Needham advisory committee backs nearly $2 million for new town financial and billing system

The Technology Advisory Committee voted unanimously Thursday to recommend that Town Meeting approve a $1,999,995 appropriation to replace Needham’s aging financial and revenue software with an integrated, cloud-hosted system, committee members said.

Committee members said the purchase would consolidate the general ledger, purchasing, accounts payable, payroll and multiple revenue-billing systems (property tax, motor vehicle excise, water and sewer and miscellaneous billing), and pay for implementation services and a long-delayed archiving project to convert decades of records into searchable digital files.

David (staff member) said the committee is proposing a nearly $2 million request because the town’s current revenue and financial systems date back to much older products and have not met operational needs since an earlier vendor implementation. “We’re coming with a $2,000,000 request instead of what effectively was a couple hundred thousand,” David said, describing the higher up-front cost as driven largely by implementation fees and cloud hosting. The committee said roughly two-thirds of the proposed appropriation would cover implementation and related fees, with the remainder for software licensing and archiving work.

Committee members said the move responds to repeated problems with the current revenue package, which they described as an inexpensive system purchased years ago that did not scale for Needham’s size and complexity. The transcript shows committee members noting that the town’s financial software dates to 2013 and that some revenue modules date to the 1990s; archiving needs were described as extending back to fiscal 1992. Committee members said about $750,000 remains available from a prior $1 million appropriation specifically set aside for archiving; that work cannot proceed until the new system is in place.

Proponents told the committee they want a single vendor solution to reduce integration failures between separate packages. The transcript records references to past vendors and products (including a legacy AS/400 system, HTE/Central Square and Tyler), and members said a larger vendor’s market share can yield faster regulatory updates and more established vendor integrations for functions such as water billing.

The committee discussed operating-cost implications. A committee member summarized the net operating increase as “about $700,000,” and said the second-year incremental cost would be roughly $200,000; the committee reported that about $500,000 of that $700,000 is already accounted for via planned consolidations and savings. Committee members also said some existing maintenance fees would stop after cutover to the new system.

Anne (staff member) offered to prepare materials and to attend Town Meeting to answer questions. “I will be ready to prepare to answer questions,” she said. Josh Levy, a member of the Select Board, was identified in the meeting as the anticipated speaker for the Select Board’s presentation at Town Meeting.

At the end of the discussion a committee member moved to accept the Technology Advisory Committee’s recommendation to support the article; another member seconded the motion and the members present voted in favor. The committee approved recommending adoption to Town Meeting; the mover and seconder were not named in the recorded excerpt.

Committee members said the article is scheduled to appear early during the Town Meeting session (the committee indicated it expects the article to come up on the first night, near article 11). The committee advised that proponents plan to provide the standard presentation and that members who support the appropriation should be prepared to answer routine questions about costs, prior attempts to save money, and why the town is seeking an integrated solution now.

Background and context: proponents told the committee that Needham has struggled for years with partial integrations, unsupported modules and a utility-billing implementation that failed to meet timelines in a prior conversion. Committee members described the new request as an effort to position the town with a single, supported enterprise system for the next decade and to complete a long-delayed archiving project. The Technology Advisory Committee will present its recommendation at Town Meeting and the Finance Committee likewise indicated support in the recorded discussion.