Your guide to NYC's public proceedings.
Q&A
Council Member Brannan questions Commissioner Niblack on budget allocations for system upgrades
4:31:29
·
150 sec
Council Member Justin Brannan inquires about new budget allocations for upgrades to the summons tracking account receivable system (STARS) and pay increases for city tax auditors. Commissioner Preston Niblack explains the need for system upgrades, detailing the limitations of the current system and the plans for a new "parking 2.0" system.
- The FY '26 budget includes $1 million in new needs for FY '25 and $6.7 million for FY '26 for STARS upgrades and auditor pay increases.
- The current STARS system is outdated, costly to maintain, and inflexible for making changes.
- The new system aims to reduce ongoing operating costs and allow for more in-house IT work.
Justin Brannan
4:31:29
Thank you, commissioner.
4:31:33
So the FY '26 budget includes a million dollars in new needs in FY '25 and 6 point $7,000,000 in FY '26 and increasing amounts in the out years.
4:31:43
These new needs will fund upgrades to the summons tracking account receivable system, STARS, as well as a pay increase to city tax auditors and the ATAs, the administrative tax auditors.
4:31:56
Can you provide a breakdown of the improvements that will be made to STARS as well as detail the last time those systems were improved or updated?
Preston Niblack
4:32:06
Yes, absolutely.
4:32:07
So from time to time we make changes to the existing SAR system to reflect new types or amounts of violations or other changes in the law.
4:32:17
So part of the funding is for that, for the ongoing maintenance of the current system.
4:32:22
The bulk of the funding here is for the replacement system that I talked about which we are calling internally parking two point zero.
4:32:30
And the challenge with the current system is really it's you know, we lack people who any longer people are not trained right now in the programming language that it runs on, so we have to maintain a special consulting group just to work on it.
4:32:47
It's costly.
4:32:48
We were exploring to give you one example, we explored earlier this year what it would take to write tickets against vehicle identification numbers in lieu of or in addition to license plates.
4:33:02
And it was going to cost don't quote me, although I know I'm on the record here but something like $2,000,000 and take eighteen months just to make this change.
4:33:10
So that it really illustrates kind of the rigidity and the and the superannuation of the of the current system.
4:33:17
So the bulk of the funding here is really to allow us to replace that system with a new upgraded modern architecture and system.
4:33:24
Architecture and system.
Justin Brannan
4:33:26
Are there are there gonna be any other costs, additional costs of running the new system once it's fully upgraded?
Preston Niblack
4:33:32
You know, it's gonna cost some amount to operate continue to operate.
4:33:38
And I don't know that we know right now what exactly that cost is gonna be.
4:33:44
Our goal here is to be able to lower the contract cost and to do more of the work in house with our own IT staff and ultimately to reduce the ongoing operating costs which right now are very high.