City Council Work Session - February 23, 2026: Website Update and Honey Bucket Discussion
City Council Work Session - February 23, 2026
This work session covered two agenda items: an update on the city website redesign project and a discussion regarding the future of the Honey Bucket business operating in a light manufacturing zone. The council reviewed the website staging environment and deliberated on potential pathways for Honey Bucket to remain at its current location.
Discussion Items
- Website Redesign Update: Megan George, Deputy City Manager, and Heidi Stanley, Creative Communications and Marketing Program Manager, presented the progress of the website redesign project. The project is within budget at approximately $105,000 of the authorized $150,000. The staging environment was demonstrated, featuring improved search functionality, hover states, translated options via Google Translate, and dedicated pages for parks, police, and library. The council noted the integration of meeting minutes and agendas is still under development. Council members expressed positive feedback and requested beta testing volunteers.
- Honey Bucket Business Discussion: Aquila, from Community Development, presented the background. The business has been operating in a light manufacturing zone since October 2024, and a code interpretation found the use (solid waste treatment and recycling) not allowed. A voluntary compliance agreement is in place, holding enforcement in abeyance pending council direction. Council considered two options: a text amendment to allow conditional use in light manufacturing, or a zone change from light manufacturing to general manufacturing for the specific property. Council members expressed concerns about changing light manufacturing zoning, which serves as a buffer between industrial and residential areas. Honey Bucket COO Jason Perry answered questions, confirming that a waste tank had been removed and operations are now largely indoors, with wastewater directly dumped at Clean Water Services. Councilor Brooks and others opposed opening light manufacturing to conditional uses, citing potential impacts on community health and environment. Mayor Bubenick suggested exploring a zone change to general manufacturing for the two lots (Honey Bucket and adjacent landscaping company). Councilor Gonzalez and Councilor Reas supported this approach. Councilor Hillier expressed openness to the zone change idea but wanted to understand staff impacts. Councilor Sacco opposed changing zoning for future unknown businesses. The general consensus was to allow Honey Bucket to pursue a zone change application from light manufacturing to general manufacturing.
Key Outcomes
- Website Redesign: The project is on track for launch; beta testing will be offered to council members. Staff will follow up with an email for volunteers.
- Honey Bucket: Council directed staff to work with Honey Bucket to initiate a zone change application from light manufacturing to general manufacturing. The voluntary compliance agreement will remain in effect during this process. No formal vote was taken; the direction was a general consensus.
Meeting Transcript
Are you ready? Okay, welcome to the February 23rd, 2026 to the City Council work session. Our first item is uh website design update. Megan. Okay. Uh good evening, uh, Council President Pratt and members of the City Council. It's good to see you. Uh and Mayor Bibenick. I saw you. Um I am Megan George. I'm the deputy city manager in Twalton, and I'm joined this evening by Heidi Stanley, our Creative Communications and Marketing Program Manager. And we are here to provide an update on our website redesign project. Um I've got a few slides, but the bulk of the presentation will be Heidi giving you a preview of our website from its staging environment. Okay, so um you've seen a version of this slide, I think, in every time we've been before you. Um, this project was broken down into six phases. The first being discovery, the second being design, then website development, followed by content migration, testing and training, and the launch of the website itself. Um phases two and three were the longest. Um the last time we were before you was in May of 2025, and our um contractor Juice Box has been at work since then actually developing the website, and they handed us the keys in December to the staging environment. Um so we have been uh working very diligently to try to move all of the content on our current website into that staging environment. Um luckily we we knew we were going to reach that step, and so we asked staff to get a head start on that workload, and so they have been working for much of the past year on um updating content, rewriting content, making sure content was accurate and timely, and so we have made quite a bit of progress on the content migration phase thus far. Um council authorized our contract with Juice Box for up to 150,000, um, and we are right around 105,000 right now, so within budget at this point, and we expect to stay within budget for the project duration. Let's see. Uh current tasks that we're working on includes finalizing the content migration. Um, and you'll see much of that is already in the staging site when Heidi pulls up the preview. Um right now we're focusing on our final integrations. Um this is a bit technical and above my head, um, but we have a bunch of third-party software or tools that we use for various components, including um Municode or Municode meetings where your council packets are published, um, or our connection with WCCLS for the library catalog. So we've been going one by one through those integrations to connect them to the website in the way that makes the most sense. So a few of the ones we're still working on are the Municode meetings as well as the community pass, which we use for our recreation programs. Uh we're also working on internal testing and a review of pages. So as folks are loading things up, we're testing them in that staging environment to make sure that the paths uh navigate the way that we anticipated that they would, that the content looks nice on the screen and that it is all getting transferred. And I want to shout out to our website steering committee. So we had an interdepartmental group work on this project from the beginning, and they have been very hard at work, particularly in the last few months to get that content migrated over, and they've done a wonderful job. So shout out to them and a shout out to everybody on staff who has participated in the website process in some part. Um I know I've asked a group of at least 15, maybe more, to review pages that I've been working on. So it really has been an all-hands-on-deck effort. The future tasks that we are getting closer to day by day, um, include a structured beta testing with staff, the city council, and the community. So, way back at the kickoff of this project, we sent out a survey and conducted focus groups with members of the community to ask what their priorities were. At that time, we also asked for volunteers to assist with beta testing in the future. So we have a list of folks who are interested. We'd also like to check in with the city council and see if any of you are interested in doing beta testing with us. That would likely be handled one-on-one, and so you could all sign up if you're interested. Um, so I'll send an email out afterwards once we have a little bit more information about what that looks like. Uh and then the final two pieces, which should be fairly short order, our training for internal staff. So many of our staff have already gone through trainings. We also have recordings of trainings available, but that will be expanding the group to everybody who will have access to the website, and then of course, launching the website. That's the most important step, I think. So, with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Heidi, and she's gonna flip through. So, I'll pull that up. Okay. Sliding it over.
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