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Council OKs two GIS professional services agreements to finish parish mapping dashboard
Summary
The council authorized two professional services agreements (Morris P. Abare LLC and T Baker Smith LLC) to complete the parish’s GIS dashboard and damage‑assessment mapping capability; staff said internal lead Brooke handles ~90% of mapping work and the contracts provide short‑term programming capacity for disaster response.
The Budget & Finance Committee approved two resolutions authorizing professional services agreements for geographic information system (GIS) work to support a parish mapping dashboard, emergency damage assessment and public-facing tools.
Robbie, the administration presenter, said the parish’s GIS manager "can do about 90% of the things we need done," but the remaining 5–10% requires specialized programming. He described the proposed agreements as do‑not‑exceed retainer contracts that would pay firms only for services rendered and be used chiefly in disaster response and for finishing dashboard features such as auto work‑order display, status by council district, nuisance/abatement tracking, and an outage map.
Council members probed the need for two firms and concerns about retainer language. One member asked whether one firm could complete the remaining work for the same cost; Robbie said using two local firms spread the work and produced competitive pricing. The administration explained most GIS system funding comes from existing budgeted professional services and contributions from the assessor’s office, not new taxes.
Both resolutions passed after discussion (item 2 and item 3 recorded as approved). Staff said the dashboard will be linked (via API) to existing MGO Connect data and can later be extended to send outage notifications by polygon to affected residents.
What’s next: Contracts will be signed and staff will return with implementation details; firms will be engaged on an as‑needed basis and work will be prioritized for disaster‑response readiness.
