Valley County commissioners approved the purchase of CivicPlus software Oct. 8 to manage public-records requests and to archive county social-media channels.

The item was added to the agenda by motion after staff noted the vendor had provided a sizable first-year discount for onboarding. The county's records manager said the record-request module will centralize the current manual process and ease routing to legal review, and the social archive module will preserve Facebook and YouTube postings for accountability.

Commissioners asked whether the purchase was budgeted; staff said the full annual cost was included in the current fiscal budget but the county accepted a discounted onboarding rate for the first year. The records manager said the software is intended for countywide use. "My absolute plan is to implement this for anybody who is doing, there's no limit on what kind of records request it can handle," the manager said.

The board approved amending the agenda to add the item, then voted to approve the CivicPlus software purchase. Staff said they will bring the signature page to the chair for execution and will finalize implementation tasks with IT and departments.

No dollar figure for the first-year discounted amount was approved in open session; staff said the full budgeted amount was included in the FY budget and subsequent years will be supported through department line items.

Speakers whose remarks are quoted in this article are limited to staff who presented the software and the board's recorded motion to amend the agenda; specific vendor contract language will be filed with the county clerk's office.