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Commissioners approve IT budget realignment to accelerate recreation software upgrade
Summary
County IT staff won approval to reallocate savings from Microsoft licensing to buy replacement recreation software (CivicPlus) and to put remaining savings into the commissioners’ emergency reserve.
On May 6 the St. Mary’s County commissioners approved a budget amendment allowing the information-technology department to reallocate one-time savings from a Microsoft licensing timing adjustment to purchase a new recreation and parks management system and to place remaining savings into the commissioners’ emergency reserve.
IT director Bob Kelly told commissioners that a prior Microsoft licensing renewal had been bridged to an August payment date, producing approximately $215,000 in timing savings. “We’re able to do that because it’s on a GSA schedule,” Kelly said, explaining the county could accelerate procurement for a replacement recreation-management product rather than wait until next fiscal year. He said Recreation and Parks selected a vendor and staff expected to go live by next spring or summer.
Kelly said the current recreation software (installed circa 2006–2007) is aging and that modernization would improve mobile-friendliness, online scheduling and ticketing and reduce staff time spent maintaining older systems. He said departments reviewed multiple vendors and that purchasing now would allow the project to be removed from next year’s budget. The proposal would use about $115,000 of the savings for the software purchase and place about $100,000 into the commissioners’ emergency reserve.
Commissioners asked how the software would affect field scheduling disputes and whether policy changes would also be needed to prevent overbooking. Kelly and Recreation and Parks staff said the new system would be more user-friendly and mobile-friendly and could support better data and controls, but that some issues (for example, league booking policy, penalties for no-shows and inter-league field allocation) would require policy decisions by Recreation and Parks and county policy staff rather than being solely a software fix.
The commissioners voted to authorize the budget amendment and to allow procurement of the new recreation-management software under a GSA schedule and county purchasing rules. Staff said procurement would proceed immediately and that the department would report implementation timelines to the commission.
