Again, when I designed the page, this site had far fewer departments, hence far fewer gifs. As it is, I leave many departments and sub-pages off the core page, allowing you to stumble onto them as you visit the various pages. At least the top works. Text as graphics. Text loads quickly.
Graphics take time.
On the other hand, the difference between good sites and great sites is primarily visual. But you can take it a lot further than that. Thing is, they're not gifs at all. They're just text. Similarly, if you return to my core page, you'll see a black navigational bar containing links.