Quarterly management report: Washington County says ERP replacement, ARPA investments on track; staff raise capacity and reporting cadence questions

Tanya, the county administrator, presented Washington County’s first-quarter management report on Feb. 4 and told the board the report covers organizational goals, department work-plan highlights and several cross-cutting projects.

“We are hitting milestones in modernizing our IT systems, hitting some key milestones in the journey of the replacement of our enterprise resource planning system,” Tanya said, adding the ERP replacement work also included design of an employee portal called Horizons and a redesigned public-facing website.

The presentation highlighted several items: completion of ARPA obligation deadlines, progress on the jail-capacity and community corrections expansion study, public-safety and library levy polling and steering-committee work, and a countywide classification-and-compensation study. Tanya said Washington County obligated all ARPA investments approved in the ARPA framework before the federal contractual obligation deadline, a milestone staff said was notable.

Key figures and timelines cited by staff included: county ARPA allocations totaling about $117,000,000 that staff said were contractually obligated; a target date of June 30, 2025, for completing a classification-and-compensation study and job descriptions (staff said January submissions had already started); and ongoing work with Matrix Consulting on the jail-capacity study (staff said timelines for that project will be adjusted as more information is gathered).

Tanya also summarized work on the Washington County Cooperative Library Services (WCCLS) levy process and public-safety local-option levy polling. She said polling tested replacement levy rates and rate increases; staff would present recommended base service levels and cost assessments in future briefings.

Commissioners asked whether the board could skip the May quarterly report and combine it with a July report because of the upcoming budget season. Commissioners and staff discussed the public-value of a quarterly cadence versus staff workload constraints; one commissioner noted the report is also useful to the public. Tanya and other staff said some departments had not been able to update the work-plan dashboard because of capacity issues, and staff recommended preserving a consistent reporting rhythm while refining scope.

The presentation also noted a tax-assessment summary that described the county’s portfolio of properties at about $1.197 trillion in real-market value and that the county retains about 16.3% of property-tax revenue after distributions to taxing districts.

In closing, Tanya said staff would work to align the quarterly report’s scope with board expectations and to prioritize the content departments could reliably produce. Commissioners identified follow-up briefings they wanted on jail-capacity timeline updates and assessment and taxation staffing and processes.

Staff quoted in this article are identified in the transcript excerpts below. The board did not take a formal vote to change the reporting cadence during the session; members asked staff to return with proposals and options.