ASHLAND — Ashland Municipal Court is dumping its case management software provider.
Ashland City Council unanimously approved of an ordinance that allows officials to enter into a $90,000 deal with a firm tapped to provide municipal court with a new case management software system.
Municipal Judge John Good called the project a “massive undertaking” that he’s wanted to do for several years.
The municipal court has depended on Civica for more than 20 years, Good said. The software handles all facets of court operations, such as criminal and traffic cases, dockets, the probation department, the court’s calendar — even its accounting.
Good said the firm’s “one-size-fits-all” approach doesn’t necessarily work for the municipal court, which saw 11,572 cases in 2023.
The company’s customer service lags, and sometimes doesn’t exist, he said. Civica also runs software updates every four or five years and essentially forces the court to purchase the new version.
Currently, the court pays just shy of $40,000 per year for the Civica software.
‘They hold your data hostage’
“It’s like planned obsolescence,” Good said, adding the company will charge the municipal court $150,000 to update the software, or else face no technical support of the software being updated.
“And if we try to get get out … they hold your data hostage,” he said. “They save our data in proprietary file formats. So when we threaten to switch, they say it’ll cost $150,000. That’s how they keep courts from switching.”
He and his staff found i3 Verticals, a firm based in Tennessee, that could save the municipal court $100,000 in the first couple years. Keely Smith, the court’s clerk, said annual maintenance will cost around $40,000 per year with i3.
“The cost savings, if they turn out as we believe they will, will be very significant. But that’s not the point. The point is we have a product that doesn’t work for us anymore,” he said.
The judge said he likes the fact that i3Verticals’ product is web-based and, so far, the customer service experience has been better than the current partnership.
The court’s software license with Civica expires in July 2025, so Good hopes the new software can be installed before then.