Staff proposes centralized municipal software and server move to reduce siloed systems and annual licensing costs

City staff urged the finance committee to approve capital funding to replace multiple siloed municipal systems with one integrated platform, citing efficiency and long-term savings.

Miss Lorenais said an ‘Edmonds’ software package would consolidate finance, business licensing, permitting, tax, permits, work-order and parks functions into a single system. Staff put a one-time capital request of about $100,000 on the table for initial implementation and estimated recurring costs of roughly $46,000 annually compared with approximately $66,000 across the multiple systems now in use.

Staff warned that data migration would likely take about a year and require substantial staff time for data scrubbing and mapping; they estimated six staff and additional temporary help would be necessary during the migration. Staff suggested retaining three years of cloud history and running an initial data dump, then migrating recent records into the new platform.

Miss Lorenais also proposed moving the city’s server equipment to the police department’s conditioned server room and installing a fiber connection (vendor referenced as Shentel/GloFiber) between sites to improve reliability and reduce maintenance overhead. Committee members asked about cybersecurity, data retention, and the specific exclusion of the courts module; staff said access layers would limit user permissions so departments would only see their modules.

Next steps: staff will refine the scope, provide a clearer implementation schedule and staffing plan, and detail recurring license costs and data-retention choices before the council considers the capital request.