Council asks city manager to scope HDL revenue-recovery services and budget impact

Representatives from HDL Companies described a turnkey tax-and-fee administration service designed to strengthen collections, improve customer service, and identify unregistered commercial activities (including short-term rentals and unreported hotels) through discovery, audits and compliance workflows.

HDL representatives said their work historically increases municipal revenue growth relative to local baselines by uncovering missed or underreported activity, improving filing and customer interaction channels, and offering an online portal and extended customer-service hours. The firm described a mixed fee model: a flat per-account administrative fee for accounts under management plus a revenue-share model for one-time recoveries identified by discovery/audit work.

Council asked about implementation timelines, compatibility with existing city systems, staff impacts, and data-security practices. HDL said implementation typically takes about 60 days and that data are held in secure, isolated cloud environments; cities retain ownership of their data and HDL can integrate with municipal systems during implementation.

Council moved that the city manager and staff scope a potential scope of work with HDL, including an analysis of budget impact and three vendor-comparison options; the motion passed. Councilmembers requested that the scope include potential utility billing interactions and an estimate of ROI and proposed contract terms for different tax/fee streams (lodging, occupational, alcohol, short-term rentals).