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IT director seeks server replacements, staffing adjustments and on-call stipend in draft budget
Summary
Boone County IT director proposed replacing aging server hardware and switching virtualization software to reduce licensing costs, requested pay adjustments to retain staff, and proposed a stipend for after-hours support; staff said IT will move from sheriff’s oversight back to administration Dec. 1.
Joe Shad, Boone County’s IT director, asked the finance committee to fund replacement servers and a change in virtualization software, proposed pay adjustments to retain key staff, and recommended formalizing after-hours support compensation for a current salaried employee.
Shad said the county’s virtualization servers have reached “end of life” after roughly six years and licensing costs for the current VMware platform have risen steeply; he proposed purchasing new hardware and moving to Microsoft Hyper-V to lower long-term costs. Shad presented a combined hardware-and-licensing figure and said the new hardware should last roughly seven years absent a catastrophic failure.
Shad also asked the committee to consider a retention increase for a network-administration staff member (Paul Vincent) and to formalize an on-call stipend for long-time after-hours support (Pat Sager). “We have a very talented individual…we want to retain,” Shad said, adding the county’s IT responsibilities are increasing and that comparable private-sector pay is making retention difficult. He asked that the IT department be returned administratively to the county administration from under the sheriff’s purview effective Dec. 1, so the department stands alone and can better manage hires and operations.
Committee members raised standard concerns: tracking and documenting IT calls for service, creating ticket-based records to measure workload, and ensuring any pay or stipend arrangements are properly budgeted. Several board members said they support retaining staff and emphasized better time-tracking for after-hours responses; staff said they will propose tracking categories for short (minutes), medium (hours) and long (multi-day) service calls to inform future staffing and budget decisions.
No formal appropriations were adopted at the meeting; staff will return with detailed cost estimates for the server hardware, licensing change, and position adjustments during subsequent budget discussions.
