Big bucks spent to prevent Y2K crash

Noaki Schwartz and Andrew Glazer

NEWPORT-MESA -- Preparing for the Y2K bomb that now appears to be a dud

cost Costa Mesa close to $1.5 million and Newport Beach more than

$100,000, officials said Monday.

Richard Kirkbride, information services manager for Costa Mesa, said the

money was used over a period of three years, upgrading the city’s

computer software and hardware.

The spending apparently paid off. Not one of the city’s computers behaved

abnormally when the clocks turned over at midnight.

“It was absolutely worth it,” Kirkbride said.

Newport Beach started its Y2K preparations two years ago, when officials

started identifying computer and phone systems that needed to be replaced

for Y2K compliance, said Paul Malkemus, the city’s management information

systems manager. Faulty systems were upgraded and the city’s voicemail

service was replaced.

“There have been no problems at all. Everything is great,” he said. “If

some do surface, they’ll be extremely minor. You never know about these

things, though.”

Because the city’s systems were nearly a decade old and needed to be

replaced anyway, upgrading them for the year 2000 seemed like a good

idea, Malkemus said. And so the city shelled out $100,000 for both the

phone and computer systems.

In addition to upgrading computer systems, staff for services such as

police, fire and public works were also beefed up for any potential New

Year’s disasters.

The extra staffing cost $10,170, plus an additional $3,500 spent for a

special weapons team that was summoned to diffuse a domestic fight that

occurred over the weekend.

Other than that, officials say the holiday quietly came and went.

The event of the century was even less boisterous than last year, said

Sgt. Mike McDermott.

The city hotline for residents to report emergencies was turned off early

at about 2 a.m., said Lt. John Blauer, community relations officer for

the fire and marine department.

Despite the rather dismissive event, however, Newport Beach Mayor John

Noyes said he thinks the precautions city staff took were warranted.

“I’m happy that nothing went wrong,” he said. “We’ve taken a lot of

measures but they didn’t go crazy. They covered us.”

Costa Mesa Mayor Gary Monahan agreed.

“Thank goodness nothing happened, but now we’re prepared for the worst,”

he said.