County IT reports email outage, firewall issues; Exchange migration cost unclear

LaSalle County IT reported about 640 support tickets for the month and an email outage that lasted roughly three to four hours after a server reboot and a pending update, county IT director John Hague told the board.

Hague said the outage occurred when an update that needed to run held up the Exchange service, extending what would normally be a 20- to 30-minute reboot into several hours. He said firewall updates from Fortinet also caused some users to be unable to open PDF files; IT implemented a temporary workaround and the vendor is working on a permanent fix.

On budget items, county staff (Jen, budget presenter) told the board that the Exchange 2025 project is uncertain: the county has $50,000 budgeted but a figure of about $93,500 was mentioned as a possible cost if vendor pricing comes in higher. Staff said Microsoft had delayed public pricing, which keeps final numbers unclear; if the vendor price exceeds reserves, the project could be postponed to next fiscal year.

Staff also reported that hardware replacement needs are down for the coming year and maintenance contracts are increasing by roughly 3 to 5 percent. The county has planned separate project lines for a jail camera system instead of consolidating that cost in a single large line item. Staff said there are several legacy databases (about eight) in the county clerk epartment built on very old technology and that migration work is included in the proposed budget.

Board action: Joanne moved and Nancy seconded a motion to place the IT report on file; the motion passed by voice vote. The board also accepted the department budget and forwarded it to finance on a motion by Joanne, seconded by Tina.