Published: November 03, 2009 09:50 am      

Funds are approved for tech upgrades

Elkhart County Commissioners Monday approved four additional appropriation requests aimed at funding a portion of the county’s ongoing IT and energy efficiency projects.

First to be approved Monday was a total of $445,000 in additional appropriations — $395,000 from the Special CAGIT fund and $50,000 from the Cumulative Capital Development fund — which will be used to fund several projects in the county’s five year IT plan unveiled earlier this year.

According to Elkhart County Administrator Tom Byers, a total of six areas will be targeted for improvement with the appropriated funds.

Areas to be targeted include:

• $20,000 for removing latency from the county network

• $10,000 for software patch management

• $100,000 for server replacement

• $50,000 for application maintenance

• $120,000 for e-mail upgrades

• $75,000 for the installation of a trouble ticket record keeping system.

“This will take care of everything that we had in the plan for 2009, with one exception,” Byers said. “The plan originally called for us to begin moving to a voice over IP system, which is an upgrade to the phone system. That’s going to be delayed until next year.”

Also approved Monday was $900,000 in additional appropriations — $650,000 from the County Property Sold fund and $250,000 from the Special CAGIT fund — which will be used to fund a portion of the county’s energy efficiency program establish back in January 2008.

According to Byers, the county is also awaiting approval of a $630,000 grant from the Department of Energy that will be added to the energy efficiency program’s funding, bringing the total funds slated for this portion of the program to approximately $1.5 million.

“This will go to the upgrade of lights and heating and cooling systems in five county buildings,” Byers said.

County buildings currently slated to received the improvements include:

• The County Administration building

• The County Courthouse

• The Courts building in Elkhart

• The County Work Release Center

• The County Public Services building

Once the planned improvements are in place, Byers said the county can expect to save approximately $150,000 a year on energy use alone.

With their approval Monday, the appropriation requests will now move on to the Elkhart County Council for possible approval during its Nov. 14 meeting.

If approved by the Council, Byers said an additional evaluation will be conducted on the five buildings in order to gauge the full extent of work needed and projected savings anticipated from the completed project.

“We had an evaluation done at those five buildings in January 2008, so the numbers we’re looking at are actually a couple years old,” Byers said. “If the Council approves the appropriations, we will have a consultant come in and look at those five buildings in more detail to ensure the numbers we’re looking at are correct, and also to update what they’re anticipating the annual energy savings will be if we make these improvements.”