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Last night I presented the Legal/Newsletter/Computers Committee report to West Easton Council and the public regarding the computers and equipment that were purchased last year, following approval of spending $5000 for new computers back in late 2014.

A bill for almost $4800 was submitted by a former IT individual for the Borough, that charged the Borough for 3 new computers and their installation. As there were only two of the computers available for inspection, I gave the report of the two I was able to inspect.

Both computers had a label on them that showed their manufacture date was 2012. One is running a Windows 7 Operating System (OS). The other is running a Windows 10 OS.

Checking local retailers (Best Buy) and websites for the two different models we paid for, one sells for $179.00. The other sells for $579.00.

More in my report noted the finding of a small backup hard drive in the back office. It is a 1 TB (1000 gigabytes) hard drive that was completely empty, either having never been used or wiped clean. This hard drive was used (or not used) with an old computer that remains on the desk in the back office. That computer is inaccessible due to the Windows OS being password protected.

I also reported on a bill we received for a Wi-Fi router we were charged for. The router model we paid the former IT person $100 for, costs $38 at Walmart. He also billed us $400 for the installation of the router. When compared to the charge of $105 a new IT tech charged us to do the same work for a new router the new Council purchased, to replace the old router, I recommended that the Council refer all bills to our new Solicitor for review and possible action, when all bills (there are others) are taken into consideration.