City technology and department leaders told a Lake Stevens budget retreat that the city’s growing data holdings and an aging mix of software create operational and security risks.

Troy (IT director) said the city recently migrated large volumes of content into SharePoint but lacks staff to clean, maintain and govern that content. He and other speakers said many documents are scanned images without OCR, which prevents modern search and AI‑assisted analysis until documents are converted and metadata cleaned.

IT proposed two prioritized staffing additions: an application/data analyst focused on governance, data hygiene and ADA compliance; and a GIS technician to provide redundancy and support increasing spatial data workloads. Troy also proposed reclassifying a systems engineer to an infrastructure manager and adding an infrastructure/system administrator to increase capacity for cloud migration, data‑center upgrades and security.

Operational asks included a SharePoint administration tool (Sharegate), upgrades to core infrastructure (data‑center hardware, wireless and telephony), and targeted modernization of specialized city software (for example, ViewWorks for public‑works workflows) — costs the IT presentation described as largely professional‑services and implementation rather than software subscription. Directors stressed that many vendors are beginning to build “AI‑native” capabilities and that staying on legacy frameworks will limit future automation and analytics.

Staff emphasized that the principal barrier to rapid modernization is staff capacity rather than software funding — departments reported a large backlog of projects and daily operational demands that keep IT working “fire to fire.”

Ending: IT leaders asked council to consider the proposed staffing and a staged program of modernization so the city preserves and leverages prior technology investments and can respond to ADA and public records obligations.