 Thank you for this day and for all that you've allowed us to be about today. You've allowed us to come into this room to go through the materials and the questions and the inquiries about materials that are offered. We pray for sensitivity and in so praying for sensitivity we pray for two fallen leaders within the community the city called Columbia. We pray for the family of Officer Reinhardt, undergird them with your care, touch them and yet allow them to know that as a city we stand with them. Be with Kevin Alexander Gray as we prepare our sales for a funeral service tomorrow, but we know that death has and takes no prisoners. We simply ask that you might undergird us even in death these two warriors, these two saints. I feel their families feel and sense our support for them. We ask it, we claim it in your name. Thank you, Reverend Dowell. So I mentioned to Council that in this season of the budget we would be mostly doing budget workshops but we also had a few work session items, some of which will have implications on the budget as well, but also need just to have some housekeeping time I think for lack of a better word so that I can make sure that I and the staff are always providing you with the information efficiently and in the way that you even wanted like what works best for you. All of that and so we thought it would be helpful to incorporate a little tutorial today on our minute track agenda management system that our wonderful clerk manages and helps you manage and is also always looking for other solutions that work even better but until we have an additional or different solution, we want to make sure that we're utilized a minute track efficiently and get feedback from you all on things that might help you with that. Similarly, item two, Gulf QA, the customer relationship management system update. Ms. ACM Benjamin will provide an update on how we're going to expand upon a platform that we already have to incorporate the ongoing request you all have had for constituent services related items to be one place where everybody can see what's going on with these requests as they come in and track them and know that they're being attended to and she'll talk about some of the other solutions that have been mentioned but why we believe the Gulf QA system is probably is the better system just because of the way it will integrate with our city work system and other things that are already in place at the City of Columbia. Mayor, it is not click bait but it will do and incorporate all the things as you know, secret fix. What it would have would have done but because of our technology in the city, this would be the better solution. So we'll get started with items one and two and then I'll talk you through our last few items as well. Erica. Better pay that match board invoice Barbara be calling. Get out my emails now. Good afternoon. I'm Erica Hammons City Clerk for the City of Columbia. Just wanted to walk you through minute track. We appreciate you all putting up with our technology but just wanted to let you know or remind you I think you're quite familiar with the system because every Friday evening every other Wednesday and several times throughout the week you receive an email that looks just like this. Within that email you typically have an agenda that's attached and it's just your basic agenda, right? This week we attached a full board agenda which had confidential documents included that are just for the attention of city council members. We don't do that often because of the file size of documents that makes it nearly impossible to transmit them via email. And so the options that we have for you to view your packets include the links that are provided here. The link here says view web agenda and this one allows you to download the PDF packet. So traditionally you would click view web agenda directly from the email and this takes you to our meeting portal that looks like this. Within the meeting portal you will see that it gives you the meeting type, the meeting date and time in the meeting location which most of the time is accurate but I noticed that for today it was not so but here you have your agenda and you have an agenda packet. You'll see the items as they're listed on your paper agenda but you don't see any backup materials and this is because the items that were attached were for your eyes only and so as a member of the public if I logged in this is what I would see. But as a member of city council and the executive management team if you log in to the system then you would see the personnel related matters that were included in your packet. Yes sir you would see it here and I should have bought the keyboard up with me but here you would log in where it says register I'm already registered so here you would log in and you would use your credentials here and because I'm have not logged in on this computer it's not registering but the good part about logging into Minute Track is once you log in you stay logged in. Thank you Ashley. Unless the password is changed. Unless the password is changed without you knowing. Thank you and if you log out it will save your password if you have your security feature set up to do so. So from here I'm going to attempt to remember my credentials and that didn't work. Y'all help me out. Does that say ED? Oh well that would be the problem. Thank you man. I can see that. You all I type all day. EDM. There again. You keep hitting them. That's M. You got no. You get it again. I hit H. You want EDM? Yes ma'am. I think I do. Y'all give me a second. The good part about the system is that I'm the administrator so I can reset my password and your password. You don't call IT. You just reach out to me and I have your passwords on hand. So I logged into the system and now the information that I couldn't see previously it is visible. You see that there? And if you just wanted to click on an attachment and you'll see a confidential document is notated by the shield that was next to the item. And so it downloaded packet and you open it. That's just one way of accessing the files. And I don't really, I didn't think this through clearly. This is probably not the best venue for doing a demonstration. But any questions about how I got there? So anytime you see this shield you know that it's a document that's for counsel's eyes only. Any questions from those who are challenged to email wise? Well here you have what we call the board agenda. If you're logged in you're going to see a third packet which is called the board agenda. That's again a packet that's just for city council members. That's one of the choices here. Yes sir. And when you're logged in. And here you have the full agenda packet. Luckily today it was just 67 pages but sometimes it ranges between I can go up to four or five hundred pages. And that's why it's very difficult to email you the entire packet. But in this, that's a good point. And so here you would have the full packet. You could choose to view it or print it if you desired to do so. But it's in a chronological order lined up with the agenda that we send out on Friday. Again you have your agenda which is just the face of the agenda that tells you what's going to be discussed. You have the agenda packet which excludes any confidential items. Most commonly confidential items are mostly related