IT proposes $2,824,894 for FY26, a nominal increase the department said will fund expanded cybersecurity work, additional network staffing and continuing cloud migration.

The vote: The committee took a straw vote in favor of the IT budget proposal.

Why it matters: The presentation framed the increase as largely driven by growing cyberthreats, replacing aging equipment and moving core services toward cloud-based vendors. Department staff emphasized the need for a dedicated cybersecurity specialist and ongoing investment in training and monitoring after the city’s recent high‑volume brute‑force attack.

Joe Mulvey, Information Technology director, opened the department’s presentation and framed cloud migration and security as central priorities. Gregory Insaldi, the department’s deputy director, described the attack the city repelled and the case for a full‑time cybersecurity hire: “At one point in a three‑hour period, our staff measured 4,000,000 attempts to breach our network,” Insaldi said, noting work with consultants and the FBI to stop the incident and verify no breach occurred.

Insaldi and Mulvey said the IT request would fund a cybersecurity specialist to test products, monitor for vulnerabilities and coordinate incident response and training. Mulvey described a broader plan to move more municipal systems to cloud contracts to reduce on‑site equipment and shift some maintenance responsibilities to vendors, while retaining staff expertise for oversight.

On artificial intelligence, Mulvey said the department has deployed chatbots on some departmental pages and uses a customized Google search backed by AI. He described an internal review process for chatbot answers and said, “We review all the questions and the answers on a regular basis…We feel that 80 to 85 percent correct rates is very good.” Councilors asked about human review and transparency in answers.

City COO Jonathan Young told the committee that cybersecurity had been the administration’s top IT priority this budget cycle and that reductions in federal information‑sharing programs had increased the urgency for local monitoring and staff expertise.

Councilors pressed staff on staffing composition and proactive outreach to other departments. Councilor Albright asked how IT will help departments adopt applications that improve their operations and resident services; Mulvey said the department holds annual planning meetings with each department and will continue outreach while noting many departmental solutions are now cloud‑hosted and require more vendor management than in‑house development.

The committee registered a straw vote in favor of placing the IT budget forward for consideration by the full Committee of the Whole.