Communication, Technology & Information Systems Committee - Regular Meeting

Good morning. Welcome to the Community Communication Technology and Information Systems Committee for August 5th, 2026, 830 in the Executive Conference Room. In attendance, please call your names out. Councilman Juan Moreno. Councilman Cardenas. And Councilman Sherry Reardon. Approval of the minutes, do I have, have you reviewed them and can you? Second. All in favor? Aye. We have no citizens here to be heard on agenda items, so we'll move to our first agenda item, which is 9931, award of contract to Sierra ITS for professional service funding in the amount of $275,000.

Okay, so Sierra is a company we have done business with throughout the years. They provide contract services. They're a staff, they oftentimes find a staff augmentation The primary reason why we're going for this contract or this agreement this year is in preparation for the large enterprise permitting and licensing project we're going to be doing over the next 12 to 18 months. We're looking to get out of this two positions primarily. One is a full-time project manager to help us manage that whole project. As we've talked in the past, that project is going to be Most departments in the city are going to be impacted in some way, but heavily in the community development area, the finance area, and the business license area are going to be very heavily impacted. As you guys know, coordinating that many people, that many moving parts, you really need somebody managing that. On the other hand, this is a position we need after the project is over, so contract services just makes a lot of sense. We also have a lot of initiatives going on right now in the HR area. We're trying to automate a huge amount of work over there. So we're looking at bringing in a temporary HRIS person. So this would be a technology specialist that has done major work HR initiatives throughout the years. And again, this is not somebody we would need long-term. This is a short-term need while we're doing these projects. We're trying to get things automated such as when you apply for a job. online here right now it's uh you're going out and you're filling out pdf forms right this should all be like online submittals uh internal tracking on those submittals all of the things you would consider normal in a you know 2026 hr group we're trying to modernize all of that across the board we would like to bring a specialist in to help us through that process um so those are is there any um

Is there any, like, so I know, like, I want to start, like, so through our website, and when you mentioned that, right, because I do websites as well, like, there's forms of stuff that you can build in throughout the website that people can just, like, even if it's the basic and upload the resume, is that something separate that is being looked for through the HR department, like, through some different, or would this person hired help kind of utilize our website and build out that portion of it to be able to put this online, or is this, like, a whole other thing? No, there'd be no extra cost for the software side. We actually own all that software already. That is part of our... This person would help us utilize our software that we currently have to better use it to its capacity where it can be used for. Yes.

We need somebody to help them get up to speed on using what we currently own because that's exactly how it works. It would be fully integrated within the website and then also pass that information automatically into the ERP unit for long term. know whatever we need to do it there the actual flows for like that in particular is really nice if we were utilizing every component it would you would apply for a position that would actually follow you all the way through the cycle to becoming an employee if you were hired and all that information would automatically put in there would be our data entry work significantly helps the whole workflow process I don't know how much change anyone in like leadership or whatnot to kind of really know how everything is used so in case you do have new people coming in you're already at that point familiar with what you're doing so that we're not continuously having to hire outside that do the same thing over and over oh yeah we can track things it's a there's some other modules in the HR world we want to track like certifications additional education people have gotten you know I think there's like the things we we need to be tracking that we are tracking in kind of miscellaneous ways. Let's just like people's CDL license and expirations and things of that nature.

I think maybe you were talking about actually the trained people to continue this journey going forward. Yeah, more in general. Like how are they going to get – how are the staff going to get trained so that they're utilizing it to its full potential once we have it to its full potential?

Because let's just say they do create something for HR. They would have filled out their application online and do whatnot. But then you should almost be able to then do that for other departments, for other – purposes right like so if we build our stuff online now currently on websites we could do that i could create a forum online for someone upload their you know resume and everything else, but then I can also create an online form to sign up for the parade this month, and then this is the information I need because I'm able to then create the form how I want it and what information I need and what they can upload. So, again, having someone here in the city that would learn how to kind of create that and do that, so moving forward, you know, and not just hire a professional.

Sorry, my bad. You kind of lost me on this. So we got to hire a temporary HR specialist. Yeah, you said HR specialist.

Yeah. This is a person who specializes in implementing HR technology. It's more of a technology person. This is more of a technology person. This would be like an IT person that has specialized, like throughout their career has worked in the HR.

Special programs or stuff like that. Yes. I mean, are they really that hard to implement or use? Don't use, for example, No, I feel like it's something that we can do already internally, but maybe I'm just not grasping it fully.

It's more of an issue of capacity. I only have three analysts right now. My analysts now are going to be tied up for at least two of them will be almost fully dedicated to the EP&L project for the next 12 to 18 months. And we've We're kind of in a situation where we don't want to wait that long to do all of the HR components that are needed. So bringing this person on just kind of makes that go more rapidly. To your point, though, like long-term support of all of that, that would be our normal internal team. So we could do it then.

