Committee B received a quarterly update on the city’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation and agreed to receive the report for filing.
Brian Tully, the presenter, said the project has completed the new chart of accounts and is progressing on vendor and project imports, user permissions (about 75% configured), and payables and purchasing workflows. He said the vendor will be on-site in November to validate the solution and that end-user training will follow; the project is still scheduled to go live in January 2026.
Tully described data-cleanup work tied to importing legacy systems: the team plans to bring in roughly two years of payables data and to remove stale or duplicate vendor records accumulated over decades. He said organizations such as staff reimbursements that were formerly set up as vendors are being reconciled during the cleanup.
Councilmember Vivian Olsen asked whether the new system can detect fraudulent vendor activity similar to a recent case in King County; Tully replied the ERP implementation includes procedural workflows and approvals intended to reduce risk, for example requiring vendor additions to be sponsored by a department contact and requiring appropriate documentation before accounts payable will process payments. He said purchase-receipt controls remain in place (no payment until items are received unless a contract specifies otherwise).
Tully also described an internal content/document-management workflow: permitting and land-use records will be scanned and associated with parcels in the city’s document system (Laserfiche) and are accessible through a public portal and the city’s GIS parcel map. He said the project remains under its current budget allocation and that he intends to submit a carry-forward budget amendment to ensure funds remain available next year.
Committee members praised project staff and the finance team for progress and thanked them for coming in under budget; the committee agreed to place the update on receipt and filing and asked that presentation slides be added to the receipt-and-filing materials so the public can follow progress.