to boards and commissions because we don't want to publicly share individuals personal information and so we've opted as a policy to link those as confidential documents and so those are the type things that you would find. So if you're trying to review your boards and commissions and prepare to make appointments, you want to be sure to log in into the system so that you can see all of the information that's being provided. Are there any questions? Anything else that I needed to address? Right here we have We don't use this feature. He reads my comments. In recent months I've had to use it quite often. So one thing that Dr. Bustles is doing and I would assume it's from here where you see the bubbles. Right here it says you can discuss the item. Here you click the bubbles. You insert your comment and you click add comment and then we all receive that comment via email. So if you wanted to respond to her comment through the system you would log in and go beneath her comment and click the bubble and then it would create your comment. What a overachiever. Yeah. When she sends a question out it sends us an email. Yes sir. I have been responding straight off of that email. Am I supposed to go back into the agenda? If you should go back into the portal because it allows us to track it an easy way of doing it is going to the discussion and so then I go back and you may get it again because I put it in the system. But if you come back here and you click the discussion tab from the meeting portal you see the comments here and you can add a comment and respond and just do it from the discussion tab. So when you all are done having your comments and we give the responses I go in and I just print this page and we keep a record of it by just printing the page of comments. Here in your welcome tab or in your meetings tab you see a full slate of your meetings. You'll see the minutes after the meeting especially a council meeting and some committee meetings will send out a meeting summary and this is where you find the summary, the minutes, the agenda and the agenda packet. We try to keep everything in one place except the videos. We're not logging the videos here. We hope that as we explore new systems that we're able to integrate the meeting agendas, backup materials and videos in one location. Several times I have tried to go back through iPad and look at some of the backup. Well that's because I close meetings out so they don't show up in the web portal in the app but on the web portal they're here if you go back through some of the earlier years that we have used Minute Track you will see that the information is still available. So Eric let me ask how would you say you have the best to sign back into the Yes sir. So what's the date on this one? Is that 20? So from 2017 this information is still out here. We don't delete it if anything will update it. How far back in terms of archives? Our minutes in general go back to the 1800s but not online unless you go to the digital. Yes sir. Our minutes are archive. If you ask for a particular year, a specific year. Yes sir. We'll get it for you. It goes back to 1800s. Yes sir. We have nice minute books in the vault. They're hand written and I'd love to show them to you if you ever have a friend. Hand written. They're hand written. If they go back to 1800s it must be hieroglyphics. Yes, it's beautiful. But the late 1800s of course but we also have a partnership with the South Carolina Digital Library where they scanned a lot of our older minutes and they're online as well so I can send you a link to that if you're ever interested in looking at minutes. Now no pun intended. Did you say hand written? Yes sir. So this is a quick overview of Minute Track. We try to use it and I try to put as much information out there as possible so that even on the weekends if you need an ordinance it's there. Whatever is coming up on the upcoming meeting agenda. I want backup. I stalk people for backup materials when they see me call and they go the other way. But we do our best and Ms. Wilson supports us in making sure that we provide you with as much information as possible so that you can prepare for upcoming meetings. But we certainly want to hear from you about any concerns you may have because we are endeavoring with the PMO and procurement department to look at new vendors as our contract with this vendor will come to an end later this year and I would like to set us up with a more robust web based agenda management system. Well you know it's interesting because some of the materials that the attorney and I were talking about some of those materials come out of dated minutes that council sort of dealt with then. Yes sir. And into a particular issue. Yes sir. An issue that we are constantly still working on but we got the materials off of what Howard calls it meeting track. He called it minute. It's minute track. Ed it's amazing if you use that function the information you can get prior to a meeting. I mean it is just shocking how much information is on there. Well you know it's amazing that I've been on councils in 216 and I'm just hearing about minute track. Well. And that's not an excuse for not being trained in that protocol. And I will talk some more to you all about that. I look forward to that. Yes ma'am. Thank you ma'am. And I haven't shown you all the search feature and I'm not going to delve into it but that white box in the top right hand corner is a search box. If you're looking for something you can type in a key word and it will show you the minutes, the backup, it'll pull up anything that's in the system on that particular matter. But certainly if you're looking for something and you can't find it or you don't want to use this feature we're available. We have a robust records management division. So for as you wrap up the tutorial what would you say is the key take away for the council members so that when they come to the council meeting and we do always try to print some of the addendums and the items that might go in the backup items but we try to you know not print everything so we could be printing a whole lot so that they have what they need as you said over the weekend leading up to a council meeting. I'm just trying to for once and for all make sure council members know how to get to the material. So the best thing is to go to the board agenda. Yes ma'am. Yes ma'am. And so the best thing is when you get your email on Wednesday go ahead and review the agenda and then use the web link make sure you're logged in. If you don't have your credentials let me know and I will get those to you. If we need to reset your password we'll certainly do that. We'll have a one on one session whatever's necessary to get you all acclimated but make sure you're clicking on the board agenda because there you're going to see all of your materials and something maybe a personnel matter and maybe contractual we make items confidential for various reasons but it's all covered under FOIA. So we're not always able to pinpoint what's confidential so just make sure you're logged in. Stay logged in. You can close the system out and still stay logged in or save your password but just make sure you're reviewing your materials and if you have any questions we're always on standby to answer those questions. Erica the one thing I would ask