Title
Ordinance amending the FY2016-17 budget for Cemetery Software
Body
SUMMARY:
The City Clerk has been looking at software to more definitively map the records for City Cemetery and Frost Cemetery and for hosted software solutions for managing and providing cemetery records to the public, including mapping and searching capabilities. Using the City's engineering and mapping capabilities, the City would provide the GIS mapping in an ESRI shapefile format, for the desired "grid" to be used for graphical representation of the burial sites.
This software would provide the public access to the current database and inventory of graves in the cemeteries. This new software is envisioned to provide for genealogical research, capability of receiving new information on burials from family members or researchers, and online maps to assist in locating graves. The addition of public-provided memorials of the deceased by the public would be an added benefit. The City Clerk's office is increasingly receiving phone calls from people looking for graves of family members, as well as from monument companies preparing to install grave stones. This would put all that information online. The City's database includes birth, death, and burial dates, funeral home involved, and other information, when it is available. This will also be beneficial for Public Works because the location maps will be available to them on their iPads.
Proposals were requested from vendors to provide software and hosting to put the cemetery records online. While the City Clerk discussed the project with three potential vendors and advertised the project, only one vendor (Pontem Software) submitted a proposal. The other two vendors were unable to provide GIS mapping at this time.
Initial conversations with vendors indicated that the project might be able to be accomplished within a budget of $5,000. However, after more serious discussions and reviews involving the City Clerk's Office, IT Departm...
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