Utica IT budget cuts contractor line, plans two in‑house hires to replace outside services

The IT director said the proposed budget reduces the contracted‑services line and increases salaries to hire two IT technicians — one based at city hall and one at the police department — to replace large parts of a multi‑year external contract.

“This was a 2 year contract. It was about $497,000. That was split up 40, 40, 20,” the IT director said, describing the prior contract split across city hall, police and fire departments and saying that shift “is going away.”

He said the city will retain a smaller external support relationship on a block‑of‑hours basis for high‑level assistance while the in‑house staff will handle day‑to‑day user support and system continuity. “That’ll be 2 individuals…One will be primarily in city hall. The other one will be at the police department,” he said.

The director listed continuing contracted costs that will remain, including network monitoring (about $19,000 a year), SSL certificates for public‑facing systems and a few subscription services. He told council that moving support in‑house is intended to reduce long‑term costs and preserve continuity of IT services.

Council members pressed for clarification on how the savings would show in the packet and whether year‑to‑date actuals reflected the change; the director said some printed copies were less up to date than the council’s internal version.

Ending: The council heard the IT plan to replace much external contracted support with two staff positions and a retained block contract for advanced work; members asked for reconciled numbers in an updated packet.