Dunbarton Technology Committee
December 5, 1996 Meeting

Agenda

The main purpose of this special meeting is to interview Janice Jelley regarding the town's needs for software.

Attendees

  • Van Dittmer
  • Glenn Doten, Secretary
  • Gary Hendley
  • Linn Kurkjian, Chairperson 
  • Chip Peters

Discussion

The meeting began at 7:30 PM.

This meeting was to interview Janice Jelley, Executive Assistant to the Selectmen, to determine the software needs for Janice's work and some other department's work.

The two biggest programs in use at the town are:

  • Assessing/Appraisal records
  • Accouting records

The Town Assesor, Compton French, is an independent contractor hired by the selectmen. He has a PC in his house with the town's assessing/appraisal records on it. He lives in Concord. Janice also has a copy of the program that Compton uses as well as a copy of the data the Compton uses and they both make changes to the data: Janice from the town offices computer and Compton remotely via modem from his house.

The software used by Janice and Compton for the assessment/appraisal records is a program written and maintained by Jim Gucci, who lives in Montana, on a contract basis; it is custom software. Compton works with Jim to get the requirements of the program established. The original program is circa 1990. It is a DOS-based program. PC Anywhere is used for the remote connections to the town office's PC. Janice uses the program for printing out assessments for residents, among other things.

Compton delivers cards of updated assessments in the spring. The changes that Compton makes to the file typically over-ride Janice's changes to a record.

Every spring Janice updates the current use property forms. She also updates the monthly deed changes.

There is a 3rd major program used by the town: the tax file. It is used to produce the tax bills, warrants, and blotter book. This is also custom software, circa 1986-87, DOS-based using Foxbase or DBase. This program has many bugs.

The tax blotter book contains assessments, tax bills, etc.

Martha Rae, the town tax collector, has looked at replacement software for the town:

  • Atlantic Turnkey Corp.,
  • Business Data Systems, and
  • Business Management System, Inc.

Of these three vendors looked at Martha and Janice prefer the Business Management System software because it is Windows-based and has good support.

Janice would like to see a monitor and keyboard on the counter so that residents and real estate agents can look up assesment information.

The need for 5 PCs can be seen for the following town employees:

  1. Tax Collector
  2. Town Clerk
  3. Building Inspector
  4. Selectmen's Secretary
  5. Public-accessible "counter" system

The assessor will need access to some of the town data as well.

For any software purchased and implemented by the town, there are two items that would be desireable: support and on-site training (some vendors require that training be done at their business office).

None of the above mentioned vendors have assessing programs.

The state has an assesment program from the Department of Revenue, the contact name is Guy Petell. This program works with the three vendor's programs.

An accounting program called One-Write Plus written by NEBS is used by the auditors Mason and Rich, they come in with their own notebook PCs running the programming). This is a DOS-based programl; there is a Windows-based version but it isn't stable yet. This program does the town payroll, W2s, GL entries, etc.

The following utility programs are used by Janice:

  • WordPerfect, Professional Write, Amipro (last one is hardly ever used).
  • Program to page the police.
  • Q&A program: real estate people use this to look at the sales file and the town assessor also uses it and the tax collector uses it. The resident list is also on this program. John Swindlehurst assigns house numbers (a duty of the fire department) and he has the most current list of residents on a PC in his house.
  • Lotus 1-2-3

The following vendors have been contacted by Martha already:

  1. Business Data Solutions
    George Humphrey
    4 North Road
    Box 129
    Deerfield, NH 03037
    (603) 463-8367
    "Municipal Management System Overview"
  2. Atlantic Turnkey Corporation
    Terry Finefrock
    9 Route 101A
    Amherst, NH 03031
    (603) 673-9447
    Fax: 673-0442
    "AMASE: Property Tax Billing and Collection"
  3. Business Management Systems, Inc.
    Bruce Perlo
    Dow Academy Building
    Franconica, NH 03580
    (603) 823-5578
    Fax: 823-7003
    "Does: registrations, titles, licenses of all sorts"

The Technology Committee will review these vendor's products for incorporation into a town hardware infrastructure.

The meeting was adjourned at 9:00 PM.

The committee members were sworn in by Irene Thalheimer, Town Clerk, after the meeting.

Action Items

  1. Glenn -- contact the state Departent of Revenue to find out about the assesment program available.
  2. Glenn -- contact the three vendors mentioned above to get 6 copies of the material sent to Martha Rae for the members of the committee. 

Next Meeting

The next committee meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, December 10, at 7:00 PM to interview Irene Thalheimer and Martha Rae.

Note that these minutes are available at the town office as well as on the World Wide Web at http://www.ci.dunbarton.nh.us/ in the Technology Committee section.