By Ryan Whisner
The Fort Atkinson City Council last Tuesday unanimously approved an $8,157 contract with CivicPlus for agenda management software.
Over the past several years city staff has been putting steps in place to improve communication with the city council and residents, and to increase access to information about city finances and services.
As part of that, Fort Atkinson City Manager Rebecca Houseman told the council that staff has determined some efficiencies could be created using an agenda management system both internally and externally.
Currently, Sarah Weihert, public relations executive assistant spends nearly half a day with the city council packet and a little less than that with Plan Commission packets using Adobe products. Houseman said it ends up being a weekly process of putting together the packets with information typically emailed from different departments within the city.
“This agenda management software will allow for each department to log into a web-based system and put their documents in specific templates that we would create and then it would all kind of come together at the end and be posted directly to the city’s website for distribution,” the city manager said.
Before bringing a proposal to the council, she said city staff reviewed multiple options for the service. Demonstrations of functionality, internal interface, workflow, and ease of use for end-users were reviewed.
Proposals were submitted by three firms other than CivicPlus. Granicus, Champion Data Systems, and Revize each submitted a proposal.
Houseman said the Granicus product was $7,000, and included a first-year discounted price, and the Champion Data Systems product was $6,500, and offered a similar first-year adjustment. There was no cost associated with the Revize product, however, after reviewing the new and underdeveloped system, she said staff determined that using the product would take more staff time and effort than the current system.
In addition, Houseman noted that although the Granicus and Champion products were more developed, neither met the needs for which the city was looking.
City staff found that CivicPlus, which also designed the city’s financial software, was the best value and functionality.
“This will be another module that we would have through CivicPlus and making it more of an enterprise-wide system,” she said.
In anticipation of advancing the concept, the 2023 city budget did include $10,000 for agenda management software within the city manager’s dues and subscriptions account.
As approved unanimously by the council, the contract from CivicPlus will cost $8,157 In the first year, and $5,035 in year two.
Houseman pointed out that the initial cost includes the annual fee, premium configuration, custom template design, virtual consulting, and two half-day training sessions.
“There’s also a discount due to the city having multiple services with the company,” she said.
The ongoing subscription rate will be approximately $5,200.
“We did a look at the other products, and they did not provide the form and function that we thought would assist us in the most efficient way of creating these packets,” Houseman said.
Council member Eric Schultz pointed out that based on his own experience with the purchase and implementation of software packages, the contract approved by the council was inexpensive compared to things he has seen.
He also expressed appreciation for the detailed information Houseman offered in terms of the comparisons and how staff reached the decision on the best choice.
Council member Kyle Jaeckel inquired about Houseman’s certainty of the cost, and whether the software would free staff time up for other duties throughout the week.
“It would create efficiencies in my office, and it would create efficiencies in other departments as well,” Houseman said. “There would be a workflow aspect to it as well so as soon as a management team member is complete with a memo it would send me an email saying that that information is in the system and then I could review it and pass it along to the next approval.”
As designed, she said there’s a workflow involved internally that would create some efficiencies.
“Emailing documents back and forth to each other there’s certainly an opportunity for error in using incorrect versions of such documents and it does take up server space as well,” the city manager said.
Fort Atkinson Municipal Building, file photo/Chris Spangler.
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