The Dallas City Council on Jan. 8 authorized a three-year cooperative purchasing agreement for the ProjectDocs plan-review software — a subscription renewal not to exceed $1,536,554 — while discussing the city’s broader effort to modernize permitting by integrating ProjectDocs with the Accela land-management platform set to launch in summer 2025.

Council Member Paula Blackman pulled the item (agenda item 16) for questions about earlier software “bugs” and implementation; staff said the bugs were resolved after migrating ProjectDocs to the cloud and described the current purchase as a subscription renewal that will maintain the platform while Accela is stood up. Deputy Director Vernon Young, Planning & Development, said ProjectDocs is the plan-markup tool staff uses and that the purchase will keep it interoperable with Accela when the new land-management system goes live. City IT representatives said Accela’s deployment has been prioritized for summer 2025, and that final integration, payment and testing remain underway.

Council debate focused heavily on interoperability, recurring subscription costs, and whether the city should be buying software that might quickly be superseded by AI-enabled products. Council Member Jim Ridley asked whether the subscription will mean recurring $1.5 million costs every three years; staff confirmed the price reflects a subscription model and is recurring if the city keeps ProjectDocs. Multiple council members pressed staff on why ProjectDocs and Accela had not been integrated previously and said they want a long-term plan to avoid paying for multiple overlapping systems.

IT staff and the city manager’s office said they have accelerated integration, will brief council next week with additional permitting metrics, and are working to reduce duplicative systems. Doctor Brian Gardner, interim CIO, said Accela has taken several years to configure and test and is expected to improve permit turn-around once fully integrated. Council discussion included questions about whether ProjectDocs will support custom AI tools to pre-screen plan submissions — staff said ProjectDocs and Accela offer future potential for AI integration, but any AI tailored to Dallas zoning would require significant custom work and cost; the city is exploring partnerships (including the American Planning Association and university researchers) to pilot tools that would not replace human review but help identify code compliance issues faster.

On the vote: the council approved the cooperative agreement after a brief debate; two council members recorded no votes. Staff said next steps include keeping ProjectDocs current, completing Accela implementation, folding duplicated systems into a governance review and returning to council with a fuller permitting improvement briefing.

Ending: Council members framed the vote as a step in a multi-stage modernization effort — a recurring subscription will fund the current plan-review platform while Accela is completed and the city develops a longer-term technology governance and AI strategy for permitting.