County moves toward new, more secure website

Changes are coming to the Bosque County website after commissioners elected to partner with a new site developer last week.

Established in 1997, CivicPlus only works with local government entities, with about 500 clients in Texas and 13,000 across the U.S.

Estimated costs for the first year were $16,900, which included the first year of site hosting, a dedicated account manager, the training of county staff to maintain the website, and relocating content to the new site. After the first year, annual expenses were expected to be about a third of that cost, approximately $5,600.

Discussion of the change came as security concerns were on the rise. Bosque County Judge Cindy Vanlandingham said she continued to monitor a list of security threats to the current county website, but even though those threats were identified as a “false positive”, Vanlandingham said she was reluctant to clear them, which would allow them full access to the website.

CivicPlus invests $12 million in cybersecurity each year. The developer was able to fend off online attacks stemming from Operation Ferguson, an organization of hackers claiming to be associated with the hacker group Anonymous, following the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO in 2014.

“This is the most secure, most highly recommended web page I’ve found. It surpasses even TAC (Texas Association of Counties),” Vanlandingham said.

CivicPlus estimated about six months from the date contracts were signed until the new site would go live.

Approval from the court was dependent upon funds available in the next annual budget, which is expected to be adopted in September.

Inothernews,commissioners also voted to set the group term life insurance elected rate at 5% for employee contribution for the next year.

In 2020 the county life insurance fund was underfunded at around 20% and the county made lump sum payments to catch it up, according to Hightower. In 2023, the fund was overfunded at 102.4%.

The required rate set by TCDRS to fund the account for Bosque County was 4.12%. The statewide average in Texas was 12.1%.

“With the market the way it is, I’d much rather be a little bit overfunded to help fund those future years if we have another drop,” County Human Resources director Darcie Ragsdale said.

Bosque County commissioners also:

■ Approved the payment of claims, salaries and wages against county and precinct funds.

■ Filed the county treasurer’s third quarter report and corrected second quarter investment report; corrections were made after County Treasurer Pam Browning found a mistake in the mathematical formula on her spreadsheet.

The error did not change the market value figure in the second quarter report.

■ Authorized the county judge to sign the direct deposit authorization form for Citizens State Bank in Clifton.

■ Renewed group medical and group ancillary insurance, keeping the same, no out-of-pocket costs insurance plans for county employees.