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Hampden, East Longmeadow work toward regionalization of IT

Date: 11/5/2012

By Chris Maza

chrism@thereminder.com

GREATER SPRINGFIELD — The towns of Hampden and East Longmeadow are in the midst of working out the details to enter into a regional Information Technology (IT) agreement.

"We've dedicated a lot of resources to our [IT Department] and they have automated parts of their service so we can offer them to other towns, which also reduces costs for them while also offsetting our costs," East Longmeadow Board of Selectmen Chair James Driscoll said.

East Longmeadow IT Director Ryan Quimby told Reminder Publications that his department would be providing "full IT support" to Hampden's municipal government and that the new duties and responsibilities would not be an added burden for his employees.

"We are going to extend our helpdesk services, as well as our systems administration services," he said. "Most of the systems that they run are the same software vendors as ours so there really isn't much of a learning curve for our technicians/system administrator."

Hampden Board of Selectman Chair John Flynn told the Board of Selectmen at an Oct. 16 meeting that his board would welcome any help East Longmeadow could offer and was willing to formalize any agreement that the East Longmeadow Board of Selectmen wished to bring forward.

Driscoll added that while East Longmeadow has merged its municipal and School Department IT systems, the support extended to Hampden would not benefit the Hampden-Wilbraham Regional School District.

However, he said that other municipalities, which he would not name on the record, citing ongoing negotiations, "are interested and have come to us concerning regionalization."

The East Longmeadow selectmen met in executive session with Quimby regarding the agreement, and no contract has been signed, Quimby and Selectman Paul Federici told Reminder Publications.

Flynn was not available for further comment as of press time.