Fernley council approves PAC States contract to modernize city IT systems

The Fernley City Council on Nov. 19 approved a six‑month contract with PAC States to modernize the city’s network infrastructure and migrate city services toward cloud‑based identity management.

City staff said the work will replace end‑of‑life switches, firewalls and access points at City Hall and at remote sites such as the water treatment and wastewater plants; add UPS systems to protect servers during outages; and establish a lifecycle‑management program to schedule future hardware refreshes. PAC States’ presenter Ryan Basker told the council the city’s existing switching and wireless equipment are roughly a decade old and are producing frequent outages and degraded performance: “the network is so bottlenecked because of the old equipment that she couldn't even see the PDF,” he said, describing staff productivity problems.

The contract was introduced by Acting City Manager Lydia Altech, who said the FY2025–26 budget includes $200,000 toward the project but that an initial deposit will be needed to begin work in January and the remainder will be budgeted in the next fiscal year. PAC States said the procurement would also pair new hardware with redundant internet links and changes designed to meet NIST 2.0 security guidance.

Councilmembers asked several operational and security questions before the vote: whether the city would pay sales tax (staff said the city is tax‑exempt and that sales tax had been removed from the packet figures), whether the server/network room needed a non‑water fire suppression system to avoid damage from sprinklers, and how access control would be managed so that entry to the network room could be audited. PAC States offered to bring engineers to scope fire suppression options and said its integrated camera/access systems support badge control and live tracking.

Councilmember Laauo moved the contract and Councilmember Hannon seconded. The motion recorded in the meeting log stated the contract amount as “$551,6605” (the figure was corrected on the dais during discussion); council recorded the vote as 5–0 in favor. Staff said the hardware list will be finalized after an on‑site verification; any hardware not used or purchased will reduce the final cost.

The council asked staff to return a formal cyber‑security policy and procedures for adoption and directed staff to coordinate equipment disposal and potential donation for wiped devices that can serve local schools or community programs. The contract vote concluded the IT item; staff said implementation will be planned to minimize downtime and to preserve autosave and collaboration features by accelerating cloud migration.

The council’s action authorizes work to begin; staff will return with final procurement reconciliation and any required budget amendments.