 Mr. Brown, would you care to do the invocation? We'd love to. Everybody bow their heads please. Heavenly Father, please bless this beautiful day in Columbia, bless all of our citizens, bless our staff, bless those on council to do what is right for the people of the city of Columbia. Help us to be mindful of our responsibilities and our accountability as we go forward in this beautiful day. Amen. We are excited to move along some discussions updates really regarding several initiatives, projects in the city and we are approaching the budget season. It was very important for us to share some of this in addition to a deeper dive on additional items about what we think we've settled on today or getting close to day and a half. Thank you, Erica. That's a Monday and part of Tuesday, correct. And part of Monday. And that should be the meeting that day. In Columbia. In Columbia. Got it. Yep, I'm in. Thank you all so much for that. No need to belabor it. We're there. Mission accomplished. All right. So item one is very near and dear to me and my heart and the team retention and recruitment strategy as I discussed with you during our last budget cycle. And you all so graciously agreed. We are moving forward with this strategy. And Miss Denise P. Davis or Dr. Davis director of human resources will give you some updates regarding our employee engagement and evaluation process, which are some key elements of the strategy. We'll get started with that and then Bailey, if you have any questions as we go, just let us know. We've already talked with you some about this. We'll do. I think it'll bring you pretty current with ease. Wilson and thank you council for allowing me this opportunity. I'm excited to share some initiatives that have been implemented in the human resources office over the last several years. I think this wasn't talked about discussion. Okay. Make sure it's on. All right. It's on. We miss Wilson went over what the outline would look like. And I'm going to just start with some of the things that have happened over the years with reference to compensation in July of 2023. We implemented a 3% merit increase for all employees. This year, we implemented, well, two years ago, we last year, we implemented a new step structure for the police department. And the police has had the opportunity to enjoy their second year as a part of that particular step program. So that's one, one thing that we've also done for them. And I know that you are aware that we've been working real hard to implement a step program for the fire department. That is now in place. And as it relates to the performance evaluation for fiscal year 2324 at the end, there will also be some type merit increase implemented. The merit increase is, is part of the merit increase is going forward as part of the we have of the evaluation process. Yes, I think it'd be very helpful if you would talk a little bit about that, because I'm not sure that everybody knows what part of the process is. Yes, it's a part of it. It's actually toward the end. Some of the hiring practices that have been implemented is that we have what I successfully implemented where we introduced the annual career fair. We've implemented individual department hiring events and that simply means that if the water department called and it said they needed assistance with their particular hiring, we will go over and speak with them and determine what is necessary to make that happen and put forth some recruitment strategies in place to get people in place that may be able to occupy those particular jobs. We've expanded the talent acquisition department or the area in my department to be able to accommodate the hiring demand citywide. We've restructured the city of Columbia's high school career internship program. We've implemented the talent initiatives with two districts here in Columbia, Richland 2 in that particular district. The title, that particular program is titled Premier 2, Career. And in Richland 1, that program is titled One City Future Ready. And the one with Richland 1 has been in place for about two years, for three years, Richland 2 for the last two years. We've developed an implement ready to respond program that's a partnership with SC Works, and they are going to help us create a pipeline to fill our positions in the fire department. We've also developed and introduced talent in the city. You may have seen commercials in the morning when you're getting ready with reference to that. This past week, our first segment aired, and we're going to share that segment with you now, Ms. Erica. Hi, my name is Sharon Elson. I'm with Stacey, and the support services. Yeah. Yeah, we're good. He never says anything. He was talking. He was. Ever get a sign that Universe is trying to tell you something? At University of Phoenix, you could earn your competency-based master's degree for under 11k in less than a year. Get started at University of Phoenix. Hi, my name is Sharon Elson, HR manager responsible for talent acquisition for the city of Columbia. Talent in the city is our effort to highlight and showcase the departments with the city of Columbia, the department's impact players, as well as the talent who makes the city run every single day. These impact players and departments often times don't get the spot like they deserve, but without them, the city of Columbia would not run as a beautifully oiled machine that it is. As the city electrician, I'm responsible for all of the building maintenance throughout the entire city, whether it be specialized repairing, receptacles, you know, adding up-fit offices or what have you. I was here for 16 years before I left, and decided to come back. This department is like a family. I mean, it's a swell place to work. It's got the natural lighting to it. It's stuck with it. The support service is a hard thing to do. My team is responsible for the roof to the city take-home staff. We have HVAC help rooms. We have, I've got a position. He's over contract. He manages all of the janitorals and his controls. Smaller renovation projects. You know, I don't want to go, I'm like, you know, I'm intentional about trying to be behind the scenes. I'm intentional about, you know, in this position, I think I get a lot of credit, but it's not me. It's my team, you know. That's very important. To me, it's easy to explain my journey. My journey is pretty simple. You know, after graduating, I tend to be honest about it. You know, I went there for it. It was a little difficult. I did that. You know, if you want to come in at it on myself, you know, I came in and asked, I was in the city of Columbia, asked the electrician, did that for a few years. I'm going to say probably four years. The assistant administrator position came available, so they promoted me from within. I mean, I kept, you know, I'm going to call it digging. We don't kept working. We kept trying. It's been the Americans a chance, an opportunity to get promoted, you know. I was in the right spot, you know. It's worked out for me. The ability to be the electrician for the city of Columbia to be on the bank. It's a pretty special privilege. And I, like I said before, I feel very honored to get my talents back to our capital. 25 years ago in the field, we're a private contractor. We're there for seven or eight years. Came to the city at the traffic engineering division. This opportunity came over here for services. Here we are. Come on to mention about this position in this department. Visit www.columbiasc.gov. So talent in the city, yes, who, who talent in the city came about as of, as after a conversation that Karen and I were having about the career fair, the career fair has been an opportunity for interested employees to come and kind of evaluate us once a year. And so when she brought this to me, I thought it was a really good idea and I, you know, went through Pam to make sure that we could do this. This is strategically done every week leading up to our April career fair. And we have about 13 departments that will be highlighted. And the ones that were chosen were solely dependent upon there, the vacancies that were out there for us to fill. And so we're hoping that that will put that in. Sharon has done a fantastic job. Those of you who know Stacey know that he is not a person that likes being out front. In fact, he said that. But when she goes out to film these segments, she puts them at ease and there's a level of conference and trust there that, and you'll see as time goes on when you see the segments that they're trusting her and they're thinking. So thanks for the opportunity to share that. One of the things we talked about is doing more than one career fair because you had such a good response when you did it. Have you thought further more about trying to do it more than once? Yeah, certainly we can continue to look into that. What I will tell you is that what we do with the information that we get from that one is the continuous follow up. And the reason why we've expanded that particular area of our department, the acquisition department because when we get people interested that day, when we get resumes we're continuing to fall back on those particular things. But certainly we can this is a this career fair is not cheap but it's very well done and we get a lot of interest. So we're hoping that we'll get about a hundred or so more people in the year in the past. It's been between three and four hundred and we're hoping to get a few more but we will definitely consider that as an option. It's the date and determined. It's the 25th I think I think it's April 25th. And so I guess in follow up does that mean are you saying that you get so many applications at that time that you have plenty to work through throughout the year? Yes, I'm sorry. Yes, let me make that clear. Yes, we have we have plenty to work through throughout the year. Yeah. And then do we have any and it may be in here outcomes on how many hires or I do have that information but I'll have to forward it to you because I don't want to tell you something that's incorrect but every year Sharon does give me kind of the outcome of where we landed. And then what's a lot of money? It's the government everybody. Yeah. 15,000. Is most of that venue space? No, it's food mostly for the people who come to participate like the city of Columbia employees. But the venue is not well they probably work with us if we continue to have it at that venue but it's not granted. They don't. Well, the venue is free but all the other things that come along with it like if you need yeah if you need any internet so yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to need extra coffee. Yes, you know you have a little condiments and we didn't really go I mean we had water and coffee. We didn't have any kind of oh we had box lunches for lunch but I was talking about the setup at the beginning you know it was just water and coffee. I mean current vacancies do we have positions? We have about 112 right now what you see that's based off which number because pre-COVID we were at close to 2,500 and I think we deemed through over the year that we didn't need to fill all those so what's your baseline number that you're trying to get to? 2,200. That's max employment is 2,200. 100% yeah. And that includes everybody. That includes some CPD and fire, CPD 911. Say that we're going to 100 and about 112 and it changes every day it just depends what you might see on the website may list of positions but there may be several of those positions that are vacant as well so the website wouldn't be a good determinant as to actually how many positions are vacant. Okay so we're going to go past this. One thing I didn't see in there one of the things I think you all worked on with changing too was the requirements for jobs taking into account people's experience more than just if you had an agree and you didn't know how we used to have it. So I didn't put that in there because it really kind of depends how we just evaluate every job as it comes. We have gone to equivalencies versus just having a certain number of years of experience in that particular area. So we have done that. We have waived the requirement for driver's license if they don't have to drive for the job and those are the two that really kind of stand out more than any policies were being and I think departments really appreciated the latitude to be able to do that. That's what we heard from the employees saying you know we got friends that we could get here to work but I think we are now from my understanding I think that's a great change for us because I think we missed out on some talent before. We have been attempting to provide our employees with some training and development opportunities. We repurposed our training administrative position and we have hired an employee engagement and development manager. We have introduced, we have taken an opportunity to introduce him by meeting with various departments throughout the city and to inform department managers and supervisors of his purpose. And we've also started to discuss with departments the different engagement activities that will take place throughout the year that will include the training and development. I forgot to ask a question earlier when we were talking about which one and the internships and one of the things that I don't think we've taken advantage of the business community we're introduced into but the Hayward Career Center is set up and I don't know if we can play a better role in that as a city. They have a $100,000 CDL simulator there that teaches not only stick shift but today's modern push button and everything else. The diesel mechanics that they got there the automotive piece, the welding piece we've got a lot of business community that we're going to take over there to introduce to try to boost it up and expend and talk into the secretary of labor I think there could be some funding that could help them boost that program is there a way for us to integrate in that a little bit more and build it up because I think it's an underutilized asset that when you go out there you go I can't believe all this is here and we haven't taken advantage of it. Interesting that you would say that a few years ago when we started the One City Future Ready with Richland One there was only one CDL program and it was at Eau Claire and they were starting one at another school but at that particular time it was only at Eau Claire and we went out to try to get those kids interested because we were in desperate of CDL drivers as a result of that today the CDL program is what exactly what you described and Sharon and the talent acquisition team just last week went out to tour because as a part of the One City Future Ready initiative we're going to be incorporating all that Hayward has to offer so we are doing that as well We've got a group of auto dealers who are struggling for mechanics to go and invest and boost that we're taking out there and southeastern freight lines and some other major trucking trying to take advantage because a lot of everybody's having the same problem Yeah, absolutely Can't get talent Keep in mind Mr. May Lawhorn at the Urban League as those partnerships keep developing because he reached out to me recently about CDL and if we as a city have a connection with the school districts and the high school but he was asking more about from a job perspective was that like a certification or something that we had within the city but I think that might I didn't tell him that part so that might be good information for him too Okay. Sounds good, I'll reach out So to date we have several courses for our professional development program The first three you see there the verbal communication personal accountability and professionalism principles of teamwork and collaboration and trust every single employee in the city is able to take those three courses and those three courses really optimize the core core competencies that are being stressed through our process through our evaluation process we're going to have coaching, supervisory practices and the five choices of extraordinary productivity those are set to start in the spring and then there's a series of courses for leadership development currently we've had Ashley Wilkerson to come in to present Winning from within Winning from within and we're going to have Curtis to lead by Mr. Morgan Lee and he's coming up on February 20th we have our employees in leadership positions go to leading edge we have them participate in local government leadership programs the South Carolina Executive Institute in the ICMA University Do you know how many of you have taken advantage of some of these programs? Yeah, I'm going to tell you that you can write it down. Could you Can you forward it or do it again? Can you forward it or do it again? Okay there you go, alright Alright since we began these professional development opportunities and they started in September of 2023 and up until January of 2020 January 29th, 2024 we've had the general courses offered and they're listed there. We've offered 20 courses and there are four hour sessions and we've had 345 attendees. Is that individual employees or does that overlap across the room? That is individual employees. That's a good question but yes that's individual employees. We've had two sessions with Ashley Wilkerson, leader winning from within and there have been 53 attendees for that particular session and there'll be two more with Ashley and then we just wanted to highlight the numbers of the departments and these are just numbers not percentages but the departments that have sent the most people