Regardless of any objections by council members
The controversy is over – at least for Parish President V.J. St. Pierre.
St. Pierre informed the council that their e-mail server will be combined with the e-mail server of the administration, regardless of their objections.
“It’s a done deal,” St. Pierre said at a recent committee meeting. “The server has already been purchased and we’re moving forward with this thing.”
District 4 Councilman Paul Hogan strongly disagreed with St. Pierre. Hogan is currently researching the cost to purchase a separate server strictly for council use.
“No V.J., it’s an undone deal,” Hogan said at the meeting. “You might have done it but I’m going to work with the council to undo it.”
Some council members are concerned that by combining the two e-mail servers they will not have the privacy they need to get parish work accomplished.
“There are quite a few ordinances that I sent to other council members via e-mail,” Councilman-at-large Terry Authement said. “Some of those ordinances were never seen by the public because I changed my mind or just decided not to present them to the council. What if those kinds of things get out to the public?”
Authement is concerned that by combining the servers, council business will be more easily accessible.
“There are safeguards that can be put into place to protect the council e-mail,” Kendall Stall, the parish’s Information Technology coordinator, said. “I am willing to sign a confidentiality agreement with the council if that’s what it takes.”
Stall said that he will not be responsible for the upkeep and maintenance of the council member’s parish-purchased computers if the servers aren’t combined and he can make no guarantees on the security of the system.
“You can put all the safeguards you want on a system,” he said. “If someone wants to access certain things there are always ways to go around it, but I will not be the person accessing areas that I’m not supposed to.”
Stall says he’s heard allegations that he’s been reading parish administrative e-mails and talking about the contents of those e-mails within the courthouse.
“It’s not true,” he said. “I’m not reading anyone’s e-mail. The server might pick up 4,000 e-mails in a day. Who would have time to read all of that?”
Stall doesn’t want to be responsible for council computers if a separate server is purchased.
“I don’t feel comfortable providing technical support for separate servers and networks – knowing the additional cost,” he said. “If we combine the servers, we can save the parish $20,000.”
Stall says by not combining the servers the council is unable to use a shared Blackberry Enterprise Server.
“We’d have to purchase separate Blackberry support just for the council,” he said. “Not sharing servers is also keeping the parish president’s staff from printing and scanning documents from the multi-function printers that were recently purchased for the administrative office.”
Some council members also disagreed on using laptops to access agendas during the council meeting instead of the paper copies they currently use.
“I need my handbook-style agenda,” Hogan said. “I prefer that to a laptop and if they are purchased I won’t use it. I will pay whatever it cost to get my paper agenda.”
Stall informed the council that the laptops would be purchased and would be kept in council chambers for use by other departments when meetings would be held.
“If that’s the case then we need to split the cost of purchasing those laptops between the administration and the council,” Council Chairman Dennis Nuss said. “I wasn’t aware that we’d be sharing them with other departments.”
Councilwoman-at-large Carolyn Schexnaydre said the majority of the council was not informed before the decision to use laptops was made.
“Mr. Nuss should not be allowed to speak for everyone on the council,” she said. “He should have kept us informed and we should have all been allowed to decide as a group.”
The cost of the laptops will be $970 per council member. The money to purchase the laptops came from the council budget.
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