“The police servers are ready to crash,” Martwinski said. “We’ve known for months ... we’ll lose thousands of police reports, all the work on murder trials we need for court. If we lose this ... it would be catastrophic.”
Martwinski told surprised council members that he was angry that they would be discussing a remodeling of the city’s website for $10,000 when the city’s information technologist told them that a complete crash of the server could come any day.
“I know he said $30,000 would be for the top-of-the-line server,” Martwinski said, qualifying his remarks by saying that he is not a computer specialist. “It’s crashing daily. It’s just a matter of time.”
City Manager Bob Fiscus said that the police server is not their only problem.
“We have had technology problems in the building,” Fiscus said. “The early intervention grant hasn’t come forward.”
The Early Intervention Program through the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development provides matching grant funds to help municipalities experiencing fiscal difficulties to develop comprehensive multi-year financial plans and establish short- and long-term financial objectives.
Fiscus said the city has been waiting on the funds, which seem to be about 80 percent guaranteed, according to city finance Director Jason Tomko.
“I’m not sure exactly how much this could cost,” Tomko said. “Anywhere from $30,000 to $100,000.”
But he told council that $20,000 is earmarked for a police server in the 2019 proposed budget under capital improvements.
The city would have to match the EIP funds with 50 percent of its own funds.
“The data needs to be backed up,” Martwinski said. “About a year ago ... it crashed and we lost 5,000 files and they had to be manually re-entered.”
Police Chief Ed Stabile said the crash happened in mid-2016, during the previous chief’s tenure.
“If this crashes tomorrow, it’s catastrophic and we’re all getting fired,” Martwinski said.
A stunned Councilwoman Courtney Saylor said this is a big problem.
“I did not know anything about this. Thank you for letting us know,” she told Martwinski. “This is much more important than updating the website.”
“I would rather wait as long as we need to on the website so we can get this taken care of,” council President Frank Connelly said.
Stabile explained that his predecessor, Gerry Smith, also doubled as the city’s information technology specialist for free.
By way of questioning, council found out that no one who works for the city knows the passwords for the entire city’s system or how, if even, the police server is backed up. Fiscus said the city server’s are backed up remotely.
“We need a professional person in here,” Connelly said. “We need to find a short-term solution.”
The police officers explained that a person who worked with Smith previously is still helping out with the computer problems free of charge. He also works at Sharon High School in their technology department.
“This isn’t a simple solution,” Stabile said. “We need a professional IT person.”
©2018 The Herald (Sharon,Pa). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
