POULSBO — The City of Poulsbo took a huge step toward becoming a more modern municipality as the city council approved a new $633,000 software system on Wednesday night.

While the new software will make an immediate impact on city staff, residents will also have the ability to report concerns online once the system is fully operational.

“I can remember nearly 10 years ago when this came up with former Finance Director Donna Bjorkman,” commented Councilman Ed Stern. “We spent two hours last week asking tough questions and came away thoroughly impressed.”

Representatives from the software company Sungard HTE gave the full council a 30-minute demonstration, highlighting the system’s capabilities and council members were visibly amazed.

“It’s like magic,” remarked Councilwoman Connie Lord after demonstrator Rob Ann Hurst created an example of the city’s quarterly financial report in less than five minutes.

“All we do is government exclusively and we know government,” said Steve Naegli, national field sales manager for Sungard HTE. “This will be the last software you ever have to buy.”

Unlike other software companies, which target larger municipal markets, Sungard HTE specifically designs its products for towns of 5,000 to 50,000 residents, Naegli explained.

“We realize this is a very big decision by the City of Poulsbo and many of our customers have been with us since we started in 1981,” he said.

Sungard HTE was the leading candidate during the entire process and also happened to be the lowest bidder, said city Finance Director Nanci Lien.

“This system will meet our needs as we go forward and the recommendation is based on looking at many systems and we felt this was best for us,” Lien told the council.

The new system will reduce the number of operator errors, improve communication between departments and residents and allow city staff to get things done sooner, she explained.

It will also eventually allow residents to go online to pay bills, report problems to the public works department and track the status of permits in the planning department, Lien said.

One of the key future capabilities of the new system is that it lends itself to gauging performance measures set by the council, Stern said.

“We can identify goals and set up standards and the program will drop down and cross over and evaluate us on our performance measurements,” he commented.