to these sessions have been the Parks and Rack Department, Engineering and Support Services and we have heard nothing but great wonderful things about what they think about it. They seem to really enjoy. I've made it my business to go to make sure to every single one to just have an idea of what is being offered and they seem to be having a really good time. There are a possibility for us to add a customer service piece to that. You know we talked about early on trying to emulate some of the Chick-fil-A and some of the other processes you know because we have so many employees that touch our residents and I think with a little bit of boosting and ideas they feel more comfortable you know I mean you think about it how many of our employees that are in the field that I mean they're they're our ambassadors right so can we give them a toolkit with that could we add that somewhere in there? We've actually done that yeah we have identified a consultant to administer those or to facilitate those obsessions for us. We just have not been able to pin down that yet, but yes we do have that in the works. Or share with Pam a card to cars one for you and one for Pam that are even that they do that. They have specific knowledge with the public safety sector but they retool their some of their classes for non sworn staff as well so okay and it might be one of our former employees Captain Matt Marsh if you've ever seen him in action he's quite the facilitator but he just retired but he's going to be doing some of that work as well yeah I had a really good interaction with a parking attendant in five points last week in my haircut the meter was broken and I saw her walking and I said so I'm parked right there and the meter is broken so am I okay to park here or not okay to park here? She said you're okay to park there. She asked me which car was mine I told my suburban and then I said here's I give you 50 cents and she said I don't want it. That's a typical normal interaction that we want somebody from the public to have with one of our employees and I said do you want me to report to meet her or would you like to report? She said I report. That's right. Two for two for parking so this morning I heard a similar interaction from someone who's pretty close to me the veteran tag was on the vehicle which he's like I still see the meter that usually they charge me anyway and she said no sir she like made a whole point you're not supposed to be the meter when you have the veteran tags and I will make sure you need to tell us that if you've been getting tickets and you have a veteran tags we're not supposed to do that so. I've found a long thank you that's wonderful to hear because often it's a negative. Absolutely. Man I get a lot of I don't I don't share all my share of my war story. One follow up question. Do the employees themselves get to volunteer to go or is it that their people pick who go? A little bit of both. A little bit of both like Wilson said they do get to volunteer and when they fill out their forms they have to get approval by their supervisors but they do volunteer themselves to go and then you know for some of the leadership sessions a lot of our ACMs and the directors will send people to those. It should be a little bit of you know carrot a little bit of a carrot here because as Denise is about to go into with the evaluation process this is also factor in to the competencies that would have I'll let her talk about all this but we want to see that this is a curve for every single employee that they're being voluntary or they're volunteering but it ought to be documented that they're doing this. Going back to what the mayor said about customer service and I think it's important for us to recognize the world we live in so we live in a very institutional world that's not designed around relationships and we live in a very compliant driven world and I had one of those wake-up calls myself last week with one of my good customers and in the our main contact said we're in the hospitality business and your people need to make sure that they're in the hospitality business so but but what happens is over time because of the you know we live in a very institutional and compliant world that tends to do this over time and you don't recognize it until it's not acceptable so I think it's important that that's a really it is it's important to to talk about it and recognize it and reinforce it that we're you know we're part of the city club is I would consider as hospitality not institutional so so like I said I have all wake-up call last week so it's everybody's gonna have to have that mentality yes I agree so moving forward through June 30 of 2024 the end of the evaluation period we're going to continue to offer those general forces the emerging leader forces will continue to be offered as well and the leadership courses will continue to be offered but we will add one more facilitator as I mentioned earlier Morgan Lee and he is going to be facilitating three sessions and they are on the courage to lead okay so a couple years ago miss Wilson gave my department HR department an opportunity to pilot an alternative work schedule and we had a few hiccups at first but I thought that you know after COVID things went really really smoothly we developed some goals we developed some non-negotiables and they were developed among the team so that you know if anything were to come up that they would be held accountable to those particular those particular goals but we have settled on two different schedules a four ten-hour day schedule and a three in office and two-day remote schedule we have 15 departments citywide that's about a third of our departments that are participating in this and it in and it kind of ebbs and flows you know who's participating and what's going on the department directors have an opportunity to just pull that back anytime they see that there may be you know our our service delivery isn't up to par but it's going really really really well when I how we measure in that could you explain a little bit to how that works obviously you know everybody can't work Monday through Thursday or whatever you obviously that but also how many people are eligible for three in the office and to remote cuz I'm curious how that works so I will explain to you what what we did and every single department head had the opportunity to assess their operation so of course you know those persons who work in 911 and fire department police department they of course can't work and yeah with the difference with that type of schedule in the HR office we're working a three in office to remote because we have more than one person in almost every position we're able to provide the same delivery of service as if both of those particular persons were in the office so for instance if my if one of my specialists is in the office on Monday then that person may have may be off on a Tuesday and Thursday that particular week and then office Monday Wednesday Friday then the next week they flip flop and so we every department is able to determine what works best for their department and did it what specifically is your question about how it works because in our department that's how it works we're we're 3-2 and they just kind of flip flop so if we have someone working Monday Wednesday Friday one week we have a different group working Tuesday and Thursday and then the next week they just kind of I guess it just fundamentally understanding too because of the way we're set up I mean if you have a long time in three because of vacation time because of holidays and this and that this is tremendous amount of time out of the office already on top of that so how do you feel that gap because you know one of the things we've always talked about is we always have to hire 1.4 people for every job because of the longevity of light which is you know a good thing to have the but how does that balance you know to make sure that things are continuing and how do you measure that because a lot of people are now coming you know coming back to the office and I think there's an advantage I don't think every position fits that mold you know obviously you have to figure that out as a department head we don't know that I'm just curious how you how it works from a practical standpoint to deal with those other factors that play into it right and how do you measure the remote work you know and in you know how is that how are the employees affecting each other I mean is there are they still able to you know do a lot of crossover because I do think that you know what what I'm seeing and reading and all these studies are that a lot of businesses are struggling because the socialization of the employees especially when you're dealing with people-to-people and that's your job more than anybody else's is people-to- people how that affects it so I'm just curious how y'all have measured all that I didn't know we were doing that there but you look you got to try I mean that's what people are asking so you got to come up with a way to try to see if it works or get it overwhelmingly asking particularly at the hiring process of getting certain people in the door because they are just now used to having those options yeah it's COVID so that really I think put us at the place to try to consider it we sort of piloted with HR and to see how it works it is it's the third of the departments it's not it doesn't work for everybody in a municipality clearly I mean it just we're not set up that way from a public safety standpoint parts and recreation some of it's just we didn't even consider it but for those kind of a lot of back office functions where it could work it's been working very well and I don't I have it since there's a gap with any of the socialization but the caveat is it stops if I mean the reason it works is because there's a clear expectation there should be zero difference in service delivery which is which is what the expectation was during COVID so we stood it up during code demonstrated us that we could do it we stopped it and then there was this sort of sense of you know I I sort of like that opportunity if we could figure out how to make it work as a city what is the core hours that everybody's expected to work right especially customer-facing or people-facing you know is it eight to five is it nine to five like if someone was were to call someone working remotely are their phones forwarded to their cell phone like I'm trying to understand and I'm somebody that does work remotely for my full-time job so I know it can work if you have the right technologies in place I don't my only concern would be that people that are trying to engage with the city miss out because someone's working from home so we don't have that problem because we have the office managed and as it relates to the the social aspect every Wednesday everyone's in the office so I misspoke earlier if you work Monday Wednesday Friday then a different group works Tuesday Wednesday Thursday so every Wednesday everybody's in the office so those are the days that we have departmental meetings and and we engage in any activity that would involve every single person but to your point about the phone calls a phone calls go directly to the computers to the laptops and they were able to answer phones as if they were sitting right at their desk one of the things that y'all talked about too was it some of the hiring was some part-time with flex like you know people talented folks who may have retired or have you know child constraints and we have we have you tried any of that yet we haven't well you know we we're interested in making sure that we have all of our positions field and whatever comes to us we consider it so there's nothing that's really off the table in terms of that we just haven't had that I had to do do do that at this particular time as it relates to accountability we have ground rules and a lot of them have ground rules I shared my ground rules with the whole entire city in my department they cannot say if this is your week to be off Monday to be in the office Monday Wednesday and Friday and you can't be there on a Friday you're not going to switch with someone else and have them come in because it messes up the rotation and it causes the employees to feel pressure from their colleagues so we don't have that we don't they have to respond to me within 15 minutes of a text or an email because they know if I'm emailing them and asking them something then I'm really needing that back I have had one person get one minute to that 15 minutes but it's almost immediate it's almost as if they are it's almost quicker than going to them in the office so it's worked really really well and that's what I'm hearing curious to how is it affected sick day usage and other stuff with the flex is that you seen a reduction in that you know I'll have to do the stats on that just curious yeah I'll have to do the stats on that I would have a positive effect on it but I can't say for sure do we have any people do the 410 I wanted that I hate Henry's not in here because I think he has the best one of the best examples isn't it hit is it support services who's who's and they were to 410 I love it I would like to get feedback on one of the things that you know we're having to deal with as well going back to the mayor's point about remote workers is you know we were having to make people take time off because a lot of remote workers this is I mean I can show you yeah I'm working from home today I've got two sick kids taking my mom to the doctor I got a pickup dinner for someone so blah blah blah blah I'll be I'm here yeah we're gonna be talking about that's a whole week's worth of stuff for me but we're doing today so so I mean I think you know we're having to put some real guidelines around right working from home well you work from the doctor's office right I actually got one the other day I'm working from the airport okay yeah well that's a new one that's the first that I'm working from the airport today that was working out of country I had somebody that was working from California because her daughter working remote that's out you can't work from California why you're taking care of your sick daughter that's out right so we're having to get more so I'm assuming you'll have to do well we've dealt with that in our guidelines because they know that working from home means just that and that I'm not to call in here baby in the background or Starbucks or some library exactly where you're working from home they know that they know they can't take lunch at three o'clock you know lunch has to be between 12 and 2 they can't be in in Belk at 2.30 your department has this been adopted by others as well this has definitely been adopted by others okay we've had lots of conversations surrounding this before it went into implementation back in August and things seem to be going really really well okay and I understand you said that the policy can be revoked by the department absolutely absolutely and if you're a new employee you don't get to do it until you've been an employee for up to six months you have to be an employee for six months before you can work remote I mean it's also important because I think a lot of people feel an extra pressure because they're working from home so I don't think most people like I got a day off you know it's like I mean you got to hurt back and just take the day off we give you time off and I think you have to stress we give you time off take it okay you don't have to work from home today I think what I like about this is that it's structured that it's not I'm just gonna change my schedule every week right to fit I think that's the big difference in this and the rotation so that everybody is in tune and you know how to plan right you know that to me gives me so much more comfort from from exactly what you're talking about is that you know I know I got to work these days and this is what I do I can plan ahead but you're right I will share with you that our receptionist can't work at home yeah right she's the only one of the 14 of us who cannot work at home I promise you miss Doris can't work from home and you know every department has one or two that just can't do it even though the department may have gone to that schedule but you just explain to the employee and it's just the nature of their job and she's handled it very very well be great to know the numbers behind who's and what what program you know across the city yeah okay and I would going back to I think it was the mayor's point I would like to get some feedback on for our support services team has been working the 10-hour schedule and it is really work wonders from the standpoint they're able to get more work done earlier in the morning but also late in the afternoon when there's not a lot of activity so project related items they're able to kind of work through the evening time whether it be in a facility and our parking garage so that's work really really well and it's been a great morale booster as well so so is it always what is everybody on a different schedule so is it like in other words there was it Friday you know like somebody's works Tuesday Wednesday it's a rotation it's a road everybody's on the rotation yes yes it's like a like the old seven-day shift work except you only work right and it really has worked work very well for that team especially late in the evening so we we are very appreciative of that recommendation so not just the days but the timing of the day during the day is that changed to right right I'm curious to know to be great to look at how this has helped with