The City of East Ridge is rolling out its new Website, officials said Wednesday.

The introduction of the latest version of the Website came about as a result of the previous version having crashed last Friday officials said.

Community Involvement Coordinator Amanda Miller said in an email that the city’s Website crashed because it was on an old server at the host company. The company tried to get the old site up with no luck and the only solution was to put the new site up, even though some of the pages are still under construction. 

Miller went on to say that there was miscommunication earlier this week as the host company had downloaded the old city Website to their new server as well and it was finishing uploading. 

“So where we stand now,” Miller wrote in an e-mail, “is that they will be moving the new site within the next few days.”

East Ridge News Online discovered late last week that sensitive personal information – including dates of birth, home addresses and social security numbers – of executives of a parent company of a convenience store that had applied for a beer permit, had been posted to the City of East Ridge Website. It is unclear how long that information was available for viewing.

This was called to city officials’ attention and the information was removed.

City Manager Scott Miller said in an email that  “the employee acknowledged to me this error and was counseled to be more careful in the future, since social security numbers are forbidden to be released in any communications whatsoever.”

On Thursday morning, two City Council members said they were unaware of any issue involving the City posting confidential information improperly.

This error in posting information to the City’s webpage comes on the heels of another gaffe.

For more than three months, the City’s Website had a “master schedule” of all City Council meetings and other public meetings posted with the dates of 2016 meetings. When it was called to the attention of city officials the current schedule for 2017 meetings was posted.

When asked about the error, City Manager Miller said via email that “the assigned employee was not on top of their job of keeping the website updated.”

The last item on the May 11 City Council agenda calls for an “executive session” in which the council will discuss litigation. It is unclear if the topic of the executive session has any relevance to the release of private information by the City on its Website last week.