Arapahoe County staff brief commissioners on property-tax system modernization and contract terms

Arapahoe County staff told commissioners they have selected a vendor and are preparing to start a three-year implementation to modernize the county's taxation and property system. "The purpose of this drop in is to give the commission an update on the taxation and property modernization efforts," Director Savino said.

Why it matters: County leaders said the modernization is among the county's most complex recent IT projects and will move the system to a hosted vendor model that shifts infrastructure responsibility off the county.

County staff said the board previously approved supplemental funding to support the subscription and legacy-system support: a $500,000 operational increase plus a $750,000 amount to sustain legacy support for three years, which Director Savino cited as helping pay for the subscription. Amy, the project manager, told the commission the county completed vendor due diligence and negotiated contract changes intended to reduce long-term cost growth: "we were able to decrease that to, for the last 5 years of the contract, we were able to decrease that to 3%." Amy also stated, verbatim, that the negotiations produced "a cost savings of $883,100,000. So Awesome."

Staff described key implementation constraints: transferring and validating existing parcel data, reconfiguring internal workflows to match the vendor platform, and avoiding "go live" dates that conflict with peak assessor/treasurer seasons. Staff said mid-to-early fall is a potential launch window, while the end and the early part of the calendar year are "absolutely off the table" because of seasonal work. Staff also said the solution will be a fully hosted product so the vendor will handle hardware and platform maintenance.

Questions from commissioners focused on comparative procurement experience and vendor references. Staff said they completed reference checks with other Colorado jurisdictions using the same vendor and secured a person with prior Colorado implementations to assist with deployment. Commissioners did not take a formal vote during the drop-in update.