PREPARED BY: Nicolle Burnham
Parks and Public Works Director
Reviewed by: Town Manager, Assistant Town Manager, Town Attorney, and Finance Director 110 E. Main Street Los Gatos, CA 95030 ● (408) 354-6832 www.losgatosca.gov
TOWN OF LOS GATOS
COUNCIL AGENDA REPORT
MEETING DATE: 12/02/2025
ITEM NO: 3
ADDENDUM
DATE: December 2, 2025
TO: Mayor and Town Council
FROM: Chris Constantin, Town Manager
SUBJECT: Authorize the Town Manager to Execute a Third Amendment to an Agreement for Services with OpenGov, Inc., for an Amount Not to Exceed $401,214.79
REMARKS:
Attachment 5 contains public comments received before 11:01 a.m. on Monday, December 1, 2025.
Attachments Received with the Staff Report:
1. Third Amendment to Agreement with Exhibit D - OpenGov
2. Second Amendment for Services with Exhibit C - OpenGov
3. First Amendment to Agreement with Exhibit B - OpenGov
4. Original Agreement for Services with Exhibit A - OpenGov Attachment Received with this Addendum:
5. Public comments received before 11:01 a.m. on Monday, December 1, 2025.
From: Lynley Kerr Hogan
To: Clerk
Subject: Re Tuesday Agenda, OpenGov
Date: Wednesday, November 26, 2025 5:03:24 PM
[EXTERNAL SENDER]
Is it necessary and what are the alternatives ?
In my opinion there's always a better way than the most expensive one. Who is really benefiting by spending all this money on open gov?
Great question.
The short answer: **No, using OpenGov (or any single commercial platform like Cartegraph/OpenGov, Tyler/Munis, Cityworks, Accela, etc.) is not absolutely necessary.** Many towns and cities run perfectly well without it — and some do it better, cheaper, or more transparently than others who pay six or seven figures for OpenGov.
Here’s a breakdown of the real alternatives and which approach tends to work “best” depending on your city’s size, budget, and goals.
| Approach | How it works | Typical cost range (2025) | Who it works well for | Pros | Cons | | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |
| 1. Full commercial suite (OpenGov, Cityworks, Infor, etc.) | One vendor, cloud ERP + asset management + budgeting + permitting | $150k–$2M+ initial + $100k–$500k/year | Mid-size to large cities (50k–500k+ pop) with complex needs and staff capacity | Turnkey, mobile apps, good support, frequent updates | Very expensive, vendor lock-in, annual fees rise, you own no code |
| 2. Best-of-breed mix (pick separate tools) | Separate systems: Lucity or Brightly for assets, OpenGov or ClearGov just for budgeting, Neon or GovPilot for permitting, SeeClickFix/311 for requests | $40k–$250k/year total | Small to mid-size (5k–150k pop) that want to avoid mega-contracts | Lower cost, choose exactly what you need, easier to switch later | More integrations to maintain, multiple logins for staff |
| 3. Home-grown or heavily customized open-source | Build on low-code platforms (Microsoft Power Platform, Appian, ServiceNow) or open-source (QKview, OpenCities, LibreCity) + GIS | $20k–$150k upfront + $10k–$80k/year | Tech-savvy cities or those with a strong internal IT/GIS team | Full ownership, exactly the workflows you want, no recurring SaaS bloat | Needs skilled staff, higher risk, slower feature updates | | 4. Lean commercial core + Excel/GIS for the rest | Basic 311 system + Esri ArcGIS Online + Excel/SharePoint for asset registry | $15k–$60k/year | Very small towns (<25k pop) or budgetconstrained cities | Extremely cheap, you already own most of it | Staff spends time wrangling spreadsheets, hard to scale |
| 5. Regional cooperative or state-provided system | Join a county-wide, COG, or state platform (e.g., some states offer free asset modules to locals) | Often $0–$50k/year | Small towns inside cooperative regions | Near-zero cost, shared support | Limited customization, slower innovation |
### Which way is actually “best” in practice?
| City/Town Size | Most common successful path in 2025 | | -------------- | ----------------------------------- | | < 15,000 pop | Option 4 or 5 (Lean + GIS or regional co-op). Many are perfectly happy with ATTACHMENT 5
Esri ArcGIS Online + a cheap 311 app and Excel. No need for OpenGov/Cartegraph. | | 15,000–75,000 | Option 2 or 3 (Best-of-breed or low-code internal build). Cities like Burlington VT, Missoula MT, and Durham NH run very transparent, efficient operations this way at 20–40 % of OpenGov cost. |
| 75,000–300,000 | Option 1 or 2. This is the sweet spot where OpenGov/Cityworks often wins sales, but many peers (e.g., Boise ID, Asheville NC, Eugene OR) still mix tools and save hundreds of thousands per year. |
| > 300,000 | Usually Option 1 (enterprise suite), because the staff capacity and complexity justify it. |
### Real-world examples of cities that skipped the big suite and thrive - **Chattanooga, TN** (~185k) – Built most functions on Microsoft Power Platform + Esri.
Saved >$1M vs. OpenGov quotes.
- **Durham, NH** (~15k) – Uses free Esri Community maps + Google Sheets + SeeClickFix.
Residents love the transparency; total software budget < $18k/year. - **Arlington, VA** (~240k) – Uses a mix: Cityworks for assets (pre-dates OpenGov acquisition), OpenGov only for budgeting/transparency, custom permitting. They avoided paying for the full OpenGov ERP.
- **Montgomery County, MD** – Runs a shared asset platform for all 19 municipalities inside the county — many small towns pay almost nothing. ### So what should YOU do?
Ask these five questions before anyone tries to sell you the full OpenGov/Cartegraph package:
1. Do we actually have more than ~150 public works / parks / facilities staff who would all log in daily? → If no, you probably don’t need the Cadillac version.
2. Are we receiving big federal infrastructure grants that require sophisticated reporting? → Sometimes yes, that pushes you toward a commercial system.
3. Do we have at least one strong GIS analyst or IT person who enjoys building things? → If yes, lean or home-grown becomes very viable.
4. Are neighboring cities or our county already sharing a system? → Joining is almost always cheaper.
5. When the sales rep quotes you $400k–$900k/year, are citizens willing to pay the equivalent of $25–$80 per household for it? → Frame it that way to council; suddenly cheaper options look attractive.
Bottom line
OpenGov + ex-Cartegraph is excellent software, but it is a luxury purchase, not a necessity.
Thousands of cities and towns deliver transparent, efficient asset management and operations without it — often at 10–30 % of the price — and many of them score higher on resident satisfaction surveys.
If you tell me your city/town size, rough budget situation, and current pain points, I can suggest the exact mix that tends to work best for places like yours.
Lynley Kerr Hogan