Morris to announce new business development director

MORRIS- The city of Morris may have found its new business development director.

The finance and administration committee met Wednesday afternoon to discuss the hiring process and potential salary of the open position.

Out of over 27 applicants that applied, the city was able to narrow it down to seven potential candidates.

City Planner Mike Hoffman discussed the details of the position, stating that if hired the new director would be a champion for the town of Morris.

“We wanted to make sure we found a person who was able to do that, someone with a lot of energy, and someone with some experience in economic development,” Hoffman said. “The candidate we have picked came out on top for multiple reasons in our mind.”

The new business development director would start on Jan. 3 and receive a $95,000 salary.

The proposal was sent to council and upon approval a new business development director will be announced Monday night.

Other committee news:

At the last committee meeting held on Nov. 16, Simple Communications gave a presentation highlighting concerns regarding the city’s and the police department’s phone and internet systems.

Simple Communications outlined several ways the city was at risk for a cyber attack.

Matt Wilkinson of Simple Communications said he was particularly concerned about the water treatment plant, pointing out issues that come from using Windows 7.

“Windows 7 machines are vulnerable to escalated privilege attacks, meaning if someone gets access to one of these Windows 7 machines they can elevate the privileges to an administrator,” Wilkinson said.

“Once they have given themselves that right, they can go across the network basically installing malware across all of the machines and they have the privileges to do that,” he said. “So even if malware protection or antivirus protection are installed on the system, the system will not protect against the threat because the administrator said it was OK to install.”

The committee agreed that the threat was high and that this was a top priority. The plan passed through committee and will be presented at Monday’s City Council meeting.