Item four is approval of minutes.

As I mentioned before our meeting, um our January minutes did not uh get attached, so we'll hold those over till our next meeting to get approved.

Um that takes us to item five, which is our business items.

We have a few uh items to talk about tonight.

And 5A is to review and approve a contract with Main Star for a new permitting code enforcement and inspection system.

Chris, you want to kick this off?

Yeah, sure.

Um our current uh building permit code enforcement um sys system went in in 2014, and um I a couple years ago they gave us notice that they were gonna end support for the on-premise uh version, and so we're gonna have to move out to the cloud, and so we had um we had had some issues with that vendor.

Uh the product had been sold four times at least four times uh since we've owned it.

Uh the first sale coming about 30 days after we inked the contract.

So um it's been it's some of the support's been problematic, and um and so we said, well, if they're gonna force us to go to the cloud, we're gonna take this as an opportunity to um look around and see if there's a a better product out there because essentially the quote that they had given us, there was no real break.

We're gonna have to pay migration costs and and that sort of thing.

So uh during the 2025 CIP budget process, this project was approved.

And so last year we went out to RFP and um reviewed the RFP.

We we scored them.

So we have Maria Pandazi from uh she's our deputy community development director, and then uh I have Mark Probuki, he's my uh business solutions architect.

Uh they've been uh heavily involved with this project, but we went out to RFP.

Um there was a group from IT community development and engineering.

Uh we scored the RFPs, we ended up bringing in a handful uh for vendor demonstrations.

Uh we did went through the demos and uh Main Star is the one that bubbled up to the top.

And um so this is this is uh what we have before you.

It is a SAS solution.

So I did it, I did attach the IT uh uh technical questionnaire uh answers that we got back, and so with that uh we'll open up the floor to questions.

So operationally, uh Maria can hand uh handle those questions and Mark is super familiar with uh the current product.

In fact, he's uh he's had to do the troubleshooting for their support um on some stuff, and then he's also pretty f uh really familiar.

He kind of led the the demo part of the RFP um process.

So Maria, is there anything you want to add before we pepper you with questions as far as I know this touches your department probably more than any other sound?

It does, it does.

We um we probably have at least six thousand either permits, projects, or code cases that go through this software every every year.

Um and that number is growing.

Um I think Chris did a good job of explaining our challenges and the the cost of keeping the software moving to the cloud didn't seem to make a lot of sense without assessing better software for us.

One of the challenges I think in addition to the um the customer support or lack of support or challenge of support, was their customer portal also, so for when contractors are logging in or the general public wants to report something their interface, I think that's the right word.

Um not IT, but they're you know, what what the public sees is very cumbersome and it's not very customizable.

Um one thing that I really wanted to see out of new software was a really nice customer facing um piece, and and that's I think what we're gonna get with Main Star.

So I was I was on council when we implemented track it.

So I remember that.

And I I do remember that their customer portal was one of the things that was supposedly a selling point of that product.

So it's disappointing to hear that that never really well that portal from 2014 is the same portal we have now in 2026.

I'm sure it's good.

Yeah, and I think that's the issue.

I mean, it knows its job, yeah, but it's very difficult to navigate, and it's not, you know, maybe it was okay in 2002.

Yeah.

Well, Maria was just uh commenting, she was at a conference a couple years ago for it, and they they talked about one of the jokes that during the keynote was that their uh customer facing portal is what yeah, somebody stood up and said, Oh, it's state of the art for 1972.

So they I mean I think they acknowledged that it was an issue, or they heard it was an issue, but nothing really ever changed with it.

So I'm really looking forward to that part of Main Star actually.

Questions from the board just sounds to me like they rang the money out of it, you know, uh early on 30 days after we saw it and then proceeded to sell it and it for bagged data.

So yeah.

So what other um features are you looking forward to in the software compared to what you currently have?

Um considering how much I mean it appears to be quite a bit more expensive.

Yeah, annually because of the cloud costs.

Right.

Um yeah.

Uh but it's right in that same ballpark as track it would have been in the cloud.

Got it.

Yeah.

So there was only one out of out of the three that we brought in for demos, there was only one less expensive than this one.

But it was uh product that really wasn't finished.

It was kind of like if you were going from paper to electronic, that would have been a first good step.

Um, but it it but it just wouldn't work for some, you know, uh I mean some of their just calendar functions for scheduling inspectors wasn't there with that product.

So um there's you know, there's a lot that was left to be desired there.