Iroquois County officials discussed a proposal from the county’s RMS/records vendor to migrate dispatch and jail records systems to a vendor-hosted cloud model and the attendant cost increase and operational tradeoffs.

The vendor’s cloud option would increase the county’s first‑year maintenance and hosting costs from about $38,000 to $65,000, a county staff member said. The county’s Emergency Telephone System Board (ETSB) currently pays the bulk of maintenance and the sheriff’s office pays a smaller portion. Presenters proposed a 70/30 split for the first year where the ETSB would cover roughly $45,050 and the county’s general fund (through the sheriff’s office) would cover about $19,950. The proposer noted ongoing uplift costs of roughly 3% per year after the initial transition.

Officials said the cloud option can reduce local downtime associated with hardware failures and speed vendor upgrades, but increases ongoing subscription-like costs. Staff described tradeoffs for local equipment replacement cycles, shipping delays for hardware repair, and potential downtime risk if on‑site hardware fails. One staff member explained that on‑site equipment replacements can take time to ship and install, which affects dispatch and jail operations.

Committee members asked for more detailed allocation scenarios and said the ETSB still needs to approve its share; the matter required additional negotiation and formal ETSB approval before the county general fund would be committed. No final decision was made; staff were asked to supply a detailed multi‑year cost comparison and proposed funding splits for committee review and for ETSB consideration.