County Offers Towns Shared IT, Procurement and Training Support; MOUs Proposed for Public-works Aid

County staff offered expanded intermunicipal assistance including IT help, procurement piggybacking and shared training during a meeting with town officials.

“If you’ve got something you really need help with, you gotta let us know,” a county official said, urging towns to provide a list of department heads so county personnel can make direct contacts for issues such as snow removal and road repairs. Participants discussed pairing town departments with county counterparts and holding scheduled meetings to share contacts and expertise.

County IT staff described services for municipalities including refurbishing laptops, providing anchor-site fiber to town halls, helping write software specifications and advising on cybersecurity or agenda platforms. “We might not be able to help you with every little issue, but we can help with parameters and specifications,” an IT staff member said, offering assistance writing RFPs and coordinating vendor discussions, including for CivicPlus website providers.

Officials also discussed procurement piggybacking to achieve better pricing on chemicals, pavement striping and other common purchases; county staff said they had reviewed a Howard County striping contract that towns could match. For emergency public-works support, participants proposed written MOUs with legal review to clarify call protocols and liability before shared responses (for example, snow-plow deployments) are executed.

Why it matters: Small municipalities often lack scale for IT, training and large procurements. County coordination and formal MOUs can reduce duplication of effort and speed emergency responses.

What’s next: County and town staff agreed to follow up with contact lists, coordinate schedules for trainings and draft an MOU template for public-works assistance.