New councilman Fred Reese, left, was sworn in Thursday evening by Butler Mayor Bob Dandoy. Reese was appointed to fill the vacant seat left after former councilman Mike Walter died in March. EDDIE TRIZZINO/BUTLER EAGLE

Butler City Council voted Thursday to buy a new backup server from Perfection Services Inc. for nearly $3,000 after one of the city’s units went down.

Councilman Don Shearer said the old server was about eight years old — surpassing the life expectancy of an average server. He said council needed to act fast after the loss of the server.

“We have one backup left, but if it goes down, then we’re in critical phase,” Shearer said. “So we have to get the other one put in place to stop that from happening.”

Mayor Bob Dandoy said with the council’s authorization of the purchase, Perfection Services could bring in the new unit by Friday.

The city will enter into a new contract agreement with Perfection Services with the purchase of the backup unit.

Shearer said the city had been grandfathered into a contract with Perfection Services at a monthly rate of around $390 for years, but the monthly cost will be about $730 under the new contract.

Shearer said the city is using notably more data now than when the old server was installed.

“With all the advancements the city has been making in its services, especially with the new accounting software, our data usage has gone up,” Shearer said. “We are no longer grandfathered into the old plan because we are updating equipment, and we are also well over the previous contract amount.”

Council also discussed its subscription to Code Red, a service that costs $4,000 a year. Code Red is an email service the city has been using to alert subscribers to happenings in the city and within city government.

According to Dandoy, only a few hundred people are subscribed to the free service and could be getting similar updates from Butler County’s Code Red service.

“My suggestion is we don’t renew it,” Dandoy said. “That’s money well spent elsewhere.”

At the beginning of the meeting, Dandoy performed a ceremonial swearing in for new Councilman Fred Reese, who was appointed by Council at its last meeting to replace Councilman Mike Walter, who died in March.