FREE TOOL — THE SWITCH
Off WordPress, under the threshold.
Three fields and the Practice produces a tailored scope-and-price brief — sized below your jurisdiction’s direct-award ceiling, with the procurement path identified, the timeline named, and the inclusions enumerated. Yours to print, edit, or take to council.
Pricing varies by jurisdiction, anchored to the most-permissive procurement path that applies in your province. No RFP required. The principal answers the phone.
SCOPE & PRICE BRIEF — FILE 260525-6249
Burnaby
SUBJECT: Custom municipal website — off WordPress
2026-05-25
DRAFT · PRINCIPAL-LED
RECOMMENDED CONTRACT VALUE
CA$24,500
Inside your direct-award ceiling of CA$25,000— no RFP, no posting.
PROCUREMENT PATH
Direct award — single-source memo
NWPTA binds these provinces at $75,000 services, but the confirmed municipal direct-award norm is $25,000 (Nanaimo in BC, Saskatoon in SK). A $24,500 contract sits inside that bylaw ceiling — no quotes, no posting.
Council’s public-facing website is the reconnaissance surface. Every header, every plugin path, every form action is published and read by attackers before a council member ever sees it.
The most recent comparable Canadian municipal incident on file is the City of Hamilton: a ransomware event in February 2024 that cost $18.3M in recovery, with a $5M insurance claim denied because multi-factor authentication had not been fully rolled out. The vector was an internet-facing server.
A custom municipal website on Next.js infrastructure, the same stack used by the largest enterprises on the public web. No PHP runtime, no database, no plugin supply chain, no monthly patch cycle. The attack surface becomes a git repository.
- ·Bilingual delivery (FR/EN) by default, not as upsell
- ·WCAG 2.1 AA compliance verified, not asserted
- ·Canadian-region hosting with edge CDN
- ·Council livestream embed, agenda PDFs, by-law search
- ·Atomic deployments with one-command rollback
- ·Auditable git history — every change reviewable
- ·No analytics scripts, no third-party trackers, by default
- ·Annual hosting + maintenance retainer optional, not required
The paragraph below is the load-bearing document at year-end audit — the file must show a written rationale that maps to a clause in your procurement bylaw. Staff may paste the paragraph onto municipal letterhead and complete the bracketed insertions. Bracketed text identifies facts only the municipality knows (specific bylaw section, internal time-sensitivity, the approver’s role and date).
Staff may paste — non-competitive procurement approval form
Single-source · professional services
Pursuant to Burnaby’s Procurement Policy Section [X] / Clause [Y] on Non-Competitive Procurement, staff recommend a single-source award to Fit For Gov Limited for the rebuild of the municipal public-facing website (custom Next.js infrastructure replacing the current WordPress installation) in the amount of CA$24,500 CAD (inclusive of HST/applicable taxes).
The basis for this single-source recommendation is professional services, prior assessment, time-sensitivity, and value-for-money, specifically:
- Professional services exception. The work is professional advisory and custom-development services (architecture, design, accessibility audit, content migration, bilingual delivery, deployment), not a commodity good or construction. Under the Community Charter, the CAO holds delegated authority for professional services under the bylaw ceiling. The District of North Cowichan Procurement Policy (§3) is a representative pattern: direct award $0–$19,999, no quotes required.
- Specialized methodology and prior assessment. Fit For Gov has completed a passive reconnaissance assessment of the municipality’s public-facing infrastructure, identifying the specific WordPress vulnerabilities, plugin inventory, and security-header gaps that the rebuild remediates. Engaging the same vendor for the implementation phase preserves continuity of analysis and avoids duplicating diagnostic work.
- Time-sensitivity. [Insert specific time-sensitivity: e.g., a documented vulnerability requires remediation before the next election cycle / before Council’s [date] meeting / before a regulatory deadline such as AODA, Quebec Law 25, Ontario Bill 194, CASL, or PIPEDA.] The competitive-procurement timeline (typically 60–120 days for an open RFP at this size) is incompatible with the operational deadline.
- Value-for-money. The fee of CA$24,500 is below the municipality’s direct-award threshold of CA$25,000 (Community Charter §147 — CAO-delegated; $25K is the BC direct-award norm (Nanaimo, North Cowichan)). The vendor is principal-led; no agency overhead applies. Pricing tier and methodology are public at fitforgov.com/switch and fitforgov.com/thresholds.
- Anti-splitting confirmation. This award is for the complete website-rebuild scope. There is no related contemplated procurement that would, if combined, exceed the next-higher threshold under the Procurement Policy or under CFTA Article 504.3 / NWPTA / APA / CETA / CPTPP / WTO-AGP, as applicable.
Fit For Gov is a Canadian sole proprietorship principal-led by Jesse James, registered in British Columbia. Documentation supporting points 1–5 is attached: [scope-and-price brief; reconnaissance dossier; price benchmark; non-conflict-of-interest declaration].
Recommended for approval by [Director / Manager], [Department].
Approved by [CAO / General Manager / Director of Financial Services] under delegated authority of [bylaw section] this [date].
AUDIT NOTE — The Office of the Auditor General of Ontario (2016 Ch. 3 §3.13) and the MMAH Guide to Developing Procurement Bylawsset the defensibility standard at “adequately documented” — a written rationale that maps to a clause in the bylaw. This paragraph follows the structural pattern of single-source justifications confirmed in Hamilton (FCS25025, FCS23019(b)), Chatham-Kent (T22-127-F), and the OAGO affirmative-grounds list (Figure 6).
| Week 1 | Discovery, content audit, IA |
| Weeks 2–3 | Design + first deployment for council review |
| Weeks 4–7 | Content migration, accessibility audit, bilingual delivery |
| Weeks 8–10 | Cutover, DNS, retire WordPress install |
Council direct staff to engage Fit For Gov on a single-source basis at CA$24,500, structured below the direct-award ceiling identified in § III above and in the Procurement Authority file at fitforgov.com/thresholds.
The answer is always yes or forward. It is never yes-when-no.
Call first. Email second. Forms third.
FIT FOR GOV
A CIVIC-TECHNOLOGY PRACTICE
REGISTERED IN BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA
JESSE JAMES, PRINCIPAL
Pricing is jurisdiction-aware. The recommended contract value is sized below the direct-award ceiling that applies to your municipality, derived from the procurement-threshold dataset at /thresholds and a sample of 14 municipal bylaws.
Anchored at $9,800 in Atlantic provinces and mid-Ontario (where the universal $10,000 direct-award floor is the binding constraint), $24,500 in BC/AB/SK/MB (NWPTA $75,000 floor), and $34,500 in Quebec (CFTA $139,000 floor under Cities and Towns Act §573).
Scope is identical across tiers; pricing varies because the procurement constraint that anchored the original $9,800 doesn't apply outside the Maritime / mid-Ontario cluster.
Nothing on this page is sent anywhere. The output is yours to print, save, edit, or delete. The Practice is contacted only when you call or email.
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