Committee Meeting on Payroll Modernization Update - September 23, 2025
Committee Meeting on Payroll Modernization Update - September 23, 2025
The Syracuse City Council committee met on September 23, 2025, to receive an update on the payroll modernization project. Commissioner of Finance Mike Canazero and project manager Josh Larson presented progress on timekeeping rollout (SWC and Telestaff) and proposed a new $900,000 expenditure for implementation services (Mosaic Consulting Group) to adopt UKG Pro as the new Human Capital Management (HCM) system, replacing the legacy AS400 system. Council members expressed skepticism based on past failed attempts and concerns about urgency, cost, and internal capacity. No vote was taken on the request; the committee agreed to continue discussions and consider monthly updates and possible third-party consultation.
Discussion Items
- Timekeeping Rollout Progress: Since the last committee meeting on April 14, 2025, the city has made significant progress on deploying SWC (Workforce Central) timekeeping software. Water Department has been live for several weeks, and every department has been reached—either trained, in parallel testing, or live. The goal is to complete rollout to all remaining departments (DPW, One Park Place, City Hall) by the end of calendar year 2025. The rollout is being done internally with minimal external contractors, reducing costs.
- HCM System Selection: The city previously evaluated Oracle Fusion but decided it was not the best fit due to high ongoing costs and need for internal IT staff. Instead, after a competitive RFP process, the administration selected UKG Pro, which integrates seamlessly with existing UKG timekeeping products (SWC and Telestaff). Implementation services will be provided by Mosaic Consulting Group. The annual license cost for UKG Pro is approximately $745,000 to $750,000, which includes support and maintenance (SaaS model).
- Request for $900,000: The new request is for $900,000 to fund implementation services (Mosaic) and initial migration work. This would come from the previously authorized capital project (City Software Systems Project), which still has $2.5 million remaining out of $6.5 million originally authorized. The funds are already bonded, so interest is being paid on the unspent balance.
- Urgency and Timeline: A key driver is the end-of-life for the current Workforce Central timekeeping software (on-premise) on March 31, 2027. If not migrated to the new product (Workforce Dimensions) by that date, the city would revert to paper timesheets. The plan is to have UKG Pro operational by Q2 2026 and complete migration of timekeeping to Workforce Dimensions by March 31, 2027. However, council members noted that past Gantt charts have repeatedly slipped and expressed doubt about this timeline.
- Internal Capabilities and Aging Workforce: The current payroll/IT team supporting the AS400 is aging: two employees are already retired but working full-time hours, two are near retirement, and three are further away. The city lacks in-house expertise to maintain the AS400 for payroll long-term. The new SaaS model would offload maintenance to UKG, reducing the need for niche programmers.
- Council Skepticism and Concerns: Council members (including Councillors Caldwell, Holden, and others) voiced skepticism based on years of failed attempts (PeopleSoft, Oracle). They questioned whether the administration has sufficiently mapped business processes and documented workflows, regardless of software choice. Concerns were raised about the urgency of approving the $900,000 request with only ~100 days left in the current administration, and whether a new administration might have different priorities. The annual recurring cost of $745,000+ was also a concern.
- Comparison to Other Municipalities: The administration checked references for UKG Pro and Mosaic, including municipalities like Seattle, Detroit, and South Bend, Indiana, which reported positive experiences—especially with Mosaic as an implementation partner.
- Training and User Concerns: Some employees are nervous about the transition. The city has offered training sessions and plans additional sessions. The new system will include rounding rules (seven-minute grace) for clock-in times and require supervisor approval for early punches.
Key Outcomes
- No Decision on $900,000 Request: The committee did not vote on the proposed expenditure. Council members asked for more time to digest the information and suggested monthly or quarterly updates.
- Continued SWC Rollout: The administration will proceed with rolling out SWC timekeeping to remaining departments, with a goal of year-end 2025.
- Potential Third-Party Consultation: Commissioner Canazero offered to consider a third-party consultant, as recommended by a prior IT audit, to act as a liaison between the council and administration to build trust.
- Future Committee Meetings: The committee agreed to continue discussions, possibly with more frequent updates.
