City IT reports multiple upgrades under way, including agenda software and server migration

The City of Imperial’s Department of Innovation and Technology on Tuesday gave a line-by-line status update on more than a dozen IT projects, saying most were approved by council in July and several are partially or fully complete.

IT analyst Francisco Alvarez told the council the agenda-management software project was approved on July 2 with a total investment of $39,250 and no funds expended yet. "The first project is the agenda management software," Alvarez said, adding vendor submissions closed Sept. 25 and the estimated completion date is August 2026.

Alvarez reviewed the city website redesign (approved July 2, $37,260 investment; planning stage), a workstation refresh ($30,000 total; $23,596.35 expended; nine computers replaced), and completed camera and storage upgrades: a City Hall NVR camera system (approved July 2, $20,000; $18,112.57 expended; completed Sept. 12) and a Dell Unity storage upgrade (approved July 2, $90,000; $85,637.54 expended; completed Oct. 11).

Projects listed as in execution or planning included a water meter base station replacement (approved July 2; $82,000 investment, final amount pending), a SCADA wireless replacement at the water treatment plant ($10,000 investment; $6,899.25 expended; expected to finish by year-end), traffic-camera network work ($12,000 investment; $9,196.77 expended), and an NVR system at the wastewater treatment plant (approved July 3; $25,000 investment; $19,770.46 to date; expected by year-end).

Alvarez also reported smaller completed and in-progress efforts: an ID card system for police ($2,000 investment; $1,660 expended; completed Sept. 25), community development intercom work ($5,000 investment; $4,861.17 expended; scheduled for completion Oct. 16), and a planned migration of the city’s payment infrastructure to a cloud environment (approved Sept. 3; $9,970.24 expended; estimated completion Oct. 31).

Council members praised the IT team’s in-house work. Council member Burnworth said IT staff had been complimented by vendors, and other council members noted the city’s broadband, traffic-camera integration and AI plans for Highway 86. Alvarez said the department will continue quarterly — and now monthly — reporting so council can track expenditures and timelines.

Clarifying details reported by Alvarez included approval dates, individual project budgets and amounts spent to date, and completion dates where applicable. Several projects were approved administratively by the city manager or department heads because they were under council-approved thresholds; Alvarez said those items are presented to council for regular reporting even when they do not require formal council approval.

Alvarez said several projects remain contingent on vendor scheduling, equipment delivery and legal review (for the acceptable use policy update). He said the department is continuing work on cybersecurity, long-range battery backup for a key site ($15,000 investment; $14,248.04 expended to date) and other resilience upgrades.

The council did not take formal action on the individual IT projects Tuesday; the presentation served as a status update and fiscal report to the council.