City starts new fiscal year with IT upgrades, renewals
Sep. 30—Huntsville City Council will begin their fiscal year with the annual purchase or renewal of several maintenance programs at Tuesday's meeting.
The meeting will begin at 6 p.m. Oct. 3, at the Huntsville Public Library. On the consent agenda, Information Technology Director Bill Wavra is asking for new or continued services with CivicPlus, Onix Networking for Google Workspace, Lodestone for antivirus protection and monitoring, and Tyler Technologies software for finance, public safety, utility billing and municipal court software.
Wavra is also requesting the annual purchase of PCs on a replacement schedule for just under $80K. He reported that 73 computers have reached their end of life and need to be replaced. The cost in 2022 was just over $66.
Lastly, the renewal of phone and data services for the city through State of Texas Department of Information Resources (DIR) contract with Verizon Wireless. The contract was $72K for 58 phones and 103 air cards, but is anticipated to cost $83K in 2023.
Also on the consent agenda is the purchase of a new Mower Max Gen 3 Boom from ATMAX Equipment.
The Street and Drainage Division is tasked with mowing creek and drainage ditch channels as well as cutting limbs overhanging the right of way within the City. The purchase mower, from a BuyBoard approved dealer, will enable these steep banks to be mowed mechanically. The Mower Max also has a limb trimming attachment to aid in trimming limbs during right of way maintenance.
The new machine will be utilized in drainage areas such as Town Creek and Normal Park watersheds, according Public Works Director Brent Sherrod. He said the mower is budgeted for in the new budget and will cost almost $300K.
Also up for consideration in the consent agenda, Sherrod asks the council to award a contract with Hawkins Inc. for water and wastewater chemicals for the treatment process throughout the City at a cost of $29K in 2023-24 and a total of $116K over the life of the contract.
In the action portion of the agenda, a resolution is being presented by Mayor Andy Brauninger for the 2024-25 nominees for the Walker County Appraisal District's Board of Directors. WCAD nominations come from all jurisdictions with voting entitlement. Chief Appraiser Stacey M. Poteete presented a nomination ballot with current members listed as Jody Crawford, Jack Dean, Blossie Johnson, Jerry Larrison, Otis Oliphant, Ed Owens and David Standlee.
The voting entitlement of a taxing unit that is entitled to vote for directors is determined by dividing the total dollar amount of property taxes imposed in the district by the taxing unit for the preceding tax year by the sum of the total dollar amount of property taxes imposed in the district for that year by each taxing unit that is entitled to vote, by multiplying the quotient by 1,000, and by rounding the product to the nearest whole number. That number is multiplied by the number of directorships to be filled.
A taxing unit participating in two or more districts is entitled to vote in each district in which it participates, but only the taxes imposed in a district are used to calculate voting entitlement in that district.
The allocations for each entity are:
City of Huntsville 0.0901%
City of Riverside 0.0006%
Huntsville ISD 0.5287%
New Waverly ISD 0.0791%
Richards ISD 0.0088%
Trinity ISD 0.0041%
Walker County 0.2887%
Contact Brenda Poe at editor@itemonline.com