as we look at a new PMO system is when you click on each of the attachments and this is where I think I sometimes will miss things I'll just see a bunch of PDFs downloading at the bottom and then I can't remember what I have looked at and haven't. So I really think it's important when we move to a new system that it is able to either pull it up in a new tab or something where I can see exactly what the different attachments are. That's how I've like missed like H-Tax recommendations because I'm like well I think I downloaded everything and it all just has numbers. It doesn't say the subject of the memo. Okay. And the snapshot. Snap all the documents. Say snapshot. Keep that in mind as we're talking to vendors about their capabilities. Another option when you talk about opening in a new window we can look at some of your settings on your computer to tell it that when you open attachment to open it in a new window as well. Yes sir. You're not Yeah you need to go to the web portal. You don't need to download it. You need to go to the web portal. I'll give you that. I'll get you set up. I'll send you the link and when you click that link or if you're looking at an agenda and you go back. If you're looking at an email that I've sent you just click the web link in the email and it'll take you directly to the web portal. Oh here we are. So if you receive this email. You're doing the left side. You keep downloading. You don't need to download. You need to go to the other side. That way you get all the material and you're not waiting an hour for it to all load up. It doesn't take long at my play but it takes an hour to get it here. Are there any other questions or concerns that I need to be aware of? I don't have a question on minute track but I do on the new dashboard. Did we ever think we are? Okay. Anything else? Anybody else have any other questions for Miss Hammond? Well I appreciate your time and attention. Thank you so much Aaron. Thank you. And can you make sure Councilman DeVall and Reverend McDowell have a number for you? We got questions. We're gonna be like Sam Dave. We're gonna have to have a team come out. In the computer break every day. Just take it off me. Send the I.T. team. Alright Miss Benjamin. I'm all Miss Benjamin. Well take it. You gotta walk up there anyway. Good afternoon everyone. I am here. I have the pleasure of talking about our CRM, our citizens opportunity to be engaged with us as a city and we do that through GOVQA. Now I'm just a spokesperson because I'm trying to champion some changes to this process and kind of in there involved but I do have my technical people here with me. Ms. Carmen Fleming who is in the PMO office with Miss with Missy Kaufman who is the technical guru to help me along with Miss Denita right beside her and Denita is in customer care. And so customer care is one of the key stakeholders of GOVQA and really help make sure the system works. And so they're gonna chime in as they see me up here struggling. As I talk through some of the detailed information about GOVQA. So let's kind of get started here. So first of all, our city CRM background. This is kind of what we're gonna talk about. The background, discovery, planning and update. Gonna do a brief little demo walkthrough for you. Get some feedback and then talk about some next steps. So how many of you have ever used GOVQA? Good. Good. Great. About a speed bump. Alright so that's exactly what we're talking about. So it is an online portal that allows citizens to submit and track concerns and place service requests to city staff for an enhanced customer experience and it also enables our departments to work collaboratively together to resolve citizen issues. So that's really the foundation of GOVQA. We contracted with them back in 2010. We reached out to other vendors, did a request for proposals kind of checked all the vendors that were out there and contracted with them as a part of our support to our 311 and our FOIA initiatives. So moving forward in 2018 we did some enhancements to the portal to expand some of the customer service options including the mobile app. In that process we did demos and had bids like I said for some other vendors. As the mayor talks about a lot, C-Click Fix we reached out to them at that time with Bay. Not Click Bay. That's actually a really good movie but not this. City sourced and there were some other vendors that we talked to. The decision was made to go with GOVQA because it checked a lot of the boxes that were on with some of the requirements, some of the existing technology we had the timeline and the pricing kind of fit within the scope of what we were trying to do. So we had our first project kick off 2018 in October-November around about those parts. So fast forward to now. To last year we started. The mayor and other members of council really want to make sure we're really reaching our citizens and really giving them an opportunity to engage with us. And so we dusted off our GOVQA and started a process of reevaluating it, figuring out what was working well, what wasn't, and what other opportunities we may have to maybe even go in a different direction possibly if it wasn't meeting our needs. And so we've done a lot of sessions with internal stakeholders, customer care, the PMO office, IT department, a lot of users internally to try to figure out is it working for us, is it not working for us, what do we need to do to update, refresh, and revamp for better functionality and better service to our citizens. So just to give you some general information in your little handouts that you have, you'll see some of this information just to give you a color for GOVQA and who uses it. So over 20,000 customers have utilized GOVQA since its launching. And we've had 25,000 plus customer requests that have been submitted. Over 4,200 requests via web portal or the mobile app since 2018. Giving you a color for what those things look like. So if you look in that little box below, you'll see the departments where those requests have been made for water maintenance, customer care, street division, public works, solid waste, sanitation, and code enforcement. So Dr. Bustle Speed Bump is underneath one of those categories. Those are the categories that we see the most requests for services or the most complaints or issues involving those departments. Those are our major ones. So they're big stakeholders in using some type of CRM system. That's right. And we're going to talk a little bit about that. So and you'll see the chart kind of gives you a graph of kind of, you know, at our peak we were up around a thousand in between apps and web based request. And then you'll also see that the staff can also submit requests on behalf of customers. So that's where Mayor, we like to utilize that a little bit better. Whereas things come into your office or Ms. Wilson's office having a better connectivity to the system so that that information gets in there and the request get processed within the system to make it kind of more seamless. So that's just some data just to give you some something to think about. So because we, yes sir. How do you get this data as opposed to persons calling whatever department, is that included in the current data? So it is included in the current data if there was either they submitted it themselves as a citizen or