Yes.

My team is more than capable of doing these things. It's just a capacity.

I mean, I think maybe part of the high that you missed is because you came in, you know, this just current term. Before that, we were talking about all the papers that everything HR was and how they had to back scan all these papers into the systems to save them, and it was all done that way, data entry, blah, blah, blah. So I assume, like, when you say, and this is, again, me and my lack of, you know, knowledge of how you're saying it, We currently have where they fill out a PDF and then they, like, what do they print it and fill it out? Or do they fill it out and then submit it? Or how will it differ now? I mean, if you could submit the PDF, how is it different than what you're saying?

Now they would actually, so not right now when they fill out a PDF.

We did recently build a lightweight utilizing our laserfiche system. We utilize the forms there to build an online application where they can upload resumes. So we did just do that to help the HR staff so they're not getting so much paper. But it's still a very broken process you know folks are submitting this online form and then they still have a high touch where they're you know looking at that form and they're reviewing it and then they're passing that application on to city staff for review and then once a hire is made an offer was made They're still doing manual data entry into the ERP system, which is long-term employee tracking. So in moving forward with a lot of these initiatives that the HRIS person would come on for is to move that application to... utilize more of the HR module in the ERP and put the application there. So then there's a behind-the-scenes workflow that says, okay, application is submitted, send it to HR, and HR does their quick review, says, you know, send it off to the hiring manager, and then hiring manager says, reviews once an offer is made button is clicked in ERP and none of that data entry has to happen so it's very seamless workflow it's not clunky there are multiple systems in place so it just makes the whole process a lot smoother start to finish and that you know not having to do a lot of that manual data entry reduces a lot of errors You know, folks, you know, you know. So that's the purpose of part of the projects that we're trying to do with HR, that just the team, like Chris said, the IT team just does not have the bandwidth because we have so many projects in motion. And this person that we would be looking to bring on would be special They're well-versed in HR. They understand what the rules and the regulations and the processes that HR would want to have in place versus someone on my team who looks more at sometimes they're more well-versed in the financials because they've implemented that before or in a different piece of software. So this person would be very focused and dedicated and experienced in just HR. Is that right?

Yeah. Okay. So then would we say, would it be safe to say that the $275,000 for this professional service funding, right, we're going to say is going to be the advantage towards versus just hiring someone. We only get one person that's going to be versed in that. But with this funding, we can potentially have three, four, or five different people come in. Oh, absolutely. And different projects and help out to make sure that we're capitalizing on the paid permitting process and then having that. So versus having one person that just knows the one thing, we're going to have access to multiple people, professionals, to help us.

Yeah, and this is a not-to-exceed amount, right? We only pay for hours. Hours, yeah. This isn't like an agreement for us to pay $275. This is a not-to-exceed amount. Yeah, it's just an up to that amount.

But versus hiring one person, we have access to multiple professionals. We can go out there and help them when we're trying to build up. That makes sense. I'm satisfied. Motion to approve? Second.

All in favor? Aye. Okay, our next agenda item, 9933, award contract to CDWG for the renewal of Cradle Point NetCloud mobile router licensing in the amount of $49,207.09. Okay, so Cradle Point Devices, this is our...

mobile routers that we have in all of our public safety vehicles. So quite a few years back, we made a transition from instead of putting like old school like air cards in individual laptops and individual devices, which was causing us to licensed two to three devices per vehicle. Instead, we put a mobile router in the vehicle and then it almost turns it into a mobile office. And this is, we do this in every squad car, all the fire apparatus, all the fire engines, all of those things. And there's a couple of like side benefits to it. One of them being during major incidents, because we now have a collection of vehicles there, it actually creates like a like a Wi-Fi zone that other staff, like so if the ARSEN inspectors were to come in during that, they would actually be able to just pick up their regular iPad and walk into that area. And the vehicles have now created a mesh network of Wi-Fi signal that all comes back into the city. We use what's called private Verizon. What that means is we have a private network within the Verizon cellular network that our devices ride on. So when an officer is in the squad car, there's really no difference in their ability to access resources than if they were sitting at their desk and We've done this for quite a few years. It's a great methodology. It's worked for service really well. This is simply just renewing our annual license.

How did it come in compared to last year?

It was roughly the same. It would probably just be a minor increase.

And it could potentially be a little bit of an increase as well because as we add new devices. We do have them all co-termed as the big renewal comes around. We co-term everything. So there are likely more devices on this renewal than there were last year. Any questions?

Any motion? Motion to approve. Second. All in favor? Aye. Now number... Agenda item 10140, award of contract to Levineau for 2026 PC lifestyle program in the amount of $85,000.

Okay, so our... Lenovo, sorry.

Lenovo, yes.

Okay.

It's a warning.

Yeah, it is true.

Yeah, you want me way better at 630 at night. I know what you meant. Lenovo.

