Revamped Borough Website Launches Monday

Say goodbye to the drab, informationally-barren Fair Lawn borough website you've grown accustomed to navigating over the past six months. A more colorful, redesigned and informationally-relevant page will be live by Monday, assistant borough manager Jim Van Kruiningen said.

The borough has been without a proper website for more than six months since its former web host unexpectedly closed up shop last September and took the town's website down with them. Since then, visitors to www.fairlawn.org have been shuttled to a temporary, colorless shell of the old website.

When the new website is rolled out Monday, its functionality will mirror the borough's site prior to its September shutdown, but its content is expected to be more relevant for residents. Borough offiicials would like the site — which many residents report never having even visited — to become a more informative and highly-trafficked town resource.

To achieve that end, Van Kruiningen said he'll begin urging residents who call with a complaint to submit their problem online through the new site's "Request for Service" option.

Submitting a request for service through the new site will create a paper trail that's expected to make the town more efficient and more accountable to its residents.

"If our employee does not respond to that person [within a reasonable amount of time], then I’m notified," Van Kruiningen said. "So I can turn back to the employee and say,'Listen, it’s been this many days, you’ve yet to respond to this service request, you need to respond to it.'"

A request for service could be anything from a resident asking that the town patch a pothole in front of her house to an Army veteran inquiring about the application process for a tax rebate, Van Kruiningen said.

When making a service request online, residents will be prompted to provide their name, address, phone number and the nature of their request or complaint.

Once submitted, the request is automatically sent to the appropriate department supervisor who will be expected to confirm receipt of the request and fulfill it in a timely fashion. 

"Everything is tracked," Van Kruiningen said. "It eliminates the he said, she said."

While residents will have the ability to download and fill out numerous forms and documents online using the new site, submission of those documents — at least for the time being — must still be done in person or through traditional mail, Van Kruiningen said.

It's unlikely the borough will be able to begin processing online credit card payments for things like taxes, tickets and permit fees through the site until next year — although that is the ultimate goal.

The Fair Lawn Community Center website, which shares a webmaster with the Fair Lawn borough website, will remain active for the remainder of the year at its current distinct web address. Beginning next year, however, it will be consolidated into a page on the borough website and will no longer have a distinct URL, Van Kruiningen said.

Other Fair Lawn-related websites like those for the police department, library and school district will not be consolidated and will continue to operate independently, he said.

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