It’s 2013, increasingly citizens rely on computers, smart phones and other digital devices for current, accurate information. While it’s often confusing to decipher what’s accurate and what’s not; the one place citizens, in a free and democratic nation, ought to expect to get current, accurate information is its governmental Websites.

Because all politics is local, all citizens must expect current, accurate information.

Once upon a time, acquisition, hosting and maintenance of a Website was quite an expensive project. Advances in systems have significantly reduced those costs. In fact, thousands municipalities have useful, dynamic, updated; easy to manage and update Websites that cost about $100 a year. An excellent example is the WordPress Sites for Cities program.

Columbia news, views & reviews wonders why the Columbia Borough Website is out-of-date, inaccurate and so costly.

For example, the data on this Webpage still shows Renae Sears as a councillor a month after a new citizen replaced Sears following her resignation. And this page shows events and activities that happened in the borough over a month ago.

While scanning the borough’s Website, we clicked on the “BUDGET INFORMATION” page to review the posted budget information. This cursory review prompted some intriguing questions.

Why does Columbia Borough budget $1,000 in the 2012 and 2013 budgets for a Website that’s not accurate nor current?

What exactly is included in the line item of Community Re-investment; $20,000 budgeted? Where does it go?

Isn’t it convenient that the budgeted expenses for Emergency Management are exactly the same … year after year. Computer equipment … $500 a year? The Disaster Planning Manual … $500? Really?

Interestingly, a neighboring community accounts for Emergency Management this way: “there is no need to budget for emergency management as the Chief of Police acts in that capacity and the costs are absorbed within the police budget.”

Could not Columbia embrace the same action; could not Columbia say, “there is no need to budget for emergency management as the Codes Officer acts in that capacity and the costs are absorbed within the codes budget?”

We’ve said this before, too.

We wonder why local governing bodies do not embrace the practice of showing budgeted and actual expenses as Lancaster County does. Don’t you?

In our experience with private sector budgeting, we know no private sector business that would sanction or allow this kind of nebulous budgeting.

We wonder why citizens do not question how elected “public servants” spend their money. Don’t you?