The New Pension Website
From Farris’ email to our membership, it now appears that our pension fund will finally have a website owned by our pension membership which is something I suggested when originally proposing this website but Farris did not believe the ownership of the website mattered. That was a decision that I am certain he later regretted as he soon discovered he could not control the contents or operation of a website owned by someone else. The information from our pension board to our membership will now be under the total control of our pension board i.e., Farris. While that may be fine for many of our membership, there are others who will undoubtedly wish for a more balanced appraisal of our pension board’s actions but I seriously doubt those members will post any comments concerning that issue on the new website just as they usually did not post them on this website. However, because I actually build and maintain various websites for others, I shall now provide our membership with my analysis of the expected associated costs and problems of having their own website for your review:
Although I suspect our pension board will be able to obtain a new pension fund website for somewhere between $500 to $1,000 or more for the website design alone, hiring a “small production company” to build it should require that someone provide them with basic information to accomplish that task that will include providing them with a name for the website, appropriate art work or photographs, menu choices, basic color schemes, and actual text for the proposed website pages before providing the final approval of the submitted design by the production company. Of course, I also suspect that most of those decisions will be left to the discretion of the “small production company” which may be fine. However, when anyone utilizes such poor judgment in the design of any website, there will inevitably be “something else” that must be done after the website is finally approved that will cost still more money for such additional modification. Therefore, it is generally very important that the production company not be given a “blank check” with which to design any website and instead be provided with clear instructions and information for the accomplishment of that task to reduce the overall cost to our membership.
Surprisingly to the inexperienced, the simple design of the new website will likely be the least expensive part of having a new website. Most production companies who deal with clients that know very little about updating a website, such as our pension board, will strongly recommend with good cause, that a monthly “maintenance agreement” be signed with their firm to keep the website functioning as there are a whole host of serious issues that must be dealt with on a regular basis to maintain the new website’s functionality which the “small production company” may then be expected to resolve. The associated cost of that maintenance agreement will vary greatly depending upon the services and maintenance requested. Other than the mere cost of maintaining the basic operation of the new website, other services to include the cost of hosting the website as well as the cost for uploading the audio and video files mentioned in Farris’ email will undoubtedly add to that cost. While it is true that the audio file can be easily obtained from Kathy Lindsey and can be uploaded to the new website by the “small production company” with relative ease, they will not do that for free but, more importantly and expensively, someone from that “small production company” will likely have to videotape each month’s pension board meetings and the expense of them supplying a person for that purpose will likely cost our pension fund considerably more money. Therefore to somewhat limit that expense, I would suggest that the pension board attempt to have the City videotape each pension board meeting and simply provide that video to the “small production company” but that company would still have to be paid to upload those files and create a webpage or a new link on the website to view each month’s video.
Yet another problem our pension board will undoubtedly encounter is that someone will actually have to write something to put on the pages of that new website or it will be only a website with little or no information for our membership. To cheaply achieve that purpose would require someone to actually learn how to post articles on the new website but that is something that none of our current board members ever bothered to learn while using this website. If that fact remains true for the new website, that will mean the “small production company” will likely be asked to post any articles submitted to the new website by our pension board members at an additional expense to our membership for that additional service to be included in the new website’s “maintenance agreement.” Additionally, while Farris may occasionally write something for the new website, I seriously doubt he will want to shoulder that responsibility alone because that process is very time consuming and he claims to have only very limited time for pension business now. While there are other members of our pension board who could conceivably write something for the new website, none including Farris have ever written any article for even this website in the past. Thus, I expect that someone other than our pension board members will ultimately be tasked with writing the majority of those articles who may actually want to be paid for performing that service. While that may be fine because even Farris’ writing is fraught with grammatical errors, as I am certain many have noticed just from his prior comments on this website, that could still potentially add to the cost of the new website as well as the additional cost for posting those articles that will be charged by the “small production company.”
Thus, excluding the additional costs for future articles mentioned above, I would expect the mere cost of simply maintaining the new website with the features Farris listed in his email and assuming that the City WILL provide videotaping services for our pension board meetings, will likely be between $200 to $500 per month or more but even that additional expense is not as important as providing those features to our membership which I previously provided for free for well over two years. Of course, my “guesstimates” of those costs are only based upon what I would normally charge for such services and probably will not be in accordance with the actual costs from the “small production company” but will provide our membership with some idea of the associated costs and problems of website ownership that they can reasonably expect.