if someone in customer care took that complaint from you and put it into the system. Does that, are you tracking with me? And we'll show you that in a second so it'll make a little, it'll be a little bit clearer for you. So like I said our current status is really looking at what we have. We really wanted to do a good evaluation of what we currently have before we just you know, subscribe and then went to something else. We've spent a lot of time and energy getting the system set up, getting it established, getting some workflows in there and so we wanted to make sure we utilized a tool we already had to see if it's going to meet our needs or not before we totally went in a different direction. So we've done some requirements gathering. We've had some vendor demonstrations from some other vendors, Secret Fix, we reached back out to them. IndieGov is also one that we've reached back out to to see whether or not we wanted to look at those products and we kind of did a comparison and of course nothing's perfect. Secret Fix may have had a better app functionality as opposed to what we currently have but then some of the integration with CityWorks wasn't quite there. IndieGov, no integration with CityWorks. So to figure out which option or which platform is going to be best for us. Which one of those also allows us because one of the things that we had hoped for as part of this process is as we get constituent emails and we do how it all tracks so that we know because right now for the majority of us we get something we pass it on. We don't know that it's completed. You know unless somebody calls us back say hey that hole's still there you know two months later because the system doesn't allow us all to track. So how we track that I think is what I'm hoping that this will allow us to do so that no matter what the issue is we ought to be able to pull it off. So if I'm in my office I can pull it up but if I'm in customer service I ought to be able to see the same thing and go hey that's been addressed. You know the folks have been out there they've marked it you know in two weeks it's going to get done because that's the frustrating stuff for our constituents is nobody can tell them where the process is and so if there's a way that this integrates so that no matter where you are if you're on a city computer you ought to be able to pull up and be able to tell them if it's done by work order if it's code enforcement order I don't know how you want to structure it but I think that's what we want to make sure as part of that not just navigating our system but how we deliver that information back to our constituents. I just had a quick question can you remind us what CityWorks is versus GovQA? Absolutely yes. So GovQA is this front facing portal and it's the platform where the customer can make a request for service or enter a complaint. CityWorks actually the workflow system that's internal that a lot of our big departments use. Columbia Water uses it. Customer Care uses it. Public Works uses it and it is where you get a work order assigned to a task and then there's information that's put into that system in order to track what the progress is on that particular work request. So that's really what you all want to see. You want to see hey I called in about the speed bump. I called in on this date March 14th 2023 and I want to know what's going on with it. So CityWorks is where the individuals that go out to repair something it's what they pull up it's what they see and they enter their notes as to what is going on with that particular problem or issue. So is there a constituent relations component to CityWorks the same way like what was the company with Intergo? Where is there something that we can see on our end to also see things over time is it that we just need access to CityWorks or is there like a link we can send to when someone reaches out about a code enforcement issue for them to fill it out and then we can track it. Like I'm just trying to figure out in my head how I would know without following up. That's why GOVQA they're making the recommendation to data use GOVQA because it will allow for that functionality that you're describing. Dr. Bussells some of the other platforms wouldn't integrate with our CityWorks. Indigoves didn't integrate with CityWorks. I have it alerted so if I send something to say to Clunt's office he passes it on to Frank or somebody down the line there's a way that we know that it's gotten to the individual that is being done and in the process. That's why I was kind of leaning towards where is there a way for it once it's inputted that no matter where you are you could access it. Right and so some of that honestly and we've been talking through that as work groups some of that is going to be how we actually function right, how we input it as staff and what we do to enable you to see some of that stuff. Let me show you Erika can you take us? Yes sir. I think it's very important for us to know and I've called in several times and every request of course has been handled or taken care of whether it's a cold enforcement issue or a warning issue or any other issues it's been taken care of. I guess my interest is whether or not that's in the numbers that are already there. What I heard the Mayor say just a few minutes ago, making sure that when we call in an issue it's adequately tracked. If there's an issue say in one of the districts and that issue is so over when we get that done there ought to be something that says to us through the data that it has it's been identified and it's been taken care of. Yes sir. Is that a part of that protocol that we're going to be looking at? So yes sir we're working on we're working through the enhancements. Right exactly. So one of the things I wanted to show you real quick was this is what it looks like on the web page and you can get to it in a number of different ways just ma'am. So you can get to it several different ways. We have talked about its visibility and how it's easy and how we probably needed to put it somewhere on a banner or a link that would be just in your face front page. You've got to go through another department like if you go to Columbia Water. If you go to Columbia Water scroll down and it's right a report of concern. So you click that report of concern it takes you right to go up QA. But we have talked about your website TrackMyColumbia. Have you gone to TrackMyColumbia and typed in the work orders? So let me show you. So with this this is the front page of the GovQA site and we've been talking about and I'll talk a little bit about this later pictures and the way it looks and all that. But this is what it looks like right now. So of course we're on the home page. So you can like you can see those two tabs one is submit a FOIA request. So if you want to do a FOIA request about anything you want to get this day's meetings notes minutes you can or you can also look at the frequently asked questions and there are a ton of frequently asked questions that you can ask about anything you can search for a particular topic or you can just look at the frequently asked questions and you can put them in categories there are lots of them out there. About just basic city functions those are all there. So in order to really submit a request you can click on where it says log in or