recruitment how we could we could rapidly track that this has made a difference for us to get talent and I think as the program continues to grow I think we ought to track that because that may dictate how you recruit in the future you know kind of like the messaging we talked about early on is you know free parking downtown access to 55 restaurants at lunch you know hey how about four 10s you know or three in the office and that may become our recruiting tool how we message that especially if we know it's working well I'll tell you this has been working on that in because we are 100% full staffing in support services so that wasn't the case before that wasn't the case before so to that point I think it's a good point it is it is hard in today's world to get people to want to work I mean we used to have people to work overtime yeah now I mean if somebody work overtime you think you're asking to go kill somebody they just won't do it so you see other areas of the city going to four 10s or is that not reasonable do you know which areas I have that information but I didn't put it in here I could I might be able to find it in my emails and provide that to you at a later time but I can let you know I know I have a breakdown Jeff you had something you wanted to get good we did okay a little surprise a couple of my divisions that I thought would want to do it depends upon your staff if you have children you might not want to be coming in order staying late and I'm actually surprised how many people turn it down or just still work for the regular five days so it's interesting though we have different people in our company doing it so for a lot of managers though if the world's not working for tens you're not working so if you're managing a customer or something and you may think you're off but you're gonna have to answer your you know you're gonna have to deal with stuff if it comes up so I think that's smart for a lot of people to realize that's not true and other people you know like our design group if they work for 10 they work for 10 that's it the back of the office functions that Jeff overseas are quite different than the operational right Henry overseas it makes a plenty of sense for them and maybe for some of the three to but I would even say that each department depending on what's going on I won't say it's remote but like during my finances all in accounting there's several months where they may be in the entire week in the middle of an audit going on same with IT if they're in the middle of an upgrade something like that they may be in the office you know if their normal day out was Tuesday it might be that they're not allowed to rotate to another day that's just the way it is but everyone's accepted that because previously we didn't have it at all so we have I'm gonna have to admit to say that the testing of it that HR did for six months morning and help lay a lot of ground rules to see things that would be effective and how we're going to introduce this to our employees because you know Dr. No here was probably a little sooner than the whole thing you but I have to tell y'all I have been very interested because the work is still getting done that was one of the things that we really cannot sacrifice are what we're currently doing whether it's internal or what the external customer well all great feedback thank you we are clearly not at 30 minutes we're at an hour so we're gonna start picking up the pace just a little bit this is all great in my last slide to actually know but it's my last it is the last thing yeah evaluation so mayor you brought up earlier to you wanted me to review what this process looks like and this has been great and wonderful because the where I come from in education you had several different steps to an evaluation process and one was called orientation and so this is kind of modeled after what I'm used to implementing as a as a principle when I was in education the first step of our new processors the orientation process this is the time that management meets with their employees to discuss their evaluation they are spoken to about the competition they're spoken to about their expectations and they have there's a checklist that's provided to them of everything that needs to be covered during that particular meeting that checklist is gone through by all of the the managing evaluators and it's signed off on by the manager and the employee and dated at the end then there's a step called the mid-year evaluation and this mid-year evaluation is placed strategically before the self-evaluation the mid-year evaluation is a time where you can talk with the manager talks with the employee to discuss how things are going and at this particular time if things are not going well we help them create a improvement plan for that particular employee there to let them know whether they're meeting expectation whether they're making great progress toward those competencies that are put into place and then there's a self evaluation and in the past this particular step we would I would see those that were clueless about what I thought about their performance right some may think they're doing a lot better than I think some may think they're doing a lot worse than I think but because we had that mid-year engagement I'm expecting this year for us to be on par with with that self-evaluation so this was always my concern are we still doing one-to-five scale with three needs okay cuz when I used to evaluate you got a three right mostly I was just about doing your job right they were used to getting vibes right they complained up so what's the scale is that part of this so it does not meet meets and exceeds and they're specific the specific yeah measures for it you know they have to be measurable they're we call the smart objectives so it tells you exactly what you need to do how many of each of those things you need to do or how often you need to do it so they know how they're doing what that means right they can look and say okay I want to be I want to be exceeds so this is where I'm looking for every single every single evaluation orientation that we didn't used to do before is that opportunity to dialogue with the employee to hear from them too on what they want to do to me or exceed or I feel like I need more training and blah blah exactly what that looks like you know I have one person in my department who does exceptionally well she was losing sleep over this evaluation so she was like what you know I just I'm just losing sleep I don't know what to do and I was like let's sit down and talk about it you know this is very specific what is it that you don't understand here it goes right here and we're reading through and so she's like oh okay so you know those high fires they want to do really well they want to know exactly how they're going to get there so after the self-evaluation staff there's a manager review there's an indirect manager review and the manager review is simply to look at what's been placed there look at what I've done look at what the employee has done and then Pam as the indirect review for my people would take a look and she would sign off and then there's an overall sign off on the manager for the manager and the employee and the very next step is to plan for next year we had a whole this was in the top five requests from employees this was yeah because they for some reason didn't know that they were being evaluated 100% and I met with every hourly employee throughout the city and this was in the top five of everything that they they wanted an opportunity to have a path forward they want to understand they're like well we don't get a value we were doing evaluations they just didn't know right right this I think this is I think this is fantastic and I think this is this is what will make us have a stronger better workforce right because now they're involved and they get to have a conversation and you get to know them well it also rewards the folks who actually want to do better right and you know that was one of the complaints is is yep y'all just do across the board mm-hmm raises and merits and however but not all of us are pulling the same weight this gives everybody an opportunity right and you add training programs the opportunities for for all the the growth patterns of leadership this is what's gonna make us have a workforce a strong workforce for the future yes I agree so we've completed two steps so far we've completed the orientation task and as you can see from this slide we've had we had 93.1 percent increase an increase I'm sorry overall progress and on this particular task and the six percent the six point nine percent is made up of people who might be on some type leave whether it's military leave family medical leave might be on workers comp but we're very proud of that overall progress because then we know like you said to your point mayor that our employees are involved in this process and the very next the next slide mid-year engagement task we are at about eighty eight point three percent increase I mean I think I want to increase their overall progress there in completing that particular task in the same for the for the percent of incomplete their leave cases and things of that nature you got to do to get to a hundred well you can't get to a hundred if they're not here and so you know we have people who are not here during that particular time and then they you know we were able to come back to them once they come back but for this particular task during these particular dates where we had to you know in our system we had to put a date to finish it so that we can get on to the next task but they're not necessarily going to be left out of the loop in terms of the merit that will come come in September how many people do we have on longer term leave right now do you know between military leaves and others yeah I would it would be a guess but I would say maybe 250 I mean and that's that's a guess that's a lot that's 12 or 14 that seems very hot yeah that doesn't include injured workers doesn't include workers comp but those guys around their living pipes and stuff like that shouldn't pull our numbers down we could we take that out so there's a when you're looking at the numbers and somebody got hurt for example work on the water line and they're being graded as being out of work not negatively affecting their evaluations we make sure that's not it's it won't make it absolutely will not yeah are there any questions I'll be interested for you us to review that that is that high that seems awfully high our military leave numbers would be higher than it is and we get and there is no play with that from the federal government you don't they're looking at going from 15 to 30 days for military yeah now just to look at it understand it any other questions leave as well I'm sorry yeah you know these are all important because when you you put that on top of how sick leave is done and other stuff and vacation your constantly back our next related item is the management wanted to give you all quick update on where we are with that this Hamilton Jimenez assistant city manager for administrative services and Miss Missy Kaufman a budget and program management and grants director good morning everyone thank you for allowing us to present this information we've we got a great team and we've been working really hard and it's good to to recognize all the hard work I want to take a moment just to thank everybody for their recent support for me my niece passed away about two weeks ago and everybody was so kind whether it was chief or miss Wilson with food her husband happens to be a rookie of the year police officer and so the north region was very kind to bring food every day and from your text messages may I recommend to everybody bringing me flowers and and all kind of good treats and hugs and text and warm wishes and prayers so I just want to take a moment to say that I appreciate that and one of the things that makes a place a place that an employer that retains people is how you treat your people and so the city of Columbia is definitely a family like Bacon said when he did his little presentation it's definitely a family and they rally around you and support you when you're having tough times and when you're having good times so I just wanted to take a moment to say thank you for that because that means that meant a lot to me and my family so like miss Wilson said we are currently in the process of working with a consultant and I'm gonna skip this slide real quick and I'm gonna come back to it so we're working with matrix consulting group and went through procurement process to to pick matrix they're a consulting firm that is out of California they have offices in in Oregon Illinois and one in Charlotte North Carolina and one of the reasons why we picked them was because they have done hundreds of management and organizational assessments for local governments and their staff consists of a lot of prior municipal employees they've got prior clerks they've got prior chiefs prior city administrators public works directors and so they have a good feel for the type of work that we do which makes them a really great consultant to work with us because they do understand municipal government in its entirety and so what we've done so far we've been engaged with them for several months now but their task one that they have started working on is evaluating the effectiveness of the current organizational and management structure to determine the basic requirements for personnel and determine where the span of control and management staffing levels throughout the organization are appropriate to support timely effective and efficient delivery of service to the public as well as internal proper internal operations proper internal operations so what they've been doing is doing a current state assessment of operational practices organizational structure and resources and staff and allocations and they're working on an interim report that's going to outline the current state assessment so they've reached out to all of our departments and they've met with each department and they've done a series of interviews and questionnaires to make sure that they are understanding our structure they've gotten org charts they've gotten budgets they've gotten a lot of staffing allocation they've been we've shared with them the assessment the police department has had done and also the assessment that the fire department had done in order for them to get some good information and I'm just giving you a few of the data points that they have received but there's a whole list laundry list of data they've requested and so we're providing that data to them they've done all the departmental interviews and meetings and they're looking to do an assessment draft in February and one of the things that they are considering in their assessment is also employee engagement and they are going to partner in with us and I'll see if I can go back to do an employee engagement survey so that employee engagement survey was sent out and it's being administered it started January 29th through February 11th and it's not only asking for engagement questions do you like your job what do you find satisfying about your job those type things but it's also asking organizational effectiveness type questions do you have the equipment that you need what type of technology do you think will help you do your job better do you feel like you can make decisions do you feel like your manager is responsive to you so those type of questions that dig into the organizational effectiveness of each of our areas is also in this employee engagement survey that we couldn't have done this you know and had a benchmark to go against because of all the changes that have been implemented you know I mean we've made massive investments in the last two years in technology equipment and our employees into our infrastructure within the city it would have been great to see the difference before after it's gonna be I think it's gonna be very important for us to be able to see moving forward because of the commitment we made exactly that would have been unbelievable to see it would have been I think at least what I hear when I'm out there the employees feel much more engaged with with the city right now and feel like we're investing obviously we can always improve and so that's why we want to do this but I can't wait to see the results and it yeah no I think it's you know this is how we this is how we improve right there in the trenches day-to-day and it's asking definitely asking demographic information as well so we can see kind of the things that help us retain some of our younger employees as opposed to some people that have worked here longer and the goal really is that we're gonna take the results and make some engagement just employee engagement decisions we're gonna figure out things that our employees are asking for things that will make them feel you know more valuable enjoy their work more but that's the the foundation and the framework to start that process so we are pushing I'm giving a plug for it right now everybody who hasn't done your survey please do your survey because it's really important and we really need the information you know you get you have to have about 70% participation you're not included for in order for it to be you know really effective so we're really pushing because they really need the information and then something we can do to help encourage people we got it I think we got it and we are pretty high 70% is high but that you know that's the target but I mean I would be