Council hears staff proposals to migrate finance software to cloud and to hire consultants for water and sewer comprehensive plans

City staff briefed the Mountlake Terrace City Council on two administrative items Jan. 23: a planned migration of the city’s Tyler Technologies Munis finance software to a cloud-hosted environment, and proposed consultant contracts for required six-year water and wastewater comprehensive plans.

City Manager Carolyn Hope told council that Tyler Technologies will no longer support the on-premises Munis deployment and that the city must migrate to a cloud-hosted solution. Staff said the migration aligns with the city’s IT strategic plan and that the proposed work has been budgeted; the estimated contract cost presented in the meeting was roughly $160,000. Hope said the contract would be placed on the consent agenda for the next regular meeting.

Public Works Director Gary Schimek described two consultant selections: RH2 for the water comprehensive plan and CONSOR for the wastewater comprehensive plan. He said both plans are required every six years and include two primary elements: an assessment of existing system conditions and computer modeling of future demand and growth scenarios. Schimek said plans will be coordinated with a parallel rate-study process, and that regional partnerships (for example, water supply handled via Alderwood Water District and wastewater conveyance to neighboring jurisdictions) are an important part of the scope. He said Senior Utilities Engineer Man Truong will lead the city’s project management work with the consultants.

Council members asked about scope documents and where to review the exhibit of work; staff pointed to the contracts’ Exhibit A as the primary scope of work and said outreach and public education will be included as the consultants develop modeling assumptions. Schimek said staff will return with additional briefings and that council can expect multiple checkpoints during the work.