Communication, Technology & Information Systems Committee - Regular Meeting

Okay. K. Welcome everyone to the May meeting of the CTIS committee at 08:30 in the, executive what do we call this? Yeah. Let's start with roll call. Go ahead and announce yourselves.

Councilman Juan Moreno here. Councilman Cesar Carter is here.

Sherry Reardon here. First, we'll start with the approval of minutes. Has everyone had a chance to review?

Is there a motion to approve? Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Citizens, we heard on agenda items. We do not have any citizens here, so we'll move to agenda items. We're gonna do our last agenda item first just so that if we need have any questions. Agenda item ninety seven eighty one, award of contract to Forte for the Joliet City Square AV background music system project in the amount of $554,740.42 dollars.

Okay. At at a high level, this is to get the AV infrastructure into the city square. Right now, we have some conduit laid. Basically. We did all of that during the foundation lane of the square. This would run some fiber connections were also run throughout the square connecting all the various, like, cabinets in the square. This would allow us to run the remaining fiber. All of this would go back into an IT closet that is in the parking deck that is under construction as we speak.

Is that in the corner there?

Yes. Yes. It is. We're yeah. There's gonna be, like, two two rooms being built right now. There's an electrical closet and then a IT closet. But we need to get this in the AV infrastructure in place. This would give us about 45 speakers throughout the park and about 25 security cameras. This would allow for things like your background music, so ambient music during the day. It allows us to control the lighting throughout the park.

It also allows basic, you know, basic functions in the park. You know, I I was teasing the mayor. It allows him to give a speech whenever he wants. He he can he can get up on the stage, and this will have microphones and basic speaker systems. This does not give us, like, as Jeff, you know, says all the time, the the rock and roll capability.

It is not like this is not the band type equipment. This is your day to day speaker equipment, speaker sound reinforcement throughout the square and all of our infrastructure needs for this. Now what this does do though is kind of set the stage for all future growth. This puts everything in place that if we want to go the rock and roll and have, you know, all of the equipment for, you know, live entertainment of the city own that equipment, we can do that. If we want to eventually put a big video wall up on the the side of the deck, that puts the infrastructure in place to do that.

This is just a foundational part of the project. Those other pieces are, you know, being discussed for, like, as a phase two or three to this, but this is out of all all the phases, this is the this is the core one. We we really have to have this to continue, you know, proper operations throughout the park. Funding for this, we had we earmarked last year during the budget process $350,000 in capital funds. We've also received a heritage corridor grant of $225,000.

We'll caveat. We we have to get this through the next council meeting because the grant is quickly running out. It's a Route 66 grant. We actually have to get those funds spent by the end of this month. We have a deadline of May 31. So kinda kinda put this into a tight situation. This did go out to bid. Forte was the winning bidder. They were actually the only bidder we had on this project. We did work with Jeff Pry.

He helped us put together this this whole package, and he's been working with us kind of as our consultant for pretty much this whole process through the AV in the city square. It's kind of it's kind of the high level. If you guys have any very specific questions, Jeff is here to answer those for you.

Mhmm. Jeff, so I know we mentioned the potential of if we get the the video future, does that then connect the audio to that video wall if they'd like to watch a game or something that would connect to those speakers as well?

That's correct. So this infrastructure allows, again, what Chris said, the background background music system, which is speakers on all the polls. There are microphones in there to do press conferences. I I I think Anne has some programming for workouts and if there was panel discussions and the tree lighting and all those things would be in this phase. The other important thing to know is that the infrastructure also allows when Anne needs the program like she did on Friday, a band to come in in the future.

This infrastructure would allow that hookup to happen so that the band could be throughout. So the only construction so the rock and roll phase that Chris mentioned is kind of the band stages, the smaller stage and the larger stage to equip all the necessary microphones, stands, speaker systems for bands where you wouldn't have to rent that in the future. And then a third phase was talked about the video board. And the infrastructure for the video board is there. The power requirements, the data requirements would be there.

