Jackson is about to buy the software that decides how fast a building permit moves through City Hall, and it is asking the companies bidding to tell it what the software should cost. The city's Request for Proposals for an Enterprise Resource Planning system, RFP No. 20477-092226, states plainly that "a formal project budget has not yet been established" and that "the City will use submitted cost proposals to inform its budget determination and contract negotiations."

The RFP was issued Aug. 27 and published in the city's bid notices. Proposals were due Sept. 22 at 3:30 p.m. The city's procurement portal now lists the bid opening for Oct. 6 at 3:30 p.m., and the city posted two new documents Tuesday, an addendum with vendor questions and answers and Appendix B, the functional requirements matrix vendors must fill out. Both carry an Oct. 6 publish and opening date.

The document is unusually blunt about what is wrong. Jackson "currently relies on a legacy permitting and land management system that was implemented more than fifteen years ago," the RFP states. The system "lacks integration with modern geographic information systems (GIS)," and "several application types continue to accept paper submissions, creating parallel workflows that increase staff workload and slow processing times."

The RFP lists the consequences in the city's own words: siloed data across planning, zoning, permitting, inspections and code enforcement with no real-time sharing; manual review routing that "adds days to permitting timelines"; inspection scheduling "handled by phone, with no automated notification or mobile field capability"; and staff who "rely on ad hoc spreadsheets for performance reporting."

One line in that list has a dollar consequence. The city has "no integration with the City's financial system (Tyler Technologies Munis) for automated fee calculation and collection." That is the same Munis system a city finance official described at the Sept. 8 special council meeting as capable of tracking vehicle and building charges, adding that "we just have to use it," according to the meeting video. The new procurement is meant to close that gap, not replace Munis.

The scope is wider than permitting. The winning vendor must supply software and implementation together, covering planning and zoning case management, business licensing, building inspections, code enforcement, project tracking, grant monitoring, 311 resident services, Public Works asset and stormwater management, housing programs, data migration, training and ongoing support. The city also wants artificial intelligence built in, to cut staff time on routine tasks and to tell residents what documents and fees they need before they submit.

The city has attached a number to the payoff. It wants permitting and review cycle times cut by 25 to 40 percent within 18 months of go-live. That is the only performance target in the document, and it is the one a council member can hold an administrator to later.

The money is not identified. The RFP says the project is "anticipated to be funded through a combination of general-fund appropriations and federal grant allocations, subject to City Council approval," and that federal grant rules including 2 CFR Part 200 may apply. Vendors must price a ten-year total cost of ownership, with the annual subscription and support listed separately, so the city can compare a one-time build against a recurring bill that will outlast this administration.

The city has also written a conflict-of-interest bar into the procurement. Any vendor that provided consulting, advisory or technical services to Jackson on this project in the 24 months before the RFP was issued is disqualified as a prime contractor. Proposers must disclose financial relationships with city employees or officials. That clause matters because the city has spent the past year under a federal corruption case in which three officials pleaded guilty, and because the RFP was drafted while the council was still fighting over the fiscal 2027 budget.

The timing is tight in a way the document does not advertise. Proposals are valid and binding for 180 days from the Sept. 22 deadline, which carries them to about March 21, 2027. The RFP sets no date for the notice of intent to award, no contract start date, and no go-live dates for either phase. Every one of those milestones reads "Upon City Council Approval TBD."

That leaves the schedule in the council's hands. The council has not yet taken up an award, and the RFP gives the city the right to reject all proposals, cancel the solicitation, reissue it, or negotiate with one or more proposers. The city has done all of those things before on technology contracts, and the Sept. 8 meeting shows the appetite for consolidation: members discussed merging departments and moving code enforcement out of planning, which is exactly the function this software is supposed to track.

What's next: Bids open Oct. 6 at 3:30 p.m. on the city's procurement portal, jacksonmsbids.com, under RFP No. 20477-092226. The purchasing manager named on the solicitation is Monica Oliver, reachable at procurement@jacksonms.gov. Watch for the notice of intent to award, which the RFP ties to council approval with no date attached, and for the cost proposal, which the RFP says will be made public after award. That document will be the first real number attached to this project.

The council is the decision-maker on the contract itself, and the RFP says the project is funded by general-fund appropriations and federal grants subject to council approval. The question no one has answered publicly is which federal grant the city intends to use, and whether that grant's rules will constrain the award. Angela Brown, the director of Planning and Development, and Nathan Slater, the director of Information Technology, are the two administrators whose departments would run the system and who could answer it.