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Staff Report
City Council
Item No. 6.C
Meeting Date: June 28, 2023
From: Anne Ambrose, Assistant City Manager
Title: Approve Agreement with Park Consulting Group for EnerGov Implementation
City Council
RECOMMENDATION:
Staff recommends the City Council approve the agreement with Park Consulting Group, authorize the City Manager to execute all necessary documents and approve a budget amendment of $177,310.
BACKGROUND:
In 2018, staff initiated an RFP process for a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution to integrate many of the business functions of the City, including the City’s financial system and community development processes. Staff selected and the Council awarded an agreement with Tyler Technologies for Tyler Munis for the City’s financial backbone and EnerGov for permitting, licensing, code compliance and inspections.
Since 2018, staff have been working to implement various components of the Tyler products. It began with Tyler Munis, the financial background of the City that is utilized for accounts payable, accounts receivable, budget, general ledger, and payroll. Munis was implemented in January, 2019 with most of the core financial functions Payroll and business licensing were implemented 2021.
Concurrent with this work was the initiation of EnerGov to create an updated platform for planning, building and engineering activities including licensing, permitting, and inspection services. At the time, the City had no online services available for submitting plans, requesting inspections, or making payments. Additionally, the system in use, PermitsPlus did not offer these services, did not fully integrate with the City’s financials, and did not have the ability to establish automation to facilitate collaboration on reviews.
PermitsPlus is no longer being supported by the vendor and assistance cannot be provided if something goes wrong, so it is essential the City migrate from this system to a stable platform.
Staff have had numerous starts and stops in the process of implementing the land management component. Implementation of systems of this complexity requires
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considerable dedication of staff time which has been challenging in the earlier years of the implementation efforts. Additionally, staff has predominantly been conducting the implementation in-house without the benefit of a third-party consultant, which can also be difficult with a small staff. In July, 2020, Finance dedicated a staff member to serve as the project lead. Considerable work has been done and in October, 2021 EnerGov went live for permit processing and acceptance of payments. However, there are still issues that have been identified and workflows that need to be completed to make the various processes used by planning, building and engineering fully operational.
DISCUSSION:
EnerGov is currently in use in planning, building, and engineering, however it is not being used to its fullest capacity due to there still being workflows that need to be set up so that staff can solely be working in the EnerGov system and not PermitsPlus and to take full advantage of the automation the system can provide if being fully utilized. There have been issues identified by the departmental users that need the assistance of someone who speaks the language of both the operational departments and finance to help resolve.
Currently staff are doing data entry into both systems to issue a permit, which is not an efficient use of time. Completion of these workflows and having all processes done in EnerGov is also necessary in order to implement customer self- service options, including the ability to apply for permits, make online payments, schedule inspections, or track the progress of an application.
Staff have contacted Park Consulting Group who have been assisting numerous other cities with their EnerGov implementation. Most recently, they aided the City of Palm Springs who went live in May. To this point, our staff have predominantly been working on the implementation without the assistance of a third party to help project manage the implementation to assure issues identified by all parties are addressed. Finance has taken the lead role in project management and implementation with the assistance of the departments and IT. If the City Council approves this agreement, Park Consulting Group will begin their engagement in July.
FISCAL IMPACT:
The agreement is for an amount not to exceed $177,310 and will require a budget adjustment. The funds, if approved, will be budgeted in account 100-100-150-8600- 8601.
Unappropriated reserves will be used for this budget adjustment, leaving the reserve balance at 51.44% and still above the City’s policy of maintaining a 33% reserve.
FIVE-YEAR STRATEGIC PLAN:
Goal C: Fiscal Stability and Sustainability
Objective: Cathedral City has economically prospered by facilitating the investment of private dollars in high quality development which benefits the community. We remain financially solvent by instituting prudent fiscal policies and transparent financial practices.
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Action C-6: Complete and improve the utilization of EnerGov software to automate, improve, and streamline building plan review, permitting, and inspection processes.
ATTACHMENTS:
Park Consulting Group Agreement - EnerGov Imp FINAL