Photo: File photo

Staff are recommending Vernon city council authorize the expenditure of up to $3,095,689 to modernize the enterprise resource planning and human resource management system.

The funding would come from the data processing reserve, $1,676,684, and the casino reserve, $1,419,005.

Staff is also recommending council authorize the expenditure of up to $594,013 annually, starting in 2023, for the costs to maintain the new system, with funding of at least $211,000 from the existing financial services budget and the remainder of up to $383,013 from investment income or taxation, to be included in the 2023 Five-Year Financial Plan.

In a report to be presented to civic leaders Monday, staff said the rationale behind the recommendation is “one of council's 2019-22 Strategic Plan goals under Organization Priorities is to 'enhance transparency of decision making, including the use of new or expanded tools and on-line platforms' by investigating options to replace the city's human resource/payroll systems and enterprise resource planning systems (financials).”

The report states the city needs a “contemporary, long-term, integrated software solution that is innovative, user-friendly, mobile, secure and that offers effective and efficient tools available for the management of human resources and financial transactions.”

The proposed solution will be the backbone of the city's finance, human resource and capital systems for decades to come.

Currently, the city utilizes four on-premise, non-integrated financial software programs to create annual departmental budgets, the five-year financial plan, record actual expenditures and revenues, and prepare year-end financial reports including the year-end audited financial statements: Questica, Vadim, Tempest and CaseWare.

The Vadim system was adopted by the city more than 40 years ago.