Tigard spends $1 million on software it will never use

The program for the Financial and Information Services department would require several additional staff to run

By Geoff Pursinger

The Times, Jul 29, 2010 (3 Reader comments)

The city of Tigard is out $750,000 after city budget cuts stopped it from implementing a new in-house software for its Financial and Information Services department.

In 2007 city officials decided to change the software for its financing department, which handles the city’s ledger, payroll and other in-house services. The city had used its previous software for years, but wanted more flexibility online, and chose to purchase new software from SunGard, a Pennsylvania-based software provider.

In total, including visits and training sessions, the city spent about $1 million on the service, but after three years of slow phase in, that software will never be used, city officials say, after the decision was made to go back to its old software, given the state of the economy.

“The program would require several additional staff people, and we didn’t feel like that was something we could go forward with, so we stopped the implementation,” said Debbie Smith-Wagar, assisted financing director.

Earlier this year the city laid off 11 people, in order to stabilize its budget in the down economy, and Smith-Wagar said that there was no way that the city could hire the additional staff needed to fully implement the software.

“With the current economic environment, it was better to halt the implementation than spend the money to provide those services,” she said.

According to city officials, Tigard will only receive about $250,000 of their money back, and is out about $750,000.

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