Constable’s office gets new computers despite imminent demise
Las Vegas Township Constable John Bonaventura’s office will cease to exist on Jan. 4 under Clark County’s decision to abolish it when his term ends.
At the same time, the county in the past couple of months has installed in the office 14 new computers valued at $11,186 in all.
Even Bonaventura got a new computer from the county’s Information Technology Department. Like the others, it comes with a guarantee that will outlast the constable’s office by more than two years: Its warranty expires Oct. 16, 2017.
Bonaventura has been scratching his head about why the county has put new computers in his office less than a year before the county plans to eliminate the office.
But a county spokeswoman said the purchase was made for security reasons.
County commissioners in March 2013 voted unanimously to abolish the office, which performs functions that include serving court notices and performing evictions.
“To me, it’s strange,” Bonaventura said, as he showed a Review-Journal reporter around his office space. “Because it’s not like the computers were having problems or anything.”
Bonaventura said his office never requested the new electronic gear, which includes keyboards and mouses.
“It wasn’t like we had breakdowns,” he said, criticizing the expenditure of public money as unnecessary.
If the office had never gotten the equipment, Bonaventura said, he and his staff could have made do with the existing computers until January.
The constable’s office received 14 new Dell OptiPlex GZ260 workstations, which cost $799 apiece, or $11,186 total, according to the county.
The replacement was part of a systemwide security initiative that the county’s IT department has been doing for the past several years, county spokeswoman Stacey Welling said in an email.
The effort started after Microsoft’s announcement that it would end support for an aging Windows XP operating system as of April 8. As a result, security patches to mitigate software flaws are no longer provided, making the system vulnerable to hackers, she said.
“It was a security issue that needed to be addressed,” Welling said.
As a result, the county upgraded its Windows system, and 14 of the computers in the constable’s office, purchased in 2003, were too old for the upgrade, she said.
The computers are paid for with money from the constable’s enterprise fund, which contains fees for the office’s services.
The older computers are still sitting in a storage room at the constable’s office, with a box of new computer equipment still in new packaging and awaiting a new home.
Bonaventura isn’t leaving office without a fight. He has an ongoing lawsuit against the county that seeks to overturn the commission’s decision.
Commissioners decided to dismantle his office after a variety of controversies, which included a foray into reality television with foul-mouthed deputies, jurisdictional disputes with neighboring constables, and conflicts with the county over financial matters.
As for the new computers, it’s uncertain where they will go in January 2015, assuming the county’s abolishment decision survives Bonaventura’s lawsuit. By then, they’ll be less than a year old and still have warranties that are good for another two years.
In general, available computer equipment is reassigned elsewhere in the county, Welling said. Specifics about the future for the constable’s computers weren’t available Tuesday.
The county has signaled an intent for the Metropolitan Police Department to take over the office’s duties, but it’s unclear if the department would use the computers or its own system. The Police Department didn’t respond to a request for comment on where it’s at in planning a transition.
Bonaventura still remains skeptical, noting the extra work and expense that the county’s IT staff will face in January to take the computers and reprogram them for another department.
“It’s just very puzzling,” he said.
Contact Ben Botkin at bbotkin@reviewjournal.com or 702-405-9781. Find him on Twitter: @BenBotkin1.
