IT director warns rising software costs, asks board to approve help-desk position

The countyhief information technology presenter told the Board of Supervisors on Jan. 27 that steep increases in subscription and renewal fees are putting pressure on the proposed FY2027 Information Technology budget and asked the board to approve a new help-desk support specialist position.

The IT director said account 553, which covers software renewals, is projected to rise by about 13.77 percent to roughly $69,776 and pointed to specific vendors: Tyler New World (financial ERP), Encode (property tax management), Esri (GIS), Microsoft 365, and VMware (virtualization). The director said Microsoft recently announced a roughly 10 percent increase and that a VMware price shock is likely after the Broadcom acquisition. "The cost of doing business with all these software companies is going way, way up," the director said.

To help the department maintain projects and improve customer service, IT requested a single new full-time help-desk support specialist at GS-14. The position would act as a first line of defense on phone and ticket triage so technicians can concentrate on field and migration work. The estimated total cost for salary and benefits was presented at about $77,424.

The IT presenter described the benefits: quicker phone response, better ticket routing, fewer project delays and a staffing pipeline for technicians (the help-desk role could be a stepping stone into a technician role). The assistant IT director, Clint Pardon, joined the presentation.

On capital, IT said it had deferred a planned refresh of 66 Meraki access points and recommended spacing large replacements (firewalls, core switches) across fiscal years to avoid spikes. The department also reported ongoing plans to migrate away from VMware over time to reduce future costs.

Supervisors asked about current ticket backlogs and metrics. The presenter said the help-desk system holds over 9,000 historical tickets (about 3.5 years of data) and estimated current open tickets were "under 20 to 30" on most days. The board asked for reports showing tickets opened versus closed by fiscal year and average resolution time.

The board did not vote on the FTE request during the work session; the IT director said he would provide follow-up reports and the draft job description already circulated to supervisors.