Casco town government experienced a systems outage on Tuesday, July 8. The outage disrupted municipal operations for about five hours.

Town Manager Anthony Ward told Lakes Region Now the outage was caused by a regular update to Trio, the software the town uses for the majority of its business transactions. The night prior to the outage, the software received an upgrade, which changed some of the settings, and “deactivated” Casco’s ability to enter it.

While systems outages within the town offices are not unprecedented, Ward said they were mostly due to larger internet outages, rather than software errors. He said that, because so much town business was done on an internet-based software, the town was effectively subjected to a standstill until the outage was resolved.

While impact on the town’s business operations was relatively minimal and the town’s online services remained relatively functional, several residents, mostly those who were at the town office for business, were inconvenienced. Ward said multiple people had come to the town offices to register new vehicles or secure a dump sticker, among other transactions that are required to be done in person, but the town was unable to provide these services.

Though some people were disgruntled about the delays in service, Ward said the vast majority of affected residents were understanding of the situation. He said some residents waited until the system was fixed, while others chose to move their planned transactions to the following day.