Minor changes now, complete redesign later

Ask anyone who's ever used the City of St. Petersburg's website, and the words "easy to use" don't necessarily come to mind. Rick Kriseman promised to change that.

While campaigning, Kriseman said he would make StPete.org "user-friendly, highly interactive, and reflective of our community." He also vowed to make the city's budget easy to review.

A quick look at the site five months into Kriseman's term shows more features, to be sure. There are quick-navigation bars for hurricane season, the city's Pier, the Greenlight Pinellas mass transit initiative, the downtown waterfront master plan and parks and recreation. These all have updated information, the city said.

Communications director Benjamin Kirby said the website was still a work in progress, but pointed to the Council Agenda page as an example of a recent update. Clicking on day and meeting links will bring up PDFs showing agenda items with back-up material on subjects.

Kirby also said Kriseman has discussed a complete redesign of the website with the city's marketing team. He said the tentative goal is to have a new site available sometime in 2015.

We rate this promise In The Works.