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Story County reviews IT budget; website ADA compliance and vendor costs draw attention
Summary
At a Feb. 2 work session, Story County supervisors reviewed the IT department's proposed fiscal-year budget, highlighting a planned website redesign to meet looming ADA requirements, vendor billing checks, and follow-ups on vendor contracts and reimbursements.
Story County supervisors and IT staff spent their Feb. 2 work session reviewing the Information Technology draft budget for fiscal year 2027, with attention centering on a county website redesign to address accessibility rules, vendor billing discrepancies and several infrastructure priorities.
Colin Gers, the county IT director, told the board the county website likely needs an overhaul to meet ADA compliance that “is kinda rolling out and ... going to be a requirement by April,” and that he doubts the county can complete the work before that deadline using current resources and schedules. Gers said he has collected quotes and estimates: the county’s current provider, CivicPlus, has an annual renewal Gers recalled around $22,000, while other providers presented annual hosting and maintenance estimates in the $4,000–$6,000 range. Gers said he budgeted conservatively for hosting (he placed a higher-side annual estimate in the draft) and flagged migration of historical agenda PDFs as a decision point—some legacy documents could stay on a separate archive portal (ArcaSearch) rather than be converted immediately for accessibility.
Supervisor Linda Merkin and other board members raised potential penalty exposure for noncompliance; a board member quoted a figure of roughly $115,000 for a first violation by the Department of Justice during the meeting. Gers and board members agreed the county should assess how many legacy documents must be remediated and whether to keep older records in the existing archive portal while new content meets accessibility standards.
The board also questioned how to spread the website expense across fiscal years. Gers said that depends on vendor terms and timing but recommended starting the procurement process sooner rather than later because of ADA risk.
Board members asked IT to return with more precise vendor quotes and an implementation timetable. Gers was asked to verify which historical records must be remediated versus archived and to provide a refined annual hosting estimate for the next board meeting.
The work session did not include a formal vote on the website project; the discussion concluded with staff follow-ups and no action taken.