The only thing that would be an additional construction phase is the actual hanging of the video board on the parking deck. So, again, this is kind of that base system to get everything in there. And if you didn't purchase anything in year two or three, you're still in a pretty good state to bring in anything or rental or if there was a bigger event that needed to happen within the next couple years. This infrastructure allows all of that to happen and for everything to talk to each other.

Right. And the the other question I would have also is then as far as the music, how's that controlled or who controls that I'd like to have if we're having a daily ambiance of music playing? Because that would the idea, right, to have who who controls that or how is that controlled and and

So the entire system, because it being in the parking deck, the IT Room, and the electrical closet, everything can be remoted from city hall. Everything can be remoted remotely from any computer anywhere on the Internet, but there the plan would be if a staff member needed to control or staff the event, they would walk around with an iPad, and that iPad would allow volume control for those speakers, changing of the music, changing of the lights, all by a single person, again, walking around the square. So they didn't have to go into the IT closet to make that happen. But, again, everything is remote monitored as well. The police security system, the sound system, the lighting system, everything is remoted so that you don't actually have to physically be there to monitor temperature, what is the status of the music, how loud it is, what the color of the lights are.

All of those things can be remote monitored as well. So I think that would be a staff decision of who programs that space and how that music is controlled, but that's you know, functionality is there.

Alright. Thank you. So real quick, you said how much is the grant again? Well, I think excuse me.

The grant is 225,000. 2 and 5?

Yes. And then you say they put it out for RFP? Yes. We did. Yeah.

This went out to bid.

Yes. Okay. Perfect. I just feel like, it was a lot of money. But I I mean, maybe this is some I mean, I get to use the grant. Right? And so, technically, it's not really the $5.54 that we're spending. Right? Because we have

$2.25.

But I feel like we're trying we're doing something that we're not doing yet, you know, in in a sense. I get the vision of doing it ahead of time or not doing it now so that we're ready for it, but it just I don't want I don't see it really, like, a necessary thing to do right now. Although I do like the idea of putting, like, a a game on the projector or whatever you said. Well, you know yeah. So that that would be a good idea. But now it's not only the city that uses it. You know, you got city center. Other people are gonna be using it. I don't know. It's just

Yeah. So, you know, to kinda explain the the primary like, some of the use cases here. So as it as it sits right now in the square, we don't we do not have any kind of ambient music. There is no sound there. There's no speaker system there. There is no microphone system there. If we want every so for everything we do in the square right now, we're renting all of that equipment.

Really? Okay.

Yeah. So there there is, like, there exists no equipment right now. That's this is that project. This project right here gives us that kind of basic level of equipment to actually the square function. And to Jeff's point so this would also include the hookups for larger events. Like, right now, we don't even have the receptacles for a band to come and plug into our system. They're literally running power things from generators to you know? So we're stashing generators in the parking deck and running the cables out into the square to run the event. This is kind of all of that baseline hookups. Yeah.

If approved today, is everything if this gets approved, is everything gonna be protected from obviously, if all the wires have copper, right, people come and steal it. Are they or is everything gonna be safe? I know you said we have conduit.

Yeah. So this sure

they put that under everything.

Absolutely. Yeah. All the all that kind of wiring and all that, that is all underground. That was all preplanned during that those initial phases of the build. So they put they already put everything underground for us. So all the wire poles and most of the actual, like, actual copper type poles have already been done. The we have a a few legs of fiber that were not part of the original agreement that need to be pulled for with this contract. But even a lot of our fiber has already been run throughout the throughout the square as part of the actual build out phase. So this has always been kind of planned to be layered in.

I don't know why I was thinking that we we did something like this already for City Square, but I'm I was probably confusing it with Bicentennial. Did we do something like this for Bicentennial?

We we have done

some updated Yeah. We saw Rigging.

Yes. Did. Yes. It was that we did the rigging over there.