register your account or I'm sorry report a problem you got to log in you got to register you have to set it up in order for us to be able to for you to get those email responses when something has been done with this. So Erica's typing in her email address and our password to log in. So password for the CRM Yes so you create your own account and you would put in your email address and you would create your own password. Yeah Pam is this new as opposed to what I've got now looking for that No sir it should be the same. It looks a little bit different on the different devices on your phone it looks a little bit different than it does on this web portal if you're using an iPad it looks a little bit different because the landscape is different size. It's the same thing. He's looking at the app. It looks a little different. It's configured a little bit differently. So if you wanted to report a problem you would click on report a problem and then you would find what category you're looking for whether it's animal services, solid waste. For example if you wanted to say your roll cart got stolen and you want your roll cart to be you want a new roll cart. Right so you would go to that solid waste you would type in your address city, state, all that good stuff and then you'd say with the incident or information requesting the roll carts missing. If you had a picture of an empty space with your roll cart was you could take a picture and you could select a file and upload that picture and it would send that picture for example if you wanted to take a picture of a pothole or you wanted to take a picture of a water leak you could take a picture and Erica's doing it now. Right and we're going to show you that in a second. Because all people want a 399a or am I 4,010 where am I? So once you do that and you submit it you're going to get an email that says your reference number you've submitted a request. So this part is out of CRM nobody can give me an answer. So how do we integrate those pieces so that when somebody gives you their number if they call you, me, Ms. Wilson or customer care you can pull up and say hey you know what your street needed a new valve we're out of those valves we've ordered that valve and then go in there and you know the markings are coming and then you know three weeks they should be there I think that's what we're trying to get to is how do we merge those so that we can give those constituents because I think that's the frustrating part and I feel it gets frustrated for our customer service first and it gets frustrated for the constituent because they're both trying to just get an answer and understand that and nobody can talk to the other. Well all of the information is in the city work so one of the things I wanted to show you with this Eric could go back to find my information for your account go back to your account. So if you've submitted something you can look it says view my issues so you click on that and Eric I don't know if you got anything in there but that that she submitted would show up as a as one of her issues and you see where it says completed or in progress you will see or any details that are in there so the integration to the city works is going to show you where anything that's been put in about that particular item is going to show up in city works and then it's going to feed to this. So that's what's going to happen it'll be integrated. So once that gets integrated then what we're really asking for we'll have at our fingertips and the constituent will too. So they'll be able to see the status of that roll cart being gone now what also happens though. So will you be able so we have one master login well we have access to all of that so that if somebody calls me I can just get on my computer go in there and punch in that work order and see where it is because I can say hey I see it on my screen you should see it on your screen this is where it is are we going to have that capability or can we get that capability so that would cut down on a lot of phone calls or the address or whatever yeah property address well that's what they can integrate I don't know do you want because Clint's Mr. City Works person these are great questions I think it's in there service request usually generates a work order it's triaged and if there's work that needs to be done then it generates a work order in city works we use city works to track our progress and also for cost and time accounting as well so we can look at how much that particular thing repair costs us you may have five calls you won't have five on the my columbia seap right now because 25 people using it a month right but you might have five calls about the same pothole so you'll have five service requests that may generate one work order so customer care if they know the reference number they can see the systems and tie it together but sometimes it's like putting together a puzzle that next step of integration with city works that's the goal standard once we integrate city works with that platform then that frees you up to potentially be able to do outbound notifications automated notifications to the customer that entered the online service request or had that placed in so the fact that we could give people tracking that they know hey in the next seven days you know pups coming out that's step one step two it would cut down on 50% of the calls that we get of frustration it's the communication piece that's what we really want is this integration so that we can share where we are and what we're doing people are okay if it takes three months to get something fixed if they know it's happening it's that information piece and it may work internally but we need to be able to internally a broad brush because we call Ms. Harris gets calls we get calls you know your customer service care calls everybody's getting calls so by integrating that and having that as a single point that you can grab changes the ball game it will and having a service level expectation we've talked about this with me for two years probably getting the service level expectation for if it's a service line leak we expect it will take X amount of time it's a main line leak it will and that sometimes fluid depends on the volume of work and hard freezes and that sort of thing but capturing the work that's being done which we're doing now everything we do is entered in city works and any of our crews and that's really really important this I think is the next step in that evolution. Well I think for water for an example how many times have we seen groundwater going up and it's not a water leak and people keep calling saying that it's not water leak it's a ground leak you know it's groundwater it's not us but that would solve a lot of that angst and phone calls. This is a groundwater leak Clint. Yes sir. On your monthly report which I love to read in this very outstanding report you list between 25 and 30 touch points a month thousand. Yes sir. Customer how are they handled do they make up a work order in city works or in something like this. So we'll a lot of times we'll take the customer's address and that's tied to their maybe their water account and so a service request may be generated in the banner billing system that's a way we generate a lot of service request the my columbia SC system can generate a