Politics & Government

Budgets Not Easily Available on Holmdel and Hazlet Websites

By law, municipalities must have updated budget information on its website.

Holmdel and Hazlet Townships received no recognition for their municipal websites, according to a Monmouth University study performed by the school’s Polling Institute and its Graduate Program in Public Policy.

Holmdel Township ranked 437 out of 540 rated websites, while Hazlet ranked 330.

The study, which graded 540 municipal websites for features such as citizen interaction and the use of social media, named Middletown as its overall winner.

Find out what's happening in Holmdel-Hazletwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Using codes for the amount of information, student teams then assessed each website for its ease of use. Students gauged how long it took to find certain information on a website, including the municipal budget and trash/recycling information.

By law, municipalities must have updated budget information on its website.

Find out what's happening in Holmdel-Hazletwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Holmdel Township's budget is located through a link on the front page. However, budget information through that link only goes as far as 2011.

Further searching on the Holmdel homepage brings a user to the fine print, at the bottom of the page is a link to the 2012 introduced budget, complete with year-old information about the budget public hearing.

For Patch, the search for Holmdel's budget took about five minutes.

Hazlet's budget isn't as easy to find, which may have counted against the township in the ease of use category. In fact, Patch couldn't find the township budget at all, after several minutes of searching.

Patch's search for Hazlet's budget was stopped at six minutes.

Hazlet does have a township mobile app which contains business information as well as departmental and committee information.

Hazlet Interim Business Administrator Dennis Pino noted that the Monmouth University study was based upon an older iteration of the township's site. The Hazlet Township Committee recently authorized a redesign of the site and other IT enhancements.

Tell us: do you think your municipal website is easy to use and provides the information you're looking for?


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