The Finance and Government Operations Committee gave its support to a proposal from Information Technology Director Bill Oliver and Mayor Sebastian Giuliano to move the IT department to new quarters in Riverview Plaza. The plan could allow the movement of the Parking Department from the Police Station to City Hall.
Oliver explained that the IT department had insufficient office space, the servers for the city have insufficient power, cooling, storage, and space, and there is no backup power available to keep the city's website available in the event of a power failure to City Hall. He presented several options for new locations, two of them on upper floors of Main Street Market and two in Riverview Plaza.
The Committee agreed with Oliver that moving IT into the soon to be vacated Dialysis Center on the ground floor of Riverview Plaza made the most sense of the available options. The space is about 8,000 square feet, and would cost the City about $73,000 per year in rent. The advantages of this location are the extra space for city storage, the central location, and the common wall with the police station, which might allow emergency power sharing and data cable access.
The Committee members were supportive of moving IT, but were concerned about the second part of the package, which was a proposal to move the Parking Department from the Police Station to the vacated IT space in City Hall. Oliver explained that the Mayor, the Police Chief, and the Parking Director supported this move, but Committee members said they wished to hear from the Parking Committee and Downtown Business Disrict, both of which they thought had strongly supported keeping the Parking Department in the Police Station.
F&G agreed to support the option of requesting $48,000 in the upcoming budget to secure a lease on the Riverview location.
I think there should be a more organized approach to housing these off-site offices - they need to have supervision and should be grouped together somewhere near City Hall if possible, but renting from private land owners in various places seems risky. What about consolidating some of the unused classrooms, so they are all in one school building - then we could locate various offices, including park and rec and others as needed, in a single place that would make it easy for the public and other city employees to work with them? This one office alone, the IT department, is going to cost $73,000. That seems like a lot of money if there is any empty space in any other buildings the city owns.
ReplyDeleteThe school system already has a technology department. When will this city start cooperating with itself?
ReplyDeleteThis $73,000 bloat sounds like the Harding relief fund. Such a massive expansion is a big clue that City Hall is out of control.