Kalamazoo pulls a $220,000 Oracle cloud contract after the vice mayor balks

KALAMAZOO, Mich. — A $220,000 plan to move the city of Kalamazoo’s data storage off its own servers and onto an Oracle cloud service was taken off Monday night’s City Commission agenda, WKZO reported. Vice Mayor Drew Duncan asked for the item to be pulled, saying he has concerns about the vendor.

City Manager Malcolm Hankins told the station the upgrade still needs to happen. Staff will bring a recommendation back at the commission’s next meeting, two weeks out.

In a memo, city staff argued that the cloud service would be more flexible and more secure, and would cost less, according to WKZO. Duncan said he had tried to raise his objection quietly rather than make a public fight of it.

The timing drew notice. The Oracle item sat on the same agenda as the final vote on Kalamazoo’s one-year moratorium on new data centers and battery storage sites, which commissioners approved that night, WKZO and NowKalamazoo reported. WKZO pointed out that Oracle is one of the big companies building data centers around the country.

Monday’s meeting also marked the return of call-in public comment, which NowKalamazoo said had not been allowed since the end of the pandemic. Under rules the commission adopted Sept. 8, speakers on the phone or in the room get up to three minutes during the Public Comments portion of regular business meetings, the city said. Callers must give their name and say whether they live in the city, according to NowKalamazoo. Comments at Committee of the Whole meetings stay in person only, with a two-minute limit.

Regular business meetings start at 7 p.m. on the first and third Mondays of the month at City Hall, 241 W. South St., and are livestreamed, according to the city. The next one falls on Oct. 19.

That afternoon, at the 5 p.m. Committee of the Whole session, the Housing Advocacy Collective is scheduled to ask the commission to act on conditions at Fox Ridge Apartments, a federally subsidized complex in the West Douglas neighborhood, WMUK reported. Duncan confirmed the presentation to the station. The group says the property has been allowed to deteriorate. WMUK, citing records it obtained, reported that federal housing inspectors gave the complex a “below average” rating in May. In those reports, managers questioned how serious the problems were or attributed them to tenants and visitors, the station said.

Sources:
WKZO, “Proposal to replace Kalamazoo computer system with cloud service pulled from commission agenda,” Oct. 6, 2026, https://wkzo.com/2026/10/06/977006/
WKZO, “Kalamazoo city commission enacts one-year moratorium for data centers,” Oct. 6, 2026, https://wkzo.com/2026/10/06/976985/
NowKalamazoo, daily newsletter, Oct. 6, 2026 (data center moratorium; call-in public comments), https://nowkalamazoo.org/newsletters/daily/10-6-26-lori-moore-celebration-set/
City of Kalamazoo, “City Commission to Restore Call-In Public Comments Beginning October 5,” Sept. 9, 2026, https://www.kalamazoocity.org/News-articles/City-Commission-to-Restore-Call-In-Public-Comments-Beginning-October-5
WMUK, “The Kalamazoo City Commission will hear from advocates for safer conditions at Fox Ridge Apartments,” Oct. 6, 2026, https://www.wmuk.org/wmuk-news/2026-10-06/the-kalamazoo-city-commission-will-hear-from-advocates-for-safer-conditions-at-fox-ridge-apartments
Photo: Chris Rycroft, “Kalamazoo City Hall in 2022,” March 19, 2022, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/), cropped and color-corrected, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kalamazoo_City_Hall_in_2022.jpg

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