The District of Lantzville is ready to open its wallet and spend thousands on the replacement of a computer server. Lantzville councillors voted 4-0 favour of purchasing a computer networking server on Monday night. However, the approval has some strings attached as district staff will have a budget of $13,500 to purchase a new server and install it as well as convert its current server into a backup. So far this year, Lantzville councillors have approved spending thousands of dollars on asset management programs, including more than $21,000 on new software modules from Vadim Software. In a recent report to council, district staff explained that the current small business server was ordered back in 2013 and is no longer supported by Microsoft.
The report indicated Vadim Software informed the district that installation its software must be postponed because the district’s server did not support Vadim’s new software.
Coun. Will Geselbracht asked if it was possible Vadim Software could have informed the district about the problem prior to councillors approving the purchase of $21,505 worth of software from the company.
“When we ordered the software was there any way that the supplier might have told us that we might have problem with the server later on?” he asked. Jeannie Beauchamp, the district's director of financial services, said it wasn’t part of the conversations with Vadim and didn’t know the answer, but told councillors that a server upgrade was going to be required regardless.
“My understanding is that the server is going to be part of that upgrade. The software we purchased recently, we don’t need the server for it, with the exception of the reporter module,” she said. “That was an item that was mainly handled by our interim CAO, who is unfortunately not here to be able to comment on it. I wasn’t that involved with that process.”Federal and provincial legislation has forced the district to make various computer server upgrades over the last year. Mayor Colin Haime and Lantzville councillors Denise Haime and John Coulson were absent from Monday's meeting.