BLAIR, NEBRASKA (2025 December 3, Wednesday)
Don Harrold, Writer / Editor
editor@blairtoday.com – Facebook
Blair City Administrator Phil Green has responded to concerns raised about the city’s recent utility billing software upgrade, providing detailed information about the project’s scope, budget, and implementation.
The questions came after a Blair resident with extensive IT experience shared observations us suggesting the city might be experiencing significant problems with a software migration project involving Tyler Technologies.
However, Green clarified that the city contracted with BS&A, not Tyler Technologies, and disputed claims of billing errors or budget overruns.
Contract Details and Budget
The Blair City Council approved the original contract with BS&A on December 10, 2024, for $174,215. The contract covered database setup, data conversion, project management, cloud modules, online portal access, and onsite training.
The payment schedule includes $58,805 paid in January 2025 for database setup, current data conversion, and project management; $37,900 to be paid in December 2025 for cloud modules and online portal (an annual fee); and $77,510 to be paid in January/February 2026 for onsite training and customized setup following Go Live.
“The project is not over budget,” Green said. “The council approved the initial contract for $174,215 but $210,000 was available for the project from last year’s budget and this year’s current budget.”
Green explained that several change orders following the initial contract approval have both reduced and increased costs. “The net result has been a wash and well within budget.” Some reductions came from data that could not be converted from the old system, while small increases were for additional modules including assessments and Laserfiche integration.
Next year’s budget will include $44,000 for the annual fee.
Staffing and Customer Support
Contrary to suggestions that the city allocated $20,000 for call center support due to customer complaints, Green said, “We have allocated $0 for call center support to handle customer inquiries.”
The city did bring on a temporary front office employee between October 2025 and January 2026. Green explained this employee “was brought on while we were short an employee in the front office. We hired a new full-time employee in early November 2025 so they would only need to learn the new system.”
“The temporary employee is staying on to help with the extra traffic flow at City Hall through January 2026 (the same period that late fees have been waived),” Green said.
Data Migration Challenges
Green described the technical challenges the city faced in migrating data from its old system, which was originally written in COBOL, an older programming language.
“The challenge with data migration from the old system is that it was originally written in COBOL and continued to utilize a COBOL relational database,” Green said. “The significant challenge is that the former vendor would customize the setup for each community over the years but did NOT utilize descriptive headers in the various tables.”
This made it difficult to understand what data was stored where in the old system. The city was faced with a choice: pay BS&A significantly more to reverse-engineer the old data structure, or move forward with current data in the new system while maintaining access to historical information through PDF reports and Excel downloads from the old system.
“We chose the latter, less expensive option,” Green said. “Fortunately, the old Utility Billing module had been updated previously and was able to be migrated, which we did.”
Customer Impact
Green stated emphatically that “throughout this project, including the Utility Billing migration, ZERO customers have been affected by billing errors or incorrect usage data.”
The main source of customer confusion came from a sample bill included in a recent mailing. “A sample bill was included in a recent mailing, with a light watermark of ‘Example’ across the entire page,” Green explained. “The watermark was too light for some customers to notice, so several called or came into City Hall complaining that we had mailed them the wrong utility bill.”
Green acknowledged the oversight: “We should have used a fake address, like ‘1234 Fake Street’, just as we used a fake account number ‘0012121212’ and meter number ‘89898989’ but we didn’t and the address caused some confusion.”
When asked about the timeline for resolving problems, Green responded simply: “No problems, no issues, nothing to resolve.”
Implementation Status
Green reported no significant implementation issues with BS&A. “We have had no significant implementation issues with BS&A,” he said. “Problems that do arise are reported to onsite staff and they immediately resolve the issue. Starting next week, we will report issues to customer service for their support.”
Regarding contractual remedies, Green said, “No remedies, credits, or penalties necessary due to implementation issues. We have received credit (from the contractual quote) for data conversion that never occurred.”
Green added, “No outstanding implementation issues exist with BS&A. Routine issues and questions are handled by customer service.”
Paperless Adoption Success
Green highlighted one positive outcome of the transition: rapid adoption of paperless billing. “Out of 3,392 total customers, 910 have already setup paperless accounts, saving them and the city money,” Green said. “That’s a 26.8% success rate in less than two weeks. Our goal is to be over 50% paperless by the end of December.”
“We continue to daily help customers who call or stop at City Hall setup their online accounts,” Green said.
When asked about compensation for affected customers, Green stated, “No problems or incorrect billings so no need to compensate affected customers.”
Editor’s Note: This article is based on written responses from City Administrator Phil Green to questions submitted by BlairToday regarding the utility billing software implementation.
