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Porter County Council approves budget adjustments, hears Microsoft 365 migration briefing and road plans
Summary
Council approved multiple 2026 budget adjustments — including travel, insurance and trail fund appropriations — heard a briefing on migrating county systems to Microsoft 365, and received updates on road paving plans and MVH/LRS disbursement timing.
Porter County Council approved a set of 2026 budget adjustments at second reading and took several individual votes to fund travel, building insurance and trail contracts.
A $1,200 additional travel appropriation for 911/Motorola training passed on roll call; the council also approved a $77,600 increase for building liability insurance in the highway fund and a trail-fund contractual-services appropriation of $143,547.75. Roll-call votes were recorded for each motion.
Jeffrey Spears, principal consultant working with county IT, briefed the council on a planned migration from the county’s on-premises Microsoft environment to Microsoft 365 in the cloud. Spears said Microsoft is ending support for the county’s current on-premises system and that many customers are moving to subscription-based licensing. "They are forcing it 100%," a council member said in discussion, summarizing the consultant’s point that the vendor’s licensing model is changing. Spears warned implementation costs are higher than early estimates because of additional required services; final licensing and ongoing subscription costs will be presented in the next budget cycle.
Highway staff reported a temporary shortfall in MVH and LRS receipts because of state disbursement timing and outlined prioritized paving projects: 100 North (Union Township) and 50 West (to 1050 North), with geotechnical base stabilization and drain tile to be installed ahead of paving. Staff said in-house work will be used where possible and that a package of projects will be prepared for bidding later in the year. The council requested an itemized list comparing last year’s road work with the current plan and estimates of in-house savings.
The second reading of the budget adjustments passed by roll call; the council recorded approvals for the presented appropriations and asked staff and the county attorney to follow up on payroll timing questions discussed later in the meeting.
