This is taking a little longer than I had hoped...
I took the server down for maintenance earlier so I could back it up and move away from the official bukkit build to an unofficial build which should increase performance. (there was much lag after we switched back to the survival world)
The unnofficial bukkit project is managed by someone who is on the bukkit team, so it should be fairly safe. But as it is a territory I am unfamiliar with, I am being cautious and ensuring I have everything backed up properly before switching.
As I post this it is still backing up data, once it is finished I will switch over to the new bukkit build and hopefully everything will be magical. This may not resolve the lag entirely, though. I just ran out of options, so am doing the best I could to reduce the lag quickly. (for anyone who did not log in earlier today, we were running at about 1/5th the speed, sometimes less. To me, this was unacceptable)
Sorry for stealing Zedwork away from you, hopefully we'll be back together soon <3