So, I mean, I what I'm hearing, and I think this is what is correct. We have always intended to do this. We it's just this is just the time of the phase to get this done. So now we're finally putting in the audio and video, and this has been planned all along. We only have three fifty planned for the the the continuation, but we have the grant that will cover the remaining difference. And we'll have I'm sure we'll use the grant first, and then we'll have a little leftover within our budget from what we budgeted for it.

Yep. Because the the grant will cover the grant is the grant doesn't cover labor. It covers hardware, which our equipment cost on this is 314,000. Yeah. So that So we would use the whole grant to cover as much as the equipment cost as possible. And to that point, you know, this is the phase out of the kind of three phases that have been proposed for the square for AV, this is the phase we absolutely have to have. Right. There there's absolutely discussion that could be had on the later phases and whether we, you know, spend two or three years renting equipment and we find that to be acceptable, that would be totally fine. This is the phase that, like, puts that infrastructure layer in to allow those other phases to even be discussions. Right.

Because right now, we're just doing a ridiculous amount of work to try to bring the power in and to do the

Everything is kind of pieced together right now.

And and the security.

And there is yes.

Cameras. This is our lighting and all all the different things that we need to finish it out.

Yeah. And a great example of the the lighting is a good point. So right now, during events, until this is implemented, the lights are all at max. There is it is simply like a light switch. It they're either on or off because this phase actually puts all of the hardware in place to allow, like, dimming of the lights and ambient lighting and like, none of that exists right now because we need this hardware in the IT closet to

I noticed that I went past it last night when I left the meeting at night. And it's like woah. It's it is is little break. Sleeping before. Nobody's everybody's sleeping on their grass. Yeah. Jeez, Louise. It it was very, very bright. Oh, I just had a question just in case you guys would know. Jeff, you might know this. Do we have any idea what the video screen might cost as far as going forward doing that?

There were three proposals. And in the original AVDG that had worked with the architects, a small video board was a million. And that was my first kind of red flag to say, I think that's a little too much for the size video board that wanted to go in there. So my first task was to research video boards for the space, and I did find a small, medium, large where my large was just under a million. And when I say large, it's large.

And the other thing is that it's a twenty four seven Chicago weather rated video board because of the space and things like that. But we did have proposals out for a medium sized board at around 700,000, and then I think the other one came in at about six just under six. So between six and a million on the video board depending on the size. But, again, the infrastructure for whatever video board were to be in place is happening at the current construction contract. So all the power necessary to make that happen is there and ready to go, and then the data infrastructure piping and all those kind of things would be in there.

So the installation would be fairly straightforward regardless of what video board needs to go in. And I think as we the project gets further out, I think those prices will change because those those came in in the '25. So, actually, video board prices have gone down. They're a little tougher to get with the things being overseas, but I think those costs can come down. So I think, you know, to answer your question very windedly, anywhere between maybe $5.50 to 1,000,000 depending on the video board itself.

And that is something, just so you guys know, we are exploring possibilities like sponsorships and things like that. Mhmm. I think Anne is kinda heading that up.

K.

But we are looking at, like, possibly getting sponsors to pay for that. Like, you get different people in because it it

is That'll be a drop. I mean, think about, like, Gallagher Way Mhmm. You know, at the cops.

It's like,

jeez. People won't be out there just sitting there and

Watching people. We could've got other type of people.

I have

a question. FIFA. The video board, would that be, like you mean, like, an automatic, you know, that, know, you have the how do spell LED screens. LED screen. But if it's gonna be used as a but wouldn't we use a projector for it, or it's gonna be a screen? Okay. The digital screen. The digital okay. That's fine.

It's really cool technology. It's almost like video field? Tons of different

panels. I get it now. Yeah.

Yeah. It's like lots of TVs all put together. So if, like, you have a a single panel can go out, you can actually replace a single panel and They're 12 inches panels. The technology is pretty pretty slick for it now. It is. Yeah.

Anything else? Just a comment. No. I think this is definitely necessary. You know, like you said, the the key to success of this square is that we activate it. Right? And we gotta have, like you know, we got story time in the in the park or whatever, and then just be able to have the audio and or, like, yeah, if we're just walking around and having to have, we have music, we'll change the lighting and and whatnot. You know, I think it is key to to finish the project to to where we needed to get to. And I am a big, big, big, big advocate of this video wall.

