At dinner a couple of weeks ago, some friends admitted they weren’t sure exactly how many council members run their hometown of Duluth. I piped in knowingly, “You can find that on their website.”
Turns out my computer-savvy friends have never visited their city’s website.
I’ve discovered most of our Gwinnett cities have excellent websites chock full of not only city government info and latest events, but a wide array of services.
Not to be confused by our county website, www.gwinnettcounty.com, these are the source for closer to home information. In the past year, Lilburn, Norcross, Duluth and Lawrenceville have all updated their websites making them more attractive and easy to navigate. I’d personally suggest Buford and Snellville look at updating theirs when funds allow.
Most city websites provide residents and business owners with code ordinance information and necessary forms for building projects, business licenses and fees. You can find information about city projects open for bidding and job openings.
Several have links making it easy to pay utilities online. You can pay parking tickets and other fines on the Lilburn, Norcross, Lawrenceville, Snellville and Duluth websites.
Nearly every city has some form of “Request Tracker” that allows residents to report potholes, vandalism, street light outages, or trees or shrubbery that need trimming to improve driving visibility. Lawrenceville’s website has a place for anonymous crime tips.
Some of the more unique features include Berkeley Lake’s Carbon Calculator to help determine your carbon footprint. Sugar Hill offers a weather alert feature. Several cities offer free chipper service for removal of small trees, limbs and shrubbery.
My favorite, newly discovered feature is what Lilburn calls the Out-Of-Town House Checker. Residents can enter vacation dates, alarm and emergency contact information and police will make a special effort to check the perimeter of homes for signs of illegal entry.
In addition to the vacation check, Norcross offers a Senior Citizen Check program. Registered senior citizens must call into police communications by a specific time. If no call is received, an attempt will be made to contact the resident by phone. If no phone contact is made an officer will check on the resident’s welfare.
In addition to these websites, most of Gwinnett’s cities maintain a Facebook page. These are a great way to learn quickly about water main or gas line breaks, road closures or other short-term events impacting your commute.
You can easily search online for your city. Just be sure to search “Duluth, Georgia” or you may find yourself looking at info for our friends in Minnesota.
Karen Huppertz has lived in Gwinnett County for 15 years. Reach her at karenhuppertz@gmail.com.
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