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 Department, and Engineering Department, the cost to provide the robust system to meet the objectives is higher.
The first phase to convert the database and prepare the maps will take approximately 3-4 months to complete, dependent on in-house time availability and will cost $14,850. The annual support cost will be $650. This cost is drastically reduced due to the capabilities of the City’s Engineering Department to provide the GIS mapping. Extensive work has been done already in the older section to begin this process.
The second phase will be to put the information online at a cost of $8,382, with an annual hosting cost of $2,079. Part of the cost that would be optional is the memorial pages, which has a cost of $3,307. The memorial pages would allow family members to add pictures, information and tributes to their family members. They would submit the information to the City before approval before it goes online.
Council approved the purchase and contracts at the October 2016 meeting.
BUDGET ACCOUNT: 110-43400-312 $5,000
Budget Amendment Required
Recommended Action
NECESSARY COUNCIL ACTION: Pass budget amendment.