IRON MOUNTAIN — The city is buying 20 new computers and software at a cost of $16,464 after surviving a malware scare last month.

“The malware was stored on individual computers and, fortunately, never accessed our servers,” Iron Mountain City Manager Jordan Stanchina said. “We were never completely down. It just choked us up with spam.”

Replacing the computers and making a few other changes will help prevent future occurrences, he told the city council Monday.

Staff became aware of the problem in mid-December when emails wouldn’t send. The city’s IP address was being blacklisted because the malware was sending spam at a rate as high as 3,000 messages a second, Stanchina said.

Teck Solutions of Iron Mountain, the city’s network administrator, diagnosed the problem and provided some answers. There was never a ransom involved, Stanchina said.

Along with the new computers, the city will change its antivirus program and introduce a cloud-based content filter. In addition, a new email service will provide spam filtering at an extra cost of about $3,400 a year.

The new computers will operate on Windows 10, which coincides with the end of support for the current Windows 7. Most of the 20 computers weren’t capable of being upgraded to Windows 10, which made it necessary to replace them, Stanchina explained.

“There were things we had to upgrade and this just brings it to the forefront,” he said.

The council authorized the purchases Monday through Tech Solutions. Stanchina had already placed an emergency order, but only two computers were ready for immediate shipment. The rest may be shipping as soon as today.

This past fall, Dickinson County Library fell victim to a ransomware virus but avoided serious costs because files had coincidentally been stored on a second server in anticipation of installing a new system.

In other action Monday, the Iron Mountain council:

— Awarded a $42,712 contract to Coleman Engineering, the low bidder, to provide services for Small Urban Program street improvements planned in 2020. The estimated construction work totals $344,000 on parts of North Kimberly Avenue, Prospect Avenue, West Hughitt Street and West A Street.

— Learned that 16 deer were harvested during the city’s managed archery hunt. The total included two bucks taken by hunters with their own tags after they had harvested at least three does. The previous year’s harvest total was 48. This was the first year that baiting was prohibited, per state rules related to chronic wasting disease.