service request also but again you may have five for the same problem city works is not about an address it's about an asset so it's a pipe or a valve that sort of thing and so we can query that particular asset down the line to see how many failures we've had of that asset that informs us of it's time to based on age material the touch points is time to replace that asset so that ties into our asset management system that we're developing as well so again you may have five to ten service request that generate one work order in city works but if these systems are integrated then you can get that push back out and you can query either one and it ties together tying those two together very important. Most of the time when we got constituent service request we send it in we're going to want to know when it hits the city works. Yes sir yes sir well the integration is going to be integrated together so it's going to hit together and that's what Carmen just reached out to the vendor so in the next probably three weeks or so Carmen we should have that integration with city works because that's been a part of the process one thing to note as well is that some depart yes sir yes I think it's critically important for those of us who utilize telephone calls as opposed to the method here it's been extremely helpful no question about that especially when we talk about water issues it's been extremely helpful in getting rid of some of those issues the thing that I'm sort of horned in on right now is whether or not when the work is done usually I get a customary call complimentary call or whatever kind of call I get to say that the work has been and of course I'm having to call that person back to say that person was there the work has been completed and we're ready to go is there any way in this protocol and I want to harp on this it is very necessary and needed that when the work is done especially if it's being ushered in by one of us who calls that in that the work is being done it's going to take five six days for it to get completed just to let those persons go in the community that it's being done that the issue is not going on with us yes sir and that's part of the workflow that we've been talking about is a lot of times like you said some of these things are finished right but that customer doesn't get that follow up call to say hey this is done with the integration and the upgrading of the system we can do more automated emails that get sent out to people or more automated notifications customer care will enter if you call them to say there's a problem with something they enter that into their system so they are keeping track of it and so a work order is created all of that is happening this will allow it to be a little bit more seamless so that things are flowing through now there are some internal things we need to work on for sure about how we help you track some of that and how constituent services like Cheney helps you track some of that so that's part of our discussion as well is what can we do internally for those touch points and those customer enhancements that make everybody feel more comfortable that they're being heard their issues being worked on and giving them more current up to date status checks on that problem so you know it's not just a technology issue it's a staff issue it's a bigger workflow issue that we're kind of trying to engineer all those things together as we work through this whole process Erica you want to get me back to the now some of the departments like I was going to say some of the departments like Solid Ways they have every department has a person that is assigned to really looking at what's coming in through this site and for example I just talked to Samantha today and she said yeah what I usually do is I send them an email that says hey I understand that your roll cart needs to be replaced it will be replaced within 24 hours or the next business day they have a schedule and they get that email so they know hey they got my request for my roll cart and I can expect my roll cart at the next business day and then the roll cart's there and the problem solved so the departments have the ability to reach back out to the constituent or the citizen when they submit a request or a complaint through the system already so that's one of the things we've been working on is tightening up that list making sure that list is accurate making sure the right people are looking at the system and they're seeing those requests come in and that there's a good response to those requests being submitted that could be happening right now we don't need that integration for that to happen those people assigned in those different departments they already have access to the system and can respond so we're going back to say hey do we have the right person and do you all have departmental protocols that say you got to respond to somebody within 24 hours or you need to follow back up as the information you know how to access the information can you see city works and see the workflow and be able to give anybody any specific information about their request or complaint so all of that engineering all that workflow and all that customer service and touch points we're working through all of that as we talk about this integration as it gets integrated though can it get up where it sends an automatic email to that person this week this is what's happening you know I got a call from somebody who's been just very adamant in this issue and they said hey my problems not solved but they were here and they've started and like the tone just changed people just want information and so that's what we're working through is their opportunities to send out those emails to let them know statuses in addition we've even talked about you know picking up the phone calling people are there some opportunity to do that depending on how long that work request has been out there you know have a schedule where it's if it's 60 days or 30 days or what have you what makes sense I mean you know we still got to get the work done and we want to be realistic but we're talking about that what are those touch points when do they happen how often do they happen what can we do to improve that customer experience is there anywhere now you can go and enter a work order to check status I don't know that we have that capability right now someone who is in city works right now could probably do it but I don't know that we could see that right now so I mean do some software I've seen it before in other cities we can go and hey I'm gonna check my status of this work order and eventually we hope to get to where the citizen can say alright it's seven days out so what if you didn't you weren't the person that entered that but there's some road work that's needed intersection that you see every day is there the capability of kind of putting a map kind of like our GIS that you know you can go and you can zoom in to that intersection of Devon and Woodrow and check and see yes there's a work order there now this isn't anybody that entered that work order that called but just for a citizen to say okay it's been reported click on it and then see the detail that we're looking for yeah I mean I've seen it out there but I don't know if it's for if it's a DOT thing state DOT thing or if it's more on the local