Select Board places $360,000 technology plan on warrant; debate focuses on electronic beach payments and fees

Dan Perdo, the town’s MIS director, presented the board with a packaged tech plan that bundles a two-year electronic payments contract for Dennis beaches, fleet management software, iPad replacements, an OpenGov tablet app for inspectors, Office software upgrades and network-monitoring/cybersecurity services. "This is kind of a group effort here," Perdo said, describing coordination across DPW, finance and administration.

The beaches pilot—staff and an outside vendor tested solar-powered routers and local connectivity and reported the pilot worked well—was a central focus of board discussion. Perdo and staff said the beaches' electronic-payments line is approximately $148,000 for two years, which covers vendor equipment and operations. Board members raised practical concerns: spotty cell coverage at some beaches, whether the town would absorb credit-card processing fees and contingency plans if equipment fails.

Board members and staff answered those questions: finance staff said the town would not absorb card-processing fees (fees are covered by a budget line), and the vendor pilot supplied supplemental cellular capability that staff said made the system reliable in practice. Perdo emphasized cybersecurity and monitoring investments—network monitoring services would feed logs to a 24/7 Security Operations Center (SOC) for alerting and response.

After discussion about budget sources and operational impacts, the board voted to place the tech plan article on the town meeting warrant to allow the funding path to be finalized at town meeting. Staff were directed to return with clearer funding-source language and implementation timelines ahead of the warrant vote.