Former Valparaiso Community Schools IT director Bill Moran is working with Portage’s new one-person information technology department to arrange “a tremendous amount of cuts and potential savings” for the city, Mayor Austin Bonta said.

“Everything that we’re cutting or reducing here is something that we either no longer use or that we can get better or cheaper,” Portage IT director Trevor Cherechinsky said at Tuesday’s City Council meeting.

That will reduce spending this year, but next year it will make a bigger difference, Bonta said.

Moran, who moved to Portage and asked how he could help his new city, is offering his services as a consultant.

“For all intents and purposes, this is our first IT budget,” he said, but he did many of them for the Valparaiso school district.Frontier “has very little that we can use,” he said. Frontier uses “antiquated copper wire that in many places is 60 to 80 years old,” he said. It’s the same copper wire that dates back to Frontier predecessor Verizon and before that, General Telephone.

“We took a very deep dive into these services that we were looking at to make sure they were no longer being used,” Moran said. “We wanted to make absolutely sure that the services we were going to cut were no longer being used or would not cause a deficit for that department.”

That’s especially true for emergency services. “We made absolutely sure that was not the case,” Moran said.

Reviewing the phone system took quite a bit of work. “Frontier invoices are very confusing. It’s like reading the DaVinci Code,” Moran said.

The city is using voice over internet protocol instead of landlines, greatly reducing costs.

“I think we’re looking at an annual cost of about $87,000 a year that we can reduce the IT budget by,” Moran said.

Two months ago, the phone bill was about $3,000 a month but jumped to $7,000, so this was a good time to address it, Cherechinsky said. Going through all this took about a month and a half, he said.

The city is working with Portage Township Schools on IT issues. The district pays about $700 a month for its phones compared to $4,500 for the city, and the schools have roughly four times as many phones as the city’s 250, Cherechinsky said. Working with the school system as the city’s IT provider will help costs drop dramatically, he said.

Cybersecurity insurance premiums have dropped, too, because the city is no longer using a private company for its IT provider. That was a barrier to quite a few discounts through Microsoft and state government.

Using a state grant, the city got antivirus software for free as well as training for employees on phishing scams.

Portage has been safe from ransom attacks and cyberattacks so far, but municipalities and schools can be “literally crippled” because someone clicked on a link and inadvertently allowed a hacker access to the system, Moran said. “We’re not in a safe world anymore.”

Some employees might have been shamed during the training, but it’s important to protect the city, he said.

For the fire department, the city plans to buy more durable, more reliable tablets with a three-year warranty for $3,000 apiece, Cherechinsky said.

The city will also switch from .com to .gov email addresses next year, he said.

The IT department is also creating “acceptable use” policies and determining how often devices should be replaced to keep everything current and functioning smoothly.

In other business, the council raised fees for building permits and related work. It’s been at least 10 years since the council last raised fees for the Planning and Community Development Department.

The city is trying to get caught up on collecting the actual costs incurred by the city, Bonta said.

In putting together the new fee structure, the city compared Portage’s existing fees with municipalities in Porter and Lake counties and studied the department’s actual costs.

A permit for new construction will cost $600 plus 28 cents per square foot. A permit for a new industrial building will cost $800 plus 32 cents per square foot.

The schedule of fees stretches across two pages.

The council also tabled action again, this time indefinitely, a proposed fireworks ordinance that would aim to require safe disposal of used fireworks. Fine-tuning of the proposal, which began a few months ago, still isn’t complete.

Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.