City proposes Salesforce CRM to centralize economic development, planning and permits; council raises cost and training concerns

City technology and economic development officials told council they are seeking funding to implement Salesforce as a shared platform to manage development projects, land‑bank transactions, grants and business outreach.

Tom McNair, Director of Economic Development, said the city currently operates with disconnected systems and spreadsheets across departments and that Salesforce would provide a single place to track a project from initial business attraction through incentives, permits and ribbon cutting. He said the administration expects to implement development cluster functions in phases and to link Salesforce with the city’s Acela permitting work to provide a smoother customer experience.

Chief Epstein and senior technology staff described the work already completed: department process reengineering and a substantial amount of design and discovery that project staff said will reduce the usual implementation time and cost. The administration asked for about $1.5 million in licensing and consulting for 2025 to deploy the first phases and said it expects to request two city FTEs to maintain the system after deployment.

Council members asked detailed questions about costs, training, maintainability and alternatives. Councilman Horst raised the risk of long‑term “cost creep” with proprietary SaaS platforms and asked how the city will avoid an expensive vendor dependency. IT staff and department directors said they plan to retain city employees to operate and maintain the system and to build processes that will keep the configuration maintainable.

Several councilmembers urged stronger integration with constituent services. Councilwoman House Jones pressed the administration to include council offices in any constituent management component and sought an explicit plan for whether the 3‑1‑1 system would be used or extended to handle constituent casework. Director Kim Roy Wilson said IT had not yet been asked to implement a council CRM but committed to meet with counsel offices to assess whether the city’s 3‑1‑1/Verint platform or Salesforce would best meet council needs.

Data ownership and an exit strategy were raised by multiple members. IT staff said the city will keep ownership rights to its data and include contract clauses requiring export of data in standard formats if the city later ended a contract. Director Wilson added that the city intends to keep primary documents in SharePoint while linking them to records in Salesforce so that document repositories remain independent of the CRM.

What’s next: the committee approved the ordinance in committee to move forward for council consideration. Staff said they will return with final contract terms, a staffing plan that includes at least two city FTEs for maintenance, and integration testing for 3‑1‑1 and Acela. Officials emphasized that any expansion beyond the initial economic/community development phases would be considered separately and budgeted by department.

Discussion vs. decision: committee authorized the administration to proceed with procuring consultant and license services under the proposed budget but did not finalize any long‑term financing or contract beyond the committee authorization.