Legal Landmines
A web professional other than a designer who is experienced with all aspects of small government website design, creation, content writing, and legalities, will have no clue of the time bombs they may be building into a website. Common mistakes that inexperienced designers make are mere annoyances to business sites - they may be legally actionable on a government site. Experienced designers who work with large government sites, or with regular businesses may not have an understanding of the unique needs of small government sites - they may expect YOU to know the legal standards for government websites, or they may not know such standards exist in any way that is different from business websites.
Government websites are required to meet minimum handicapped accessibility standards. If they do not, they can be targets for lawsuits. They are required to produce and document sustainable policies in regard to the usage of the site. Those policies must comply with state regulations and municipal code where applicable. If they do not, this, again, can be cause for lawsuits.
A site without a well written administrative manual which outlines responsibilities, duties, benefits, standards, policies, and access information, but which protects sensitive access information, will be unsustainable, and potentially open to abuse by those who have access to it. A website can be misused in a number of ways, through ignorance, or through malicious intent.
Government entities who do not understand ethics standards which should be practiced within the web design community, but which, unfortunately, are not, may be taken advantage of, and may find themselves with no legal recourse when someone has failed to educate them in technical matters which would have avoided misunderstanding. This is not an alarmist issue - some designers will not ensure that you retain full ownership and authority over your own asset. This is partly a documentation issue (documenting responsibilities and authority), partly a hiring issue (not knowing who to hire or trust).
It is not enough that a firm have experience with government sites - they should have experience with SMALL government sites, and they should know how to work with small boards. They also need to know which elements require legal research, which ones require approval from legal counsel, and what the standard elements are on a site that have to be done differently for a small government entity.
Beyond that, they should be able to train, or assist, with effective promotion of the community through the website. They should be able to recommend low cost marketing tactics that actually work, and they should be able to assist the council in identifying the assets in the community that need to be promoted.
Less than an experienced and knowledgeable professional can land you in more trouble, and expand your expenses in ways that you cannot control. A short term savings may prove highly costly in the long term.