Finally on this topic, I am rather curious to see just how and at what price the “best approach” method Farris mentioned in his email to our membership will work when using a “private administrator” for the new website to prevent it from becoming, in Farris’ words, “just another venue to trash and publicly humiliate members who happen to take an opposing view of the administrator” just as Farris was obviously attempting to do to this “member” in that email. Clearly, to any moderately intelligent person, any “private administrator” hired to perform that service would be required to moderate each and every post or comment submitted to the new website by our membership or others and then must have the clear authority to delete whatever posts or comments they deem necessary based upon specific guidelines established by our pension board that I seriously doubt they could appropriately devise. Even if such guidelines where devised, the only conceivable way any “private administrator” could possibly achieve that goal would be to require that each comment submitted to the website by our membership or others must first undergo their moderation and approval in conformance with such guidelines before allowing that comment to appear live on the website. However, that process may not be the best because it would mean that many of our membership’s comments would be delayed for up to three or four days before going live on the new website, assuming the new “private administrator” had regular days off from work and holidays. Certainly, such constant review and moderation of posts or comments on the new website would require considerable time by any “private administrator” who may actually expect to be adequately compensated for providing that service that I seriously doubt any good “production company” would ever want to provide at any reasonable additional cost.
Therefore, the new “private administrator” will likely only be asked to remove whatever posts or comments that someone with authority over the new website, again i.e., Farris, tells them to remove for whatever reasons. However, that would probably not be an acceptable procedure either because then Farris or someone else would have to constantly monitor the new website for such individually determined offensive posts or comments that would already be live on the new website where everyone could read them which would seem to defeat the whole purpose of Farris’ stated concern. Thus, while Farris’ claimed “best approach” may sound good to some of our membership, it is not really practical in any meaningful way and again shows Farris’ lack of sound judgment in a matter that is clearly outside his claimed “experience” on our pension board. In the end, all that will likely occur is that our pension membership will have to pay an additional expense to provide Farris with this ultimate control of the new website that will enable him to proudly proclaim his success in freeing it from the abuse of others, while ignoring his own.
This Pension Website
Because of my recent contact with pension members who greatly regret the announced closing of this website and because of the problems listed above, I have now decided NOT to close this website as I previously mentioned in my last article. The domain name for this website is good for another full year and my hosting is already paid which means I can easily operate this website at no additional expense because I am quite capable of performing my own maintenance and writing my own articles. Of course, there will be minor modifications to this website that you will undoubtedly notice but they will NOT be of any consequence to the information provided. One such modification to this website was correctly pointed out in Farris’ email to the membership in which he mentioned that this website will no longer accept any comments from our membership; however, the vast majority of our pension membership never provided them anyway. For that reason, I do not see that modification as any deterrent to those of our membership or others who may simply want to read the information provided on this website that will include information they will not be able to obtain anywhere else.
However, to facilitate the posting of new articles on this website from our membership or others, I will now accept for my review any proposed articles submitted to my email address that are provided as an attachment in word processor format but I must reserve my right to refuse the posting of any such articles on this website at my sole discretion. Additionally, I will also attempt to protect any author’s identity by posting such articles as being submitted by only a “guest author” if you request that service. Therefore, if you have something constructive and/or important to say in 500 words or more about a pension related topic, by all means submit that article for possible publication on this website, otherwise, please attempt to post your article somewhere else. For those who may be curious, I will also continue to write “My Observations” of each pension board meeting for this website, just as I have done in the past, because the audio recordings of the public pension board meetings are subject to the Arkansas FOIA and cannot be withheld from the public by the pension board or the City. For that reason, I will continue to pick up a copy of that audio after each pension board meeting and use it to review each meeting before writing “My Observations” articles for this website. Of course, such articles will only be my “personal opinion” as would seem to be clearly indicated by the title of those articles but that fact has been derogatorily mentioned in comments on this website before. Still, I would ask our membership and others to consider just who else’s “opinion” can any individual writer adequately provide?
Thus, because our pension board has already committed to providing our pension membership with a shiny new website that will provide many, if not all, of the same features and services I previously provided on this website, I do not see any downside to maintaining this website in its new modified form that will now save me considerable personal time because it is already built and has a readership of over 4,000 visitors each month many of whom are not our pension membership. Of course, I shall have to temporarily close this website again for up to a few hours to make other necessary changes and modifications but the information provided on this website will essentially be the same as what has been provided in the recent past and I plan on making other modifications and improvements to this website that will undoubtedly make it well worth your continued reading in the future.
Finally, I hope the new police pension website meets with great success and will serve our pension membership very well.
