The County Commissioners Meeting on Tuesday, May 26th, was what could be described as a typical exceptional meeting. Typical in that there were the usual rudimentary action items along with a few events that are the type that finds their way into the local news media outlets.

There was one item that was not rudimentary and probably will not be featured in the local news, but it should be. That would be the retirement of the Lycoming County Director of Information Services (IS), Karl Demi. It is difficult to appreciate how critical information technology is to our local government. Commissioner Scott Metzger stated it is the Central Nervous System of the county. Information Services deals with networking, programming, cybersecurity, telecommunications, record management, printing and publication, audio-visual information, voter registration, and mail distribution. There is not a single aspect of the county operations, from the courts to the prison, voting services, even resource management that are not networked into the information services department. It is widely recognized as an exemplary system for the size of our county, and much of the credit can be attributed to Karl Demi.

Karl Demi does not look like a computer geek, but he has been one his entire life. Born in 1962, his favorite television program was Star Trek, and he wanted to be one of those guys who worked the computers. He joined the United States Navy right out of high school and became a data systems technician for them for the next six years. After the Navy, he worked as a computer technician in various positions until he finally landed a position as Network Manager for the Lycoming County government in March of 2000.

It is almost impossible to imagine how primitive information services were at that time. One person described it as an IT nightmare. The servers were in storage closets, and it was not unusual for the janitors to knock out a server when they were getting out their supplies. All the departments had their own systems, and there was no way they could share information from one department to another. Karl was hired as a network manager to try to straighten out the mess. It was so bad that he seriously considered walking after two weeks. He never walked away from a challenge before, so he rolled up his sleeves and went to work — and what a job he did. In fact, he did his logistics job so well, when the position of director for the department came up in 2014, Karl was the obvious choice.

At his retirement presentation on May 26th, the praises from his peers, colleagues, and bosses were so overwhelming, when he was asked to make some comments, Karl went to the podium and remarked, “Well, based on what I have been hearing today, I am retiring to be able to give lessons on how to walk on water, with just four easy payments of $19.95.”

That was so Karl. I watched many times when he came to the county commissioners’ meetings and had to explain extremely complex questions relating to information technology and somehow make it not just comprehensible but even interesting to listen to. Periodically he had the painful task of having to approach the commissioners to seek expenditures that ran into hundreds of thousands of dollars for upgrades in equipment and licensing fees. He would take the beating that was not his fault (blame Microsoft!), but through it all, he kept his cool and his smile.

The film director John Frankenheimer once said that talent is doing easily what others find difficult, and genius is doing easily what talent finds difficult. Karl Demi is another degree after genius. He found solutions to some of the most complex problems that the county faced and never whined about the difficulties or boasted when they were completed. He is one of a kind, and Lycoming County was very fortunate to have him. Happy retirement, Karl.