County supervisors vote to not include their server equipment in city/county IT equipment sharing

Winneshiek County supervisors voted unanimously Monday afternoon in favor of not agreeing to share their computer server with the City of Decorah.

Supervisor Dean Thompson, who introduced the motion, said the county's interests would be better served by having "independent physical computer servers."  Several supervisors said they were concerned about security on a server that could be accessed by two organizations.  Supervisor John Beard said the county would have much greater liability exposure if it shared the server with the city.

County officials had studied the feasibility and costs of having a third party as administrator of the server, but found it could cost $15,000 to $30,000 a year to do so.  A proposal to have County IT Director Steve Smith act as the administrator of the server also was studied, but Smith said he and the county would be liable if something happened to the city's portion of the server.  Supervisor Floyd Ashbacher said if Smith added the responsibility of being administrator of the city's server, he would need to be paid a higher salary and wondered which government would pay that cost.

While the county supervisors were unanimous in their vote, there was dissension at the meeting.  Decorah Mayor Don Arendt accused the supervisors of "railroading" their resolution and declared, "This is a mistake."