Archived News

Waynesville website a reliable resource

fr webwaynesvilleAs the largest town west of Asheville and the county seat of Haywood County, Waynesville is the economic engine of the region, driving development and investment from Canton to Cherokee. Accordingly, its burden is high — some of the most important interactions residents will have with any local government occur on its website, almost 90 times each day. 

And while Waynesville’s overall score puts it near the top of the list, some mildly troubling issues remain. 

Despite being only three years old, the site already looks dated. The rotating banners and the large circular icons on the home page hearken back to the do-it-yourself days of Geocities and MySpace, and mobile compatibility is merely average due to issues with scaling photos.

Also troubling is the seemingly-dormant “performance dashboard” which is supposed to be an “interactive web-based tool [that] provides data sets and graphs to show and explain the performance measures we use to gauge our success.” 

A noble effort, to be sure — but it seems that maintenance of the documents associated with this tool has fallen by the wayside. The main page of the dashboard contains only a mid-year report from 2013, demographic info hasn’t been updated since at least 2014; ditto for the “Budgeting and Finance” and “Parks and Recreation” sections. 

The “General Government” and “Public Safety” sections contain no information at all — just placeholder links that go nowhere, with topics like number of employees, turnover rate, and OSHA-reportable injuries appearing as links but with no further info, as if someone meant to populate these areas and then simply forgot. 

Related Items

The site does, however, make it quick and easy to pay bills, find city employees, and apply for various permits. It also earned high scores for the utility of the calendar, the publishing of announcements, agendas, meeting minutes and ordinances.

 

www.waynesvillenc.gov

Population: 9,809

2016-17 Budget: $29.7m

Annual website expense: $1,728

Initial website expense: $13,986

Year launched: 2013

Avg. visits/month: 18,568

Avg. unique visitors/month: 2,593

Smokey Mountain News Logo
SUPPORT THE SMOKY MOUNTAIN NEWS AND
INDEPENDENT, AWARD-WINNING JOURNALISM
Go to top
Payment Information

/

At our inception 20 years ago, we chose to be different. Unlike other news organizations, we made the decision to provide in-depth, regional reporting free to anyone who wanted access to it. We don’t plan to change that model. Support from our readers will help us maintain and strengthen the editorial independence that is crucial to our mission to help make Western North Carolina a better place to call home. If you are able, please support The Smoky Mountain News.

The Smoky Mountain News is a wholly private corporation. Reader contributions support the journalistic mission of SMN to remain independent. Your support of SMN does not constitute a charitable donation. If you have a question about contributing to SMN, please contact us.