WINDHAM — The Capital Improvement Plan subcommittee put the finishing touches on a plan that will be presented to the Planning Board later this month.

A $75,000 IT Department request for system replacement was fully allocated in the plan. Subcommittee members were originally split with Neelima Gogumalla, Carolyn Webber and Stephanie Wimmer categorizing the request a top priority, and Chairman Rob Gustafson, Bruce Breton and Jennifer Simmons saying the project could wait one to three years.

Scott Baetz, owner of AdminInternet, a local web development and network support company that performed a town-wide IT network assessment, spoke about the urgency of the upgrades.

“Our assets are in grave condition,” Baetz said. “They’re not just barely serviceable; in many cases, they’re somewhat unserviceable.”

His point was driven home by the fact that some town servers have crashed within the last 30 days, Baetz said. He described town servers stored without proper climate control and the aging equipment that makes up the town’s IT infrastructure. New servers are needed as well as software tools that will allow the IT department to diagnose problems quickly and remotely, Baetz said.

“The funds that are being asked for here are for assets that would consolidate some of the computer equipment and position it to be a much more strategic place than where we would be,” Baetz said.

Windham Technical Advisory Committee member Greg Cappiello said the town’s IT infrastructure was started with consumer-grade equipment and upgrades have been delayed for several years.

“Our IT infrastructure is at a very bare-bones level,” Cappiello said.

The CIP money would be used for a five-point plan to upgrade the network infrastructure, replace the server infrastructure with a virtual server environment, install software to allow remote diagnostics, move toward a virtual environment, and complete testing and training analysis, Cappiello said.

Faced with making cuts to stay within the $1.75 million amount for CIP allocations, CIP subcommittee members chose to lower the school allotment to $630,000 rather than reduce requests for public safety issues.

“The reality of these numbers is there is no other place to go,” Wimmer said.

The School Board had requested $1 million for architectural and engineering fees to prepare a warrant article for a project that would address middle school capacity issues.

Last year’s CIP plan allocated $711,000 for the school facilities master plan, but voters rejected an article asking that the funds be used for architectural and engineering drawings for a new seventh- and eighth-grade school on London Bridge Road.

The draft CIP plan includes $61,252 for police mobile communications equipment, $202,867 for breathing apparatus for the fire department, $600,000 for paving and equipment for the Highway Department, $75,000 for the IT Department, $100,953 for Searles and $630,000 for the schools.

The CIP plan will be presented to the Planning Board on Oct. 17.

jhanson@newstote.com