Andover systems crash

ANDOVER- Selectmen met last Thursday for an emergency meeting to decide what to do about their computer system that failed on them late Wednesday. Their master boot record and their backup, which holds 500 gigabytes each, was lost. The two systems held the entire electronic record for the town.

“Our data is obviously very valuable to us,” noted Chairman Susan Merrow. “Fortunately, we have TRIO who had our real estate records as of June and we’re working on manually inputting those so we can get our tax bills out.”

Fortunately for the town, on Wednesday, the town office had printed out tax commitments for 2012-2013 and were prepared with that information to be sent. Earlier in the week selectmen had set the mill rate at 13.68, the same as last year.

“I’m so glad we had that part of it done,” noted Selectman Keith Farrington. “It’s still a huge issue to deal with, but at least the townspeople won’t have to wait for their bills.”

During the meeting, selectmen voted unanimously to send their hardware out to Wisconsin on a 5 to 7 day turnaround for less than $400. Chairman Merrow had made various phone calls around the state on Thursday, with no luck in contacting a business that could restore their hardware.

Fred Dethridge, an IT specialist and citizen in the town, was volunteering his time last week to help get as much information restored as they could.

“I’ve been in town for six years,” noted Dethridge. “And this is the third time this has happened. Citizens really need to stop putting bandaids on the issue and invest some money in a real server solution. The last time we fixed this we definitely got our money’s worth, but now it’s time to take a more permanent position.”

Selectman Farrington made a proposal to look at a more permanent solution once the town is back online after this current situation is resolved.

Selectman are hopeful that the computer drives will be repaired and returned to them by the end of this week and business will return to normal.