The Norwalk City Economic and Community Development Committee on Dec. 3 authorized the mayor to execute an agreement with Mainstar for project number 4,435 — community development software and services — in an amount not to exceed $500,000 to implement a new online permitting and licensing system.

Jay Evanski, chief of Economic and Community Development, described a procurement that began in October 2024 following an environment assessment by Barry Dunn Consulting. The city received 11 RFP responses, shortlisted five vendors for in‑person demonstrations and involved multiple departments — building, business development and tourism, health, IT, planning and zoning, public works, police, and the fire marshal's office — in evaluating proposals.

"This process started back in October 2024," Evanski said, and the selection included in‑depth staff demonstrations. He told the committee the platform is intended to serve back‑end staff needs and public users. "The goal is for this project to be live in 10 to 12 months in its totality," Evanski said, adding his hope that "six months from finalizing the contract with Mainstar that we are live with portions of our permitting system."

A member of the public, Diane Cece, asked the committee to correct a vendor‑name typo in the staff memo and to disclose who served on the selection committee. "When I tried to find anything on that, I couldn't... it's a typo," Cece said, urging the city to fix the record and to indicate whether outside users, developers or contractors participated in the selection process. Evanski acknowledged the autocorrected name issue and later confirmed that the selection committee consisted of city staff who would be the platform's back‑end users, while shortlisted vendors demonstrated both staff and public views of their systems.

Council members asked about scalability and ease of use for outside users. Evanski said the platform can scale to include other departments and quasi‑government agencies and that the city will provide both live and prerecorded training resources for contractors and residents. He said staff will also seek legal advice on what data should be publicly viewable.

The committee voted to authorize the agreement; the transcript records the item as passing unanimously.

Next steps include finalizing the contract with Mainstar and beginning a staged rollout of core permits, with training and troubleshooting before expanding functionality citywide.