Hamtramck council approves migration to cloud-based BS&A system, OKs multiple park and parking contracts

Hamtramck — The Hamtramck City Council on Aug. 12 approved a contract to migrate the city's core municipal software suite (BS&A) from aging on-premises servers to a cloud-hosted subscription and separately approved a series of construction and engineering awards for Veterans Park and nearby streets.

City IT staff told the council the current .NET-based servers are reaching end-of-life and that continuing to defer migration increases the risk of failures and security gaps. “Support for that is officially ending next year,” the IT presenter said, urging the council to accept vendor concessions and the timing of an implementation window to begin training and data migration in September and October.

The migration package the council approved includes an initial net cost to the city of roughly $150,000 to be paid from the general fund and an ongoing annual subscription fee the presenter gave as about $92,007.06. Staff said they had located roughly $82,000–$83,000 in grant funding that would offset part of the up-front cost, and that the city’s current annual hosting/support costs run about $30,000–$40,000. The presenter said the vendor offered a one-time discount if the city approved the contract soon.

Why it matters: City operations — including income tax, building, code enforcement and assessing modules — rely on BS&A. Staff said migration would remove the need to maintain aging on-site servers, improve disaster recovery and move the city toward federal security standards that could become mandatory.

Council discussion focused on the total price, the proposed training hours and travel estimates the vendor included in the implementation budget. Council members asked how many staff would be trained, whether training could be centralized, and whether partner jurisdictions that use Hamtramck services (Highland Park was mentioned) would share in ongoing costs. Staff said those cost-sharing conversations would be pursued after contract approval.

Votes at a glance: The council approved the migration contract as Resolution 2025‑594. When the roll call was read, the clerk recorded Councilman Samiri: Yes; Councilman Ruffin: Yes; Councilman Sedman: Yes; Councilman Musa: Yes; Councilman Rafai: No. (Final tally reported by the clerk: approved.)

Other votes: The council approved a first-reading schedule and second-reading date for an amendment to parking provisions in the C-2 and CBD commercial districts (Resolution 2025‑94a), permitting more non–city-owned parking lots and allowing administrative relief for nonconforming setbacks; the council voted to approve multiple Veterans Park–related contracts (Resolutions 2025‑96 through 2025‑99) including award of concrete construction for parking lots and access road, and engineering/management services.

Park and streets package: City staff said Metropolitan Concrete submitted the low bid for the Veterans Park parking-lot and access-road construction at about $1,859,440.50 and that, with a 10% contingency, the construction total came to roughly $2,000,045.38. Staff told the council an overage of about $322,734.20 would be covered from an identified project fund; contractors told staff they planned to complete the work by Nov. 30. The Parks Conservancy indicated it would contribute to a separate tennis-court renovation project and a conservancy representative said the group expects to underwrite a portion of tennis-court improvements (the conservancy’s stated contribution in the meeting was approximately $66,666). Council approved awarding construction and engineering contracts and accepted the grant funding the city had obtained for the parking-lot work.

What the motions did and did not do: Council approved the BS&A migration contract and the Veterans Park construction/engineering awards at Tuesday’s meeting. The parking-amendment item was advanced to a second reading and public hearing. No council action at the meeting changed existing ordinance language; the parking amendment will return for a formal vote at second reading.

What’s next: Staff will move forward with vendor contracting and implementation planning for the BS&A migration; the city will pursue the cost-sharing conversations staff referenced with outside jurisdictions and proceed with bid awards and procurement steps to begin the Veterans Park and Dan Street work. The parking amendment will return for second reading and public hearing by the end of August.