By Sarah Lombardo
The Saratoga City Council again postponed a decision about a new computer system for City Hall until council members get more information about their options. The issue will make its third appearance before the council on Feb. 25.
The delay comes after a unanimous recommendation from the Saratoga Finance Advisory Committee to the City Council to approve an agreement with HTE, Inc., and the $236,537.92 to execute the agreement.
Even though this has been the second delay on the issue, Finance Director Thomas Fil said he wasn't worried. "I am encouraged," he said. "[The council members] have questions, and they need to feel comfortable."
After a presentation to the council by Fil about the status of the current computer system and the proposed agreement with HTE, council members said they had questions about exactly how much manpower would be saved with the new system. A few council members also said they were concerned about the dependency on HTE that the agreement would entail.
"I'm not in any position to second-guess the advisory committee and staff on this, but that does concern me," said Councilman Paul Jacobs, who said his office at work had run into costly problems with proprietary software.
Fil said he was sure that the council would eventually agree with the FAC's recommendation and approve the project because of its urgency once they have all their questions answered. The situation with the computers is so bad, Fil said, that the city is at risk of experiencing a major system crash because the equipment is old.
"The code enforcement, the planning and building permits systems crashed about three weeks ago, and we had to bring a hacker in because the company that sold the equipment to us is no longer in business," Fil said.
Wayne Dippel, an FAC member, urged the city to not waste too much time. "It's only a matter of time before you are going to have a problem with it and the system is going to go down completely," Dippel said. "We feel that if the time and money is invested in it now, it will probably save a lot of money in the future."
The funds for the agreement and the new hardware and software were already incorporated into last year's budget, Fil said.
This article appeared in the Saratoga News, February 19, 1997.
©1997 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.