General Government & Information Technology

General Government / IT Committee Meeting Summary Tuesday March 8, 2016 The following voting persons were present: Chair George D. Alpogianis, Village Manager Steven Vinezeano, IT Director Bill Shaw and Cammy Fortuna. Staff present were; Marlene Victorine, Hadley Skeffington-Vos, Cathy Spadoni, Hayley Garard, Kathy Thake, Kathy Barnat, Joe Annunzio, and Katy Darr. One member of the public was present, Resident Louella Preston. I. Call to order – The meeting was called to order at 8:32 a.m. in Room 218 at the Niles Administration Building. II. Approve Meeting Summary – General Government / IT Committee – January 20, 2016 Unanimous approval III. Old Business a. Take Your Child to Work Day – An idea is to have kids stay with their parents at their work stations until 9:00 a.m. – at that point bring all children to one campus here at Village Hall. Have a fire truck, police car and public works vehicle on display, also the Senior Center dog, Stanley. At noon have lunch with the Mayor. The suggested date is Friday, April 29th. The ages of children that will participate needs further discussion. To participate in the project the employee must get approval from the department head. Several area communities were surveyed and the results are: Schaumburg, children of any age can participate; Montgomery, children 7 years of age and up may participate; and Northfield did not respond. The kids could do an artwork project that would be on display at Village Hall or outdoor chalk drawings on the sidewalk. A decision needs to be made if the Take Your Child to Work Day policy should be in the employee handbook. It was noted that there were problems in the past with TYCTWD. The original program was started in 1992 as Bring Your Daughter to Work Day. b. Rain Barrel Program Community Development started the free rain barrel program through MWRD on March 1st. There has been interest, the number of rain barrels distributed and any feedback will be discussed at the next General Government / IT Committee meeting. There are a maximum of four rain barrels per household free of charge.  c. Economic Enhancement Ad Hoc Committee Ideas & Discussion of Village Longstanding Contracts / Service Agreements Information on longstanding contracts and service agreements is still being compiled. Any vendor that provides a service to the Village must have a signed contract. Contracts will be reviewed by General Government / Legal, then sent to the respective departments and or committees to be further vetted and to determine where the Village is benefitting and where the Village can benefit more. IV. a. UIC Community Survey Update Being that the Village is a provider of services it is important to get solicited feedback from the residents on basic community services. University of Illinois at Chicago Graduate students in an MPA program will do the leg work for the survey for free – the normal cost is $15,000.00 to $30,000.00 to hire a consultant to do a community survey. The survey will be available online on March 18th. The survey will be promoted through the Senior Center, the Library and at Village Hall. There are about 37 questions on the survey. A professor and a statistical survey research laboratory at UIC will be working with the students. Questions were drawn from ICMA Insights Performance Management Program and other community surveys such as Naperville. At least 1,000 responses are necessary to obtain statistical significance. The survey focuses on trash, public services (trees, plowing and road conditions), police, fire, water billing and general services. A text box for additional comments may be added to the end of the survey, this could be quite valuable. IT will assist with multiple responses from the same IP address. The survey will be out for about a month until the end of April, at that time the students will tabulate the results. V. IT Project Updates • The Max Galaxy Project (membership software for Fitness Center, Senior Center and Teen Center) is moving into the next phase. Four weeks of online training is now complete, at this point two weeks of onsite training will begin. The idea is to go live the second week of April, the project is right on schedule. • The virtual desktop project has started. A virtual desk top is a computer without a big box. It runs off of the server which then pushes information out the individual locations. A small box or Zero Client would be attached to the back of the monitor; everything would be driven from the server. All similar computers could be updated at the same time instead of IT going to each computer individually. Information and updates could be done much faster. Another benefit – a standard computer uses a 300 to 500 watt power supply, a zero client only uses two to three watts of power. The first prototype is now working in IT. This prototype will be tested at Family, Senior and Fitness Centers during the Max Galaxy upgrade. Current electrical usage will be monitored. Overall electrical usage would drop in the entire building offering  some residual savings. An online Max Galaxy presentation will be prepared and presented to the Board once we are fully operational. • As of the end of February, internet and phone line costs have been reduced by $1,000.00 per month, another $12,000.00 of savings per year. There are four ongoing projects that will further reduce costs. To date, these updates have saved the Village over $150,000.00. These savings will be in place forever. All supporting information related to the savings will be compiled at the request of the Chair. A lot of old dead phone lines have been removed that the Village was charged for. A little different plan had been negotiated with Red Center and we were able to drop a ring-down line between Police and Red Center and replace with new technology from the new phone system. A lot of Comcast services have been dropped and picked up by AT&T. The SCADA network has now assumed control of the alarm system; we are able to drop service on the old alarm circuits. IT is now working on new technology for radio lines and other alarm lines. • Lastly a project that needs to be presented to the Board, we are spending $6,000.00 to $8,000.00 per month on connections to Red Center. A new plan is being worked on that will drop the cost to about $1000.00 per month. The new system will pay for itself but this is a project still in the design phase. The overall cost for the replacement lines is about $20,000.00. The plan for the return on investment is less than two years. VI. Open Discussion / Public Comment • Customer service training has been completed by over 200 full time employees and some part time employees. The training went very well. Next month there will be a second session of Supervisor training for those that were not trained last month. Also next month there will be Civility training for all full time employees and some part-time employees. • The website will be updated to match new branding design also the navigation will be improved. • Public comments included questions and comments about the Community Survey and Take your Child to work Day. VII. The next meeting date will be determined VIII. Adjournment A motion was made to adjourn the meeting and seconded. The meeting adjourned at 9:25 a.m.