Me too. Think it

just again, it completes it to to the key success to this downtown is gonna be that it's activated. And if you can host things like the FIFA or super, you know, just games in general or even movies at the park or whatnot that are happening, it's gonna bring a draw to people to downtown. So I think we're we're at the at the finish line to this thing, and we just need to get across. And like you say, finding creative ways. You call the grant to help offset the cost. And then, you know, hopefully, finding, like I it's a good idea to find some sponsors that we wanna be a part of that video wall. But, yeah, I'm excited to to get this get this across the finish line.

Makes sense to do the infrastructure now too. Yeah. I mean, it's gonna be costly for doing it all now and then it's just waiting for the hookups

stuff like that. Yeah. So it does it takes a lot of sense to do the infrastructure all in one phase and then be ready for future phases.

Yeah. I'd rather connect my playlist to

I gotta watch you.

Yeah. I'll be honest. At first, I was really against it, but we have a a grant, so we're gonna save some money. And and we have the infrastructure there. Well, we have the highway there. We might as use it. Yeah. We already paid to put that in. We might as you know, spend a little bit more to finish it off. And like Caesar said, I think we do have to activate. I don't know if I can support a video wall, though. I'll be honest. But As long as you I'm open. You can turn out. You you'll face the other way. I know.

I'll be

open minded too as far as this

goes. To public service.

Another question. How how is Anne doing with the sponsorships? Has she

I I yeah. I know that is something that's being explored. I I don't know.

I got a brief update from her yesterday that some some are coming in. I don't know if they're out.

But No good.

Mhmm. Alright.

Anything else?

That is all.

Alright. Thank you, Jeff.

Thank you. Thanks, Jeff.

Supporting this project. And, again, with the company that bid on the project, I do wanna let you know that they're top notch. So the project itself as an installation piece will go very, very smoothly. So I do appreciate all your support on this.

K. Thank you.

Thanks, Jeff.

Have a good day.

You too. Take care.

No. You can hang up. Just can you get are you familiar with Jeff is? I don't think Juan knows of Jeff. I don't think he was I was I mean He's our he's our basically Yeah.

He's our he's our guy to make sure that we keep the vendors honest.

Oh, that's what was kinda mean to him because I thought he was Oh, sorry, my family. I was like He

should've let you know that prior.

No. No. No. He's put it in a gun. Larry Hug loves this guy. So Really? You know. He does. Okay. So he must do his job then. Yeah. Yeah. Larry loves him.

So Yeah. He's

good with Larry. You're good.

Yeah. He's done. What's last name? Yeah. Jeff Pry. Pry? Pry. Okay.

Oh, Pry. Sorry.

I thought

it was Pry. Pry.

Larry knows that he's on the job. He knows that we're getting a good deal.

Yeah. He he does consulting

for of this. Who the guy was. Okay. Thank you. Appreciate that. Yeah. I'll let you know. Yeah. Because I didn't know.

Alright. So do I have a motion to

approve this? Motion to approve. Second.

All in favor?

Aye. K. Get back

in here. Alright. So we'll move to addenda item ninety seven seventy seven, award of contract to VideoTech for three year renewal of Genentech advantage support agreement in the amount of $83,872.

Alright. Not quite as exciting as our last item. Item. This is just kind of a renewal of our licensing for our Genetech system. This so Genetech is our our security access control system. And, you know, we just we need our annual licensing. This is allows us to connect all of our cameras and then also get support from Genentech when we have issues and other things. You know, one of the things we wanna highlight here is we are going to there's actually a little error. We put three year it's actually a five year renewal. And For the same amount? It is same amount.

You do that?

