Plymouth City Attorney Sean Surrisi opened the discussion of IT services for the City of Plymouth. He said, “We’ve been looking for a while at engaging an IT consultant and we are proposing to move forward with PC Source to provide service for all the departments except for the utilities who are continuing with the services they have with outside consultants and internally with Larry Hatcher who provides service for them.”
The city attorney said PC Source currently works with the Plymouth Fire Department and Police Department and has for many years. They are working on computer updates with the Plymouth Street Department and some work at the airport. Surrisi as the city administration did some initial outreach to department heads there seemed to be a “groundswell of internal interest in keeping the services of PC Source so they decided to pursue their services.”
A contract was signed by the city attorney on March 17th. The monthly cost is $6,900 which is $82,800 annually. He said it is a comprehensive service although there is a $300 monthly fee for off-site server usage. Surrisi said the agreement will help with the city’s upcoming insurance renewal as he prepares a questionnaire for cyber-security.
Councilman Greg Compton, a member of the subcommittee looking at this issue asked if the committee had made a recommendation and the city attorney said. “No. We (administration) really focused in on PC Source because that was what we were hearing from the department staff that had an opinion about it.” He said both chiefs said they were perfectly happy with the service they had and would almost prefer to stay where they were if the city picked a different consultant.
Councilman Jeff Houin and also a member of the subcommittee said, “At our last meeting we agreed that someone was going to reach out to the other consultants we met with to try to get a comparison with what PC Source was proposing. I think we all agree that PC Source is very confident, and we are happy with the service they are providing but none of us has a frame of reference to evaluate the proposal. I thought we were reaching out to the others to get a comparison.”
Surrisi said, “That was discussed when we left that meeting, and following that there seemed to be a little bit more emergency to try to select a provider following an insurance meeting.”
Houin asked, “What brought on the urgency because this is something I and others have been advocating for for years. I’ve asked the mayor to incorporate something in the budget and it’s not happened until just this last year when there was an issue in the city office.”
The city attorney said a lot has happened in the last year that elevated the actual experiences internally and nationwide events and some of the information that the utilities department has shared with the administration about other nationwide events.”
Councilman Greg Compton and subcommittee members asked to table the discussion to allow the IT committee to make a recommendation.
The final IT committee member, councilwoman Shiloh Milner said she wanted to compare apples to apples. She said, “We can’t make an educated decision without seeing proposals from all three.”
City councilman Don Ecker said, “I just want to make sure we are getting the best value for the money we are spending. I think Greg, Jeff, and Shiloh have the right idea.”