Our PC lifecycle program is an item we bring forward every year. This is just simply replacement of our laptop, our standard laptops and desktops throughout the city. We tend to try to do a four-year lifecycle on laptops and a five-year lifecycle on desktops. This program allows us to continuously replace the bottom, the oldest devices in the environment. We are looking at, so what we do contractually with Lenovo, quite a few years back, we used to go through different vendors and whatnot. We are a big enough customer of Lenovo, we now work with them directly to ensure competitive pricing. We do go off of a state contract to keep everything fair and even. The pinch we're gonna have this year is, as you guys have probably heard in the news, I'm sure you've heard that hardware costs are significantly higher than they used to be. So we're even internally looking at What we could do to extend this, can we go to six years on desktops, five years on laptops? Just because the costs are, we're looking at anywhere from $200 to $500 more expensive per device.

Would you say that in today's age, being that a lot of stuff is online, right, it's not so much heavy on the desktop itself and or the laptop, that you could extend it longer because it is more web-based software that we're using and or everyone is using our more, you know, again, we're building out our own internal network. What am I looking for? storage, right, so a lot of that stuff, so it's not very dependent, it's more or less just needs to be very Wi-Fi capable and speed that way, so would that help extend that?

100% agree with you. So a few things we've done, we actually came to the four year, five years, because we recognized that a couple years ago, we used to be on a much shorter cycle of like, like three years for a laptop and four years for a desktop. We slowly started stretching it because you're right, we are, as an organization, we are almost at 85%, I would say, of our major applications are all web-based. It's all cloud-based. All of the compute is happening in the cloud now. So all that heavy processing that used to happen locally is now done in the cloud. So most of our applications are run through the browser at this point. So as long as your device is connecting to the Internet and you have a really strong Internet connection, you're usually fine. And that's why we think we can get away with stretching it a little bit. Where we're starting to get a little concerned is, you know, at that point now, so Lenovo offers, you know, we do three-year warranties with Lenovo. So that means some of our devices will be like three years out of warranty. It starts to get a little bit worried about like just hardware failures, but we have started looking into third party like companies that would extend our warranty or offer service to keep the devices running longer. Honestly, it's kind of crazy. We're in a situation where hardware has gotten to the point where it's that expensive that we're really considering how can we find alternative ways to repair the limit instead of just, you know, it used to be you just throw in the garbage and buy a new one.

Supply and demand. They don't need them as many, so now they're common.

PC for like the laptops or something like that? Because they tend to last. I mean, I still got a 2011 model that I'm using.

I was about to say the same thing.

I mean, they're more expensive than the PCs, but they last. Especially in the web-based side.

Yeah, and I will say Lenovo, because we buy business class Lenovo, so They're not the same thing like consumers buy off the shelf. They go through a lot more quality control and everything. So we don't tend to have a whole lot of hardware failures on Lenovo. We tend to run them right up to the end of their life without much of a problem. We have not looked into the Apple world.

I was going to say, so right now we are replacing them once they're getting older, right? We're not replacing them because they're breaking. Technically, right?

Yeah, we just have it. It's a planned replacement site.

Can we just replace it once it breaks type of thing and keep a little stockpile of backup computers? I'm assuming we probably do.

We always do. We always have some number of devices on the shelf. The issue is we used to live in that world. I can tell you when IT was first kind of forming, that's the world we lived in then. It's a maintenance nightmare because people are constantly going down then. Their equipment's failing. You don't want to have our police officers with failing laptops and stuff in the middle of the thing because we failed.

to wait until it dies. I get the idea. In general, because it's a computer program, but I get the idea. It's a good idea, but essentially it could become a nightmare in that sense. You're always reactive to it. You're going to spend more man hours trying to figure out why is this 10-year-old laptop failing when it's 10 years old. The setup isn't quick sometimes.

We just got out of the fleet management that way, so let's keep this going. Just a curiosity, do we use the warranty often?

I mean, considering the size of our fleet, we probably send devices maybe once a month. And it's not a huge amount, but it does save us a lot of money. Because the warranty covers everything, which is a little more common. It's things like somebody leaves a pen on the And they crack their screen. It's a lot of things like that. We don't tend to have internal failures very often anymore because there's no moving parts left in these devices. So it used to be the warranties were big because you had the spinning hard drive and the hard drives would fail. Now everything is, because there's no moving parts in there, those components are usually really solid now. It is usually the, I dropped it. We very rarely send desktops back. It's not a huge amount of those. It tends to be the laptops.

Desktops still have those components, and that's kind of funny to me.

But I would ask that maybe we look into it. I know this year we're good, but maybe look into Apple and get some comparisons. Because, I mean, at the end of the day, we got iPads. And, you know, I'm an Apple guy. And I just feel like, you know, I went from a PC world to Apple. And it's just so much more. I mean, it's quicker. And, again, it lasts longer, you know. But, you know, maybe just see that comparison price-wise and then put that life cycle with me and find something that way. Yeah, absolutely.

