The following is the May 14 report of Rockport Town Manager’s Rick Bates. 

Computer Server Issues

As you know we suffered a computer hack on Friday, April 13, that shut us down for nearly a week. Gus Natalie, our IT superhero will be on hand to explain what happened in more detail and also talk about possible solutions so that it does not happen again.

In a nutshell and in non-technology speak, we had two unrelated tech issues that happened at around the same time.

First, we had an issue where we were being blacklisted for sending out spam e-mail. We started noticing that, early in the week, where some e-mail servers were sending back rejected e-mails from the Town. These are e-mails we send and receive all the time.

Gus checked all of our e-mail addresses and could not find any one of our addresses that were guilty of sending out robotic spam that would cause the blacklisting. This lead him to believe that it was someone using our public Wi-Fi. He took corrective action and removed us from blacklists. In some cases, there are algorithms that are used that continue to blacklist us until some conditions are met.

He cleared that up near the end of the day on Friday the 13th and left for the day. As we were closing up and saving our files around 4:30 p.m., we started noticing problems on our various servers. Kerry and I were both having problems, as was Diane who noticed files being saved back to the planner’s office were being encrypted.

I called Gus immediately. He responded to the Town Office to access the server around 6:30 and needed to get into the rest of the building and start shutting down systems and taking them off the internet. He started that at 7pm when I got back from Rockland. He was here when I came in on Saturday morning, after being here until 4 am.

The ransomware had gotten into our system through e-mail and he was finally able to find the computer it first infected. These people are very clever and will often disguise the e-mail to look like a legitimate e-mail, often from someone in your e-mail contact list. It was not as if someone here was overtly careless in opening an e-mail that caused the problem.

Gus worked all three days of the long weekend, bringing in Mike Dean (who was our IT Consultant, and currently works for the county) to help.

Ultimately, they were able to rebuild our servers and back-ups without any loss of data and without any payment of ransom. An amazing feat in itself.

We have been struggling somewhat in getting everything all running again as there are so many interconnected systems and linkages between hardware that was dropped or disconnected as a result of the bug.

We are now in the process of trying to establish a plan for preventing this in the future.

There are two weaknesses in our system. The public Wi-Fi and our e-mail server. We have developed solutions for each, but they come with a cost. A cost that we did not plan for in our budget. Many of these changes are a dramatic shift from the approach we had been using but will give us the security we need in the future.

The Public Wi-Fi is the far less costly but involves getting another IP address for public access and new equipment to control that access.

The cost of this is relatively small (in the big scheme of things) but will allow us to totally isolate the public Wi-Fi from the private Wi-Fi and eliminate the risk (however small) of the systems being crossed over.

The public Wi-Fi is very important and gets used a lot so we need to get it back up and running ASAP. The other problem is the e-mail server that is currently hosted by us. Gus is recommending that it be migrated to the “cloud”through Microsoft 360 which would host the e-mails in secure servers and there would be no risk of infected e-mails getting into our network.

The cost of this is approximately $12,000/year but has a lot of benefits beyond simply e-mail. Gus will be on hand to explain the benefits.

In addition, we have been forced to switch gears with regards to hosting data locally as a result of the problems we have had. We will be hosting the Vision data in the cloud as opposed to buying a new server to host that data. This also has an annual cost. But that cost is far less than lost data and maintenance of our own server.

Finally, we are looking at having a redundant cloud back up for our internal data that is again totally isolated from our internal network, that would give us additional back-up capacity in the event we were ever to get hacked again.

We are doing our best to cover these costs with the current budget. However, the next budget willrequire the Select Board’s approval to go over budget.

Public Works

Public Works has been in clean-up mode for the past few weeks, as well as working on repairs to damage caused by winter. They are beginning the improvements to the RES field to make it a better practice field. They will also be fixing the existing backstop to make it look better.

Maine Sport Pump Station Replacement

Work is currently underway at Maine Sport to replace the existing pump station.

