INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

TOWN OF OCEAN CITY

FISCAL YEAR 2025 PROPOSED BUDGET

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BUDGET HIGHLIGHTS:

REVENUE CHANGES:

In FY 25, an additional $217,650 was charged to departments to cover expenditure increases. Comcast Fiber connections for Fire station 4 and for the Convention Center and the Comcast circuit have been charged to the Equipment Trust Fund and paid for with funds collected from water tower antenna rental revenue dedicated to City-wide communications expenses. Maintenance costs for the CAD/RMS system are funded at $210,650 and are allocated directly to the departments that use CAD/RMS software.

PERSONNEL CHANGES:

Nine full-time positions are funded in this budget. Funding for a step increase and a 3% COLA effective January 1, 2025 have been included. An allowance has been included for supplemental pay due to an employee currently serving in the military. No part-time employees are utilized by this department. Benefit costs increase for health insurance and retirement, while the allocation for worker’s compensation decreases. No contribution has been funded for retiree health.

CHANGES IN OPERATIONS:

Software support, maintenance and software upgrades account for $796,749 of the IT budget. A large component of this line item is the software support for the CAD/RMS software. This maintenance agreement costs $210,650 annually. In FY 20, the CentralSquare software programs were moved to a Cloud version. Updates are performed by CentralSquare instead of by Town employees, and the fee for data recovery is no longer necessary. Maintenance and support are covered by the annual fee for this service, which increased $9,321 to $195,752 in FY 25. Maintenance and software support for all other software programs totals $390,347. Expenses in Contracted Services include professional services, travel and training, dues and communications expenses. The Comcast service for the boardwalk surveillance cameras is budgeted at $43,056, a slight increase from FY 24. Annual cleaning of all city surveillance cameras is included at $16,566. Barracuda email archiving system is funded at $29,820 and Unitrends backup replication is funded at $49,304. FY 25 is year 3 of a 3-yr contract with Unitrends. Training and Travel costs were budgeted at $16,830 for this division. Included items are: attendance at the Central Square National conference for two employees, $5,500, and a laserfiche online training center fee of $3,920. AS400 Training has been included at $12,000, which will allow many Town employees to access online training. Operational Supplies are funded at $279,420. Funded supplies include: replacement PCs, laptops and Toughbook computers, $74,900; and Microsoft software assurance, $25,000. Network switch refresh for ten switches has been funded at $30,000. Fifteen replacement toughbooks were approved for the Police department at a cost of $55,500. Fire/EMS equipment has been included at $35,900. Four replacement toughbooks for the Emergency Services department were funded at $14,800. Intragovernmental allocations for Radio maintenance, Vehicle lease and General Overhead increase. Transfers to Reserves reflects $25,000 to be set aside annually for five years to cover a future data center refresh.