Minutes of Technology Advisory Board Meeting of June 19, 2007

Present: J Tasse, Chairman, G. Eggleston, P. St. John, M. Schorr, Gardner-Town Board liaison,

              Al Smith-guest, Joe Egry-guest; Heather Scribner (part time), Town Clerk; Absent: J. Kelley

1.      The minutes of the5-17-07 meeting were approved with a revision to item 9.

2.      Regarding the appointment of Al Smith as System Administrator (SA), and Joe Egry as a member of the TAB, Tasse has not yet gone to the Town Board with the TAB recommendations.  The TAB still needs to determine the estimated costs for consultants to perform the administrator’s duties. St. John suggested checking the county website bulletin board to see which towns have such a position and what they pay. Gardner will research what other towns do re-using an employee vs consultant for the position. Smith pointed out that the software and equipment suppliers may provide much of the initial debugging and maintenance as part of the installation service under warranty and that other towns may be past that stage of the process. Eggleston pointed out that we do not envision the SA as a hardware repairman. The SA will install software and take care of system issues. The plan is to convince the Town Board we need the position and give them an estimated cost. The TAB will do a slide presentation to the Board and it should be done at an agenda meeting.  There was a discussion of when the SA will assume the position. The 2007 town budget has some money allocated for initial maintenance, installation and software purchases, but not for a SA. There was a discussion of using an intranet/internet combination for security purposes and whether there could be external access to an internal intranet.  

3.   Tasse asked the Town Clerk how the McAfee security installation was going. She said that she had downloaded it from the McAfee website as instructed by John Kelley, but that both she and Kathy Hanley have had problems with the download. The McAfee software blocks out some specialized software such as the Town Clerk’s program. Kelley will try to fix it. The McAfee installation is not going well in general and Tasse will check with Kelley on what the problems are.

4.   Heather’s desktop computer is not working. She has researched a new computer and is waiting for information from Dell. She gave the TAB a summary sheet from Hp from the state purchasing list. She had Craig Jones help her spec it. We discussed what is needed. St. John pointed out that we need to update the list of minimum requirements for new computers that the TAB developed in 2005. This update should be done at least annually. Egry said that the update should occur at the end of the manufacturer’s fiscal year, which is public information. Gardner said that we need a cost estimate for the agenda meeting next Monday, June 25, but Smith and others said that they thought the Hp price was too high. Egry volunteered to research the cost of a new computer to meet Heather’s requirements. We need to have the spec completed for the Town Board agenda meeting in 6 days, (6/25).

5.      Eggleston said that he has the electrical drawings for the new Town Hall and they show no server wiring. He questioned whether switches and a router were funded and Gardner said that it was in the money provided for the computer system work. Eggleston also asked about termination points and Gardner said that he believes the telephone contractor will do the computer/server wiring. Tasse said that Eggleston should meet with the telecommunications contractor on what we think is need and Gardner will check with the architect.

6.      J. Kelley did not send the TAB members the new web page setup for the TAB members to comment on.

7.      J. Tasse discussed his draft slide presentation to the Town Board (see item 2). He will send a revision for Tab members to comment on ASAP so that the presentation can be made to the Town Board no later than the July 30 agenda meeting.

The meeting was adjourned at 9:08 pm. The next meeting will be on July 17, 2007 at 7 pm in the Town Hall.

Prepared by M. Schorr