The Lindsborg City Council Monday approved a move of the city’s Tyler Technologies financial, payroll, municipal and police software from hosted servers to the cloud. This proposal was first brought to the Council April 6th, but action was deferred until information on possible cost savings was obtained.
Finance Director David Hay told the Council he discussed this with Reach Solutions, which the city uses for IT services, and they indicated at some point the move could end the city even needing on-site servers.
The biggest savings up front would be in eliminating the need for an off-site back-up server. This currently costs the city around $11,000 a year, and that cost goes up to $15,600 a year in June. The city pays for this on a month to month basis.
Hay said a server would still be needed for now for file storage, but that could go to the cloud at some point. With that information the council approved the move at an annual cost of $41,505 a year. While more than what the city pays now, the savings based on the current costs related to backup storage would offset nearly all of that.
The Council agreed to proceed with a pair of rate study agreements. One study will be done by Kansas Municipal Utilities and will examine water and sewer rates, and the other with Kansas Municipal Energy Agency would look at electric rates.
Both studies would examine current rates and operational expenses and future capital improvement rates. The last water/sewer rate study was done in 2020, but that didn’t look at future capital expenses. City Administrator Tanner Faust noted what the city of Lyons did in his prior position when after a similar study it imposed a flat $25 dollar fee on sewer bills to cover the cost of a major project at their wastewater plant. The KMU study has a cost of $6,500
The KMEA study will include a revenue and cost of service analysis. This was last done in 2021, at which time a tiered increase in rates was adopted. This study will cost an estimated $5,433 based on a three dollar per meter charge. The last study cost much more than that. Finance Director David Hay noted the current electric environment is very volatile.
The Council approved an CCLIP agreement with the Kansas Department of Transportation for a resurfacing project on Harrison Street, which has seen issues since a 1993 project which also included Cole Street, which didn’t see near the issues. While the city sought a full reconstruction, KDOT engineers felt a patching project would be more appropriate.
KDOT will be providing 95 percent of construction costs through a previously approved grant, which will combine funding allocations from the state’s 2027 and 2028 fiscal years.. Public Works Director Denny Walker said construction could start in late 2027 but would more likely come in 2028.
An ordinance was adopted amending Lindsborg’s Recommended Tree List. The Tree Board recently recommended adding the Kentucky Cotton tree to the large tree list to allow a greater diversity of trees in the community.
The Council also approved numerous appointments to the city’s various advisory boards and committees, ranging from the Tree Board to the Planning and Zoning Board. It also approved an ordinance disbanding the Gifts and Bequests Committee, as a lot of this work is now handled through other organizations such as the McPherson County Community Foundation.
