By Cecilia Chan
Independent Newsmedia

City staff last week spent two hours presenting its case to spend about $6 million in taxpayers dollars to buy a new software system that they say will help them become more efficient.

Some City Council members, however, were not buying it, asking for more details to be discussed at a later date.

“This was a well-thought-out decision, recommending something right for Glendale,” Assistant City Manager Tom Duensing said.

Mr. Duensing said buying Tyler Technologies’ Munis Financial System to handle the city’s financial system and human resources would allow staff to be proactive verses reactive.

The city currently uses PeopleSoft for finance, human resources and payroll, which does not integrate with other data systems such as budget and risk management, thus requiring employees to manually input the information, which takes more time and can result in mistakes, according to Vicki Rios, Budget and Finance director.

She said the lack of efficiency is costing the city; 19,562 man hours annually at an estimated price tag of $703,475.

Staff proposed the new, more-user friendly system because the future of PeopleSoft is unclear. Ms. Rios said the owner Oracle is phasing out PeopleSoft, migrating clients to other systems and it is becoming harder to find people able to support the old software.

The city can, however, spend $1 million to upgrade PeopleSoft to the next version and receive support until 2027 but that upgrade would not have any new benefits unlike the new system and the city would still need to buy a new ERP in the future, she said.

Tyler’s Munis will allow for a number of functions, including tracking of spending, paying vendors, recruiting employees.

For instance, the system, which would take two years to implement, would track sales tax revenue and let the city know if it is where it should be or lagging behind, Mr. Duensing said.

The system’s annual on-going cost is about $998,000. The $6 million would cover the first two years of the on-going costs, Ms. Rios said.

City Manager Kevin Phelps said spending the money will not take away from the city’s efforts to build a $50 million reserve fund. The purchase will be cash-funded from the general fund and various departments such as water and sewer and landfill.

“This is a significant capital investment, there’s no way to get around that,” he said. “This touches almost every function and employee. We believe in going forward. This is absolutely the right investment for the city. ”

Three Council members questioned the spending.

Councilwoman Lauren Tolmachoff, however, was not too sure and asked how taxpayers would benefit from the purchase of the new software system.

“I’m sitting up here looking out for the taxpayers,” she said. “Down the road how does this help them?”

Mr. Duensing said that was hard to say what the cost savings would be until the system was up and running.

Ms. Rios said it is difficult to say if the new system would mean elimination of positions.
allow the city offer more without adding more staff.

But she said, “you can grow your service levels without adding more staff.”

Councilman Ray Malnar said if the city moves forward with the system, he advised staff to keep track of the savings gained from it and how staff hours are re-allocated in departments to improve service.

Councilman Jamie Aldama said the cost was a difficult pill to swallow.

“First we don’t know as asked by Council member Tolmachoff what is the benefit to citizens,” he said. “But we do know where we can put $6 million.”

He took to task the staff report stating the city’s bond rating would drop if the city maintained the status quo. He called the statement a “strong-arm” tactic to get the council to approve the spending. He noted the city’s bond rating recently was upgraded under the old system.

“While manually inputing...there is the potential of making errors but not to the extent of the bond rating will go down,” he said.

Ms. Rios responded the bond rating has nothing to do with manual entry but it would drop if the city did nothing, no upgrade to PeopleSoft or a new ERP, and ended up with an unsupported system.

Councilman Aldama said he understands why staff wanted a system that would make it more efficient and if staff could cut out some of the system’s cost such as hiring a full-time project manager from Tyler, he could be a bit more supportive.

“This afternoon, you spent nearly two hours on informing, selling us on a system,” Councilwoman Joyce Clark said. “A system you contend will be faster, easier and more efficient.”

She asked if the city upgraded PeopleSoft, how long would there be support.
Ms. Rios said until 2027.

“So, I want to make it clear there is an option out there to upgrade PeopleSoft and support will continue for another 10 years,” Ms. Clark said. “I think that is an important thing to keep in mind.”

That said, one thing that concerned her is the city in 2015 spent $1.2 million to upgrade PeopleSoft for the Human Resources department, which will be supported through 2027.

She said she is not opposed to a new system for the city’s finance department but not sold on a new system for human resources.

“I feel like we just paid 16 months ago, $1.2 million for a system,” she said. “I’m uncomfortable with moving forward with HR at this time.”

She said she sided with Council members Tolmachoff and Aldama’s concern about the new system’s benefits for taxpayers.

“I’m not sure there is a benefit to taxpayers but there’re benefits for staff, which they made abundantly clear,” she said.

She also took issue that the Council will not know the final cost of the contract until the May 23 voting meeting.

She said staff has been working on the issue since last year and should have had a “pretty clear idea’ what the cost will be.

Councilwoman Tolmachoff wanted to know the costs for human resources and financial separately, which staff could not provide at the meeting.

Council members raised other questions prompting the city manager to say they needed more time to get things in order.