Council approves ClientFirst amendment and extends ComputerCourage IT support; members discuss AI privacy and AV upgrades

Tom Jacobson of ClientFirst briefed the council on completed IT projects, upcoming work on council-chambers audio-visual upgrades, AI preparedness, and cybersecurity obligations; the council subsequently approved a ClientFirst contract amendment and extended the local IT support contract for another year.

Jacobson told the council, "We just received bids from another East Bay city for a similar arrangement, and the range of those bids was between 300 and $400,000 for a project close to what you were doing," when describing preliminary AV upgrade costs. He and the city’s IT partners also outlined work on police electronic-data cybersecurity, a password manager deployment, dispatch and aquatics center technology, and an AI policy and data-classification framework staff will present to the city administrator. The council discussed use cases and safeguards for AI in local government (meeting-minute tools, translation services, redaction tools) and staff warned that data inputs must be managed to avoid disclosure risks.

Vice Mayor McCarthy moved to approve the ClientFirst contract amendment (not to exceed $242,500), and the council approved it by roll call. The council then moved and unanimously approved a 12‑month extension with ComputerCourage for IT support services at $383,750 per year and heard staff emphasize recent cybersecurity assessments and incident response experience as justification for continued local support.