Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Assessor It topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Assessor flags server risk, proposes using doc‑stamp reimbursement to fund new mirrored servers
Summary
Oklahoma County’s assessor reported a reimbursement fund from state doc‑stamp revenue and proposed using that reimbursement to buy mirrored servers or cloud hosting after repeated cooling failures in the county's server room; vendor quotes were cited at about $150,000 per mirrored server.
The county assessor told the Budget Board that a statutory reimbursement tied to state document‑stamp collections can be used to finance key information‑technology upgrades for the assessor’s appraisal system.
The assessor’s computer‑assisted mass appraisal (KMA) system maintains property records for roughly 400,000 accounts and supports millions of public searches each year. When the state program’s special fund reached the statutory threshold, the assessor filed reimbursement requests (10% of the fund) and has since received amounts that the office proposes to use for IT resiliency.
Assessor staff described precarious conditions in the county server room — repeated high temperature incidents that have forced either temporary shutdowns or emergency workarounds. To reduce operational risk, the assessor proposed purchasing mirrored servers or otherwise moving critical systems offsite (including cloud options). Recent vendor pricing presented to the board priced mirrored servers at roughly $150,000 each, and the assessor said two mirrored systems would be required for safe redundancy.
Board members were informed this is not a general‑fund ask: staff plan to use the assessor reimbursement receipts to pay for hardware and to work with statutes and assessor groups to secure more stable fund treatment in future budget cycles.
No formal vote was taken; the item was discussed as part of departmental estimated needs and flagged for follow‑up on how the reimbursement will be budgeted and spent.
