Centerton council approves one-year SmartGov contract after prolonged problems with vendor

Centerton City Council on April 8 approved a one-year subscription and services agreement with Granicus LLC to continue use of the SmartGov permitting and planning software, a measure councilors said is necessary to avoid losing access to permitting data while staff completes a planned transition to a new system.

Council members and staff spent more than an hour debating the contract and the city’s multi-year, problematic relationship with the SmartGov product and prior vendors. Planning staff told the council that if the city stopped paying for access it could lose online access to permitting and plan-review data within 30 days, which would interrupt permitting workflows across multiple departments.

The discussion recapped roughly three years of implementation problems: staff said the software lacked functions the city needed (for example, an ability to deny a permit decisively), frequent account-management changes, and multiple rounds of promised fixes that did not fully resolve deficiencies. Staff said the city has received credits from the vendor but still has recorded payments and implementation costs totaling roughly $70,000 as of mid-2024; the coming annual subscription was described in documents and discussion as about $16,000 (the draft resolution cited a not-to-exceed figure of $16,344.96).

Planning staff described an active procurement effort to replace SmartGov and said the favored replacement — BSA (cloud) — would require about six months after contract signature for conversion and implementation. Staff asked the council to approve a one-year agreement so the city preserves online permitting access during that conversion and so the vendor can complete data-transfer steps that staff argued would reduce the technical burden on the city.

Several council members expressed strong frustration at the vendor’s performance and questioned the wisdom of paying more municipal funds after repeated problems. Councilors asked whether the city should press for a shorter term, additional vendor concessions, or a lower price. City staff and legal counsel said the vendor that now owns the software (identified in materials as Granicus) purchased the original license and would take on the existing contract obligations; staff said the vendor is offering a one-year subscription option to bridge the city to a new platform.

Council members also noted the city had sent deficiency notices to the prior vendor, that staff had pursued rights under the contract, and that the city may have forfeited some remedies by continuing to work with the vendor while pursuing a replacement.

After debate the council voted to adopt Resolution 2025-16, authorizing the mayor and city clerk to enter the one-year Granicus/SmartGov agreement on behalf of the city, with authorization language that limited the city’s exposure to a not-to-exceed figure. A roll call recorded unanimous support: Cliff Thompson, Justin Cowger, Wendy Henson, Jesse (Jesse/Chelsea) Reed and Joshua Hagen voted yes.

The vote keeps the system active for another year while staff continues the vendor search and moves toward a conversion to the selected replacement platform. Staff told the council they will continue negotiating terms and asked the council to direct staff to seek more favorable pricing or payment terms where possible.

Action and next steps: staff will continue the procurement and implementation work to move permitting and planning functions to the replacement platform (projected conversion time about six months after contract signature), and the council directed staff to pursue price negotiation and any available credits before finalizing payments under the new one-year agreement.