great or maybe seeing if all the departments are represented in that now that is identifiable yeah yes Dr. Bussells you're absolutely right we're definitely trying to make sure that all departments are represented yeah because that makes a big difference and and also so they were really working hard on that part they're gonna take the information that they've that they've received and they're also gonna help us benchmark ourselves against other similar cities we are certainly gonna provide them with some of the benchmarking organizations that we use for pay and for other things but they're also gonna come back to us as experts in this field and say yeah you guys are kind of similar to and I'm throwing out something I don't know if this is but but a a wake-up or somewhere else that has a utility structure similar to us and based on their assessment would be a good benchmarking organization are they included in your layout and planning for 1401 it's a good point well we we certainly we're gonna take now are they gonna be included in the planning of 1401 because when you see when you read in here and you talk about organizational and this and that the flow of our information departments interact with each other I'm assuming they're taking all of that information and as we're getting ready to merge folks into 1401 I'm just curious if that is being included in that and they're they're giving their input to you to say hey have you thought about this not from a construction standpoint but a placement standpoint because that makes sense we certainly can integrate this information as we get these reports with what you'll hear later on today as far as the layout that's kind of done but well but I think we still have the opportunity to maybe integrate the scope over it yeah yeah yeah yeah I mean it's a major investment for us and it's a smart one but it's a major investment yeah and you only are later that yeah we'll talk about it later but that makes sense yeah that does make sense that they can validate some of the some of the decisions that you've already made about you know open spaces or not open spaces or where we have opportunities to serve our customers a little bit more effectively so so that's important so after this after the you know February March timeframe then if they're and they do that if there are some things that we feel like need a deeper dive we certainly can do that at that time and and consider some more specific targeted assessments if that if the if the report gleams that that's necessary so that's you know that's in their scope of work that's a potential phase too and so we we definitely will be looking for that opportunity if it presents itself is there any questions about that I think it's it's like I said it's been really good they've gotten some really good information from our departments because I know like like Erica for example they had a person who was a former clerk who talked to her and so they had some you know kind of knowledge to ask the right questions and kind of dig deeper to make sure that they're getting a good assessment of what she does in her office and you know police people talk to to the police department and so there's that that makes those connections and that makes that a really good assessment because they know what they're talking about you don't have to reeducate them because they're talking about something that they have no knowledge about so that's that's that was really important to us when we when we chose matrix miss you have any comments you want to add to that yes we have made a very conscious effort to make sure that we made departments know how important this was and how valuable their feedback is so that this assessment is very important as it can be yes we emphasize that you can't deliver a good product right and we've really tried to emphasize that that we need you we need your feedback we need you to participate and we're asking everybody we can for their involvement in the process they've been easy to work with in the sense that they've been to this rodeo before yeah and they also you know they know how to blend what what they're asking for the data that they're asking for to do their work so yeah and they've given good suggestions of you know maybe you should try to do the survey this way and maybe you so it's been good it's been good one survey fatigue right so they're very into hopefully we can make sure our folks are being there to respond and they're doing some in on the ground obviously interviews and so forth yes yes yes that's great any questions any nope so one of the things that's really helping us like Denise talked about with the school districts trying to get people interested in municipal government is a big thing and so one of the ways we're doing that is what she's going to talk about next and and with Mr. Mr. Councilman Brown's encouragement and Dr. Bustles where we're starting and the mayor's talking about internships a lot too it's trying to really appeal to these younger figure out why won't they come work for us and what would draw them in and so as she's gonna talk about the Institute of Local Government interns and kicking that off yeah we'll turn it over to her thank you so much good morning we're excited to provide a brief update about the City of Columbia Institute of Local Government interns and a lot of the work we've accomplished over the past few months oh got it got it oh I got it okay great so the City of Columbia Institute of Local Government interns program provides a unique opportunity for undergraduate graduate students with an interest in local government and graduate and to be immersed in local government so basically they're learning a lot about the day-to-day operations of the city what's required to run and maintain municipality services the program was created as ACM Benjamin said the desire of Councilman Peter Brown and City Council in order to foster relationship between local government and our local colleges and universities with an emphasis on community based projects so just a few fast facts about the Institute the Institute was obviously created for undergraduate graduate students it was initially offered spring and fall but with a lot of the requests that have been coming in from departments we're considering summer as well it's a paid internship students are receiving academic non academic credit some are also receiving experience the interns perform a variety of tasks that include policy research development drafting member and a community engagement outreach and education administrative task research and analysis with an emphasis on each intern being assigned a city council project to research and provide a final project report on the subject matter we've been working on this for latter part of 2023 after meeting with Councilman Brown and some city council members as well it's been a great effort we're partnering with USC as well as for the first cohort that started this spring January 12th and then we've also received some applications from outside students that weren't involved or don't go to USC as well and they're incorporated in some of the stats that I'll show after this slide but this is the list of possible projects that some of the interns are being assigned a sign based on their department area and what they feel that they are good at researching these were provided by Councilman Brown and they're some additional items that have also been provided by other city council members just a spring 2024 at a glance actually we have nine students which includes a seven from the initial cohort and two additional students that are now in turn with public relations six departments are included so let me actually go ahead and bring those up for you the departments that are participating office of the mayor and city council economic development Columbia Empowerment Zone Inc office of business opportunities office of violent crime prevention and public relations we have eight undergraduate students and one graduate student the students represent four different majors from political science to mass communications under criminal justice majors five cities are represented in two states from South Carolina and then also New York and three colleges and universities University of South Carolina Benedict College and Columbia International University and this is just the for the first group of interns now is that the new hope sign or the old hope sign it is the one that's currently on Main Street currently on Main Street so it's a new one yes we wanted to get all the great angles the old one the old one's gonna try to dust eventually what's the ratio breakdown for students are five of them at USC one F Internet one that Columbia yes so we wanted to start with a smaller group and actually in the process we've gotten additional contacts with other universities from Benedict to Allen so on and so forth so for the breakdown there are graduate students there yeah the graduate student is from Columbia International University a short kid about right six of the students are from University of South Carolina and then two are from from Benedict College and they're actually in public relations but a couple of the department heads and also have sent us contacts for other schools as well we just wanted to do a soft launch and we've definitely been we'll be working with other colleges and universities not just USC and the students that applied from Columbia International University and Benedict applied through not through the partnership with the class the classes of public relations internship through professor Dr. Meyer Gutberg at USC but we had additional applicants outside of that class that were also considered and they've been placed in these departments so it's been great I mean I know we don't want to do hundreds and thousands but because it does take work to have them have show folks new things and but do we have a goal of how many we want for targeted departments so we think it will work first of all yeah it's gonna be a good indication of what you know we can handle because you're exactly right counsel woman Herbert and you know the former teacher of me too is very important that we want to have them but they need to have a good experience while they're with us and they need to be attended to and we need to be receiving their feedback as well you kind of can't do that if you start getting too too many not to mention with this cohort they do have some of them are in the class that goes with it with the professor so some of it's been informed by what the professor's class that handle in this particular cohort I would imagine yes and then we want to also make sure that we are these are paid internships so we kind of softly rolled into this but we want to plan through the budgetary process as well with our departments because we want to keep paying the interns if we can but we need a budget accordingly for that so and we're checking where the departments throughout the internship as well as the students initially they filled out a survey so we can get their feedback and we'll be doing that periodically throughout the semester as well figure out probably called the president's office over Becca I think these students will qualify for the matching intern funding you know there's a million dollars a year put away you have to three thousand dollars yep nice for those interns added funding and they also if they're out of state working for the city can qualify them in as a GA ship for in-state tuition so that might be one thing I was gonna suggest which would be nice and was really important when I was in school is if whatever project they have if they can come present to the committee about it yes I mean for us to be able to give kind of like real-time feedback and ask questions they get a taste of you know what it's like when city professionals come and talk about a topic or idea so I think planning for that would be really great over the net you know towards the summer or whatever makes sense absolutely really additionally their day-to-day is spent in their department the departments we specified but we're also working on additional activities like the legislative reception attending city councilmanities community opportunities so that they get a well-rounded focus and site towards to each department so that's something that we tested out with our leadership Columbia class the leadership South Carolina class as well as our Harvard fellows that we had last year and it worked fairly well them getting to be exposed to different departments learn about those departments particularly Columbia water and public relations of public works and economic development all detours for those students and it was a hit requirement moving forward where they have a little checklist like been in and been part of so to city have you seen the riverfront that's good have you been to our different parks have you seen you know the different areas of town have you visited all four districts do you understand got it because I think a lot of the projects that we want to do is improving the city as a whole so they have a better geographic feel to you know kind of a mini capture if you want to call yes I know I had to discuss that briefly potentially getting them in on that tour you don't have to get the wheel there I knew so to city blog and there's like a hundred things to do before you die in so to city okay you can build on that okay like swap things that make sense for the city like the four districts or something like that that's great now what you're not sitting there trying to figure out what should I put on this list yeah that's good thank you for that I will definitely look at we'll look at those well I just want to say congratulations this is you guys really pulled this together a lot faster than I thought you could pull it together and I think it to me you know it could serve as a real model for a lot of cities and for the universities to hopefully become more involved in the community as well which is one of the goals I think of the city council and our staff is to have better relationships better working relationships not just better relationships better working relationships with universities absolutely thank you so much it's definitely been a group effort and we're thankful for the positive feedback I'll tell you with the college committee on engagement the universities you know Columbia College and Allen are having a much stronger push to get their students to get more engaged in the community and we're seeing that we're hearing it from the kids which was part of why we weren't retaining some of these folks here because they didn't really know what the opportunities were even think about it how about that we're getting going about it didn't even think about it and we found out from that one of the biggest pieces there is living living is how they're making choices they want to live in an area that they can they can move freely walking everywhere and so I mean our call for downtown living is more important today than it's ever been if we want to retain that that future talent good internship program too yep it was it was amazing we had the advocacy council over here the other day from USC and this is all under under grads juniors to the freshman and you know they were talking about you know I hope y'all will look at you know we walk from Main Street the lighting but over by the state house is not there's not enough blue light you know canisters in between here and there not that we think we need it but having that safety net there and the lighting upgrades you know is there things we could do to make it brighter rent control which was very interesting because some of the rent is getting out of controlling is making it harder for them to continue on because there's limited opportunities on campus and things to think about as we are improving future growth how that plays into it absolutely thank you all thank you thank you guys you want me to break I could use a five minute you know they're working on it because I heard it you can even get a little thing that jiggles your mouse like if you're an organization that keeps up with the mouse movements so our design folks we we track all their activity like that yeah you can get a little thing that moves your mouse like you don't touch something for 10 minutes you'll get notified yeah but you better be like send a shockwave or just a little that's what we're live live from New York okay let's keep going our customer relationship management platform update miss Benjamin will give us the update along with the team who's been working on this I'm sure because I see Carmen in here too and we know this is kind of in a long time in coming so we're anxious for you all to give us some feedback so hopefully we can begin the launch absolutely so like miss Wilson said this is definitely been a team effort we have been engaged with the project management team the IT department and every single department within the city that's gonna provide some type of customer experience for our citizens and and customers that use the services at the city of Columbia so with the mayors and and Dr. Bussles and encouragement we we were encouraged to go out and try to figure out a better way to engage with our citizens and the customers to give them some platforms that will make it easier for them to and so we request something we went through a process so I will say that and now you're not working can you advance me Erica because it's not working now so based on this opportunity we had to refresh and enhance our citizen and customer experience we had a few