Laguna Beach authorizes $1M to upgrade public safety records management system

The Laguna Beach City Council this month authorized an emergency expenditure in excess of $1 million to modernize the city’s public safety records management system.

City officials noted the current records management system had not been updated since 2006 and contended it was on the verge of becoming obsolete.

The potential interruption of an essential city service constituted the emergency, according to staff. The city manager could approve emergency purchases up to $500,000, but council approval was needed during the Dec. 12 meeting with the agreement exceeding that threshold.

Council members approved the $1 million agreement with Hexagon to upgrade the records management system, along with an additional $94,200 for mobile field reporting software. Funding for the upgrade was included in the current fiscal year budget, according to a staff report.

The city had previously put out a request for proposals to update the system and in 2020 a contract was awarded to Soma Global, but the city terminated that agreement in March due to significant delays in implementation, Assistant City Manager Gavin Curran said.

“Some of the key modules … that come with the system are property and evidence, jail booking and processing, alarms and permits, report writing, calls for service, case management, traffic collision reporting, tracking chronic offenders, and statistical reporting,” Laguna Beach Police Capt. David Dereszynski said.

Dereszynski added the proposed records management system upgrade would ensure data integrity while also promoting efficiency that would benefit public safety personnel and residents.

Mayor Sue Kempf inquired as to what the city could expect for its $1 million investment.

“The $1 million includes the implementation costs and the software costs, and then there’s an ongoing maintenance of $50,000,” said Curran, who said the new equipment should be in place by September.

Laguna Beach’s requirements of a public safety records management system have increased since the current equipment was put to use in 2006.

“In that [prior request for proposals], we allowed for people to bid just on a police component,” Curran said. “This year, we were looking at police, fire and marine safety. You had to have all three pieces.”

Councilman Bob Whalen asked about the impact of the mobile field reporting software.

“Currently, our officers write their reports in the station, and a lot of that is because even with our new … computers, the signal, the software, the hardware doesn’t support it, so it crashes,” said Dereszynski, indicating that the benefit would be in eliminating delays.

The Hexagon equipment will be installed on the premises, city officials said, although the city will have the ability to transition to a cloud-based option down the line.