City officials detail tax

As Jefferson City voters prepare to decide the future of the city's capital improvement sales tax, city officials said Wednesday that the revenue helps pay for everything from cybersecurity software and computer servers to new artificial intelligence tools.

The city government hosted a "city coffee" on Wednesday morning to discuss how the city's capital improvement sales tax supports technology purchases at City Hall.

Jefferson City voters will decide Aug. 4 whether to renew the half-cent capital improvement sales tax through 2037. The city projects the tax will generate about $7 million in revenue this year.

City Administrator Brian Crane said the city allocates 59 percent of the tax revenue to the Public Works Department, 20 percent to public safety agencies, 10 percent to the parks department, 9 percent to a contingency fund and 2 percent to technology purchases.

Richard Gerling, the city's IT manager, said the technology funding pays for hardware such as computers and servers, as well as software like cybersecurity firewalls.

Buster Schrage, the city's Geographic Information Systems (GIS) manager, said the funding also supports high-resolution aerial photography used in MidMoGIS, an interactive mapping system and property database for Cole County.

Schrage said the county shares the cost of the aerial photography, which he estimated was around $40,000 in 2021. The city and county update the MidMOGIS map about every five years, Schrage said.

Gerling said technology costs have increased significantly in recent years. City servers that cost about $14,000 three years ago now cost roughly $30,000.

He added that AI data centers across the country have increased the cost of technology memory and storage. Data centers require significant memory and storage, triggering a supply-and-demand imbalance that drives up prices.

The conversation later turned to the city's use of artificial intelligence.

Ward 2 Councilman Mike Lester said he heard a rumor that the city was considering replacing administrative employees with AI software. Crane said the city views AI as a tool to assist employees, rather than replace them.

The City Council approved a contract with GovWell Technologies Inc. on Monday for software to manage online permits and licenses, code enforcement and development plan reviews. The platform includes an AI-powered chatbot designed to answer questions about building and property codes outside normal business hours.

GovWell also uses AI to cross-reference design plans with city code and international building codes and automatically flags whether a plan complies with code requirements.

Crane said the city will continue "investing in AI" technology when it provides practical benefits. One potential use, he said, could be improving the city's ability to record and archive public meetings.

Earlier in the discussion, Lester asked why the city does not publish more video recordings of committee meetings and citizen-led boards and commissions.

"I think transparency is real important and a question I get is why don't we have more of our meetings on YouTube or accessible to the public?" Lester asked.

Crane said that while the city "puts out more public information than it ever has," it's not realistic to have every meeting on video. He said it's lot of work for IT staff to record and archive video meetings and there isn't enough funding for storage or personnel. And to make a video recording of every single meeting, Crane said the city would need to consider hiring videographers.

The city previously explored purchasing equipment to expand meeting recordings, but the estimated cost was about $250,000. At the time, city officials and council members determined the expense was not a priority, Crane said.

"Unfortunately, this town in the past has put on additional requirements onto our city, but not provided the resources to do the job," Crane said.

Crane pointed to the city's recent transparency efforts -- like hiring a public information coordinator in 2024 for the first time in a decade and implementing new public records request software -- as evidence of its commitment to public engagement.

He encouraged residents who want more meetings recorded to contact their City Council representatives.

The city does publish recordings of City Council meetings on its YouTube channel, youtube.com/@cojits. Crane said those meetings receive priority because the council serves as the city's final legislative authority.

He added that city staff members have not seen significant public demand for recordings of additional meetings.

"I don't think there's a lot of people that want to spend their night watching old reruns of council meetings or boards and commissions," Crane said. "So it hasn't been something that is elevated to the point where ... the public says, 'Take money from something else and put it towards more IT staff, more hardware, more software.'"