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City IT director asks for $50,000 and hardware replacements to address end-of-life servers, UPS and VPN
Summary
IT representatives told the committee the city faces end-of-support SQL databases, an aging UPS in the main server room and a deprecated VPN product; wireless access-point replacements and third-party risk management were also proposed.
City IT staff presented a multi-part capital request July 17 focused on IT resiliency and security, saying several core systems are at or near end of support and need replacement or re‑licensing.
The presentation described three prioritized components: (1) Microsoft SQL Server instances that are at end‑of‑support and must be relicensed and updated; (2) the main server room infrastructure (backup environment, air handling and an aging UPS from 2004) with replacement battery stacks and control units; and (3) the city’s remote access (VPN) environment, which the presenter said runs on Cisco AnyConnect and is scheduled to go out of support at the start of 2027.
City IT staff said the overall SQL/VPN/license work would be shared among multiple local agencies that use the consolidated environment (city, county and NorthCentral Health Care). "The city's portion of it is in the report," the presenter said, noting a $50,000 city share was included in the packet as the city’s portion of licensing and migration costs.
IT staff also asked for funding to replace wireless access points that are at end-of-life: across the county there are about 360 access points, 130 of which need replacement next year, with 27 of those city-owned. Each city access point was estimated to cost a little more than $1,000 when licensed and installed.
On security tools, staff described limitations in the Microsoft suite used now for outbound-mail data loss prevention and said a more capable product would allow tagging of sensitive data (PHI, financial identifiers) and prevent or encrypt outgoing messages more reliably; staff gave examples of state or law-enforcement file exchanges that use secured FTP instead of email. Finally, they proposed a lower-priority third-party risk-management subscription to assess vendor partner security posture.
Committee members asked about cost-sharing with the county, whether city funds were required to move projects forward, and about how these changes would affect remote access for poll reporting and law enforcement connections. IT staff said the firewall moved from Cisco to Palo Alto last year and that the Palo Alto appliance can host the new VPN module, reducing long‑term costs.
Ending: IT staff said the items are their highest priorities for 2026 and asked the committee to rank them; they will collaborate with county partners on cost allocation and return with firm pricing and corrected CIP pages as needed.
