Pittsburgh Municipal & Government organizations deserve a site that signals credibility.
Allegheny County has more than a hundred municipalities, and a lot of their websites are an accessibility complaint waiting to be filed.
Pittsburgh residents deserve a city or township website that is clear, accessible, and easy to trust.
- Custom-built designs made for public-sector audiences and their needs
- Mobile-friendly pages that work for residents on any device
- Simple content tools so staff can update information quickly
- Plain, readable layouts that support transparency and public access
- A real person to talk with throughout the whole project
The problem facing small Pennsylvania boroughs and townships
Allegheny County is split into more than a hundred separate municipalities, most of them small boroughs and townships running lean offices. The website is usually maintained by a secretary or a part time administrator on top of everything else, which is not a criticism of anyone. It is a staffing reality.
Two things follow from it. First, residents cannot find what they came for: meeting agendas, the current ordinance, trash and recycling days, permit forms, who to call about a specific problem. Second, and more seriously, the site is very likely not accessible, which for a public entity is not a design preference. It is a legal exposure under the ADA and Section 508, and it is exactly the kind of thing that gets a demand letter.
Most borough sites I look at fail basic checks: images without text alternatives, contrast too low to read, PDFs that a screen reader cannot open, forms nobody can complete with a keyboard.
A site a resident can use and a secretary can maintain
Accessibility from day one
Built to WCAG 2.1 Level AA at delivery, with the specific issues that generate complaints handled rather than deferred.
Meetings, agendas and minutes
Posted in a predictable place in a format residents can actually open, with a structure your office can keep up with.
The five things residents call about
Trash days, permits, ordinances, tax questions and who to contact, all reachable from the front page without hunting.
Maintainable by one staff member
Trained in an afternoon, no ticket required to change a date, because a site only one vendor can edit becomes stale the moment budgets tighten.
Sites are hosted on a private server I administer and kept patched, which matters for a public entity that cannot afford an outage during an emergency notice.
Public records and payments belong in specialist systems
I build the public facing site. I do not become the custodian of municipal records or the processor of resident payments.
Tax collection, utility billing and permit payments belong with the providers your municipality already uses or a purpose built govtech vendor who carries that compliance. Right to Know responses and records retention stay with the municipality under Pennsylvania law. What I build links to those systems clearly so a resident is never confused about where they are.
Small municipalities get sold bundled platforms constantly. Before you sign one, it is worth asking which parts you actually use.
What it is like to work with one person in Pittsburgh
You are hiring one person, not an agency. I am Scott Rocca, I work out of Bridgeville just outside Pittsburgh, and I do the design, the build, the hosting and the support call myself. Nothing gets handed to a junior and nothing gets outsourced. That is the tradeoff: you will not get a 20 person team, and you will never be handed to someone who does not know your project.
Most builds run three to six weeks depending on how much content is ready. Sites are built to WCAG 2.1 Level AA at delivery and hosted on a private server I administer, not a page builder you rent by the month. You get a straightforward one time build price plus a flat monthly for hosting, updates and support, and I quote it before you commit to anything. If a cheaper option genuinely fits you better, I will say so.
If you are in any borough or township in Allegheny County and you want to talk it through, email scott@brightpresencedigital.com or call (412) 314-8850. I reply within two business days.
Ready to give your Municipal & Government organization the site it deserves?
Tell me about your project. I reply within two business days.