Council extends contract with ERP integrator amid disputes over missing reports; 4-1 vote

The City Council voted to extend a professional-services arrangement that continues support and consulting for the city's Oracle ERP/HCM system. Debate focused on council concerns that core financial reports (budget-to-actuals, cash-flow, and certain expenditure reports) have not been consistently produced since the vendor go-live in July 2023. One councilmember said, "We have not been able to get those reports for 2 years," and questioned awarding more funds to the same integrator without first pursuing an RFP.

Finance staff defended the contract extension and described implementation complexity and staff bandwidth issues. Rob Bennett (identified in the meeting as the city's financial services director) said the project required difficult migration work and additional staff time, and cautioned that switching integrators midstream carries significant risk and onboarding cost: "It was a tremendous amount of work to get to even the point that we're at... to go with a new one at this point would seriously create more cost because they're gonna come in. They're not gonna know exactly the way the system was designed by Graviton." Councilmembers split on the best path: some favored a short extension with an RFP run in parallel; others favored a direct extension to get reports produced quickly. The motion to extend the contract carried 4-1.