County to move to .gov email addresses

At the persistent urging of the Nebraska Secretary of State’s Office, the Hamilton County Board of Commissioners moved on Monday to secure dot-gov email addresses for all county offices including the five commissioners. 
The Hamilton County website is a dot-gov domain, however, county offices such as the county assessor currently have hamilton.net email addresses, and county commissioners are listed on the website with their personal addresses hosted by various domains. 
Adam Jurgens of Hamilton Telecommunications appeared at the meeting to discuss a proposal by Hamilton and the Secretary of State to move all county offices to Microsoft email under a dot-gov domain for security purposes. He also said the $8,000 one-time charge to make the move will be paid by the state and going forward the county will have an annual cost of $2,500 for the upgraded service. 
County Clerk Jill DeMers said the Secretary of State especially wants clerks across the state to make the switch for election integrity and noted that Hamilton is one of only three counties in the state that has not already made the move.
“The Hamilton email server wasn’t really built for businesses,” Jurgens said. “It’s a really advantageous time for the county to do this because all you have to pay for is the (annual) subscription.” 
With regard to the Secretary of State’s Office, Chairman Rich Nelson commented, “They’ve been giving us a heads up about this for more than a year now and NIRMA and NACO are encouraging all counties to be on a dot-gov email.” 
Nelson also suggested that the commissioners be given dot-gov addresses for their county business emails, noting that he is currently using a gmail address.
Following the discussion the board voted 5-0 to make the switch and Jurgens said it would probably take 4-6 weeks for the switchover to take place.
In another agenda item, the board discussed renewing the interlocal agreement for planning and zoning services it previously had with Merrick County when Scott Stuhr was county business manager and was also overseeing the Planning and Zoning office. 
Planning and Zoning Director Hillary Betka, who was in attendance at the meeting, told the board she had helped out with Merrick County Planning and Zoning under the supervision of Stuhr when she first started in the position last year and had a familiarity with the office. She stated she was in favor of renewing the agreement. 
“I don’t think it’s going to be overwhelming taking on Merrick County,” Betka said. “There doesn’t seem to be anything big coming in.” 
At one point the board appeared to be moving in the direction of resuming the interlocal, however, Commissioner John Thomas spoke up and questioned whether it may be too soon, since Betka has not yet been on the job for a year and newly hired county business manager Pat Shaw has no experience in planning and zoning. 
With commissioners Nancy Salmon and Nicole SaBell adding their agreement, the board began to put the brakes on the proposal leading to Nelson stating, “We’ll talk to Merrick County and let them know we’re open to it, but not now.”
The board discussed revisiting the proposal in three to six months.