Gooding County | minutes | meeting 2025-10-30 | Special Meeting Board of County Commissioners source: https://www.goodingcounty.org/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Minutes/_10302025-844 SPECIAL SESSION, OCTOBER 30, 2025 Commissioner Bolduc opened the meeting at 11:00 a.m. Commissioner Buhler, Treasurer Wines, Sheriff Gough, Assessor Baldwin, Shelly Bates, C.O.O. Scott Leslie and Mike from E.T.S. and the Chief Deputy Clerk, Jackie Fuqua, were present. MEETING WITH E.T.S. REGARDING CONCERNS FROM SHERIFF’S OFFICE Commissioner Bolduc stated it was good they all were meeting today to talk about issues and to find solutions. Scott from E.T.S. gave a briefing on where they began the project and where they are now. They have 14 months to get the project complete. Phases one and two consisted of backups, switching and routing. They are in phase three which consists of dealing with servers. Commissioner Bolduc asked if they could discuss the I.T. part of this and the grant it falls under. Scott said they have used funds from the Capital Projects Fund, $523,000.00 for project development, $374,000.00 for land, $61,055.00 for architectural costs totaling $958,000.00, and must prove we are matching as we go along, which E.T.S. is doing. There is $187,000.00 remaining and they hope to stay within that amount. There is the potential for further grants. Scott says it would be cost effective to upgrade all systems now through the fiber hub. Commissioner Buhler stated he thought the fiber was to go to every household in the county. Scott said that is the way it worked out in Camas and Lincoln counties because they had a previous grant so they are further ahead than Gooding County. Gooding County started with the fiber backbone through main street with conduit. Gooding residents can pay their current providers to tap into the broadband fiber, at whatever cost their provider charges, if the provider has applied to be on the network. Assessor Baldwin asked what the cost to the customer was. Scott said it depends on how much the provider charges. Customers pay their provider, whatever their charge is, then the provider pays $30 per customer into the Broadband fund that is managed by the county. After the fund grows, the funds can be used in new construction neighborhoods and there wouldn’t be a cost for them if it gets laid during construction. The county could then choose existing neighborhoods to add to as the fund grows. The goal is to have fiber or fixed wireless to every home. Sheriff Gough said he was told they won’t have access to any of their systems such as cameras, once they are in the hub. Scott said that was not the case at all. Scott said as long as we use a company that is not on a blacklist, the Sheriff’s office can monitor their own cameras. Treasurer Wines asked about the AS400. ETS suggests moving over to the hub, but it depends on future legislation. Assessor Baldwin asked if they could buy a backup and put it in the hub but use the existing one until it dies. Scott said they could, but it would be a decision for the Board of County Commissioners. Examples of what the racks in the hub look like and what they can do were passed around. The racks are seven feet tall, and the hub can hold around ten racks. Shelly asked if the county would have access to all the racks. Scott said certain racks only E.T.S. will have access to. Two racks are for the fiber footprint; all others are county access. Shelly asked who grants the access cards to the racks. Scott said it’s a web log and the county decides who has access, but they should be C.J.I.S. certified. Shelly said that certification didn’t make sense since some of our vendors won’t be certified and will need access. Scott said whatever systems they wanted could be left in house, only core business systems will move to the fiber hub. The other systems could move over eventually with different levels of access. E.T.S. recommends that every system that isn’t state mandated be moved into the hub. Shelly brought up an issue with passwords being changed without the Sheriff’s office knowing. Scott and Mike weren’t sure what had happened in the example of the finger printing machine over the weekend but didn’t see any logging showing anyone enabling or disabling a password in the time frame. They said some of our servers are from 2012. There were proposals for new servers provided and discussed. Shelly said there’s been a lot of tickets with E.T.S. for things that we could have been taken care of by Computer Arts at no charge. Our software is still maintained by Computer Arts, but everyone sees the E.T.S. tech and asks them to fix problems, triggering a ticket. Scott said some tickets are part of maintenance and are not billable, while others are. He suggests making one-person in-house I.T. to direct employees to the process of reporting issues instead of just asking an E.T.S. tech and creating a ticket. She wants to know if some E.T.S. permissions be eased a bit so Chris with Computer Arts has departmental rights. Scott will get Shelly a list of what tickets are billable, and which are maintenance. Shelly and Sheriff Gough say more communication needs to happen between E.T.S. and them. Scott agrees. She also says the Commissioners need to decide if she is the in-house I.T. or do they want to hire outside. E.T.S. says if they need help with outside hiring, they can assist. Treasurer Wines asked what the timeline for Broadband is. Scott says Idaho Power does their work in a couple weeks, and the fiber hut should be in by February. He wants the courthouse “clean” by 2026 with only one rack in the server room that can be walked around. Scott asked if there was any county property for the tower in Wendell. The county property by the Portuguese Hall is available. Further investigation is underway with Assessor Baldwin to see if this property will work. Commissioner Bolduc adjourned the meeting at 12:27 p.m. /s/Mark E. Bolduc ________________ /s/Vern Eames____________ /s/Ron Buhler______________ Mark E. Bolduc, Chairman Vern Eames, Commissioner Ronald Buhler, Commissioner Attest: /s/Jackie Fuqua______________ Jackie Fuqua, Chief Deputy Clerk