And we are you know, just to point out, by doing a five year agreement with them, we're gonna be saving just over $36,000 as a five year agreement. You Genentech has been foundational here for over ten years. We're not seeing it going anywhere. They are one of the industry leaders in security systems. You you know, just the last project we were talking about, those 25 cameras will be getting added to our Genentech system. This is how not only our security in the city works, the PD uses this also for a lot of their projects and a lot of their camera systems. It basically, all cameras flow into Genentech at some point. So this is just our baseline, you know, support and licensing agreements.

Any questions? Motion?

Motion to approve.

Second. All in favor?

Aye. Aye. Okay.

Next item, seventy nine ninety or 70. 97. 9779. Oh, boy. I've become dyslexic today. 9779, award of contract to Heartland Business Systems for VMware annual renewal in the amount of $66,014.08.

Did you skip that? Yeah. You skipped the That's great. We we can talk about VMware first if you want, and then we'll we can go back. Why?

We're all

over the agenda today. It's okay. We really had

to move this

to, like, 11:00.

Well, we'll just do that one first.

How often am I presenting this?

So VMware is essentially, this is the virtual this is the software that allows us to manage our virtual servers. This is kind of the software side of it. The other item we'll talk about is the hardware side, but this is this allows us to create new virtual servers, manage them, move them about our and move them within our infrastructure, and it is just basically a management tool. We're only doing a one year renewal on this. We're actually hoping to do some projects over the next twelve months to move away from VMware.

So we didn't wanna do a multiyear agreement. VMware was acquired by another company called Broadcom, and Broadcom has not been very flexible on pricing. And we're so even though VMware itself is a really good product, the costs have started creeping up quite rapidly. And because it's such a you you have to have software like this to run it. We're actually looking at some other alternatives, and we're hoping I'm hoping to be sitting here this time next year talking to you about a whole different product that we've moved to that is significantly cheaper.

But we are kind of we've been a VMware shop for probably over twenty years here. VMware has been kind of a a staple, but they are getting a little pricey. So hence the reason why it's only a one year agreement on this.

And what is their essential role? I'm sorry.

It is for the creation of any of our virtual servers. So we have about 90 80 to 90 virtual servers. And this is from everything you could think of from, you know, your SQL servers databases to your print servers. You know, our laser fish runs on this. And every one of those is a virtual server. You know? If you think back, you know, twenty years ago, you'd walk into a server room and it was all individual actual boxes. Nowadays, we have one stack of hardware and all the servers themselves are actually just logical. There there's no physical piece to that any longer.

Any questions? Okay. Shall shall we approve the out of order number?

Most voted approved. Sergeant. All in favor? Aye. Aye.

Okay. So now we'll go back to 9778. Award of contract to CDWG for the Nutanix cloud infrastructure subscription licensing and hardware support renewal in the amount of a $101,687.68.

Yep. So now this one, this is actually the licensing for the hardware side of our servers. This allows us to have, you know, typical hardware support. And, again, we're only doing a one year agreement on this renewal because we're we're purchasing new hardware this earlier this year. And we at any given time, we have 12 of they're called nodes in the Nutanix world.

So we have 12 nodes. We're doing a one year renewal here because we're actually be all of our licensing next year for some savings there. So these are just a handful of the servers, our oldest ones that need to be renewed for one year. And then we'll be doing a bigger agreement next year to everything, probably see some discount discounting at that time. But this is just kind of the the the hardware side of the house and the licensing required for that. Any

questions?

Motion to approve. Second.

All in favor? Aye. Aye. So now let's see where we're

at now.

9780, awarded contract to evolve for the three year renewal of project docs premium bundle in the amount of a $129,210.

So project docs is our e plan review software. We partnered with evolve back in 2021. This just allows for digital plan submission, parallel department reviews, twenty four seven access for applicants to to see the status on on the plans that they've submitted. This has brought in significant, city staff efficiency, and applicant transparency. We've used it for five years now.

New for 2026, we want to upgrade to the premium bundle. This is a bundle of new tools, that have just been launched, and this includes GIS integration, mobile apps. The mobile apps are pretty actually, we saw a demo of them yesterday yesterday again. And the the it allows the building inspectors to do real time annotations while they're out in the field doing inspections.

