T.O.CITY COMPUTERS PASS Y2K POWER TEST.

Byline: Cecilia Chan Staff Writer

The power was switched off at City Hall this week, but operations continued without interruption during a test for Y2K computer glitches.

City staff wanted to see if emergency power generators would kick in, as they should, in case power is cut off to the computer system when the new year turns over.

``It was successful,'' said Tom Hare, city facilities manager, who turned off the power from 9:30 to 10:15 p.m. Monday. ``Everything went real well.''

Hare said the staff waited until the city's computer network and training room were connected to emergency power, the final connections needed, before flipping the switch.

``And once that was completed we turned off the power to see if everything was working that should be working, and all the critical systems were working and went as they should,'' he said.

Hare said in the event of a lasting outage there are six personal computers in the training room that could be utilized for operations at City Hall, such as for printing up checks.

The city has been upgrading or replacing its computer system and in-house programs in the past three years to become Y2K compliant, said Candis Hong, interim finance director. She could not estimate how much the city has spent on Y2K compliance.

Thousand Oaks officials said the city has a contingency plan in place should Y2K-related problems arise and the police will monitor events worldwide and citywide throughout the day on Dec. 31 through the morning of Jan. 1.

Government agencies and businesses have been converting their computers in anticipation of the so-called millennium bug, which may cause computers to fail as the date rolls over to the year 2000 because they only recognize the last two digits in years and don't distinguish between 1900 and 2000.