Greensboro's official Google web effort an unmitiaged disaster.

RLF Communications, the PR agency hired to build and manage Greensboro's official web site supporting our pursuit of Google should be removed from the web effort, not paid for it and their pimp, Action Greensboro, should apologize for bringing them to the party.

It is no secret I had an interest in offering my professional services to the City for this project. I suggested that multiple web developers be given a chance to submit proposals. We were not. Instead, RLF was chosen without a competitve process and their efforts have been an unmitigated disaster. Consider:

1. Their "web site design," for which they propose to charge the city $1,000, was little more than a slightly customized blog. Something the City already had at its disposal for free.

2. The customized blog is broken. Its layout does not display properly for some users.

3. The professional content management, for which RLF proposes to charge the city $2,000 for 24 days worth, has yielded numerous embarrassing and uncorrected grammatical errors and the inclusion of off-topic videos with vulgar language.

4. The online activities proposed on the blog are poorly planned and unnecessarily difficulty.

This is an amateur effort -- worse, really -- and it is an embarrassment to Greensboro. What is Greensboro going to do about it? Coddle mediocrity because it would be impolite to step on the toes of certain insiders or are we going to be grownups and put the success of this effort above other considerations?