By Debbie Adams
The Town of Vinton staff has been busy enhancing the town’s official website, adding pages and
features–making it more user-friendly and accessible to residents, businesses, and visitors. Take
a look at what’s new at www.vintonva.gov.
“The Town’s official website is one of many important tools the Town utilizes to provide
services and disseminate information to our citizens and businesses,” says Town Manager Pete
Peters. “It is important to keep the site fresh and current with new and relevant information.”
“The refresh has also provided an opportunity to slightly update the color scheme, add new
photos and build in a few new functionality upgrades that weren’t previously available. Several
Town Staff participated in the site’s update, although Julie Tucei, the Town’s Planning and
Zoning Coordinator, served as the lead for the project once again and did a wonderful job of
guiding the process.”
Other members of town staff who assisted with “refreshing” the website included Town
Administrative Manager/Town Clerk Antonia Arias-Magallon, Economic Development
Specialist Marshall Stanley, Executive Assistant to the Chief of Police/Deputy Emergency
Management Coordinator Mandie Baker, Public Works Administrative Manager Jill Acker, and
Finance Director/Treasurer Andrew Keen, along with Chad Sweeney and Brian Gladden from
the Roanoke County Communications and IT Dept.
Town of Vinton website administrators are Tucei, Magallon-Arias, and Stanley.
Tucei says the improvements have not just given the website ‘a new skin” which is more current
and trendy in appearance, but have also added more comprehensive information for those living
in, working in, or coming to Vinton.
anyone can navigate the town’s official website by just clicking on a few buttons on the opening
page.
When the website was first launched in 2003, there were 40 pages and 30 links. The refreshed
website includes nearly 250 pages of information and countless links.
Tucei advocated for, and designed, that initial website in 2003. As part of her job with the Town
of Vinton she was frequently called upon to answer computer questions from co-workers and
received so many calls from the community and beyond asking for the town’s website address
that she was eager to undertake the project.
“I really didn’t know that much about designing websites,” said Tucei, “but the town paid for me
to take a few classes on web design at the Roanoke Higher Education Center and at Virginia
Western Community College.” She ended up coding the entire project–a phenomenal
undertaking.
Their strategy at the time was to make the first website as easy for citizens to use as
possible—and that has remained their goal ever since.
The website was updated in 2010 when Consuela Caudill was Assistant Town Manager. Their
goal for that upgrade was “for citizens to be able to find any information they were seeking in
four clicks, no more.”
Town Executive Assistant/Town Clerk Susan Johnson and Tucei worked on the most recent
revision in 2019, along with Sweeney and Gladden from Roanoke County. Their website vendor
in 2019, and again in 2023, was Civic Plus—a software Platform built mainly for local
governments.
As for why they decided to “refresh” the website once again, Tucei says websites should be
updated on a regular basis to ensure information is up-to-date, but also to keep citizens interested
in navigating the site. In the course of refreshing the website, Tucei and the staff started with
some research on what information was most searched for by citizens, businesses, and guests and
revised, refreshed, and enhanced from there.
You will notice the changes immediately when you first open the website. The first page has
kept many of the same features and its mega menu at the top, but with a much more user-friendly
format, including an easy-to-read font. The colorful theme features the Blue Ridge Mountains
and their beautiful blues, the traditional maroon and mustard colors found on the Town Seal, new
photos within a slide show, new menu buttons that make information readily available on the
Town Code, Agendas and Minutes, Concerns and Requests, GIS mapping, Refuse Collection
schedules and routes, facility rentals, “How Do I?”, and “Notify Me.”
“Notify Me” allows visitors to the website to quickly and easily sign up for emergency alerts
through CodeRED, view the latest town news flashes, receive notifications of town events, and
research job openings in various departments.
All the information on paying bills from the town and county can be found with one click. One
click will also get you to all the town’s social media pages, popular links, and the “All Things
Vinton e-Newsletter.”
That first page also displays the latest information posted on social media and a detailed calendar
of town events.
It also contains some Vinton trivia—Vinton occupies 3.2 square miles, has a population of 8,059,
with 344 small businesses, three Roanoke Valley Greenway trails, and close proximity (under a
mile) to the Blue Ridge Parkway.
Each town department has its own information-packed page with numerous links, and how to
contact them specifically.
If you live in Vinton, most everything you need to know is on the “Residents” page; if you own a
business or are planning one in Vinton, check out “Businesses.”
The website contains a wealth of information. It even points you to free parking areas available
when you are in town and more than you may ever want to know about codes and permits.
Tucei says working with Civic Plus on refreshing the website was a great experience, once again.
“They make it simple with easy-to-follow templates and flexibility in designs.”
Basically, the town tells the website developer what they want included in their website and
Civic Plus does the design, presents it to the town, and is more than willing to make adjustments
for suggested changes.
Tucei and the other staff members began working on the enhanced website in May 2023 and it
has recently been unveiled online. Once again, be sure to visit www.vintonva.gov. and take a
look.
