City officials are hoping that a move to cloud-based storage for the Butler police will mean fewer technical issues for the department, which has spent tens of thousands of dollars on hardware and troubleshooting work.

Council members are considering a contract that would eliminate some of the multiple servers the department currently uses to run its systems, but tabled a proposal on Monday because the city solicitor had not yet reviewed it.

Regardless of the delay — it’s possible that council could vote on the agreement later this month — council members say they want to move away from a computer system they see as expensive and unreliable.

“We’ve had continued problems with that server and that setup,” said Mayor Tom Donaldson. “There’s no point in continuing to dump good money (into the problem).”

Council members and Donaldson say the city has spent as much as $28,000 on hardware and technical support for the department’s computer system, which includes as many as seven servers and has experienced recurrent stability issues.

Police Chief Ron Brown said that it’s unclear to him the exact nature of the issues plaguing the department’s system, but that one recent crash appears to have been caused, at least in part, by a server overheating. Brown said the crash resulted in the department having to call in its IT consultant, InSync IT, on a weekend to address the issue.

Deputy Chief Dave Adam said a server crash at the department doesn’t wipe out information, but it does result in lost time and functionality for officers, who aren’t able to use the department’s computer system at all until a crashed server is at least partially brought back online,

“When it (a server) shuts down, it pretty much scatters the information everywhere,” Adam said. “They have to go in, pull it out, and put it back together.”

Council member Kathy Kline said poor planning on the city’s part has exacerbated the situation.

“We have to do more planning, instead of just throwing more servers and more servers (at the issue),” Kline said, adding that she has concerns about the ongoing cost of IT support services at the department.