“The city has had a relationship with the iWorQ company for a little over 10 years and we have received excellent service from them,” City Manager Dan Wright said. “It is our cloud-based iWorQs, which is our work order system that allows various departments to work across the internet to relay information that might need to be done or scheduled.”

Wright explained that with so many vehicles in services, specific software will make tracking the needs of those vehicles more efficient.

“We want to go with the software system that will allow us a better way to manage the maintenance of not only our city vehicles, but our heavy equipment; anything that requires routine maintenance,” Wright said. “For example, we have 43 normal vehicles when you add up police cars, dump trucks, service trucks; all of those. We have a wide variety of heavy equipment: back hoes, skid steer loader, smooth rollers; anything that has a motor on it that requires maintenance needs to be in this system.”

Wright said the system could also be used to chart the goings on of the pump stations in the city’s sewer system and water pump stations.

“Any of those would be a good place to document all the maintenance in one location so that our finance director, myself, or any of our department heads can look at those and keep track just for better accountability and from a better maintenance standpoint,” Wright opined.

Another point that was brought up is how the detailed information will help the city better informed of when vehicles need to be replaced or retired.

As a vehicle starts getting older, there’s a time when it makes sense to retire that vehicle and put it in surplus and get rid of it, or you take it out of its normal service and put it in a service that’s less demanding,” Wright said.

The board approved the annual fee of $1,575 for the new software.

“That sounds like a lot of money, but just with our vehicles that’s about $36 per vehicle per year to have that, which is about what the cost an oil change is,” Wright said.

Wright added that the annual cost would be split up among the departments based on how many vehicles they have, and handled out of those budgets.

“The funds that would pay for this would be proportionate share by whoever has the most vehicles,” Wright explained.

Councilman Larry Black inquired about how the vehicles are currently being tracked.

Right now, the vehicle maintenance schedules are handled manually by staff.

Councilman Kelly Bomar pointed out that the city is getting a 10-percent discount on the software due to already being and iWorQ Systems customer.

“They’re a good company, they’re very responsive,” Wright said.