Park lights, digitalized marriage books, data storage in works at Cape County

Three county projects are moving ahead after action at Thursday's County Commission meeting: digitizing books on file with the Recorder's office, the lake project in Cape County Park South, and a new data storage option for county records.

County Recorder Drew Blattner said he is applying for a grant to continue digitizing his office's records.

"It's a smaller series" than the deed index books, now online and accessible at no cost at gov.arcasearch.com/usmocpg/. Digitizing those books totaled nearly $37,000, Blattner previously had told the Southeast Missourian a grant had covered $24,000 of that cost, with the county picking up the remaining tab.

Blattner said Thursday he anticipated the marriage books digitization would cost about $31,000, with half that cost covered by the grant.

By the terms of the grant, if Blattner's application is successful, the digitization would need to be completed by May 31, 2020, he said.

Park lights

Parks superintendent Bryan Sander said the lights for the park road will be installed by Metro Lighting, the only bidder on the project.

Cost will be approximately $14,600, Sander said.

"That's just for the park road, not the lake," Sander noted.

County and state officials are collaborating on planned upgrades to the lake in County Park South. The project includes cleaning out the lake bed, adding rock jetties for improved fishing access, sidewalks and lighting, according to previous reporting, and is expected to take up to two years to complete. The project started in July 2018.

Data backup

Eric McGowen, the county's information technology director, told the commissioners he received three bids for an off-site, managed data backup solution. McGowen recommended the proposal by ISG Technology, a fully encrypted system with an initial setup cost of about $600, and $2,800 per month. An add-on to handle backup of Microsoft Office 365 program data, including Outlook, will have an initial cost of about $400, and cost another $450 per month, McGowen said.

The money is already in the budget, McGowen said, and the company is recommended by major software companies.

Commissioner Charlie Herbst said the price has come down on storage solutions in the past few years, and the complete data backup is no longer as cost-prohibitive as it was previously.

McGowen added this program allows for more storage space as needed, at low cost, for future data.

mniederkorn@semissourian.com

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