After years of trouble with the public safety software, the City of Great Falls is moving forward with a new contractor and a new interlocal agreement with Cascade County.

The City Commission approved the contract for a new vendor, Zuercher Technologies, LLC, in April and Cascade County is included in the contract as an additional agency.

On Tuesday, the commission will consider an interlocal agreement with Cascade County regarding Zuercher. Cascade County Commissioners approved the agreement on June 27.

The Zuercher contract has been approved by both city and county commissions, and worked through by both city and county attorneys, information technology departments and public safety agencies.

The total for the first year of the contract is $835,950. The city’s share is $409,615.01 and the county’s share is $426,333.99.

The total five-year costs, including the first year costs are split with the city paying $706,108.13 and the county paying $734,928.87.

Read the full interlocal agreement here.

Problems with the former software contractor, New World/Tyler Technologies, began in 2014 and both city and county agencies had performance issues with the software.

May 2016 joint work session concerning New World

Last year, the city filed a lawsuit and a 90-day noticed was given to Tyler Technologies to fix 90 of the known deficiencies or defects with the software and in May 2016, the company advised the city that it could likely fix 40 of those issues within the allotted time frame.

July 2016 work session concerning New World

The city and the county decided to jointly pursue a new software provider and last November requested bids. Two companies submitted bids, one being Zuercher based in South Dakota and the other was Spillman Technologies based in Utah. The Zuercher bid was roughly $1 million less than Spillman, according to a city staff report.

The city entered into a contract with New World Software Systems in 2011 and went live in June 2013, according to city documents. New World was bought by Tyler Technologies in 2015 and both the city and county continued having performance issues with the software.

Due to recent legislative actions, the city has already had to make amendments to its contract with Zuercher to be able to handle those legislative changes.

The new software will also allow the city to roll out e-citations, saving time for officers and paper. The e-citations will likely roll out sometime next year.