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Council votes to contract with Petrie Design after IT-services review
Summary
After reviewing three proposals and debating cybersecurity, redundancy and cost, the Belvidere City Council committee voted to contract with Petrie Design for IT services; the county and other vendors submitted competing bids.
The Belvidere City Council committee voted Dec. 22 to contract with Petrie Design for IT-services support after considering proposals from the county, Entrez Computer Solutions and Sundog.
City Attorney Mike Drella summarized the procurement history and vendor offers. He said the county had previously hosted the city's servers and helped after a ransomware attack, but that the county's price had risen to about $127,200 per year. Drella described the raffle of proposals: Entrez provided an hourly-based estimate with annual costs roughly $139,000–$172,000 depending on usage; Petrie Design proposed roughly $209,000 for the first 15 months (including migration) and about $117,500 per year thereafter (about $134,500 when estimated Internet costs are added); and Sundog's proposal included a $290,000 migration and roughly $600,000 per year in support, which Drella called a nonstarter.
Drella said the county's quote included dedicated fiber links but that some city officials were surprised by the county's increase from roughly $60,000–$70,000 historically to the newly quoted level. "We only lost one day of data," Drella said of the city's earlier ransomware recovery, crediting county IT assistance for restoring backups.
Mayor (speaker 1) questioned whether the county's higher price reflected market adjustments or retaliation tied to earlier permit-fee discussions; "Is it reprisal? I don't know," the mayor said after describing prior conversations about permit fees.
Councilors debated trade-offs: some favored the county for on-site redundancy and rapid response, others preferred a vendor with a fixed contract and clearer liability. Concerns included Internet costs for two city sites (estimated at $15,000–$18,000 annually), a roughly $300-per-month fiber link expense between city and county sites, and additional migration costs if the city's fire-department email must be moved to a Microsoft solution for FOIA and local-records retention compliance.
Alderman Peterson moved to select Petrie Design under the memo's terms; the motion was seconded by Alderman Hoyness. The clerk conducted a roll-call vote; the transcript records all ten voting members answering "Aye." The committee approved the Petrie Design contract.
