MASSENA — The village of Massena’s information technology system is in the process of being upgraded using more than $20,000 from its American Rescue Plan Act funds.
“Things are going along and eventually it will be done,” Mayor Gregory M. Paquin told village trustees.
The work is being done by Twin State, which handles IT services for the village offices. A separate company has been responsible for services in the police department, but Twin State is taking care of those upgrades.
Mr. Paquin said that, in its review of the village’s information technology system, Twin State discovered some issues that needed to be addressed.
“There is something that they did come across. As they were reviewing our plans and such, they came across two things, one being that our disaster recovery was, I’m going to use the term ‘shaky,’ and so they recommended a fix for that. Also, the police department uses Windows 7,” he said.
Police Chief Jason M. Olson said that Windows 7 was installed on one computer.
“We don’t use it across the board. It’s used on one particular work station for us to book people in with their charge,” he said.
Mr. Paquin said that, as part of the upgrade, the village would have to purchase software licenses.
“In order to fix those and upgrade them, we have to buy the licenses and such. You have to buy the licenses, and you can’t just buy the one year you need. You have to buy the first year, the second year, the third year,” he said.
Trustees approved paying $20,171.40 for the work by Twin State — $14,528.40 for disaster recovery, $4,075 for office updates and $1,568 for license implementation.
“I would like authorization for us to use our ARPA funds to continue this, and that should be the last of it,” Mr. Paquin said. “I think this is vital. It’s been a while since we upgraded our IT infrastructure. It will make us much more secure.”
Deputy Mayor Matthew J. LeBire said he had received a question form a community member about the upgrades.
“After the last round of IT upgrades we discussed, I did have a question from a community member about installation charges, and one of the things I explained to them, especially with software that we use down there and the various programs, (they) are very proprietary-specific to police departments,” he said. “That makes installation a lot more complicated than, say, setting up a home PC. I think it’s just good to put that out there.”
The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 is a $1.9 trillion economic stimulus bill signed into law in March. Within ARPA, the Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund provides $350 billion for states, municipalities, counties, tribes and territories, including $130 billion for local governments split evenly between municipalities and counties.
Among the possible uses for the funding is to invest in water, sewer and broadband infrastructure, making necessary investments to improve access to clean drinking water, support vital wastewater and stormwater infrastructure and to expand access to broadband internet.
Gloss