NEWBURGH—The Newburgh City Council passed several aggressive, and expensive, resolutions last night in an effort to make the city more cost-effective.

The council took a look at ways to better manage their own budgets, starting with payroll.  City Comptroller Christine Mitchell said the individual who handles the payroll processing is taking the retirement incentive, and will be leaving city service at the end of September. Mitchell questioned the choices going forward.

The city looked into payroll services as an alternative to continuing with their outdated AS-400 system as well as the cost of employing and training a new individual and the maintenance required for the old system.

The city council passed a resolution to allocate $383,750 toward an Information Technology Capital Project Budget, with which they intend to consolidate the city’s 20 servers into three virtual servers in a single location.

Mitchell says this will be more cost-effective and efficient, as well as allowing the city to update their payroll system and move forward with a payroll service.