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Budget-season IT checklist for small cities

What to have straight before you put an IT number into next year's budget — written for a small city or department with no IT director. From a former municipal IT director.

Timing: Florida cities run an Oct 1–Sep 30 fiscal year; budget prep typically starts in February and the proposed budget is presented in late summer. Line this up between February and May, using your city's budget calendar (posted by January 30), or the work waits a year.

Know your current state

Inventory — a current list of systems, devices, licenses and who supports each.
Open audit findings — every IT-related finding listed, with a plan to close it.
End-of-life risks — hardware/software past support that must be replaced.
Single points of failure — the "only one person knows this" systems identified.

Security & compliance

MFA & account hygiene across staff and admin access.
CJIS requirements mapped for any police/public-safety data (claim only what's documented).
Public-records & retention handling that survives a request or audit.
Vendor/third-party list — who holds city data, under what terms.

Continuity of operations

Tested backups — offsite, immutable, with a restore tested recently.
Keep essential services up — plan for 911/dispatch, utilities, finance during an outage.
Hurricane-season plan — documented, rehearsed, defensible to council afterward.
Deployable comms considered as an add-on where field operations need it.

Budget-ready packaging

Prioritized roadmap — must-do vs. should-do vs. later, each with a cost.
Written for council — plain language, risk framed in terms of service to residents.
Realistic figures — one-time vs. recurring, phased across fiscal years if needed.
Procurement path — on the right vendor/bid portals; RFP requirements understood.

Media78 writes a fixed-fee municipal IT assessment formatted to drop straight into your budget — and a vCIO retainer so the plan actually gets delivered. Led by a former Florida municipal IT director.
Request a one-page outline before your workshop →