Advertising Hits Arizona County Government Website

Combuchan writes "Just when you thought that pages on your local government's website were the last bastion of the advertisement-free WWW, that may soon change. Maricopa County (seen on slashdot before), home to 3.4 million people in the Phoenix metropolitan area, has seen their GIS website "become an every day tool for realtors, developers, mortgage and title companies, appraisers, inspectors, attorneys and many other professionals associated with the real estate industry." As a result, they are now accepting bids for Web advertisements. As the county is one of the best-run in the nation, this could set quite the precedent."

Comments

It's either ads or taxes.

[Anonymous Crowhead]

Someone's got to pay. I don't see the big deal.

what is the point

[phantasma6]

How much revenue would advertising bring to the site? Would it be worth the degraded image that advertising will bring? Do they really need that extra money?

Thank God for Adblock

[Edgebound]

As long as my Adblock still works they can advertise all they want.

Right

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a country by the corporations, for the corporations, and now paid for by the corporations! What a great country we live in.

I'd much rather keep my money for myself to spend on the products the corporations make than contributing to the country I live in. What a horrible concept!

Unfortunately, now I won't have anyone to complain to when things start going wrong, because I'm not paying them.

Ha ha hee hee ho that's a good one.

[Jeffrey Baker]

Maricopa County is only "well-run" if you think it's a good idea to build a city of millions in the middle of the desert, hundreds of miles from the nearest renewable source of water and sustainable agriculture. If you consider those minor matters of survival, it's a fucking disaster.

Let Maricopa County have advertisers on their real estate website. That will distract people from the fact that they're buying land in the desert

Re:Ha ha hee hee ho that's a good one.

[Jeffrey Baker]

Yes, I am painfully aware of the agriculture practiced in Arizona. My tax dollars are subsidizing it to the tune of about $1000 per dollar of produced crop, mostly in the form of water projects.

Here's some stats for you on Maricopa County's water supply. The basins and aquifers contain about 175 million acre-feet of water. This is the bit the county has rights to. The county's water use is over 2 million acre-feet per year. The groundwater recharge rate is a pathetic 150,000 acre-feet per year, on average. The aquifer will be depleted in 60 years, according to Maricopa County's own, very optimistic estimates.

Now, riddle me this. Is it wise to invest in real estate in an area that will have pissed away its water supply in less than a century?

Furthermore I'd like to point out that much of Maricopa's and Arizona's surface water supply, for the bastardization of agriculture they tend to practice in that region, is piped in from the Colorado River, which aquatic system had to be ruined to support ambitious Arizona land owners, at the expense of everyone else.

Here's a nice book to read: Cadilalc Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water

In typical Slashdot tradition...

[cleverhandle]

...it seems that few people are actually following any links before posting corporate conspiracy theories.

Now, I will admit that there's something slightly unsettling about a government giving official coverage to particular businesses. Though, as pointed out above, it may be better than taxes.

But in any event, these ads are specifically for their GIS (Geographic Information Systems) portal. That's relatively specialized stuff - people visiting it (property owners and developers) have a pretty high probability of needing some kind of service the businesses advertise there. If they don't see the ad there, they'll go to the Yellow Pages - so who do you want the money to go to, the local gov or the telecoms?

While this still strikes me as a little odd, it's not like Aunt Tilly is going to be checking a web site for the garbage pickup schedule and be confronted with flashing ambulance chaser ads or something.

Re:You don't know Phoenix...

[Jeffrey Baker]

The Hohokam had a peak population of less than 50,000 people, and their society collapsed. Some people think the Hohokam society collapsed because their irrigation technology overextended the population, which was then wiped out by drought and poor soil management. I see a parallel with Maricopa County. Yes, technology allows 4 million people to live in the desert. But in adverse conditions, the Maricopa County society is just as apt to evaporate as the Hohokam did 600 years ago.