objectives for our project the main ones were to improve our customer relationship management web and app presence that enables customers to submit and better track concerns and requests for enhanced cost and that provided enhanced customer service customer experience to also enhance the transparency and communication with customers using our services and we currently use city works is a platform that we use in the backside of the system that's where all the work orders go into and so we were we're trying to provide a little bit more transparency so that the customer if they say I got a water league at my house then we get that request in the city works and then they get more information about the status of the repair so they're able to see what's going on with their request and so that's part of our goals for this project the customer will or just the employee so it'll be both so the customer will be able to see a little bit more and the employee themselves phone calls by 30 40% and we we hope so and of course you know we we will be the people will see different things you know internally people will see things but then the customer will we'll see other things we say internally so frustration point from a customer is I'm trying to call and track this down and the person I talked to a customer service can't look it up that's that's what we're hoping this will do is that they could punch in their work order now they have to actually put a work order request in obviously which you know some people don't they just call us but when they do that then they'll be able that employee doesn't matter who it is or where they are should be able to give them a status report correct so that's what yes that's what we're working towards so of course it definitely makes a difference it definitely matters that departments are engaged in this process as well so that is part we'll talk a little bit about that as well so it's important that they're putting in the status of the work orders and they're entering in you know went to elm street this day at this time and these are the activities that happen and so all of that is what this system is offering us is the ability to see those things as they as they're happening and we're working back office to make sure our workflows are in place to make sure we're able to put the information in the system accurately and timely so that all these pieces are working together and communicating together and that's what that's the next one to improve departmental workflows staff collaboration to resolve customer issues so where we have silos where we don't communicate well we're trying to work on that process as well and then to utilize a shared platform for tracking and resolving constituent request and issues and I know you all as council members and you as the mayor you all get requests from your constituents and so we're gonna we're working with Shanique and Erica and those of us who get those requests and are trying to fill those requests for you all to track them in this system as well so it sometimes is both right that customer has reached out to the water department they haven't gotten they don't call it all they just call us directly that's a problem because it doesn't get in the system yeah usually they usually spend two weeks getting really frustrated right so so this all mirror up together so that same you know problem you'll we'll be able to see it in one centralized platform so it won't be disjointed and then we can say oh okay yes you called yesterday and this is this is the status of your complaint and to give them try to head off their complaints and provide information to them before they even ask for that information is what we're working on so they don't you have to complain we can automatic tell them what's going on because I think that's been a that's been a struggle is making sure that we are communicating to our citizens and our customers we're busy working but we're not necessarily telling them yes the status was the timeframes to turn an invisible situation into a visible situation a lot of times these situations are invisible because all it is is somebody complaining to everybody else and they're not gonna get anything done because they're not talking to the right people right so it's like yelling out your window so so a lot of this is just it's just getting the invisibility of our system visible and in the only way to do it is to have a number so if you're you're visible if you got a number and you're invisible being a number well I think it really helps the employees who are dealing with the phone calls as well so that it can actually answer somebody you know half the time it's not about that it took this long to get it it's the fact that they know that it's coming and that it's in process and and and I think we we don't give our employees that that tool and and you know I think this is gonna be beneficial I mean you know and I think yes this is some of the stuff that we got from some of the employees in that discussion to is is that I can't answer people's questions we're not set up that way well all of these topics today relate to each other as I'm sitting here thinking about what y'all are saying the touch points the connectivity with customer service training making sure integrating that yeah it's the same you know they're gonna also be able to use a piece of technology in a platform to help them be better ambassadors it wasn't technology and training solves a lot of problems yeah mr. Reverend let me ask one question a few years ago we had an app that we instituted on our laptop and it was called City of Columbia I think you can't hear me you we're saying you are right on time you are about the year transitioning us into what miss Benjamin's about to talk about you're exactly right so that so whatever may Dallas referring to is my South kill my Columbia SC and my Columbia SC was a product and we'll go into a little bit background that we did that we had and still have actually and so when we were going through the process of trying to figure out how do we make this whole experience better and what kind of platform we're gonna use we debate it whether we refresh or whether we replace it and so we did our due diligence to do some project discovery we looked at the technology we looked at what else was out there we looked at what other communities were using we did we had some vendor meetings for the mayor's satisfaction we definitely demoed C click fix and we looked at a couple other platforms that are out there and so we had to make a decision whether or not we wanted to kind of stay with what we had but update and refresh it was that the best choice or was it to go with something totally complete it's completely different so glove Q a actually purchase well Granicus is who we were using before they actually purchased a new platform some new technology and those things gave us a little bit more robust of a app and a platform so we we thought we'll and then the integration for city works was there for the work order system and so we felt like with the changes they had made in the updates we it would be better for us to just refresh and stay with the vendor that we have so we're using Granicus one view as our vendor for this new relaunch of of this platform in the app and so just for clarity because I think we were looking at different types of platforms but the difficulty would then be to integrate into the platform that we're currently using to put the data in absolutely a lot more seamless absolutely like that to people absolutely you got it completely miss Herbert you're right but in part of what we found to is that people said they could integrate with us but when it came down to the demo and others they couldn't do it we couldn't get so there wasn't any reason to continue to chase that and I think they found a good bridge gap to make that happen I found that this industry loves to tell you stuff that's not true yeah and our team our IT team and our project management team with Carmen Fleming who's gonna come up a little bit they were very insistent on proof of concept show us that you can do these things and and and and and so we can see for ourselves because we're not here to listen to what you say you can do and then you can't do it so we made sure that that concept was was there so is the idea once the app is up and running that we would all have like different levels of access to it like would we be able to on our phone check a constituents request so yes there will be different levels of access and what people can see and and so we'll we'll work we're working with the levels of staff to determine that and then to give them the access that they need so of course we'd have to do some training you'd have to be able to to access then we can talk through that so I'm going to you know I was sitting here thinking oh I can tell he was like I don't not one high actually man like that's what I've been doing the last 10 minutes it's trying to get nothing with this I've been to old school ways picking up the phone and calling so some people I'm just gonna have analysis paralysis we're looking at a CRM system and telling them download the app they can still just call the city yeah you get a number absolutely I think the difference Tyler for that is so important is that that when that person calls that the person on the other end can actually give them the information they're looking for and I think that's part of it is is sharing this integration so we're not taking away a way for you to get that information we're actually given the employee so that you know if you got an elderly person who's who doesn't trust an app can pick up the phone and call but the customer rep on the other side could say your work order is in progress it's you know number whatever it's going to be three weeks because pups got to come first this has got to happen and then two weeks after that after they fix it they'll pave it you know they can that's the information there that people want to see and I think now we just can't access it yeah so it's it's all there the pieces in part are all there it's just making sure they're that we're pulling it all together so like I said before in 2010 is when the my columbia sc um the citizens action center web portal came about to support 311 and foyer initiatives and then in 2018 we tried to kind of refresh it and enhance it with an app expand the services a little bit more and so we we did make some strides in improving it but since then um and since then there has been you know decent utilization we've had more than 20,000 customers um 27,000 crm request um and the those requests are coming in like you said councilman bailey if someone calls the the person at customer service can put that request into this web portal as well so we're just going to build on these numbers this is just showing you a snapshot of kind of what the what the activity has been since then but the hope is that we build on these numbers and we grow the use and the access and and the in the integration of of this this um is parking something that could be added to this as in terms of in terms of parking paying your bill paying your bill if you any questions about broken meter broke it yeah like some some yeah so definitely the um definitely reporting the broken meters like you said mr brown um that could be a part of that um we are looking at connecting it with the other things we have like the bill pay that we currently have you'll be able to connect to that from the app it would also be great in the app it said like even if you had a parking section it said oh and here's the link to the app store to download the what i don't know what do we use not park mobile whatever passport so that people can easily figure that out from there too even if it can't integrate at least they know go there maybe they have a button they just compress and it redirects it yeah yeah and we are definitely that's a good idea so we'll jot that down we're looking for all you know we don't want to have the app be overloaded and people say oh my god it's so complicated to get through the app so we're we're also thinking of ways to connect to different things like passport like the payment system in order for people to have access so that's really important i didn't i forgot to mention that you know of course Clint and his group are the are the major reasons why people are accessing the apps or the portals in the in the past and i don't imagine that that'll change because of all the customers that he has so that's a big big one streets public works um you know if somebody needs a new roll card we're gonna be able to connect them and say they can get a new roll card and these things are happening they're just not happening as seamlessly and as as effectively as we as we hope to happen with the new app and platform i got some positive feedback from uh Fender in five points a couple weeks ago which i've not heard good news the city of columbia business licensing division is pleased to announce the ability to renew licenses online using the statewide business license some some register now to pay uh for the uh february 2024 the next comment was what about hospitality tax um being able to do that online and i said i'll look into that's come up before um i got excited with that response how about institutionalized so you're enthusiastically working on it yeah passionately what's your happy is on it passionately working on it got it right now um i have had one person to use the app that gave me good response in a neighborhood meeting so when you use it the folks who are using it i feel are having a good experience and again um and karm i can speak to some of the technology and and miss silvia um you know some of the like geo fencing you weren't able to do some of some of that kind of take kind of features some of the other features didn't work but this is the this is what the app and the website look like now and then this is what is a mock-up of what it's gonna look and we we have consulted with crawford and um that's working on the marketing um so we've gotten some photos and some ideas from them so this might not be what it completely looks like but this is what we're going to roll out um because it has kind of the the the um the look that they're they're encouraging us to go to and so because of timing we went ahead and asked them for their assistance this was one of the photos that they recommended to us and so that's what we're going to use and and cola we're we're changing it just a little bit to my cola sc instead of my columbia sc again to give it a new feel and look a new new new um when it comes to the key buttons that will be kind of the ones that stick up like they're showing there will that be done by base what we think the most requested things are yes so we talked about that we talked about there is a potential and karma's gonna give her a demo in a minute there's a potential of about nine buttons um and we looked at other communities like Dublin Ohio and Waco Texas and um the uh a community in florida and we kind of try to look at how they set theirs up um we found that the the more buttons the more confusing it gets um and so we're trying to narrow it down to because you can do nine buttons so we're trying to do less than that but then put links at the bottom so people can link to other things so we're just trying to make it so yeah that's what we're trying to focus on but yes the the we have had days and days of discussions about what's the most frequent things people will want to do and so those are the crashes that we're in because when we have a fifth week in a month it throws off my my recycling i don't know what to do until that comes across my email it tells me to put out the recycling bit well just wanting to reiterate on the 20th you'll be getting lots of great feedback from crawford can't wait for y'all to see some of this stuff um and it's looking really nice i think that um i think this is similar but it's still not what it's probably going to be but they wanted to show you something because you're gonna get a color palette selection and we got a lot of stuff to go through on that but it's leaning into the direction they're going definitely the cola you're gonna see that again like the way it stands out with the the colors in it i'll even say mr palin was leaning into the cola part so yes sir reverend maydell yes miss minneville let me ask you a hypothetical question and the question is we've heard about the real good things that this outbrain is to the table what about those things that um hope you're not spoke real highly about and some of those places and some of those are departments they've not uh they've not uh they've not entered into into into a conversation with the constituent about their particular problem i guess what i want to say is i understand that there are some good things what about bad things and how do you detect those things and how do you weed out those things out of this there can you give us a example water water issue miss mayor yeah so what we were talking about earlier is that that this would help us create access so let's say a customer calls about a leak that they'll be able to see the information about the call they made and they got the work order where it is in the progress so we're trying to share more information through this app this isn't just a reporting mechanism it's also an informational mechanism so people aren't always wondering what's going on i hope it's a collaborative application where not only the issue the issue has been persons creating a ticket a water ticket uh or some