But you have to X out on the other side. Can you tell I've had both?

I do a motion to approve.

Second. All in favor? Aye. Okay. We'll move on to item 10141. award of contract to SHI for a three-year Microsoft Enterprise Licensing Agreement in the amount not to exceed $1,278,214.47. So this year we went out to...

RFP for our Microsoft agreement. What we have with Microsoft is called an EA agreement. There's a couple different ways they license organizations. Government usually finds the best value in going with an enterprise agreement with Microsoft. It allows us a bunch of other services. We have an actual Microsoft account manager. We're in talks with them. I probably talk to our account manager once a week. on our different licensing. They offer a significant amount of training for my team. It's all part of the EA agreement that you don't get if you go with their other licensing model, which is a CSP license. This is just our typical three-year Microsoft agreement. This covers everything from Microsoft Office that we use on all of our machines to the actual OS license. It also covers things like our SQL servers, all of our server environment, all of our Windows servers throughout the environment. Basically everything Microsoft has all put into this. The typical way this works is You'll see that this kind of scales up a little bit, and that is we anticipate as we bring on new employees and other things over the next three years, we need additional funding each year. Because Microsoft does a true-up, so that means usually around this time every year, I would get some forms from Microsoft that says, well, what licensing are you currently using? We go through, we run some tools on our environment, it collects the full amount of licensing we are using, and then we send that information to them, and that makes any adjustments on our licensing levels. So they don't, basically we can add new licensing as we need it throughout the year, and then we have a time period every year where we have to, like, come clean, and we have additional licensing, essentially. And then we make an adjustment at that point. The price of this has increased, like most things in technology. Not significantly, we actually spent Probably about four or five months this year leading up to this renewal, really trimming away. We did a big cleanup project in our world to make sure that things or people were not licensed at a higher level than they needed. One of the bigger expenses is the individual licensing that employees need. We spent a lot of time adjusting. We have two different licenses we use. We have a G3 license, which is what your typical office worker would have that allows you to download the apps and other things on your computer. And then we have what is called an E3 license. And that license is what you would give to your field workers, individuals that they need access to things like email and other ways of communicating, you know, teams and things like that. But they don't sit at a desk. They don't need, you know, they don't need to download Word out of their desk. That license is a quarter of the cost of the first one. So that was a big, you know, a way we kept costs down significantly was by ensuring that our field workers were licensed more appropriately and not just making a blanket statement. Well, it's easy. Just give everybody a G3 and call it a day. Then they can do whatever they want. Now we, you know, for example, I mean, Everybody in the fire, like all firefighters, are on a E-license. You know, those were a huge savings for us. We migrated them from a G3 down. Unfortunately, Microsoft licensing is just expensive, as you guys can guess. So costs do go up every time we do an EA. That's why we like to lock in the three-year, because... Any additional license we purchase over the next three years is locked in at today's cost. So it saves us for three years and then they kind of get us the next time we're in the market.

Have you noticed that any of the ones that you've downgraded, the E license, that you've had to reverse that and change it?

Typically, no. What will happen is people, as they move up in the organization, they'll be converted to a G license if they change position. If you're a BC in the fire department, you have a G license, right? Because you do actually do paperwork and all those other things. So as that happens, we'll change the license there. But then that's usually offset by the newer individual coming in or going to be licensed. There's occasionally, these are our storage reduction limits. But we actually, our help desk is really good about if we have anybody that's on an e-license, if they run out of storage for some reason, they get in touch with them. They work with them, show them how to clean things up and show them where they can store things differently. So we have a whole system kind of worked out to ensure that it works well for us. Okay. All right. Motion to approve. Second.

All in favor? Aye. Okay. 1-2-1-0-1-4-2. Award of contract. Oh, wait. I'm sorry. Award of contract to Video Tech for access, control, and surveillance at 9 Osgoode in the amount of $72,927. Okay. So this is the.

Nine Osgood. Yeah, this is what we internally call the PACE building. This is the, as we're ramping up to start utilizing that building, we need to get proper door access control, security cameras, that whole project. We actually went out to RFP for this just because it was a larger project. We had three vendors submitted for that. We took the, actually, which is Video Tech. They are a company we have done a good amount of work with over the years. So that actually worked out really well for us. We were happy with that selection. This is going to be, you know, four exterior cameras, interiors, so three different interior cameras, a couple cameras that are just on the vehicle entrances, and then we're going to have badge readers throughout the building is the primary goal. This is just the security throughout the building.

Any questions? Okay.

Motion to approve. Second.

All in favor? Aye. Okay. New rule of business, not for final action and recommendation. Okay. We have a motion to adjourn.