A few weeks ago, Spokane Mayor Mary Verner warned residents that the city's fiscal shortfall in both 2010 and 2011 would be $2 million worse than she had advised earlier and would total $12 million in 2011.

Yet, on its advance agenda next Monday, the City Council is asked to approve two agreements that add up to just under $6 million to buy, install, and implement the Oracle PeopleSoft Human Resource Management System.

I was stunned when I saw those amounts. When I asked about the appropriateness of making such an expenditure now, Garv Brakel, the city's manager of information technology, says, "You mean why now, when we're in about as much trouble as we've been in for 80 years?"

The city's old payroll system runs on the nearly 30-year-old Hewlett Packard 3000 minicomputer system, one of the most successful computer systems ever made, Brakel says. HP tried to stop supporting it in 2001, but so many users complained that the company decided to support the system until this coming Dec. 31. Then, HP says, no more support.

Third-party vendors are supporting the system through 2013, and some spare parts will be available, but HP no longer will control the prices of those parts, and quality already has been an issue. "The system has only broken down one time," Brakel says. "When it did, I was overnighting parts in here from all over the country, and half of them were dead on arrival."

Brakel told city leaders that the lack of parts will drive the cost of running the system out of reach before 2013. "Given this support environment, there is no guarantee that we can make payroll after Dec. 31 of this year," says a memo Brakel provided. Of course, not paying city employees because you can't get their checks out isn't a solution to the budget crisis.

With the exception of payroll, human resources, and retirement, the city already has moved its systems off of the HP 3000, Brakel says. The city has saved up $5 million over many years to make the capital outlay that buying the system requires, Brakel says.

He says it would make no sense to use the one-time capital-expense money to plug holes in the operations budget, which the mayor was talking about when she discussed the looming shortfalls. Also, he says, the city will spend the additional $1 million on add-ons later only if money becomes available.

Some employment information, such as human resources, retirement, and civil service data, still aren't automated on the old system and must be accessed by pulling 3-by-5 cards.

"This weekend, we're getting ready for a payroll," he said on Aug. 20. "There will be people who will work this weekend hand-pulling information for that payroll."

The purchase was vetted at three levels, and at each level the Oracle system won out, Brakel says. The top level, the city's senior information technology steering committee, includes Avista information technology chief James Kensok and Gonzaga University computer science professor Dan Hughes. Neither could be reached.

The price for the new system "looks like a big bill, and it is," but such a system is needed when you've got more than 2,000 employees, 800 seasonal workers, seven or eight bargaining units, and "maybe 30" pay plans, Brakel says. "The accounting of time and the payment of that payroll is a serious task."

City spokeswoman Marlene Feist says the purchase has been delayed for years. Still, coming right after the mayor's announcement of budget problems, the timing of the outlay is bad, the threshold for gaining public acceptance of it is high, and that's how it should be.