Aldermen approve expenditures to improve cybersecurity by migrating information on city servers to cloud

QUINCY — The Quincy City Council approved three proposals from the technology committee and IT Manager Corey Dean during Monday night’s meeting. Two of them would have prevented the city’s email system from being disrupted last month had they been in place.

One proposal was to spend $72,157 with Superion, LLC, for an annual software services agreement for the city’s financial system. The city also will spend $9,048 with SHI International Corp. for an annual maintenance contract renewal and migration to the cloud, and to spend up to $150,000 buy necessary Microsoft Office 365 licenses and a contract with Kroll to perform the migration the cloud for the remainder of fiscal year 2023. 

Dean wrote in his proposal to aldermen that the city’s servers were encrypted last month and are currently running in a degraded state. He believes the IT Department does not have the in‐house experience to properly deal with this scenario and asked to contract with Kroll to aid in the recovery process. 

“The Office 365 (licenses) take information off the servers we have here (at City Hall) and puts it at Microsoft’s government cloud,” Dean said. “The issue we ran into with communication (last month) never would have happened, because the emails don’t come here. If we had an instance like we did when emails could not be delivered here, we have unlimited storage for them to be backed up until they can actually be delivered.”

Aldermen also approved:

• Rezoning 2009 Broadway from R1C (single-family residential) to C2 (commercial) for continued use as a parking lot.
• A request by Mayor Mike Troup to add Todd Moore to the Zoning Board of Appeals for a one-year term expiring July 31, 2023.
• Paying $76,000 to Quincy Landfills 2 and 3 Superfund pursuant to the Quincy Landfill RD/RA Site Participation agreement.
• Rejecting bids received for the Phase 3 Water Supply Improvement Project, They asked that the project be redesigned. 
• Paying $6,900 per ton to Carus Corporation of Peru, Ill., for the purchase of monosodium phosphate.
• Paying $8,708 to Hydro-Kinetics Corporation of St. Louis for a replacement sampler at the Wastewater Treatment Plant. 
• Paying $15,720 to Hydro-Kinetics Corporation of St. Louis for the repair of a chemical feed control panel at the Wisman Pump Station. 
• Applying for a financial assistance grant from IDOT for the purpose of off-setting eligible public transportation capital costs. 
• Paying $22,140 to Quincy University for housing and meals provided for the Western Illinois University Firefighting Practicum. 
• Use of a GOV HR report as a guideline and scale for city administration to use for non-union employee reviews.
• An ordinance amending Chapter 39 of the code of the city of Quincy to create a director of public works. The position will be filled by Jeff Conte.

Interim Police Chief Adam Yates swore in two new officers, Brandon Keller and Samuel Nielsen, to the Quincy Police Department before Monday’s meeting began. The addition of the two officers now gives the department 67 total officers.