other ticket and uh they've not been responded to the city has not responded correct to the constituent and the thing that the thing that bothers me is that tickets are created but there has not been an accurate response to those tickets yes sir and that that's part of this as well um reverend mcdowell we'll get you know some analytics that will show us you know his data so it's going to show us the good the bad and the ugly so we'll know you know if we need to increase our responsiveness we'll know that we need to work on that we'll we'll know those areas that need improvement um and we and we're focused as a group we've met with all the stakeholders we've had lots of individual meetings with departments to talk about the importance of this and how important it is for them to be timely and responsive and really put information in there and i think a lot of times people just want you to be honest with them and follow up they just want to know and if they don't have information and they don't know then that makes that that that makes people aggravated and angry and displeased with their experience with the city and so the goal is is we have more touch points where we're reaching out to our customers we're letting them know statuses um you know before they even have to ask us so they at least know that we we we're still working on your problem you know we know it's yes sir so that's part of our our communication to the departments is we need you to be responsive we need you to whether it's good or bad because i think a lot of times people think i'm just going to respond when i'm done and so we're trying to tell them no there needs to be different touch points throughout the process where you're responding not just when the problem is complete but what the status is all along so people feel online yes sir i'm assuming that you would be able to get an email confirmation that that's been processed and that we could set it up where the client could actually push a function and say i want an update as progress moves or you know i want an update when it's finished because some people don't want that and some people may so i don't know if we can look at that and have so somebody can ask for the frequency they want some people just want to be informed all the time some don't like the text update yeah yeah we've definitely talked about kind of standardizing you know the timeliness of responses so i don't know about the functionality of saying you know i only want to be notified when it's finished i don't want to get notifications all along i don't know about that piece but we'll definitely look into that and see if that's a possibility i think we're making progress i think the things that i'm sorry now go ahead grab this very necessary is responsiveness right and if we could respond in a way with constituents or give whether whether it's water with enforcement or whether it's sent mail i think responding to that need has a lot to do with the the usability of this app and that's the thing that i i don't want to happen what happened last time we put that app out of there my token here um the usability of that app and following up and making it a collaborative statement that will say to constituents this is what we're going to do yes sir well let's move into some of that functionality and demonstration so that maybe that'll also give you a better indication as it's still in the works but we're getting close to launching Reverend McDowell so Carmen can you start on that yes ma'am you come up here and then can we get a lot of spam on our current system like i have a form submission on my personal website and sometimes there's spam submissions about buying this or call this number so somebody's going to weed through all those and make sure this is the legitimate three goals versus some spam from a chinese bot or something we all experience that would be able to detect that or still be that's might be a still be a question yeah yeah yeah well i'm talking about my my law firm website yeah well thank you all for having us and thank you for getting us started introduced um as mentioned we've been working on the project for a while um and we appreciate you all giving us the motivation um and the guidance to get started on revisiting this um uh Reverend McDowell you certainly have some good points about the importance of making sure that we um are responsive to the citizens as they uh put forward their request and i think that was um definitely understood to the project so that we understood that because a lot of the responses from the cases tickets that we get from citizens are actually being placed in city works um when we came like we realized that was one of the gaps they were updating requests in city works stating one thing we're done and then we had to do redundant entry entry into the gov qa portal to now tell the citizen that it's done so by having the integration we kind of fix that because the integration will pass the update to the system of records so that the citizen gets that update as well and that kind of tightens the gap um and shortens the timeline for between the citizens getting that update so i think that in itself would help and then also as i can mention we had several forums and pet rallies and meetings with the staff um at multiple times met with them to kind of ask questions what do we need to do to help you get the information in here faster sooner um teams are out in the field now working in city work so at the time that they're completing the work rather than having to bring paperwork back so administrative staff are typing in the responses there the technicians are out in the field and a lot of them are keying in the updates themselves so now the information is in city work sooner or the workload of management sooner so therefore it's being passed to the CRM sooner so that helps tighten that gap as well so i think between the um meetings with the staff helping them understand the importance of getting this you know we've got to be transparent with our citizens we want to provide this good service um management upper management has come out and spoken to them clarify that they they support this and we all want to provide this good present forces and i think we've got good buying for the staff i think the technology is going to support it so we're kind of in a good um on the right track to help with that in addition there is reporting in the system um we have right now set for the most part several of our template you know we will try to give you an update within 48 hours about what's going on um and then we'll have different escalation from there so within only 40 hours eight hours they ought to know what's happening you know we've got it we can get it done or it's going to be delayed um so staff understand that needs to be done um so we'll keep an eye on that if things aren't on track the reporting will tell us and we can kind of modify and move forward with that um we have training plan our first um user training that will be the staff who will be making sure that the uh tickets are being processed and handled starting on the 13th and then again on the 20th so we'll reiterate that and certainly make sure everybody's still you know on track with understanding um that that's the path Herman I don't this part is not a question you probably can answer and I can get an answer later but for clen and the other acms the technology in the field at one point the ipads weren't we were deploying ipads field services that sounds like we have a pretty good handle on who has them now because again this works best like you just said if they are able in real time to be updating what they're doing in the field yeah so as we're going into budget season and knowing that we want to make sure this is often functional I'll need to hear what that's looking like right yeah I've got several departments already in the field several coming on board soon um if you see ipads in the budget just approve approval right there all right so um this is our um as we know it's ipads right um and we got lots of security wrapped around that tested but it's oh I know y'all got it secured I can probably with it because it won't let you in yeah well you know just changing the paperwork check with uh this will be over there you got your cover all righty so um our tool will have a a website as well as an app so um there's an option you know you can install the app certainly we think the app is a great thing but for those who you know um folks still have a flip phone or may not want um the app installed they can always pull up their computer or go to the park and pull it up on the website and so this is our web presence right now um as miss wilson mentioned we aren't finished with our branding still working with our marketing team to get there but just as placeholders right now we got our background picture of course we are columbia and then this is the functional um presence here of the um system so let me uh figure out what i'm doing with this uh erica am i moving yeah okay i'm looking it'd be easier for you to run it from over there okay well i think i'm here all right yeah looking sideways but um here's these three um buttons um as Pam mentioned we were talking about the option to have nine of them um we you know try not to be too cluttered here so from our history you know we know that lots of people looking to pay bills right now we've got this pointing to pay their water and solid waste bills um from the online portal linking to our utility billing system we could link this to um the uh payment center uh where they could see all things to be paid the parking tickets um uh you know and everything whatever speeding ticket uh it's just a link to one of our payment sites and we could do that um with the trash um information the GIS tools they people like to search and find out um if they're in the city who their council person is and that's a highly utilized tool so we put that out there as an option to um front and center they can get access to that i'm worried i'm all over the place all right there's still an option under these ellipse here to have more um links so we did that um they can we've got cola links here uh they can pay their bill again same option but there's a columbia water link that will take them to the columbia water site they've got um the city events calendar they can go to the home page and we could add additional links you know in categories as we desire um we've got the incredible service guide that we have is printed really needs to be on on there you know along with uh i think uh randy and and the park's team they have all those programmatic for youth that's going on we ought to have those in there because that's what people keep asking me about we're sharing that information with them but in a printed copy if we're going to do the app i think that'd be great for people to see what's there and maybe it's just a program and that that mrs harmburn i've no help with wasn't that for some of the some of the youth services guide yeah yes the youth services even the even the service the service guide that we have that has everything from contacts at sister care and transitions and all the the programmatic out there that's available in the city i think it's just such valuable information we ought to figure out how to link that in okay right and we could create a services category maybe and stick parts under there and different things or parks category we thought about doing the recreation but you know we have the option to do as many categories as many links that we want um we put a few social media out there just facebook and twitter um we could add additional ones um weren't you know we're in control of this area to put more option so we decided just the three visible links on the front and then we stick most everything else both side behind the more option and customers can get used to going back there to check things and to know to get to those additional ones is only by clicking on the ellipses to get to more options right so it would probably be an educational piece for people to know to get and we talked about making a little video um we we don't just add a button on the front other options to see more yeah just yeah something to make it more more identifiable instead of being hidden down here a rb or change to see more links so easier yeah okay okay don't see which one yeah maybe a fourth button that makes it more obvious all right i lost my my cursor again let's see can you see it because i'm looking sideways yeah let me actually go over here the button here or just change more options maybe well we'll just i think you make it easy put a button that has more on it yeah and they can just click it and it lists all the text directs them to the links that way you're not you don't have so many buttons that people get confused if they are logged in they can see their request anonymously um we can as a city can choose what things we want to submit anonymously so if we want them to submit uh code enforcement anonymously but not a request to have their uh meter leak or to check uh you know fallen tree uh or it's the indicated that they did not want a person's report fallen tree without providing their name that will not be allowed to be anonymous so yeah and and you're not anonymous right okay so it's not anonymous or it is okay but like a fallen tree can't be anonymous so so we've kind of gone with the departments and talked to them about which things can be anonymous and which things can't of course if somebody does something anonymous they can't get a follow exactly because we can't follow up to nobody so you know that's part of the if someone has a desire to get those updates they're gonna have to give us some information about themselves code enforcement again can be anonymous is that right now yes yes code enforcement can be anonymous right now yes what what other ones off the top of your head just out of here you know yeah right it was any it was so it it it wasn't specific to the department it was more specific to the request and so if there needed to be someone to follow up with someone at their address kind of thing those things we didn't make anonymous but but like a traffic lights out or something that's um kind of an immediate thing um there's you know a pothole cover that's missing i like to see those once y'all kind of yeah because we had we do have a formula so but it is based on the request not so much by department so i i think that if that clarifies anything i was complaining about a war league by my house you would want me to follow up the dog companion complaining about a parking meter in five points doesn't matter whether i did it or right right right and that's how we tried to right which meter it is right but it's germane to to whether or not you're important to the complaint right that's the way you should look at it exactly and that's the way we tried to kind of parse them out was based on whether we needed you to be help us with help us with solving the problem yeah exactly or are you important to know about the continuation of the problem exactly once i let go of that the parking meter is broken i don't need to be told that it's fixed right and you don't care but you don't want to go back to that park meter and it's still broken you wrote that number down didn't you got that one figured out second one all right so miss karmel what are you gonna show us i logged in and i want to report a request so it's pulling me in to um i was here and so it says to me what's the type of request that you want to report so i can choose whatever type i have and we have various type of request grouped here i can contact the mayor and send him a request i can contact council and send them a request about an issue if i want to talk about it can i use that button those cannot be anonymous speaking of anonymous with the the list that you showed earlier because you have f a lot would you put a whistleblower or an hr piece in there so that if something comes up people could anonymously report something that goes directly to hr or and you know that's a good point though we do have we do have them if you can or what but we have um ethical advocate which is our a platform where people can whistleblower report hr related issues so we could link that one to that i think that's what this was for it's not and that see that's been part of the that's been part of our struggle is what all to put in it what all to leave off you know what's what is really the goal because we've we've certainly talked about and it's grown and we try to brought it back together and it's grown and we brought it back together so all the core things yeah so we've tried to focus on the core things that people will report request right and again we've tried to look at what the past has told us what looks like the most requests people have submitted and what does that look like so we've tried to use that as a basis probably go ahead and put in a request pick a department and go ahead so she picked solid waste she's going to pick an address and now she's on the web based the website but it essentially will work the same way address so it just asks me you know are you about to do this again oh that's cool okay so there's not like duplicate requests so um but i said yeah so it will weed out so if you got a neighborhood and there's a league and you get 10 people see then 10 requests that kind of culminates them well it will warn you that it's already there okay do you want to and you can say well they're gonna want to right or you can just acknowledge that you just added to the communication