Agenda

Return

C. 26

To:	Board of Supervisors
From:	Russell Watts, Treasurer-Tax Collector
Date:	September 17, 2019

Contra

Costa

County

Subject:

Contract with Grant Street Group for Electronic Payment Management and Processing

APPROVE	OTHER
RECOMMENDATION OF CNTY ADMINISTRATOR	RECOMMENDATION OF BOARD COMMITTEE

Action of Board On: 09/17/2019

APPROVED AS RECOMMENDED

OTHER

Clerks Notes:

VOTE OF SUPERVISORS

AYE:

John Gioia, District I Supervisor
Candace Andersen, District II Supervisor
Diane Burgis, District III Supervisor
Karen Mitchoff, District IV Supervisor
Federal D. Glover, District V Supervisor

Contact:

Brice Bins, (925) 957-2848

I hereby certify that this is a true and correct copy of an action taken and entered on the minutes of the Board of Supervisors on the date shown.
ATTESTED: September 17, 2019
David Twa,

BY:	, Deputy

RECOMMENDATION(S):

APPROVE and AUTHORIZE the Treasurer-Tax Collector, or designee, to execute a contract including modified indemnification language with Grant Street Group, Inc. in an amount not to exceed $100,000 for the processing of property tax payments by credit/debit card and electronic check payments, and an electronic cashiering system, for the period September 17, 2019, to September 16, 2023, and a Merchant Services Agreement with Worldpay, LLC for credit card processing.

FISCAL IMPACT:

There are no initial costs for the implementation of the payment processing system (“System”), all fees have been waived, nor are there any scheduled, ongoing or recurring costs to the County for using the System. Grant Street is covered by a $3,000,000 cyber insurance policy. There is a one-time cost of $100,000 for Grant Street’s Cashiering System which includes maintenance and support at no cost to the County and will integrate with the System. Grant Street’s Cashiering System will replace the current cashiering system from System Innovators which has been plagued with high maintenance costs, increasing annually, and unreliable maintenance service.

BACKGROUND:

KUBRA America West, Inc. (“KUBRA”) is the Treasurer-Tax Collector’s current third-party payment processor and was awarded an extended contract in 2017 that included the migration to a new platform designed for government agencies called GovPay. During the initial implementation of GovPay, KUBRA determined that GovPay would not meet the Treasurer-Tax Collector’s requirements and suggested a newer version of the current platform of EZPay. However, the migration to the newer version of EZPay would require significant modifications by the Department of Information Technology staff to integrate with the new version of EZPay in addition to a cost of $37,500 for System Innovators to integrate their cashiering system with the new version of EZPay.

Under the contract, Grant Street Group will implement its hosted third party payment processing system. Fees for use of the system will be paid by individual taxpayers using the system to make credit card / debit card payments. Under the contract, Grant Street Group’s liability is capped at $1,500,000.

CONSEQUENCE OF NEGATIVE ACTION:

If this Order is not approved, the Treasurer-Tax Collector’s Office will continue to use the current payment gateway vendor, KUBRA, which will not support further enhancements to the current application while being subject to increasing maintenance costs to the current cashiering system.