FORT PIERCE, Fla. — For the first time in four days, St. Lucie County’s main website is back up and running, but there are still computer network issues impacting some of the day-to-day county business.
On Friday, a network issue forced the county to bring its main servers down.
Outside the main county administration building in Fort Pierce, county employees greeted residents who may have business inside.
Robert Cerda was one of them. He had just paid off his vehicle.
"Called out of work today so I thought ‘let me go get my title,' " Cerda said/
Cerda was frustrated to find out that he couldn’t get done what he needed Tuesday, as the Tax Collector's Office was down, impacted by a computer outage.
St. Lucie County Tax Collector Chris Craft said they’ll be able to do more starting Wednesday.
"We will offer property tax payments across the counter in the office. You can make an appointment at our office for drivers license or registration renewals," Craft said.
Craft says he’ll post updates on his Facebook page, and some of his employees are going to the tax collector offices in Indian River and Martin counties to help where needed.
As for what created this problem, there still was no definitive answer from the county, when asked if it was a hacking situation.
"Suspicious activity in our network on Friday as well as the Tax Collector. We shut everything down as a precautionary measure. We’re still doing our due diligence and a forensic scan," Erick Gill, the county's communications director, said.
Celia Garcia was waiting outside an office space where county government employees were getting their county-issued laptops scanned.
She works with neglected children in the court system through the Guardian Ad Litem program.
"We’re having the staff work remotely. Fortunately, we can do that," Garcia said.
A green sticker on a laptop meant it was good to go.
As for when the entire computer network in St. Lucie County will be good to go again, that remains to be seen.
The county set up an information line for residents, 772-460-4357. It’s operational from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. until the network issues are resolved.