- Motion to Adjourn: The meeting was adjourned by motion (seconded) after the discussion.
Meeting Transcript
Um thank you for joining us today. We are here for committee meeting to discuss um our payroll modernization. Joined by Councillor Hogan, Nabe, President Hudson, Gethers, Monto, Paniagua. Um and some individuals from the administration, if you guys want to introduce yourselves. Yeah, Mike Canazero, Commissioner of Finance. Josh Larson, uh project manager in the API office. Sound good. Um I guess we'll get an update. Uh I'm assuming that's kind of where you want to go give us an update, and then we can kind of go down the path of the 900 million dollar or 900 million dollar, pardon me. But uh,000 requests in front of the council currently and you know, where we're gonna head in the future. That's good, thank you. Um so yeah, Mike Kenazar, Commissioner of Finance. Um I think we got about 10, 12 slides we wanted to go through, but just um some background. The last time we met um as far as the committee meeting was April 14th, so a little bit more than five months ago. Um the goal for today's uh committee meeting is to kind of give you an update on the the status on the progress that we've made in the last five and a half months, and then our our new request. Um so I think on April 14th, where we left you was you know, reevaluating that HRIS or HCM um software, Oracle Fusion was um you know, the the uh the previous software we were discussing and building out, um, whereas now the the new ask um as far as this mosaic uh RFP is for UKG Pro. Um so if you could just go to the next slide. Um so yeah, kind of just gave you the uh recap. We're gonna talk about our um updates for timekeeping in HCM, um, next steps for the project, and then we'll go over questions as well. And so a memo was distributed last night. Um I think all council members should have it. So if you have any questions on that as well, um I would just ask for you to let us get through that presentation and we can kind of go through all those questions at the end. Um so next slide. Um so short term, mid medium-term, long-term, why are we doing this? Um I I've been up here numerous times at this point, just talking about how manual and duplicative a lot of the processes are in uh the payroll timekeeping process, um, employees manually typing uh time cards into spreadsheets, spreadsheets getting typed into AS400, AS400 reports getting typed into different instances of AS400. Um so really the the goal is to utilize technology and streamline um some of our processes. Um why are we coming to you now? Um to touch upon that that mid-term uh AS400 um city's been using it for at least I believe the last 30 years, uh maybe a little bit longer than that. Um it is not a software that we think is viable for the city long term to continue paying employees out of. And the reason that is uh a lot of the employees um are nearing retirement age. Um so we have a little graphic on the right there that's kind of supposed to illustrate the current makeup of the the payroll team and the IT team. Um I think the yellow shade outlined employees are we we have two current retirees that work full-time hours that work every week um to help with payroll processing. Uh we have the the two um employees shaded in white that we have employees that are nearing uh retirement age that you know at the drop of a hat they can decide that they want to retire, and then three employees in the uh the payroll team that you know are still a few years away from retirement age. So really what we're trying to do now is contingency planning of you know, when when this workforce um retires, how do we pay our employees? Um that that's that's what this ask is. Um, really a lot of contingency planning for that next generation of city workers. How do we process their payroll? How do they interact with HR, how do we track their demographics? Um, so a lot of that would be the long-term you know, utilizing data and just a much better payroll and HR experience um for the city. So I will hand it over to Josh to go over the overview of systems, and it is very warm in here. I don't know if that's just me. Go ahead. All right, so I'm gonna start off on this slide, which you might recognize from back when we were here in April. Uh just want to start here because I know when we're talking about systems, it can feel kind of abstract and hard to follow what exactly is going on. So uh as a reminder, this is kind of the the simplest overview I can provide right now is we've got timekeeping on one side, we've got the the HCM human capital management system, which is on the right side. Uh and ideally, you know, this is supposed to be kind of a cycle where timekeeping information goes in and out, and those systems are working together, and and through that cycle, employees are paid. So uh we kind of have updates on both of those sides. Uh timekeeping is you know, SWC and telestaff, which uh I've got some some pretty substantive updates there. Uh and if you remember last time, the the HCM side of this was a little bit more of the question mark because at that time we were still evaluating were we going to continue implementing Oracle and building that out. So we'll we'll touch on both of those as we go forward.
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