WALSENBURG — The Huerfano County Commissioners, meeting for the last time with Art Bobian as chairman, started 2015 off by signing an intergovernmental agreement (IGA) between the county, the City of Walsenburg, and Spanish Peaks Library, to share in-common Information Technology services. Getting and keeping reliable IT service in Huerfano County has been a challenge, both for private industry and local governments. The Huerfano County Commissioners feel they have that stable platform in Jeffrey Byland, who has been with the county for several years. His time will now be spread between the county, the City of Walsenburg, and to a lesser extent, the library. The county and city have similar systems, and the library less so. Monica Birrer, director of Spanish Peaks Library, said she has budgeted $15,000 for IT services this year. The cost to the city has yet to be determined, depending on how much needs to be done, but would cost approximately $67.50 an hour, broken into quarter hour segments. If the workload continues as projected,
a second person will need to be hired to keep up with it, but Huerfano County Administrator John Galusha wants to make sure the collaboration is successful before hiring on someone else. “We can’t afford to hire a new person on our own,” he said. Galusha sees the relationship as tenuous as far as sustainability, and can be cancelled by any party if it is not working out.