on this there's a real person on the back end who looks at this not like ai or anything right so it'll be a real person looking at yes yes yeah there'll be real people looking at the request we'll get a text message you're right we might begin at that point where is that i but we're not there yet if i had a photo i could upload it um i don't right now it also offers me a chance to um go to the solid waste wizard and check because maybe today wasn't my recycling day so i could verify that if i wanted to but i know that today was my day so i'm going to submit it and Carmen has put a few in here because she's been practicing but it would show that request that you've submitted and then you'd be able to and so my request is in here um this is one i did previously with attachment that was my garbage that they pick up i took a picture until it was full and here with my recycling earlier and it was full but i also can see down here that i have a message so i can take a look at it my other one i told that says thank you for submitting your request to buy an update to your request within two business days do you think that makes sense to put that in there what about this particular one yeah i mean if i'm calling about garbage i don't want it sitting out there for two more days so it so that may be one of the yeah that's one of the tests but but that is part of what we've talked about is you know that response it needs to feel like it's not ai and somebody's just making it up it is an actual response from a person so we've talked about that and departments have people assigned to look at the request and make the appropriate response to the request it does so i live in district one i can fill in mine out get my request in my email screenshot text it to my representative if it doesn't say the date and say hey tina or consulman herbert when am i going to get my trash picked picked up and she'll tell you she'll be on her way over there to get it for you and it's gonna take me a week and be like oh that's the mail that they sent i'm wondering two business days are too short on some of them and that won't be the response to some of them it will depend on what it is immediately so that's probably a right for that's just a test that customer service right but then that goes to our yeah so that's part right so that's part of the back and that's part of the discussions we've had with the departments what makes the most sense and how are we going to respond in a way that reflects how we want the responses to have it so type of messaging within 24 hours to somebody doesn't mean that you're solved the problem but it's hey we're working on this you know you wait 48 hours we have received something like that i can't i mean our solid waste both yeah they go out that i mean they have they go out before they got told check your email yeah they were in response maybe we already dropped it back off knowing down yeah pretty effective but for something like a leak check that would depend on it just during a hard freeze or not it's a but what we could do is respond with you know we typically will check and to see groundwater service line or main mine break within x days and what a service level expectation kind of kind of communicate that that okay we'll call it utility locates within x days then excavation of you know here's the process or and then if they want to they can get updated once we've checked it they can get updated once utility locates have been called in updated once the excavation is scheduled for those sorts of things so with with this when when you when the so you get a response let's use water got a leak i've reported it they've sent me back a work work number three days later i haven't seen or heard anything just use that as an example i'll punch in that i'll go back to my message i'll punch in my work order at that point whoever's answering that ought to be able to say here's what's going on we ought to that's that's my hope is that we could respond and say cups has been been you know dispatch they should be there within 24 hours after they've done utility locates we will be able to dispatch this is the problem you know it normally takes you know depending on the situation 24 hours for us to fix it and another 48 for us to pave it so people have some type of and i think that's what i'm hoping for is that it becomes it easy for our staff to dialogue back with the others some may be as simple as one line message response but others i think you're right i mean i think yeah i just had a really good experience with an electrician house next door to my house where i live and first thing he did was they booked me for monday this week but they came back and said we're we're we'll contact you within an hour Thursday if we have time thursday afternoon between three thirty and four okay so they texted me at three o'clock and said we're out for thursday but we'll we'll keep you as a potential work-in on friday friday came around no big deal came in and said all right friday's out too we'll see you first thing monday morning seven o'clock in the morning on monday i got a text saying we'll be there between eight thirty and nine fifteen and that's that's perfect so i didn't waste any time having to worry about what's going on now maybe they over informed me because they should have just told me we'll see monday you know so maybe you know they won't play catch me up and they didn't hope that i have money but it didn't it didn't cost me any it's not like i stayed there you know when you know sat in the driveway for two hours so i think it's i think daniel and tyler are right i think you gotta i think you gotta personalize certain things to not look like this is yeah you know that's been a big part of the configuration and breakout sessions with the departments and kind of formula is in that workflow and what are our responses going to be what makes sense and what can we do because we don't want to over i mean we want to do the things that we can manage and i've consistently told them that like what can you do what can you manage what can you keep up with yeah so we try we're trying to avoid that and just being being realistic i don't think he knows you're not a mute so just because i know everybody's hungry and we we wanted to let you guys have the demo we are still like like um like carmen said we're working on in-user training we would like to do kind of a soft launch on the 29th um if we are able to do that we had to move one of our training dates because the guy that's training is in california and he's was scared that he wouldn't have connectivity because of all the storms out there so that's our plan we also are looking at the potential of you know kind of rolling this out with the promotion of the other marketing things and trying to because it's all about getting the word out that this is out here that's new this is available to get people to adopt it and to use it so we wanted to take advantage of that opportunity as well and so we we definitely are looking at that as a as a potential but i i want to acknowledge the fact that carmen flemmings and christianna Sutton and and and missy and and bud in um program management and budget um tiffany latimer who would have been here today but unfortunately she's out she takes a bulk of this customer service so she's been integral in this process her and all of her staff have really been engaged and really been interested exactly so she's she's been definitely dialed in and helping us work through this and make sure we are considering all the things um the it staff um quarry and sylvia um you know when you start naming people then you run out of people clint has been um on our team meetings but we've got a lot of people engaged in this so that this is successful erica for our constituent chenique um so we've been reaching out to lots of staff to make sure that they are working with us to to make sure this is successful so that's the next steps you know that's our goal and the legislate one of those because the legislative you know the legislators are just which that's not going to change but they're so used to just going direct with her but i think it'll be great for their state house staff to know once we get this out uh and what we do we'll let the county know too because you know so many people call them buds men because they're not sure who to talk to we ought to make sure that they have that link my problem is on the other side of that is i can't get the county to do something and i mean i gotta lay me on windom that calls me every day because the county won't remove these trees and i'm like there's nothing i can do about it yeah your reps not going to help you you need to go to the council meeting i don't know what else to tell you maybe i'm old school i like there's a complaint i pick up the phone and call somebody and nice person makes me feel better than an angry message yeah i think it's really efficient definitely really efficient yeah and we'll still offer that you know people can definitely call we'll still have our customer service line available what they'll do though is they'll put it in here so that that person can follow if they want to it's amazing to me how many people since we started doing the digital meter or water take advantage of the alerts i mean it's made a big difference i think i think this will help for for one to give people ease of mind because now more people are using technology than ever i mean it's easier for somebody to go but i think you got to keep all those options up because you do you have some people i'm a person who likes to pick up the phone i mean it's just that's what i've done my whole life so that's what i'm doing so it's certainly a working process madame city manager all of the staff this is great work this is what we talked about two years and yeah it took us longer to get where we want but all this information we got today it's so it's it's so important for us as we move the city for it's so important for our our citizens our employees and to my fellow council members this is why we got to have work sessions and you got to keep your Tuesdays open because this is the type of information that they want to share with us and when we don't meet and in this for a couple months you think things aren't moving forward but we really are moving a lot forward we're doing more than we've ever done in the city and it's all for the benefit of our citizens our employees and the quality of life and so i want to thank y'all for where we are today i'm looking forward to the matrix group and what they have to say i'm very excited about the crawford group um you know we've been talking two years about telling our story i think we finally get to tell our story um and just the little things that they've done so far are such a positive reflect on our city and just that picture and the the way they tied in the colors and everything about it you know i noticed they didn't have together though on there so i was a little disappointed about it well thanks a mock-up so we we we kind of pulled from them but i think our it's gonna look a little bit different that part they don't know that technically yet yeah yeah uh reverend mcgall did you want to say something well i'll say i'll say i'm i'm i'm thrilled that the the newness and the availability of the app i'm thrilled with that but i'm also i also understand that there are some broken promises that the previous app sort of provided to people that uh if we don't change that the perception of our city is going to change and i don't want our city to be a city of broken promises yes sir some of these folks some of these folks made tickets created tickets and they were never ever handled let's go forth in a new and positive way and to make this thing accountable and folk are able to say that this city of ours has launched a program that is accessible to everyone and that it is not it is available for everyone and that it is not uh app that's going to promote um broken promises thank you mr ham yes sir yes sir thank you so much thank you all for pushing you know pushing for these items and all that we talked about earlier regarding engagement and placing value back in and autonomy back in our employees too because we have to with all of this keep connected and those dots and i'm definitely here for that part so we're excited to um give you these updates but we also have to see them through um probably said it stuck to my original plan was erica that i had our i talked it about right that we would have been doing lunch at the start of item four and doing it working but we're gonna keep going with one last quick item if it's okay then have a clean break before you go into executive session you can get your lunch as we're going into executive sessions or some quick update with the parks and recreation master plan acm Henry Simon along with our consultant director davis is here in our project project managing building we're going to do your debt are you managing this project yeah okay so our deputy director can your plan is here also but i i'll let mr simons make introduction well thank you we won't we won't be long before you this afternoon um let me just let me first off uh say thank you to our mayor of course our entire council our city manager for allowing us to move forward with the 10-year master plan for parks and recreation we do feel like this is a critical move in terms of the innovation and future of parks and recreation and it's it's another step closer to being accredited as a department as well we are seeking our accreditation through the national recreation and park association so this is a a really nice step towards doing that so we are very excited about where we're going where we are and what we're gonna do today so what we want to do today is go through a few slides with you before we get before we get knee deep in the actual planning of the actual master plan we want to make sure that our council understood what the process is going to be what the timeline is going to be as well before we've had our initial kickoff meeting so we had an internal meeting with our consultants who are with western and samson so we did some things we did some tours as well but this is just the preliminary stages of it so we wanted them to assist us and go through a couple slides to kind of speak to the work that's going to be done so we have daniel biggs that i think he is he on the i think he's on zoom okay daniel biggs is the project manager with weston and samson he's on zoom and then i have with us kip gearheart he is the soccalina regional manager for weston and samson so he is going to take us through a few of these slides and then we'll take any questions that you all may have kip and i see him sam as it was key to do this now the timing because of the touch points in the community i think he wanted the mayor and council to realize that this was going to be being discussed with community and stakeholders absolutely and and we want to talk about that through the through the presentation let me also thank randy davis our director as well as our deputy director kenya brine who's uh with us here today as well so kip so again uh my name is kip gearheart with weston and samson mayor councilman but thank y'all very much for the opportunity to present this we realize this is a very important project and we're here to kind of go over the project uh dan biggs is on is on the line here and he's going to get us kicked off but again just want to re-emphasize what an important project this is for the city columbia and how much we appreciate the opportunity um please interrupt us at any time as we go through we want to be able to field any of your questions so with that dan please do you want to take it away dan great thank you everyone thank you mayor and members of the council it's great to see you all apologize i'm not there i'm just taking over the flu so uh you're better off on the screen uh from a health standpoint but i appreciate your time next slide really quickly i know everyone is probably aware of the project but i wanted just room for a process uh just in terms of where we're going to go um our touch points with the community and our schedule so that you all are off the speed and you're aware of when we're reaching out and when we come back to share with you our results and to share the information that we've received and definitely have a set of eyes on it before we unveil any recommendations and the final document for sure over the next 12 months next slide fairly quickly for those of you not familiar with western samson um we're a multi-disciplinary planning and design firm along the east coast we have three offices in south carolina here in columbia as well as north trawleston and greenville uh i am actually located in um new york uh but i do parks rec master plans throughout the east coast and this is what i've been doing and it's a pleasure to be working with you and your staff we've had some engaging meetings already that i will i can see a great product in the end so we've got a great relocation package if you're interested in sunny and a better atmosphere yeah i lived in virginia for 10 years and the white stuff that flies around january february is too attractive so we'll have to have some strong conversations to see how that lends but um it's it's great to visit into uh enjoy uh every net columbia half so far which is amazing that i've seen yeah 150 000 new yorkers can't be wrong right they're moving south they are we'd just like to add to that that you know we've got three offices in south carolina and over a hundred folks in the southeast and