North Adams Finance Committee members, from left, Lillian Zavatsky, Lisa Blackmer and Andrew Fitch, reviewed community development, litigation and IT budget spending for the upcoming fiscal year at their meeting on Monday.

NORTH ADAMS — Rising legal costs and long-delayed technology upgrades are driving increases in North Adams' proposed budget for fiscal year 2027.

Finance Committee members reviewed the city’s proposed general government spending for fiscal year 2027 Monday night. While the proposed budget includes a 3 percent cost-of-living adjustment for most city employees, committee members and residents focused on the more than 50 percent increase in litigation expenses and the roughly 24 percent rise in information technology spending.

The city is proposing to increase its litigation budget from $90,000 in fiscal 2026 to $140,000 in fiscal 2027.

Mayor Jennifer Macksey said that the city will “probably” be short in its litigation account for fiscal 2026 and is budgeting the $140,000 to ensure it isn’t short next year.

A city attorney serves as in-house legal counsel to the municipality, not any person or city employee. The role's duties include advising the administration to ensure they are in compliance with laws, assisting in writing new legislation, negotiating contracts and defending the city against lawsuits.

The city budgeted $73,000 for litigation expenses in fiscal year 2025, but actually spent $111,502, according to budget documents.

It's not just lawsuits driving the increase, Macksey said. The city also pays KP Law, P.C. $395 an hour for legal counsel on a range of matters, from drafting the affordable housing trust ordinance to evaluating liability issues for a volunteer snow-shoveling program.

“And, things are just more complicated every year,” said committee Chair Lisa Blackmer.

The city's two-person IT department is seeing a more than $235,000 budget increase due to expenses that Macksey and Chief Technology Officer Mark Pierson said are partly catching up from years of not investing in new IT infrastructure.

These new expenses include an $83,000 increase to the data processing line, a $127,000 increase in services purchased and an additional $20,000 in computer and equipment to replace three voting machines used during annual elections.

That increases the total department budget from $953,519 to just over $1.1 million.

“We have a lot of data that flows through here,” said Macksey. “We found we were trying to get caught up and that the city had not invested in IT and was literally putting duct tape on things."

Pierson said $140,000 of proposed services purchased goes toward network storage. Some $45,000 is budgeted for Imprivata, an identity authentication software.

It also pays $32,000 annually for server backups, $6,000 for email backups and $45,000 for Sophos, a cybersecurity software.

The city is insured against cybersecurity attacks, but Pierson emphasized the importance of staying up-to-date against potential cyber blackouts — something he warned the city does not want to deal with for the 15 terabytes of data that it manages.

“It’s months, if not years, of recovery [from a blackout], which is a gigantic expense,” he said.

A resident at the meeting asked what the $3,000 annual expense for ChatGPT for senior staff was used for. Macksey said it is mostly used "on the events side" of her office to make announcements, edit photos and help write for specific speaking engagements and proclamations.

That makes the total IT 2027 budget breakdown $706,000 for operating or data processing, $247,000 for services purchased and $60,000 for equipment and software.

Macksey said some of this increase will be offset by municipal technology money, but she did not expect it to be more than $35,000.

The next budget meeting is slated for Tuesday and City Council is expected to review the overall draft budget June 22.