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Freestone County court tables decision to switch website host amid IT, cost and elections concerns
Summary
Freestone County commissioners delayed a planned move from their current website host to Govstack, citing unresolved questions about server locations, customer support for election uploads, and migration cost estimates; the court instructed IT staff to form a review team and bring options back for a future decision.
Freestone County commissioners on the record tabled a proposal to switch the county's website hosting to Govstack while staff complete a technical and cost review.
The court's discussion centered on where vendor servers are located, how elections results are uploaded and supported, and widely varying migration-fee estimates presented at the meeting. Commissioners and staff said cleanup of old site content could reduce migration costs; one example cited potential migration-fee ranges from about $8,500 up to $25,000, with earlier estimates described in the meeting as significantly higher.
County IT staff member Dane and county staff who maintain the site described that much of the county's older material had been reformatted into separate pages and that consolidating or removing outdated files could lower the cost of moving to a new platform. The court also discussed whether election uploads require direct vendor support or can be handled by county staff with limited vendor access.
Rather than approve a contract, the court voted to table the item and asked Dane and a small team of staff to evaluate technical needs, migration options, potential domain changes and a realistic cost estimate. The court directed staff to return with recommendations before any contract is signed.
Next steps: the decision on switching website hosts will remain off the agenda until the IT review is complete.
