Critical upgrades to Vero Beach’s computerized accounting capabilities will not be made until 2027, city staff says, despite the fact that clunky vintage systems were a major factor in Vero’s failure to complete recent audits on time.

Former finance director Steve Dionne, who came to the City of Vero Beach from the Palm Beach County Health Department in June 2023 and was forced out in February, began complaining soon after his arrival here about the aging accounting systems.

Dionne told city officials that various departments had different systems that did not mesh, requiring a multitude of tedious, manual entries which took extra staff time and opened the system up to error.

Utilities Director Rob Bolton, during a previous discussion of the matter, said the accounting systems had not been upgraded during his 25-year tenure with the city.

Dionne pushed for system upgrades during the Summer 2024 budget workshops, but the City Council did not fund the project.

That December, before Vero came under state enforcement action for failure to complete and file its 2022-23 audit on time, “systems” appeared as priority 11 of 11 in a goal-setting presentation by Mayor John Cotugno to the City Council.

Top priorities were the Three Corners project, the new wastewater treatment plant, the marina, a downtown master plan, and preparing for succession of key staff.

But at a similar council discussion four weeks ago, the finance, accounting and payroll systems, along with a data system changeover for the police which is already in the mid stages, were moved up to No. 6 of a 13-item priority list.

Cotugno – based on what the city’s outside auditors, Cherry Bekaert, had told him privately – said he felt the systems upgrades should now be moved way up the priority list, even into the top slot, and urged city staff to come up with a an estimate for the estimated cost of a new system plus consultant fees so the City Council could budget for it sooner than later.

But Falls said: “I just wanted to point out that still the No. 1 priority in finance is the preparation of the budget for this coming fiscal year and the completion of the audit.”

Staff and the auditors are still working on the 2023-24 audit, which is due June 30, and Vero has asked for a 90-day extension to file its audited financials with the state. The city is also compiling its 2025-26 operating budgets and capital plans in preparation for budget workshops in late July.

Falls said he’d need to identify a funding source for the upgrades, perhaps tapping into reserves, and warned that the project would not come cheap. He said to be prepared for consultant’s fee to amount to 10 percent of the total cost, based upon his experience with the police systems upgrade.

Falls also laid out a timeline for the upgrades.

The next fiscal year starting Oct. 1, Falls said, would be spent interviewing and selecting a consultant, who would analyze system deficiencies and needs. The next step would be putting together an RFP, reviewing bids and selecting a vendor for the new system and hopefully purchasing it.

“We would like to see the selection process happen in this next year. Next fiscal year. And then implementation be late next year, or early the following year,” Falls said. “We'll select a system, and then we will work on an implementation schedule of getting that up and running.”

Realistically, the first steps of implementation and training staff on the new system would occur in the fiscal year starting Oct. 1, 2026.

“We'll have two systems running, make sure that it's something that we understand.

And they will make the transition to turn off the old one and turn on the new one, which is always a scary time,” he said.

After they switch back and forth a couple of times and are confident that the new system can stand alone and has all the historical data populated into it that staff needs to generate reports, the old system would be mothballed. During the transition year, the workload would be heavy as entries would need to be made twice – into both the old system and the new system.

So the first year the city would be completely on the new system would likely be the 2027-28 fiscal year.

“Can we accelerate the time period though?” Cotugno asked, noting that the police system selection process got dragged out way too long and doing something similar for the whole city could take years.

“It can’t take that long,” Cotugno said.

Councilman Aaron Vos, who also requested the system upgrades be moved forward, pointed out that Finance Director Lisa Burnham has been through two system changeovers in Michigan where she worked for 29 years, so hopefully that factor might help expedite the process.