IT requests 13% budget increase mainly for contracts as longtime county IT lead announces retirement

Leavenworth County’s information-technology director, Larry, presented a 2026 request that the department said is roughly 13% higher than 2025, driven largely by contractual services: new email-archiving subscriptions, an ArtTitan email-archiving line, and higher maintenance for the county’s Patriot suite and other licenses.

Larry said the bulk of the increase is recurring contractual spending: exchange and archiving subscriptions, Patriot maintenance, and multi-factor authentication (Cisco Duo) licensing. He said the department has trimmed other maintenance lines where possible — for example, reducing Cisco maintenance from $21,000 to $4,800 in one instance — but many cloud and license costs “creep up every year.” Larry described Patriot as the county’s long-running core software suite used by the clerk, treasurer and appraiser that is difficult to replace and expensive to operate.

Larry also announced his retirement: he said he will set a retirement date of April 1 and that he expects a transition plan. Commissioners asked about alternatives for particular line items such as a roughly $8,000 email-archiving contract; Larry said the team reviewed options and chose the best fit for functionality and price, but the county can re-evaluate annually.

Commissioners and staff discussed training and small-budget tradeoffs. Larry noted the department had reduced some maintenance and offset increases but said the county’s move to hosted/cloud architecture and heavy reliance on Microsoft and other vendors makes some recurring increases difficult to avoid. No formal actions were taken; staff will bring final contracts and legal verbiage back through the county’s counsel and procurement processes before signing.