Tom Whitehurst

Sunday, December 31, 2000

Hard to believe that this time last year, those of you who were gainfully employed were looking at a long night at work.
   Tonight will be a typical New Year's Eve - if the true, official start of the 21st century can be considered typical.
   This year, like last, Mayor Loyd Neal will be on our bayfront for the countdown and fireworks display. But unlike last year, City Hall won't be on full hurricane-style alert, testing every emergency system, from air traffic control to fire extinguisher sprinklers.
   Was it worth it?
   Bank and insurance firm employees won't be at their desks, and the electric company and refineries will be operating with skeleton crews.
   It is, after all, a Sunday.
   It's also not a huge non-event for which the government and private sector prepared for months, spending big bucks and overtime hours to upgrade their computer systems and test them. The city government alone spent $10 million preparing for Y2K, City Manager David Garcia said.
   There are differing opinions on whether the collective Y2K spending frenzy was warranted.
   Cesar Iriarte, manager and part owner of Internet Solutions Inc., a local Internet service provider, had said before last New Year's Eve that he'd be out partying while everyone else was working because there was nothing to fear from the millennium bug. He kept his promise. He is of the apparently minority viewpoint that there was a bit of scam in the whole Y2K frenzy.
   Garcia: City got value
   "Everything was just a big pitch to sell more computers, to sell more programs, to sell things that the people didn't really need. I mean, not everyone. Maybe 10 percent of the people needed to upgrade," Iriarte said.
   But Garcia doesn't regret the city's expenditures.
   "We got value for it. It wasn't like it was wasted. We've got a state-of-the-art communication system, we've got a great Web site and we're totally Y2K compliant. And we needed to do that. Would we have done it quite so intensively? Probably not, had we not been staring Y2K in the face. But we certainly got value for the money."
   No vacations
   Mike Carrell, regional president of Frost Bank, said at least one Frost customer in another city put itself in danger of folding because it didn't upgrade its systems in advance of the 2000 changeover. The company's systems crashed, causing cash flow problems, he said. His business customers who upgraded are glad they did, he said.
   "It really was an issue that you could not ignore it. You really had to invest the money to deal with it. So nobody is saying, 'Gosh, I wasted my money.' Everybody knew that the upgrades were necessary and ultimately would help their businesses.
   "I think the good news is people were forced to pay attention to their technological infrastructure. I would say that on the whole, it improved companies' performance."
   The difference in New Year's Eves will be felt on a more personal level. Like many companies, in addition to making a lot of people work last New Year's Eve, Frost didn't allow vacations in January 2000.
   Celebrating responsibly
   This time, Carrell said, "I think I could leave town if I needed to."
   Garcia, who technically is always on call and was at City Hall past 2 a.m. last New Year's Eve, was coy about his plans for tonight:
   "I'll be trying to bring in the New Year responsibly," he said.
   Last year, American Electric Power-Central Power and Light spokesman Frank Espinoza told his family to forget him for the evening. That night, if a squirrel caused a power outage, it easily could have become the latest apocalyptic conspiracy theory.
   'Nothing happened'
   "This year I can enjoy the turn of the year with my family and friends."
   Last year, Valero Energy Corp. spokesman Bob Grimes was at the refinery until about 2 a.m., when he went home "basically because nothing happened." The refining processes at Valero and other local refineries are computer-controlled, so the Y2K bug's worst-case potential was a real concern.
   "This year," Grimes said, "it'll be about like Christmas."
  

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