The Kirkwood City Council OKed a nearly $332,000 one-year contract Thursday night with Tyler Technologies, despite complaints about the Texas-based firm’s role in the council not receiving regular financial reports for more than two years.
The lack of regular financial reports to the council, including fund balances, has been cited as a key factor in the Electric Department overspending fiasco that led to the firing last year of Electric Department director Mark Petty and chief administrative officer Russell Hawes.
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Concerned about possible criminal wrongdoing, the council earlier this year unveiled plans to hire an outside auditing firm to begin a forensic audit of the Electric Department, a review that might require at least a year to complete. The deadline for proposals is Aug. 12.
But the council opted to continue using Tyler Technologies’ Enterprise Resource Planning System despite those concerns, as well as some allegations that it has not been easy to use.
Council member Sheila Burkett, who has a background in information technology, argued in favor of the contract renewal, though she acknowledged “disappointment” that the contract was only coming before the council now—two months past its renewal date.
“To not approve this would have dramatic implications,” Burkett said. “It would create extreme budget constraints, force our staff to do another multi-year migration to a different system … and would potentially prevent us from making payroll.”
Council member Deb Lavender also argued in favor of renewing the contract. To bolster her case, she said she had spoken to officials in a few local governments that use the Tyler ERP platform.
The people she spoke to agreed Tyler “is not user-friendly. This is not intuitive,” Lavender said. Even so, one public official, who is both an engineer and accountant, praised the system, she said.
“He thinks it’s fabulous,” she said. “He gets historical data he’s never had before. He’s able to manipulate data he’s never been able to do before.”
Darren Lamb, the city’s chief administrative officer, said a goal with the Tyler system this year will be to “go ahead and get more training for that.”
Between December 2023 and December 2025, Kirkwood’s chief administrative officer, Hawes, stopped providing regular financial reports to the council, saying the city was experiencing problems with the ERP system implemented by Tyler, glitches that were exacerbated by staff turnover and shortages, and difficulty obtaining the right training.
Meanwhile, beginning in early 2024, the Electric Department under Petty’s leadership had begun making expenditures worth millions of dollars without city council approval—an apparent violation of a city ordinance that requires city purchases of $15,000 or more to receive council approval.
The city council voted to fire Petty and Hawes last October and last November, respectively.
For its part, Tyler has denied receiving any complaints about the implementation of its system in Kirkwood.
“We consulted with the team currently supporting the City of Kirkwood, and they confirmed that the City went live with Tyler’s ERP system in 2024,” the Plano, Texas, company said in a statement. “Since go-live, the City has not reported any software-related issues that would have prevented it from producing its financial reports.”
Kirkwood’s problems with Tyler Technologies, however, are not unique. Local and state governments nationwide have also experienced difficulties transitioning to ERP platforms connected to Tyler Technologies, though the firm has stated it has a 98 percent client retention rate and the vast majority of its clients are satisfied with its performance.
Nearly two years ago, Axios reported that Tyler Technologies has grown rapidly, becoming a multi-billion-dollar business built because of its near-monopoly status helping state and local governments upgrade their antiquated computer resources
But many public officials have complained the Tyler system is glitchy and requires lots of intensive training to get right.
In April the Chicago Tribune reported that Cook County’s efforts to use Tyler to modernize its tax records encountered “massive delays and budget blowouts,” causing the original contract to surge from an initial $75 million to $250 million over a decade.