level for a combination of everything public works and everything water all in one house yeah I've seen that too I don't know I mean I think that's something that we're we're working with a vendor talking about the things that we like to see in the enhancements so I don't know but I know what you're saying I know what you're talking about yeah so that pothole that is halfway done imagine if there was a little utility flag out there and it said this is work order number citizen can go up look at the work order and I'm like okay let me type it in the work order and then it brings up the status that'd be fantastic and I'm I guess I'm also concerned that you have to go in and physically start an account to enter an issue that's kind of a big barrier for so you can enter it in anonymously you know but the problem is is we can't respond back to you if you enter it in a not as we but it would be in the flow and if it worked like you're saying that person could see it and they wouldn't have had to create an account they could just go in an anonymous so maybe there's a question in the process do you want us to contact you put put the email address instead of having the email be the trigger that puts you into the reporting process yeah I see what you're saying you can do an anonymous submission it just is difficult for us to get back to that person if they do anonymous but but you're right it would it would notify it would kick off a work order and then kick off the work being done and if you could zoom in on that map and see that little pin mark you would know that yes that has that's being worked on and you could see track it and see the status of it and so if you're out walking your dog and you see it let me see if the sidewalks can forever there's a little flag there yeah yeah so I guess cities reported to DOT so it's now in the regional DOT supervisors yeah but Erica's going through where you can submit it anonymously you just type in the address and you would be able to do that so we'll check on that and see if there's some functionality for that because that would be awesome if you could just you know look at it on a map and see where the status is but we are working on like I said all that connectivity one of the things we're also working on is just how it looks in a separate landing page and how I mean it's seriously like yeah instead of going to Columbia I see whatever whatever have its own landing page something real easy that we can just tell folks email it to them text it to them do a hashtag all over everywhere we'll throw that around you know when they first pushed this out it was kind of like a soft thing and we didn't really do it with the gusto that we can so we have the opportunity we know that Lisha's going to come up here and talk about some of her initiatives and some exciting things she's going to do from the public relations perspective so we did talk about rebranding it so that it's the same look and feel with some of the things that she's doing so we may be able to use some of her photos and some of her images and some of the way she's going to work things in order to incorporate it into this so it does look you know all together but we'll look at that landing page or something you know real quick that people can go to so what's your take on timeline like I said before it's going to take us probably about three to four weeks to integrate with City Works so that process will be happening really soon a few images that we looked at to try to you know there's one City Hall and so try to refresh it a little bit but we really are working on that integration and then our internal workflows to make sure we have the way to that we can track what you all are asking for and then we are tracking those touch points for the constituent to see it so I mean I would imagine that you're going to see some things happening in the next two months or so I mean that's what we're really trying to try to do it real soon Absolutely we can do that It would be a great way to start the new fiscal year with the service the ease for people and I think if they go to ColumbiaSC.gov and they can just hit slash repair request that would solve I mean make it pretty easy in the meantime are they still able to use this Yes this is still functional they can still use it from the web portal you can still use it from the app it's still out there it's still available and we encourage people to use it I think once we get everything integrated to the level that we think it's headed and how the notice is I think that's where you push the PR side on it to push people there because it's going to be a lot easier than being on hold and clogging up the call especially if you're trying to follow up on something you can just click click and see it that's going to make a lot of people happy Carmen and I talked a bit today and she kept saying self service self service and so yeah we definitely I know Danita probably feels the same way Tiffany Latimer about doing as much self service as possible Tiffany would like to get less emails from me I promise you Erica and Shanique and myself are in turn forward with you all and Miss Wilson to make sure that your high priority things are taken care of and that there's a better way for those things to be tracked so I think we already talked about July 1 to have for for some of these things to be completed so that's a very reasonable timeframe for us. Any other questions Got direction and a time frame so let's make it happen Thank you all thank you Pam thank you for the feedback council so a lot of exciting a lot of exciting things happening that we are pushing towards July 1 as I mentioned some of these items have budgetary implications as well so our next two item is sort of what I've been tagging as a new era in our communications platforms our communications and marketing and public relations council has definitely given us a lot of great feedback on communications in the city and your vision and as part of that I was talking to Lisha our wonderful public relations media marketing about let's reintroduce our team so many of them are helping our council members with the different things that they're doing the different events the different initiatives and we all always hear about Miss Veronica who is fabulous and is at the community meetings and the council members really lean into her but they also may not recognize or know by name all the time the other members of the team at least she has a phenomenal team a lot of them have particular skills some have been with us longer than others and so they've also taken on new roles and responsibilities and so I really would like her to introduce them reintroduce them in some instances and I'm going to hand off to her and after we go through this I also will hand off to Lisha and Shannon our director of procurement and contracts to talk about the real meat of some of the vision that you all have talked about our implementation of a communications and marketing services request for proposals Thank you Miss Wilson mayor and city council some of these faces you will recognize because you see them very often some of these faces you may not recognize because they were more behind the scenes but they're all definitely working on your behalf and on behalf of our citizens I will start on that end and Kevin