Approve agreement with Megabyte Systems Inc., in the amount of $306,308, for property tax system maintenance and support from July 1, 2023 through June 30, 2024. (No general fund impact) (Haynes/Xiong)

The Megabyte Property Tax System was first implemented in the County for the 2008-09 fiscal year. At that time, the system cost approximately $922,000 to purchase and implement (excluding staff time and effort for which information is not readily available). Megabyte is a three part system designed to manage information for the different offices involved in the property tax process, and move required documentation between the County Assessor, County Auditor-Controller, and County Tax Collector in order to bring efficiencies in administering the property tax system. The County Auditor-Controller's Office was consolidated with the Treasurer-Tax Collector's Office in 2007 and both functions were further consolidated in 2014 under a Chief Financial Officer in the Department of Financial Services.

The Megabyte system has reached an age of fifteen years. However, due to continual improvements from the vendor the system continues to meet its goal of efficiently administering the County's property tax process and has not yet reached its useful life. Since the time Yolo County implemented the Megabyte system, the statewide user base has expanded. According to available data by the State Auditor-Controller Association, 32 of the 58 counties are now on the Megabyte platform. In comparison, the next largest group of counties on a common tax system is 8 counties that are either on or in the process of moving to a Thompson Reuters Aumentum system. Beyond that, the remainder of the counties generally have in-house custom-built systems, or are on various other systems with no more than 3 counties on a common system.

Costs of the Megabyte system are included in Property Tax Administration charges that are billed to eligible taxing entities (school districts, colleges, and office of education are legally excluded from paying property tax administration charges). At the June 10, 2008, Board meeting, when the Megabyte system was approved, the Board of Supervisors delegated authority to the County Assessor and County Auditor-Controller-Treasurer-Tax Collector to renew the Software Maintenance Agreement annually. On July 1, 2018, the Board of Supervisors updated the County procurement policy which rescinded prior delegated procurement authority to Department Heads outside the Procurement Agent function.

As a result, the Department of Financial Services is requesting a delegation of authority by the Board of Supervisors for the County Assessor-Clerk-Recorder-Registrar of Voters and Chief Financial Officer to approve the software support agreement for the upcoming fiscal year (2023-24) in the amount of $306,308 and for the next two subsequent fiscal years (2024-25 and 2025-26) as long as the costs increases by Megabyte do not exceed the level of CPI increase. A similar three-year delegation was approved in 2019 by this board. The request for delegated authority and the sole-source request for the extension to continue to utilize the Megabyte system has been reviewed by the County Procurement Manager.

The Department of Financial Services collaborated with the Assessor-Clerk-Recorder-Elections (ACE) Department on the renewal of the Megabyte software maintenance and support agreement.

A sole source justification was completed for the extension of the agreement by the Department of Financial Services and was reviewed by the County Procurement Manager.