LOMPOC, Calif. -- A Lompoc city
council member is trying to drag the city into the 21st
century.
The city is discussing plans to
modernize its communication at a workshop Thursday.
Like many small cities across the
Central Coast, Lompoc is behind the times in terms of technology so Mayor
Pro-tem Ashley Costa wants to digitize city hall.
"The first thing that I noticed
immediately is that my inbox at city hall was always full with stacks and stacks
of paper which was new for me," says Costa. "That's a new culture for me to
understand coming from a university like UCLA where everything was
digital."
Now, she wants to digitize city
hall.
"That would include moving city
hall to a cloud based system, utilizing Facebook, having a strong Internet
presence as well as many other things including potentially mobile applications
in the future," says Costa.
Costa says gone are the days of
snail mail. Nowadays, we use our cell phones to communicate via email, text
messages, even through Facebook and central coast cities need to upgrade to
catch up.
"It's about providing the best
quality of service that we can and it's about creating effective communication
with the citizens and staff here at city hall," says Costa.
She says smaller cities need to
keep up with the times to lure in business opportunities.
"One of the first things a
business will do is come and look at your city website for examples so if we
update our website, we'll be able to attract more of those businesses," says
Costa.
Costa didn't have an actual price
for the cost of modernization but says the good thing about digitization is that
it has an up front cost but will end up saving the city money in the long run.
