The article
Nobody visits a city website to browse. A resident comes to pay a water bill, check the trash pickup day, apply for a permit, find a council agenda or report a pothole, and leaves as soon as the task is done or looks impossible. Municipal website development starts from that list of tasks, not from the org chart: a resident does not know which department handles a missed pickup, and should not need to.
I have 18 years in software development, and my company, 26 Lines of Code, has 70+ specialists and 150+ delivered projects since 2017. Local government is one of the fields I write website plans for, and libraries are another. Below is what I would plan for a town, village or special district site, what the federal accessibility rule and a .gov domain mean for it, and what it costs with us. The package's own terms, from page count to cancellation, are on the $499 website page.
The tasks residents come for
- Pay a bill: water, sewer, taxes or tickets, through the portal you already use.
- Trash and recycling: the schedule, holiday changes and bulk pickup.
- Permits and licenses: what is needed, the forms and the fees.
- Meetings: agendas, minutes and recordings, filed by date.
- Report a problem: potholes, streetlights, missed pickups.
- Alerts: storms, road closures, boil-water notices.
- Contacts: every department with its hours, phone and address.
Each task gets a page that names it in residents' words and links to the system that finishes it. Payment portals, permit software and agenda tools stay where they are.
The accessibility deadlines
Under Title II of the ADA, a 2024 Justice Department rule holds a town's website to WCAG 2.1 Level AA, and a special district's too. The deadlines moved once already, in April 2026: a town of 50,000 people or more has until April 26, 2027, a smaller one or a special district until April 26, 2028. Ask your attorney how the rule applies to your documents, your meeting videos and the portals you link to.
What we bring is our own website standard: every picture carries a text description, and layouts hold still while pictures load. That is not a conformance review, and we do not promise ADA compliance for a $499 site; testing against WCAG is what our ADA website compliance work covers.
A .gov domain
A .gov address tells residents the site is official. The federal .gov registry gives these domains free of charge to U.S. government organizations, cities, counties and special districts among them, and a senior official such as the mayor, the council president or the city manager authorizes the request. Whatever your domain, it stays in the government's name: we connect it to the site and never hold it ourselves.
How residents search
- They type the task and the town: the town's name with "trash pickup", "building permit" or "pay water bill". A page titled with the task and the town answers that search; a page called "Public Works" does not.
- City hall, the library and each park office can have a Google Business Profile, and its hours must match the site.
- Our $499 site includes titles and descriptions, a sitemap, Search Console, structured data and a link preview on every page, so a notice shared in a neighborhood group shows as a card.
Where city sites lose residents
I checked five pages from companies that build municipal websites, all within Google's top 20 for "municipal website development" in October 2026. All five talk about accessibility, yet 20 of their 70 pictures carry no text description. Some may be decorative, where an empty description is correct, so take it as a reason to check, not a verdict. Only 4 of the 70 pictures come in more than one size, and three of the pages load every picture without the browser's own lazy loading. None names a price.
Then check your own site for these:
- Navigation by department, so residents must know who does what.
- Forms, agendas and budgets only as scanned PDFs.
- Last winter's alert still on the home page.
- A pay-your-bill link that ends on a dead portal page.
- A search box that cannot find "trash".
Check your municipal website
| What | Why it matters | How to check |
|---|---|---|
| Top tasks | Residents come to get something done | Ask the clerk for the five most common calls, then find each answer on a phone |
| Portal links | A broken payment link turns into a phone call | Click every pay, apply and report link |
| Agendas | Residents and reporters look for them by meeting date | Find the latest council agenda in two taps |
| Alerts | An expired alert hides the next real one | Check the home page for old notices |
| Text alternatives | WCAG asks for one on every meaningful image | Run Lighthouse's accessibility audit, then have a person review the page |
| The domain | It should belong to the government | Check the registrant, and whether you use .gov |
What a town pays for municipal website development
- The $499 website: task pages, departments, meetings and notices, with an admin your clerk uses. The build is $499, paid upfront, and from launch the town pays $29 a month, billed annually ($348).
- Payments or booking on the site (pavilions, halls, fields): plus $500 each.
- More languages or more than 20 pages: priced before work starts. For scale: BND, an accounting firm's site in three languages, has 108 pages and was live about two days after its first commit.
- Resident accounts that track requests: a web application, from $5,000 for a first version.
The code and a data export come to you at launch, and Google Analytics and Search Console sit in your account or move there when you ask. Support covers hosting, fixes and updates, and we tell you if the site goes down or the domain nears renewal; on this plan we respond within 3 business days (website maintenance). Libraries have their own page; our other web services sit under web development, with all prices on one page.
