Technology (it) Committee - Regular Meeting

At this time, I'll call the IT committee meeting to order and ask for everybody to please register your presence.

Mayor, you have my five members present.

Thank you. Now I ask, do I have a motion to set the agenda? Motion made by commissioner Carver, seconded by mister McClure. Do I have any questions or discussion on the agenda? Seeing none, I ask you to vote to set the agenda, please.

Mary, you have five yes, folks.

Thank you. Item b, approval of the minutes. The minutes that need approval are there in your packet. They're from the 10/17/2024 meeting. And I have do I have a motion to approve the minutes as presented?

Motion made by miss Montgomery, seconded by commissioner McCarver. Any questions or discussion on the minutes? Seeing none, I ask you to register your vote.

Mayor, you have five yes votes.

Thank you. Now I'll ask, is there any public input on items on the agenda? Yes. Come on up. Hang on. Hang on a second, Marcus. Let me turn you on here.

Go ahead. Marcus Fitzsimons, The Daily Times. Not really speaking for me, but since our friend Harry is not here, I'll pass along his usual message that we hear so often. If the committee is hopefully going to address when the monitors will disappear and we can see your faces again, we would love to know about that.

Is there anyone else have any input on items on the agenda? We've seen none. Move on to unfinished business. There's no we have no unfinished business. We'll move to new business. E one, Blount County government IT update from Justin McClure. This time, I'll ask for Justin. Please come to the podium.

Thank you, mayor. So I've just got a few updates. We'll be quick since we've got a beer board meeting right after this. I'll start with the the question because it was actually on my list anyways. So we're gonna be, you know, doing a commission room camera update. We have one camera in here now that's not a very good quality. It's been here for years. Basically, we're going to upgrade this and have a five camera system. The system, it depends on which depending on which commissioner is talking or if the public is talking, it'll kinda get a little bit closer, a better picture of their face. It'll look look a little bit more professional for the people that are watching it on the video.

Along with that, we are gonna replace all of these monitors with a more low profile monitor. It'll look more like a tablet, type of monitor. So all that, monitor's already here. We're just getting the computers ready for a for a whole update that'll probably be coming in the next couple of months. So other things we have, we're do we have some aging switches, network switches that we are, getting to ready to replace.

We actually evaluated a new company and a new brand of switch, did a whole evaluation process on that, tested them, demoed them. Performance was great. So we've we've bought 10 of them so far, installed four of them so we can monitor performance just a little bit more. And so far, they're running great, so we're gonna replace the rest of them with that and just start through the county as as our switches are aging, just move to these new switches. Another thing I have is a bandwidth update for the Internet.

So right now, we are running at one gig bandwidth. We're gonna up that to five gig. Just as more projects come on, more technology comes on, we're getting closer and closer to that one gig bandwidth. And and keep in mind that one gig services the entire county, the 911 Building, the sheriff's office, the City Of Townsend, East Tennessee development district. We offer Internet to all of those people.

So we're gonna up that to five gig. And along with that, we've also been talking to the Blount County Schools about some shared IT services. So, basically, we're trying to figure out a way how can we, cut, you know, cut some cost in IT. And I've already I've already built a team that, basically, we can handle networking, cybersecurity, and infrastructure. So, basically, we're going to the school saying, hey. Let us help you fill in the gaps that you all have. We can we can help you with your network. We can help you, with your cybersecurity issues, that sort of thing. So we're in the beginning talks of that. We've met with Justin Ridge, the director, and John Herron, their IT manager.

So I'm sure there'll be some more meetings coming in the future with that. And then the last thing I have is this year, we're gonna start a, a big email system switchover. So right now, we use Google Workspace Enterprise. We're gonna be moving to Microsoft three sixty five. We're gonna do a two phase process to help cut costs or keep costs low and to give us more time to, basically take time with each user and each department to make sure they're trained up, because it will be a little bit different system than they're used to. But that's that'll start here in the next couple months as well. So that's all I have unless anybody has any questions.

Anybody got any questions for Justin?

Alright. Thank you all.

Thank you, Justin. Appreciate the update. Thank you very much. Seeing nothing else on the agenda, do I hear a motion to adjourn?

Motion to adjourn.

Motion to adjourn. What was you wrong about?