What we've been waiting

for. Yes. You know, instead of taking their notes and then going back into the office and putting them in. Really, really cool tool. And actually, good to note is this will work directly with our e p and l, which was just approved enterprise permitting and licensing to kind of revamp everything in community development. So this will actually work right with e p and l just for more seamless

Continuity. Yes.

So additional to the GIS integration, the mobile apps is AI assisted review, which will not only assist city staff in in in in their review, but it will also be there to guide applicants as they put in their their plan submission, answering questions and kind of pointing things out to them. So there's that. And then expanded reporting and analytics which would be used internal by, like, management staff to stay on top of kind of where all of the different review and projects are at.

How will that work?

I am going to let Jessica take some of these day to day questions. She just came back from Evolve's conference where they they really covered all of these new tools a lot. So I'll let her handle some of these details for day to day.

Yeah. So the analytics, it's it's gonna be called insights. And where it's gonna begin is you're gonna get a nice dashboard that trickles down into the smallest of details of anything in project docs. But where it goes into the future is then we now create our own reports based on whatever we want for no cost. And then from there, we create our own reports and then we use natural language.

So something as simple as give me all solar permits for 2024, and it will generate that. And then if we want to trickle it down to which contractor or which area or anything, like to the detail, we are able to do that with analytics. And it's so prior, we have never created any unique reports. We just use what they've given us, and that's really just user. We're just identifying what the users are doing, which hasn't really been helpful. In the future, we won't have to pay, but we can create whatever report we want based on data rather than user. Sounds a lot

like the system for the police that we put in where they could just You know,

bring Yeah.

Bring it out together. Yeah. Sounds very, very good. Yeah.

And then with with these other

And this is part of this cost. Right?

Yes. Yeah. Everything's included. And then with the GIS, the AI, the insights, and the mobile, all of that coordinates together. So where AI is being used in this fashion, it can also be used with the GIS. Data that we pull in review can get pushed out by AI to GIS to create a layer and details in those layers. So it's all very, like, circular like, central. Everything's using each other systems. E p and l is gonna communicate with project docs that communicates to laser fish, and then all

that comes back too. So it's like an ecosystem. Yeah. Same thing. It's great. It's awesome.

This was tied to the, like, the permitting and stuff. Right? That the permit? Mhmm. So is there gonna be, an app that, like, as an end user myself or who are applying for a permit that they can have that app and then keep it like, keep track of where their permit's at and stuff like that or comment.

So unfortunately, at this time, everything application wise is on paper. But with e p and l onboarding, everything will be digital, and it'll cross into at the click of a button from your application where it starts all the way into review, all the way coming back to payment and processing. And then into Laserfiche for filing. And then if we really get creative with it, a GIS development map could be created where you go on to a map, find a location, and all of

that's available. For where the project is. Correct?

Yeah. All the way into inspections and closeout.

Wow. So no more paper applications type

of thing? Correct.

Okay. And then, obviously, the app and you can do it on the website as well. Right? Okay.

Any other questions?

K. I'm I'm assuming it's user friendly. Right? It's for the people that don't know how to use it or, like me, I'm not a tech guy.

So

Yeah. That's just Probably a show. I know how to do it. But

the yeah. With the implementation, it's really how we build it. But the goal, it should be user friendly. Okay. That's that should

be Or it's useless. Correct. Yeah. Or else what are we doing? Yeah. Right.

Okay. Also wanna point out that this is a three year renewal. Instead of a year to year, we did this, and it is approximately a 6% increase year over year, which typical would be, like, a 10% increase year over year. So this will add in some cost savings for us during the three year.

Motion to approve. Second.

All in favor? Aye. Okay. Old or new business, not for final action or recommendation? Anything? Alright. Public comment. We still have no public.

We have a motion. Motion to hear.

So moved.

All in favor? Aye. Aye. Thank you.

Thank you, guys. Thank you. You guys have a good nice new day. See you guys. See you. See later. Alright.