CAPE COUNTY TO BUILD WEB SITE

JACKSON -- Cape Girardeau County is going on-line to offer service information to county residents within the next six months.

The construction of a Cape Girardeau County web page is still in an early developmental stage but Presiding Commissioner Gerald Jones promises it will be a reality.

"We're going to do it," Jones said. "We've just got a lot of stuff we've got to get together before it's done."

The state-funded web site will offer county service information from the various county departments such as how and where to pay taxes, how to get a license renewed, assessment information, voting data and much more, Jones said.

There has even been talk of a public forum page on the site to discuss county issues, Jones said.

Nothing is set in stone, Jones said. No one is exactly sure what the site will look like, what it's name will be, or when it will be operational.

Cape Girardeau County director of data processing Ron Andrews is responsible for overseeing the construction of the web site and he says that it's rife with potential.

"That's the thing with the web, the sky's the limit," Andrews said, adding that he expects it to be up and running within six months.

"A lot of people are using the Internet to access service information," Andrews said.

At a meeting of county department heads Monday, elected county officials were asked to set up individual meetings with Andrews to find out what specific information they would like to put in cyberspace.

Andrews said that the idea for this web site grew from the local formation of the Cape Girardeau Area Community Information Networt on the Internet.

The not-for-profit Show-Me Net Inc. launched the network in December 1995.

The Missouri General Assembly last year allocated $6 million for Missouri Express, which is designed to help communities establish information networks like this one.

The networks would tie together the web sites of a variety of organizations in each community.

For example, the city of Cape Girardeau's web page, which is still under construction, would be connected to the county web page. It would be connected to area hospital web pages, Cape Girardeau schools, and other organizations.

Each participating organization would also be responsible for creating and maintaining its own web site.

Other Missouri counties have built web pages, including the counties of St. Louis, Boone, St. Charles and Jackson.