The 6.7% increase, as of January 1, 2025, in “application maintenance and support contracts” invoiced by PG Solutions is the straw that breaks the camel’s back for the City of Granby.
The municipal council contests this notice of increase, and formally asks PG Solutions to revise this increase downwards. This request is the subject of a resolution adopted Monday evening by the Granby municipal council.
“This increase is major at the city level, especially since we often have problems [informatiques] during leisure registrations and other internal issues.”
— Julie Bourdon, mayor of Granby
In addition to the increase, the City considers that it is not getting value for money with this service provider.
“The software crashes, people are not able to register. It’s PG Solutions,” underlines Ms. Bourdon.
According to her, Granby is not the only municipality to experience such problems with the leisure registration software designed by this firm.
Several irritants
According to the municipal council’s decision-making summary provided to the media on Monday evening, elected officials mention “substantial annual increases in application maintenance and support contracts, mainly since 2022.”
The cost of these maintenance and support contracts increased by $55,000 from 2023 to 2024, going from $498,000 to $553,000, specifies Mayor Bourdon.
“We tell PG Solutions that this situation makes no sense,” she adds.
Granby hostage of the situation
The City of Granby is held hostage in this situation, with no other supplier seeming able to offer such services to the City.
“We’ve been trying to find others for a while [fournisseurs] than PG Solutions, but it doesn’t work,” admitted Ms. Bourdon to the media, on the sidelines of the public session on Monday evening.
Julie Bourdon, mayor of Granby (Stéphane Champagne/Archives La Voix de l’Est)
«[Sans véritable concurrence] PG Solutions can decide as it wishes to increase [le prix des services qu’elle facture]and this is what we are contesting,” indicates the first magistrate of the City of Granby.
“It is time to review everything, and the municipal council is clearly naming this issue with PG Solutions,” insists Julie Bourdon.
Delayed updates
These cost increases add to other irritants associated with this business.
The City of Granby uses PG Solutions’ IT modules and platforms for its assessment service, its tax accounts, the municipal court, complaints and requests, its human resources, taxation, etc.
Which represents, at first glance, quite a few services requiring computerization.
Several of these modules should have been modernized in recent months, but this was not the case, we deplore again in the decision-making summary.
Questioned by The Voice of the Eastthe management of PG Solutions preferred not to comment on the situation. At least for now.
“We prioritize the relationships we have with each of the cities and will continue to work with them,” Bruno Di Spirito, vice-president of sales and marketing of PG Solutions, responded to us by email.
Protest movement across Quebec
The challenge to increases in service costs invoiced by PG Solutions would resonate beyond Granby.
In fact, Granby says he is embarking on a broader protest movement.
The Granby municipal council, Monday, November 18 (Stéphane Champagne/La Voix de l’Est)
“Cities have started to mobilize to denounce the monopoly that they [PG Solutions] have, and we decided to join the movement, said Mayor Bourdon. We work with the UMQ [Union des municipalités du Québec] on this issue to see what can be done.”
For its part, the UMQ does not seem to want to fan the embers of the protest, preferring to go with a very general reminder.
«The UMQ, the COMAQ [Corporation des officiers municipaux agréés du Québec]the RMTIs [Réseau municipal en technologies de l’information] and the ADGMQ [Association des directeurs généraux des municipalités du Québec] work together to identify solutions that meet the needs of municipalities, network them to better control costs, share their expertise and bring municipalities together in order to attract the interest of IT suppliers for the municipal market,” replied us by email to the communications department.
In its resolution adopted Monday, the Granby municipal council invites the cities and municipalities of Quebec to follow suit, by participating “in the momentum of protest through the adoption of this resolution [celle de Granby] at their next council meeting, and to send it to PG Solutions and their MRC,” we read in the decision-making summary.
As such, the City of Granby will ask the MRC of La Haute-Yamaska to support its request to lower this increase and “to make representations to the authorities concerned and to encourage the other MRCs of Quebec to take their voice to theirs,” is added in the said summary.
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