Despite council push for improvements, some city website pages remain outdated
A push from Ward 7 Councilor Paul Katz to improve the Waltham city website has been slow to yield clear improvements. For example, until late May the online pages for the City Council’s Ordinances and Rules Committee and its Licenses and Franchises Committee hadn’t posted any minutes from its meeting since November.
The Disability Services Commission hasn’t posted agendas for its last meeting in April or its upcoming meeting this Friday. Additionally, it hasn’t posted minutes since 2022.
And the Municipal Affordable Housing Trust Fund has absolutely no contact, member or meeting information on its page.
Massachusetts’ Open Meeting Law requires public bodies to post minutes for a meeting no more than 30 days or three meetings after it is held, whichever is longer.
There are some city government entities, such as the City Council’s Finance Committee and its Public Works and Public Safety Committee, which have maintained relatively up-to-date pages all along.
And some city entities have taken steps to update their pages on the city’s website since December, when Katz asked officials to take such action.
For example, the Clerk’s Office updated its pages this spring. City Clerk Joseph Vizard said other tasks take priority in the department, noting that website updates are among the least frequent requests the department receives from residents. Still, he acknowledged room for improvement, saying “we could definitely do a better job of getting them up timely.”
Some residents shared their frustrations with the city’s website. “It looks like committees, etc. are not held to any standards to make minutes/notes available online with any speed. Some are good, others totally lacking,” one user going by the name FruitlandsForever said on a Waltham discussion board hosted by social media platform Reddit.
Others on the site commented about the website’s search function, saying the site contained so many old documents it was difficult to find current information.
Six months to take action
Katz had voiced concerns about the city’s website at a City Council meeting in December, saying constituents have complained that they couldn’t find important and updated information at the site.
Katz then requested that “everyone with a presence on the city website” update their pages by the end of January. The City Council passed a resolution making the request official although nonbinding.
In a recent interview, Katz said the website “seems to be more current than it previously was” but explained he couldn’t accurately evaluate the city’s progress without a sweeping review of it.
Katz said he doesn’t plan to reintroduce the issue to the City Council any time soon, saying the council has “made the point” it wanted to make.
He suggested passing an annual resolution to remind city officials that keeping the website clean requires continuous work.
City IT Director Donald Aucoin has reported progress on that front. According to Aucoin, the IT Department is asking each department to pick a webmaster to be in charge of the department’s own page and then training that webmaster to address website needs. So far around 90% of the city’s departments have named a webmaster.
However, Aucoin said the IT Department is not authorized to enforce the City Council’s request for officials to maintain updated sites. “A request from [the City Council] is a little different from an operational suggestion improvement from me,” he said.
Meanwhile, social media coordinator Abby Auld said some city pages are out of date because of the ongoing website migration, explaining that the IT Department in mid-April asked webmasters to refrain from posting most new information to prevent any of it from being lost during the migration to new technology.
Aucoin said website users should report any problems they have with the city website to the IT Department, explaining “If we don’t know what it is that you think isn’t right, how can we possibly work with the department[s] to fix it?”
He added that the city’s website will soon contain a feedback tool to make reporting issues easier.
Waltham Reddit users posted some ideas for improvements, asking that the city website include parking data and city mapping data uploaded to the downloadable MassGIS database.
Some improvements are already on the way: Waltham is updating the website’s design to be more navigable, and it has recently migrated to a system that makes most PDFs readable by screen readers to fit with current accessibility standards.
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Addressing the city website is a core part of my upcoming campaign for municipal office next year! It is both an issue with government transparency and an ADA compliance issue, which is why I created a petition on: https://www.walthamforward.com/act.
The Petition Language:
The City of Waltham’s website (https://www.city.waltham.ma.us/) is important for everyone who lives, works, or wants to do business here. But the current website is hard to use! It can be tough to find information or get help, especially for people with disabilities or those who do not use computers often. We want our city’s website to be easy for everyone to use. If we follow modern website design standards, the City can help everyone in Waltham find what they need quickly and easily.
As of January 2026, free accessibility checking websites such as https://www.accessibilitychecker.org/ provide audits that indicate that the current website is at risk of accessibility lawsuits as a result of numerous critical issues.
We, the people of Waltham, ask the City to make the official website (https://www.city.waltham.ma.us/) easier for everyone to use.
We ask the City Council to authorize funds for and the Mayor, the City Clerk, and relevant staff members to promptly facilitate or make the necessary changes to the website to follow modern user experience design best practices and comply with Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) accessibility requirements.
At a minimum, we request that the website should:
1. Be simple to use for people of all ages and abilities
2. Work well on phones, tablets, and computers
3. Allow residents to quickly and easily find information about any and all upcoming official meetings, hearings, and events
4. Allow residents to quickly and easily find the meeting minutes or recordings of any and all past official meetings, hearings, and events
5. Display all text documents and picture files in a format compatible with software that aids blind and visually impaired users
6. Include reasonably accurate closed captioning features in videos and livestreams for deaf or hearing impaired users
7. Guide residents to and through common zoning and permitting processes in plain language
8. Guide residents to and through the process of obtaining common city services quickly and efficiently
Additionally, City officials should make plans to comply with the April 2026 deadline [recently extended to April 2027] for compliance with the ADA Title II requirements: https://www.mass.gov/info-details/americans-with-disabilities-act-ada-title-ii-digital-accessibility-information-and-requirements.
It’s not just violations of reporting laws that the city is guilty of by not updating its Web Pages in a timely manner. It also directly impacts the city’s residents.
One example (there are more) is the city’s Yard Waste Calendar was not updated until PAST the kickoff date of the program, just like last year, causing residents using this program to lose the spring’s critical first week(s) of use.
This couldn’t be updated during the winter months? Really!”