Harbor

The new pilings for the new dingy docks have been installed and the new docks are under construction.

Repairing of the Andre statue is progressing well.

There is a tentative plan for a “summer kick-off” event including visiting windjammers, live music and food.

Status of Heron, Boat Club Lease

We have an agreement on the Heron Lease that includes changes the board recommended at their last meeting as well as an escalator that increases the lease based on the consumer price index (CPI) for the term of the lease.

I have heard back from the Boat Club and we are scheduling a meeting for this week. As expected they are concerned about the jump in the lease rate.

Ambulance Contract

We have an updated contract as recommended by the 4 town managers and approved by the Ambulance Review Committee. It is a change from the previous contract in two ways. First, asignificant increase in the “subsidy” each of the 4 towns pay to maintain the level of service wewant and second a performance-based contract that has built in fines when the level of service provided (paramedic on the call) or response times fall below an acceptable level for Advanced Life Support (ALS) calls. While the fines may seem excessive, the goal is to never be in the position of collecting the fine. In spite of the potential fines, North East Ambulance is more comfortable with performance-based contract which allows them to staff appropriately based on expected call volume, rather than be overstaffed at times, when not needed.

It is a 1-year contract with an option for a two-year renewal.

The Ambulance Review Committee spent a considerable amount of time on this as did the 4 managers.

As of this point the Select Boards of Hope, Camden and I have approved the contract. It is onLincolnville’s agenda for tonight’s meeting.

Progress on Styrofoam Ordinance

Town Counsel has reviewed the proposed ordinance and has recommended a few minor changes, but nothing of much substance. We will be bringing that to the Select Board to consider at the July meeting.

Street Light Issues

We have a new representative to work with from CMP as the previous representative retired. We are trying to set up a meeting to talk about getting our lights fixed in a timelier manner. The last inspection of lights found that the report lights out grew from 14 to 26, which is not the change we were hoping to see.

Planning Department

Bill Najpauer has begun work on a number of projects including several grant applications. He submitted a grant for $500,000 to help with the Route 1 Sewer extension as well as one for designwork on the pier and wall in front of the harbor master’s office. In addition, we are working on utilizing Hannah more in the Planning Department and training her to take on more responsibilities, considering the recent changes in the department.

We have also been working on amendments to the TIF plan on Route 1. This is needed for planned development expected at the former Oakland Park site that will be developed with residential homes and a possible commercial use. This amendment will need to be done at a Special Town Meeting in August to allow us to use current TIF accumulating proceeds to pay for design and engineering, prior to going out to bond vote in June of 2019.

This work will allow the continued commercial development of Route 1 beyond the Oakland Park property.

Town Clerk’s Office

Diane and Linda both received their certification as GA administrators. Congratulations to both of them. Diane also attended the GA Administrator’s Annual Meeting in Bangor.

The Town Clerk’s Office was closed on Wednesday, May 9, so that staff could attend the Election’sTraining. I am hoping that there will be additional training and discussion on the new ranked choice voting.

We are also hoping to get online registration, dog licensing, etc. up and running by July 1st. We are also considering possible changes to office hours which would allow us to better meet the new recommended financial and internal control policies being proposed.

Assessing Department

The Assessor’s Office has been busy with inspections for the past month.

Fire Department

The Fire Chief attended the National Fire Chief’s Convention this past month and came awaywith a lot of great ideas. The Department has been busy with a variety of brush fires, traffic accidents and trainings.

Library

Congratulations to Ben Odgren and his wife, who are the proud new parents of a baby girl.

Opera House

We have hired Andrew Weber as the new House Manager for the Opera House. Andrew teaches at the Midcoast School of Music and we are confident his new position with the Town will work well with the work he is doing.

We had 15 job applications for the position, with many very qualified applicants. The team of myself, Terri Smith, Dave Morrison and Ben Blackmon narrowed the field down to three candidates that were all outstanding. Terri and I did follow-up interviews and I selected Andrew.