Commissioners approve dotCMS website contract and five-year IT maintenance agreement

Muskegon County commissioners approved two IT-related contracts aimed at modernizing the county website and stabilizing server infrastructure costs.

IT Director Matt Kelleher recommended a three-year contract with dotCMS to replace the county's current website platform, describing a qualifications-based selection that narrowed 21 proposals to five finalists and ultimately selected dotCMS based on demonstrations and reference checks. "We decided to do this as a request for qualifications," Kelleher said, noting the county evaluated 35 weighted criteria and then focused finalists on the most important elements. He said the three-year agreement includes hosting, licensing and a $5,000 setup fee and that the total three-year cost is approximately $225,675.

Web developer Ryan Norman said the project will be a full website revamp to improve accessibility and user experience. Vendor Stacy Rice, representing dotCMS, summarized the offering as a hosted software licensing arrangement: "It is the ability to host the website ... that $5,000 setup just enables us to actually set up the environments."

Separately, commissioners authorized a multi-year maintenance and support purchase for Broadcom/VMware software through a cooperative agreement, locking in pricing over a five-year term with a total not to exceed $518,947.20. Kelleher said the move to multiyear agreements responds to recurring annual price increases and that the contract includes a termination-for-convenience clause reviewed by county legal. "We wanted to lock in the pricing for that software for 5 years," he said.

Both motions passed by voice vote. Staff said the website project will proceed with policy guidance on governance and an anticipated timeline to substantially complete the revamp within a year, subject to unforeseen delays. The maintenance agreement is budgeted and intended to secure continued operation and security updates for county server infrastructure.

Next steps: IT will finalize vendor contracts, begin the website design and migration process, and administer the VMware maintenance agreement per the cooperative purchasing terms.