INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
BUDGET HIGHLIGHTS:
REVENUE CHANGES:
In FY 24, an additional $60,551 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 $210,651 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 effective January 1, 2024 has been included. No part-time employees are utilized by this department. Benefit costs increase for worker’s compensation, while retirement contributions and health insurance decrease. No contribution has been funded for retiree health.
CHANGES IN OPERATIONS:
Software support, maintenance and software upgrades account for $764,229 of the IT budget. A large component of this line item is the software support for the CAD/RMS software. This maintenance agreement costs $210,651 annually. In FY 20, the Superion software programs were moved to a Cloud version. Updates are performed by Superion instead of by Town employees, and the fee for Superion data recovery is no longer necessary. Maintenance and support are covered by the annual fee for this service, which increased $18,199 to $195,752 in FY 24. Maintenance and software support for all other software programs totals $356,350. 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 $42,000, a reduction of $24,000 from FY 23. Annual cleaning of all city surveillance cameras is included at $16,566. A new service included in FY 23 was the Barracuda email archiving system, funded at $40,000. Training and Travel costs were budgeted at $7,420 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 $1,920. Unitrends backup replication service has been funded at $49,304. FY 24 is year 2 of a 3-yr contract. Operational Supplies are funded at $249,365. Funded supplies include: replacement PCs, laptops and Toughbook computers, $68,900; 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 $30,300. Four replacement toughbooks for the Emergency Services department were funded at $14,800. Intragovernmental allocations for General Overhead and Vehicle lease decrease for this division. Transfers to Reserves reflects $25,000 to be set aside annually for five years to cover a future data center refresh.