Redmond approves sole-source move of Springbrook finance system to cloud

James Wood, Redmond's finance director, told the council on Dec. 17 that the city's on-premises financial system, Springbrook, has been the municipality's "financial backbone" for about 13 years and is being phased off by the vendor.

"It's essentially the financial backbone to the city of Redmond," Wood said, describing Springbrook's functions for budgeting, payroll, purchase orders and cash receiving. He said the current on-premises system cost about $246,000 to implement and had ongoing costs near $40,000 a year.

Wood told the council the vendor offered a cloud-implementation price the city compared favorably with alternatives. He discussed an implementation quote of about $15,000 and said "the subscription services would be about $52,000 a year," and elsewhere discussed a five-year base contract "about $287,000." During the meeting a council member moved to authorize the city manager to sign a Springbrook Cloud (Cirrus) software-as-a-service implementation and a five-year subscription agreement "for up to $387,262." The motion passed on a voice vote.

Why it mattered: Springbrook is ending on-premises support, forcing a choice between migrating that product to its cloud offering or undertaking a replacement with other vendors. Wood presented higher-cost examples: CentralSquare implementation was described in one peer agency's record at roughly $600,000 and Tyler Munis implementations in the peer group ranged up to a few million dollars.

Councilors focused questions on three practical risks: long-term payroll complexity, contract "off-ramps" if Springbrook later proved insufficient, and banking/reconciliation safeguards. Wood said he and staff would seek contract language for off-ramps if needed and noted that the city currently maintains an "air gap" between the ERP and its bank; payroll files export a NACHA file that is separately validated and uploaded to US Bank to limit direct write access.

Councilor Tobias (the nominee referenced later in the record whose last name is spelled inconsistently in the transcript) asked why Springbrook's cloud price was much lower than other vendors; Wood said the lower cost reflected fewer bundled features and a long-standing relationship that yielded a discount. Wood cautioned that other jurisdictions had left Springbrook when payroll needs outpaced the software's capabilities, but said the city's current use case remains supported.

What passed: the council adopted sole-source findings and authorized execution of the Springbrook cloud implementation and five-year subscription agreement (motion language included authorization "for up to $387,262"). The vote was taken by voice; individual roll-call tallies were not recorded in the transcript.

Next steps: staff will finalize the contract and report back as needed. Wood said staff would also negotiate contract terms to preserve the city's ability to exit if future needs required another platform.

(Quotes and attributions are taken from the meeting transcript and limited to speakers who self-identified in the record.)