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City of North Lauderdale seeks new plan-review software, refreshes computers and renews Microsoft enterprise agreement
Summary
City IT staff asked the commission to approve a $78,100 implementation for a new plan-review product, a $54,262.50 desktop refresh and a three‑year Microsoft enterprise agreement totaling $162,029.25; commissioners probed contingency use, vendor performance and staff training needs.
Mitch Williams, the city’s director of innovation and information technology services, asked the commission to fund several IT upgrades, saying the current plan-review product has recurring downtime that interrupts community-development permitting and plan review. Williams requested $78,100 plus a $10,000 contingency to implement a new plan-review system identified in staff materials as DigiPen and said community‑development users signed off that the new product meets their needs.
The request was accompanied by two related technology items: a $54,262.50 request to refresh end‑user desktops and laptops that cannot run a newly deprecated operating system, and a three‑year Microsoft enterprise agreement that staff presented as $54,900.75 per year (totaling $162,029.25). Williams said the Microsoft contingency covers year‑end license "true ups" when head count or license allocations change.
Why it matters: staff told commissioners delays and scheduled maintenance from the incumbent plan‑review vendor have left permit reviewers unable to complete work during business hours. Commission members said continuity matters because the city has active appropriations and capital requests pending at the state level and staff argued better software will reduce schedule slips.
Commissioners asked for more documentation about past vendor performance and the expected return on the city’s investment. One commissioner asked whether staff could terminate the existing vendor and seek rebate of unused license fees; Williams said staff expects license savings once the city stops paying for the old product but could not provide exact historical implementation costs on the spot and pointed to supporting documents in the packet for maintenance and SaaS fees.
On contingencies and procurement, Williams said contingencies are standard for implementation projects to address unanticipated integration tasks and to avoid repeated trips to commission for small adjustments; he said the city typically minimizes contingency use and that any spending beyond thresholds would be brought back to commissioners.
The commission also discussed broader IT capacity: staff said a website‑redesign RFP will go to market, that training line items appear in the adopted budget, and that temporary translation devices and hiring are being used to address multilingual customer‑service needs. Williams said the IT department is "playing catch‑up" after pandemic‑era delays and is coordinating several projects (phone system upgrades, RFPs and AI routing pilots) to improve resident access.
What’s next: staff said they will provide the additional backup documentation requested by commissioners and will return with clarified procurement language where packet text refers inconsistently to "purchase" versus "lease."
