Up until the 1990s, about the only way to contact City Hall was to find a phone book and dial in. E-mail? Web forms? Never heard of them.

Today, municipalities pay thousands of dollars a year to maintain a presence online. Many have elaborate, professional sites. Locally, even small governments like Madison and Millstadt have staked a place out in the digital world.

With so much focus online, it got us thinking: Who runs our municipal websites? Who updates the calendar and fields the e-mails? In short, who are the gatekeepers?

The answers aren't what we expected.

The early adopter

Officially, Paul Ellis, 57, is director of Community and Economic Development for Columbia.

"I'm probably the closest thing to a manager for the web, but it would be misleading to say that," he said.

Ellis didn't plan on being a techie who knows how to write HTML. He first taught literature and English composition in the Seattle area. In the early 1980s, a growing family and a slow-growing economy moved him into sales and marketing.

That's also when he bought one of the first home computers, a Commodore 64.

"That darn thing — you would work on programs for three and a half hours and it would do something for a minute," he said.

In the mid-1990s, Ellis got his first IBM personal computer.

"I just got hooked," he said. "I taught myself a lot of PC repair. I tore it down and rebuilt it a couple of times."

With the arrival of the dot coms, Ellis fell back on his composition degree — he blogged about Microsoft, Amazon and hundreds of start-ups around Seattle.

When one of his three daughters moved to Columbia about two years ago, Ellis and his wife Ann decided to follow; that's what happens when grandchildren are involved.

In addition to maintaining Columbia's web presence, Ellis is also administrator for the Linked-In group Southwestern Illinois Economic Development Network.

Born at the right time

Deanna Obernuefemann, 29, began as an engineering major at Western Illinois University in Macomb before pursuing a recreation, parks, tourism and administration degree in 2002.

When Edwardsville redesigned its website nearly four years ago, a lot of the updating duties fell to Obernuefemann, the recreation supervisor for the Edwardsville Parks and Recreation Department. Calendars needed updating. Schedules needed changing.

"I like staying on the cutting edge of technology," she said. "I really like the new digital and video cameras."

Obernuefemann has expanded her web knowledge, learning HTML code "and the whole picture thing, editing, placing them, JPEG versus bitmap," she said.

The job also keeps her finger on the local pulse.

"I find I have the tendency to know the oddest tidbits of what's going on in town."

She and her husband, Tim, live outside Troy and have two young children.

Don't judge a book

He is the informational technology coordinator for Collinsville, or simply the IT guy. Michael Ajero, 36, has the computer pedigree, an associate degree in computer networking and a bachelor's degree in information systems security. But when he hired on two years ago, maintaining a website was not on his radar.

"It became part of the job requirements," he said.

That meant Ajero had to learn graphic design to set up city web pages and undergo training on web development. But don't think he's a computer geek.

"I don't have an iPhone, I don't spend hours on the computer at home," he said.

Rather, Ajero spends family time with his wife, Sara, and a 9-year-old son.

"I try to stay outdoors as much as I can he said. "I try to find a balance. I've gotten into Scouts with my son. We like to do a lot of hiking and camping."

The squeaky wheel

As a certified public accountant with a bachelor's degree in accounting from Eastern Illinois University in Charleston, Shawn Kennedy, 46, easily fit into her role as finance officer for Waterloo. That was until she complained about the city's web site six years ago.

"Sometimes you squeak too loud," she said. "We didn't have much on it. I envisioned putting more forms on line and providing more information."

Kennedy said her web site skills are limited (despite the fact she learned to write HTML by trial and error), and a webmaster and a consulting company designed the site to make it easy for city employees to change web content. She makes content changes in a Notebook format.

"My children probably know more about the computer than I do," she said about her college freshman and high school sophomore daughters. "I'm learning more about Facebook as I go."

The hard part about Facebook: "To me, figuring out how to add pictures with the comments."

Shawn and her husband, Dan, live in Waterloo.

A once future president

"In third grade, I told my teacher I was going to be the first woman president in the United States," said Chiyo Palen, 36, of Glen Carbon.

Now married, Palen and her husband, Tim, have five children, ranging from 5 to 15 years old. Palen spent her growing years trekking the globe. Just ask where she grew up.

"My father spent 25 years in the military, so pick a place," she said.

Her political plans derailed when she got her hands on one of the early Apple computers when she was in sixth grade.

"Everything was black and in DOS format," she said. "You had to type in the back slashes and everything was old-school stuff."

That junior high training has come in handy. She works in the Glen Carbon Finance Department and is working toward her accounting degree. In addition to handling payroll and accounting procedures, Palen also oversees the village website. She never envisioned web responsibilities as part of her job duties, but loves the creative aspect.

"The web site gives me the ability to use my artistic abilities," she said.

That includes adding pictures for slide shows or simple updates to community and event calendars.

"I love what I do," Palen said. "You do not do the same mundane thing. It gives you a lot of different things to work on."

The pioneer

Lowell Travis, 68, of Pontoon Beach, remembers when computers ran on vacuum tubes and used tape drives to process thousands of punch cards. Today, Travis, a village trustee, helps maintain the Pontoon Beach web site. He began working with computers in 1959 on a part-time job at the Tri-City Grocery Co. in Granite City.

"We didn't call them computers then," he said. "They called it an automation center."

After graduating high school in 1961, Travis landed a job in the automation center for Mobility Equipment Command in St. Louis. In 1970, he began working at the McDonnell Douglas automation center.

"We learned on the job," he said. "We went through several generations of computers and software. The old workhorse was the IBM Model 1401. It had blinking lights, 5-foot tall tape drive, a printer and a computer processing unit. Today, similar technology could fit in your pocket."

There is nothing to compare them to, he said.

"If we had those computers then, it would be like science fiction, like watching Star Trek."

Now retired, Lowell and his wife Paula have two grown children who live in Granite City.

Contact reporter Ken West at 618-344-0264, ext. 101