we have an office right here in columbia great so our our landscape practitioner in planning practice is supported by a whole slew of engineering and science practice areas which makes our plans readily designed and implementable which is really a goal for a plan that we want to have your staff to have their fingertips so that there are great ideas that you can implement them over the next 10 years which is our goal kind of horizon for this overall master plan next slide please um really quickly our top four objectives um one we want to develop a vision for your in the recreation department and the overall facilities you have um who aren't knowledge the great work you've been doing for many years um as i've been touring your facilities it's amazing as to what you have and the all the work that's been done so far i'm going to capture that and you also want to celebrate the great work that's been done and really uh bring that forward in terms of the next future 10 years we can do for the city we're going to set up a set of goals that you can implement and are prioritized so you know what is the roadmap moving forward these are not just goals on paper but really a working document that your staff will have in hand to move forward and to know where is next uh location to implement where to fund and what to really make transformative improvements within the community mentioned implementation it's really our goal that this is a plan that's used by staff every day to know how to operate how to improve how to work on your facilities and programs throughout the parks and recreation department and finally we're always conscious on being sustainable and innovative and we'll make sure that everything that we're proposing is financially sustainable be logically environmentally sustainable and just on the cutting edge to what columbia can have for the next 10 plus years next slide we're going to run through a number of our our phases our tasks and these in theory build upon the chapters of the final report that you'll see a couple weeks ago we had a kickoff meeting with staff this is really just to get everyone on the same page this was the senior leadership group of the park recreation department and we had a great dialogue that really set this tone for the path forward to make sure it was on the same page in our first phase we're here going to be looking at has been doing looking at all of your recreation facilities we're assessing your parks your trails your open spaces as well as your current programs within the parks or recreation department while we're looking at all those we're assessing what's the condition our people attending programs our is there a lack of programs what are we hearing or seeing just from overall of your program offerings within the city they will also be looking at what other program offerings are within the city from alternative service providers the YMCA what they have is as you think about being sustainable but you want to make sure that we're positioning you all to not compete with some of your alternative service providers in the city that have great services and that you can complement but not compete so as we start into the process we will assess what you have we start asking questions as to what the needs of the city and i'm not going to go through all these questions but we start looking at some of your current plans current reports from looking at your demographic trends you know are you seeing increase in youth or maybe seniors are you looking at what are the trends that are occurring occurring as in pickleballs a boom right now is it here to stay is it going to be growing or is it going to plateau so we look at kind of all those factors as to how is it currently operating and how are you currently community and how would you fulfill them in the future we're going to compare you to other municipalities and other trends around the country just to give an idea as to where do you fit in the overall sphere of the parks recreation needs of a city of your size as we look at that we're taking our information we're assessing a mention of all your parks recreation in your community centers and we start determining what is your level of service and this very clearly is looking at are your facilities and are your programs being offered locations of where your population is are they in the neighborhoods where we need to serve the residents are there a variety of offerings a variety of facilities so we look at how does the overall facility conditions in what you have offering the city covered in all all four districts within the city and overall says a whole in parallel we're doing the same thing for programs looking at are you serving your populations what is the other attendance how attendance numbers look for your programs and are there other needs within the community just from looking at what you currently offer within the city next slide that's a quick question so do we is there a difference between you know parks of 2024 versus parts of 50 years ago so you know like smaller more accessible more in town more more more different different different the answer is quickly gas and and also at the same respect no so one thing that is I would say a change from many years ago is many years ago everyone thought that I wouldn't say everyone but the thought process was if you had a green space a playground and a couple parking stalls you you met the need of the community without really knowing what does the community need and want because every neighborhood is a little different every location is different demographically as terms of interest so our approach now is really understanding what are the at a neighborhood level what are the needs and how do we uh attract appeal or meet those needs within those neighborhoods so if you have a trail head as in a trail network within one of the neighborhoods it doesn't make sense to have a playground at every point of access that trail hat but you may have one uh decent size playground attractive location that is along that trail so users can ride stop use a fitness center or use a playground and then ride or walk back to where they started so there's a different thought process in terms of we want to know uh specifically what is the interest needs of the neighborhood level not just that one size fits all cookie cutter place this playground in the open space to assume we meet the needs of the size of that park also be determined by those same criteria so the size of some degree yes historically the thought process was you took the entire population of a city of columbia and you took and you divide that by a metric instead you need to have x y z acres of parks within c of columbia proper um that could mean if you had to have seven or eight acres it could be all one part of the city but you really have a desert per se of park spaces in other areas of the city so the thought now is that you're where the people are so you may have say three small park parks that are spread within the neighborhood of a community area that meets needs as in contrast to maybe one multiple acre park space that has similar characteristics that's central to whenever so there's a balance there but it's not a mathematical uh calculation anymore it's uh where are the people uh and how are they going to use them for example a park that's slated by highways there's no good you need to have sidewalks and walkable access points to the parks all right that's good you answered my question thank you so i mentioned we're assessing your parks your programs but one key aspect of this is public outreach um we use what's called a mixed method approach and this kind of came uh it was happened before covid but kind of elevated the need for this during covid times where we use a balance between traditional methods you can see stakeholder interviews focus group meetings online surveys and public meetings balance with a virtual methods where we will have virtual meetings online surveying online surveying polling and social media outreach so we want to get input by many different mechanisms over the course of project so that everyone does have a chance to give us an opinion or a perspective in that we can use that as our data to make sure that we're meeting needs of the community and we're not missing out on population or demographic so for this project we're using a whole step process the first step is we're going to be doing the number of stakeholder interviews focus group workshops this is where we will talk specifically in a virtual setting uh over the course of several days uh one hour blocks we're going to talk to user groups that use oxmark ratio facilities of what are their needs what are their interests um that then will prompt us to develop an online survey that we're going to develop that will be available and I'll talk about that here in a minute in more detail but in parallel to that I I think we're missing one bullet here but says public meeting number one we're going to have a meeting at each of the four helpful districts for the course of a couple of weeks that would be in-person meeting where we would have a night user open house presentation that will give and then allowed for question answers that'll happen to each of the four districts that's what we're calling our community input session as that meeting goes on we're going to have the online survey available that'll be shared with the entire population of the city of columbia and now the open for several months the second group of meetings is going to happen a couple months later where we're going to again go back to each of the four council districts um and our thought process in public outreach is one what to listen the second is we want to make sure we share with everyone as to what we heard so we're going to regurgitate back everything that we heard from public and the third is going to make sure we have confirmation that we heard everything correctly and that the input received weren't missing any additional information so that finding this presentation we'll go back to each of the four districts and we're going to share all information for the input received to date and they'll be close to the middle of summer or sorry late spring early summer. Once upon information and all that inputs combined with the online survey we'll develop draft recommendations and we'll likely come back to you all to share those draft recommendations for each of the park facilities, each of the programs, each neighborhood recreation centers etc. That will allow us to have that first pass as to what are recommendations for the city moving forward. We'll receive additional feedback on that and then finalize and presentation for adoption for you all likely in about 12 months or so. Next slide. So the one piece that I want to just touch upon more detail is the online survey. The online survey you're going to be doing a statistically valid survey and some will wonder what does that mean. Basically we have an online survey that will be created through a third-party survey provider. They will mail out to random households within the city surveys for those users to take. The person will get a postcard and a link that they can log in and that data will be received. Shortly after that the city will post on websites and share in all social media outlets the same survey that that will be what we call the open link. And what happens is for all the same questions but we have two groups of data that will come in through our sub-consulting. So what happens is we know what the population is. We know of Columbia. We know who is responding and we can see and confirm from a mathematical standpoint that that's received. Thank you. Data will then allow us to confirm that the responses that we're receiving is at a high confidence rate and that is the consensus of the entire city. Population based upon statistically valid data. This is a process we do with a lot of municipalities. What it does is it eliminates those opinions that may be seen as grandstanding sometimes in public meetings. It allows us to work through the details of it was this really a one perspective or a general consensus of the entire community. So that online survey really is a strong point that we will share all the data all responses received with staff. So they have of what our responses were and what the general consensus is for the questions were asked across the entire community. Next slide please. So I mentioned here this is a little bit of a process but the real key to this is that we will tag the links and have a presentation for you all as to the results that are received so you can compare what is what the open link compared to the um select link and 95 percent of the data is is in line with the disability valid survey results for consensus of the entire community. So I talked about a lot of the process and every step of the way really is creating a chapter. We basically take each section of the conversation and we document all that and provide appendices for any information that's supporting it. But the key is of having a document that's useful for staff to use as the mission the path by forward. So our recommendations are going to be prioritized. We're going to look for where are they're matching funding sources a way that you can leverage other funding mechanisms to make improvements to recreation facilities, parks, programs and then really want to use these as a typical point to reflect the interests of the community the needs of the community for the next 10 years. So I kind of ran through a lot of our steps our overall schedule which is pretty close here. We're in the process now of system conditions and we'll be starting after today some of the public outreach as I mentioned starting with the focus group meetings and then we'll have our our public input sessions that I want to coordinate or have a staff courting with different members for your districts to make sure that we can get out and get the interests within each of your districts and communities for input and then roll through that process through the duration of the project. We look to conclude the project in about 12 months. December timeframe is usually about rights but we'll work with staff in terms of scheduling and timing to make sure that we're in line with the option timelines. And that's all I had for you all. I'm available any questions and appreciate your time. So I was going to ask you're calling this a 10-year plan. Is there a 10-year budget associated with a 10-year plan? Yeah so for every improvement we make we provide budgetary dollars and then we will work to prioritize those improvements over the 10-year span. So you would have over the 10 years of a potential budget cost to spend to make those improvements. And my question really is on so after you've gathered this information are you going to supply us with basically ideas of what we should do based on those priorities you heard are you doing design to go with that you just sharing examples of what people are talking about. Yes so once we get the feedback we do have recommendations some items will be very straightforward in terms of you need to add frisbee lessons as a program offering add that to the program description. Others will say you need to need a multi-purpose field and here's a potential layout that could occur at one of your park facilities or a splash pad as an idea you should include at one of your park facilities because you heard it's missing within one of your parks. So we'll provide those concepts to show what that could look like one it helps get ideas generate thought in terms of community seeing what a plan could look like and then it helps develop a potential cost in time in terms of making those improvements how important they are. So they would be physical programs and also facilities along with a budget. Thank you. Any other questions? Just some concluding remarks I think again as we look at the master plan and look at the needs across the city I think Daniel touched on this a little bit what do we don't have you know whether we need to be more innovative and creative in terms of recreation so I'm very interested in kind of going through this process and making sure that number one we celebrate what we've already done because a lot of great work is being done by parks and recreation has been done is being done at the moment but also how do we get better how do we get better and providing services to our citizens anxiously waiting to see what that's going to look like so um any other questions or comments about about the process. Anybody else have anything? Thank you so much. Great job. Thank you. Dan would have again loved to have been here but he is under the weather and he looks forward to making great deals. Understood. Thank you. With that council we can take a break I don't know if you want to quickly get your lunch but then you'll um I'd like Mr. Mayor I'd like to make a motion for us to go into executive session for discussion of negotiations incident to propose contractual agreement arrangements pursuant to secode 30 dash 4 dash 70 a 2 as well as receipt for legal advice which relates to matters covered by attorney client privilege pursuant to secode 30 dash 4 dash 70 a 2 I wish Howard was still here. Yeah. You did a great job. Okay. Is there a second? Yeah. Second. Hold on. The bullets include the municipal complex dmh surplus property northeast sewer service area and the transportation penny sales tax. Second. Got a motion a second. No discussion Madam Clark please read the roll. Aye. Mr. Brown. Aye. Aye. Aye. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.