if you can introduce yourself give your title and how long you've been with the city and say your other real role that's right mayor proud papa of a big boy a big baby boy he ain't started and not all of our team members could physically be with us because again they do work behind the scenes this is Chas Neville you can wave to him on the camera he's actually live streaming our meeting right now so he could not leave his post and then also we have interns who are not here this afternoon they don't work on Tuesday afternoons this is Taylor Houston Taylor's actually a graduate student at the University of South Carolina she actually started with us in 2021 as a student undergrad journalism student measuring in public relations she decided to go from that into the school of business at USC dollarmore school of business and she's now working on her MBA but still working as an intern we also have Allie Sear she's also an intern with us she's been with us since 2022 she's also a journalism student at USC and they both work with us and support our team and actually work on various projects he's focused on recruitment and retention Pam if you don't know who that is this is the baby boy of Justin Stevens and a future city employee we've already decided and he's got a major in journalism and working PR so we're already working on our next generation of PR staff members but we want to make sure we let you know that we're looking towards the future okay thank you so much I want to get into more of what they actually do is primary duties as our team as I mentioned Chad so you don't see physically in here he works on technical duties including live streaming our meetings city council land use meetings committee meetings he has a backup who is Elizabeth because with so many meetings going on sometimes she's got to hit a press conference or do something else and she within actually live stream our meetings Kevin Crawford on the end actually started in PR left us for a little while and went to parts of recreation as a parts and recreation PR manager and when city leaders decided they wanted to streamline communications he had to return to us in the fall of last year yes September he came back to PR so he's actually handled several duties for parts and recreation your most recent MLK day is something he actually spearheaded because we didn't want to leave them in the lurch he's currently working on projects such as the community development week that's coming up in April working closer with them for PR and promotions and also he worked on the code enforcement PR campaign that was very successful several months ago with Chief Holbrook staff and it was so well received by our citizens we actually extended it for two months instead of a month beyond code enforcement month and Miss Veronica is actually still giving out our code enforcement information in the community he developed some materials that have been very helpful so that's some of the projects he's worked on that you may be familiar with I don't think I have to say anything about Miss Veronica but I'll still say it for our audience watching and they probably recognize her name and her as well but she works with our constituents she is a godsend she does a very good job everyone knows her she's connected with our community our citizens our neighborhood leaders and she loves her job okay absolutely loves her job and she was made for that role to actually spread the word about the city to our citizens throughout the community so you will see her everywhere neighborhood meetings special events parades some job fairs et cetera anyway she can tell you about the city you will see Veronica okay and she even seeks out opportunities Anika next to her is our smiling face she's normally in the office working on various duties that are assigned because we do support almost 30 city departments that's why some of these folks are more out in the field we also need folks here working to make sure our departments are getting what they need and she has graphic design abilities she also works on our special projects and events she's a very good events planner definitely that sort of thing and she works throughout the city helping the departments who send in pure request forms for the various projects Kiera is brand new she's smiling so I think we're going to hang on to it she's been here two months she's the newest member of the team I have her shadowing various staff members she's working very closely with Miss Veronica as well helping with constituent services helping to prep for a lot of these events because a lot of times we have information bags and packets that need to be put together spreading our wonderful information so she's helping in various roles she also monitors our daily media coverage so those great media coverage reports that I'm sure every night that I send you she's pulling media coverage from various outlets locally and trying to monitor what people are saying about the city from a media standpoint Elizabeth I mentioned is a backup for tech but primarily she's our web administrator helping with website duties monitoring our home page et cetera that keeps her busy she's also our link to media relations when they want interviews from city staff she helps prep the city staff because the interview is normally there kind of hand-holding if they need it while they're being interviewed so that's her background Ryan you actually see a lot because she's our lead photographer and she's at most of the press conferences and special events so when you hear the click click click you see Ryan Ryan actually matriculated to us thank you Clint from Columbia Water she started out in Columbia Water and again we inherited her and had the streamline process for communications and she came over to PR and of course Justin's been here the longest with us he started out as an intern I didn't want to let him go he actually to me has kind of built City TV from the ground up which is now very popular and we were spread out into Roku, Amazon Fire TV for our streaming also our YouTube channel is growing as well and he was recently promoted to a PR manager to utilize his skills to work on various projects he's actually working with the Columbia Cleanup right now with Code Enforcement, Public Works and also Community Development so that's coming up in April and he's also working with HR for our upcoming career fair as far as marketing and PR okay alright anything else for this team 18 alright can't cry and do a presentation as another long standing city employee myself the ability for us to also play and know when to build up those around us and move even in greater directions so we're ready for that thank you Kevin she knows to catch me off guard because I would have told her no alright thank you team and I'll let you go great job you guys thank you and as we segue that I can pull myself together we will talk about our RFP and the process we're going through we're actually working as a team we've been meeting for a couple weeks few weeks it includes our city manager our assistant city manager Jeff Palin Ryan Coleman our economic development director and Shannon Luzeski and I'm not sure if it's her new role been announced city council I know the city staff so Shannon most of you know that Sandra retired after I don't know 30 or so years in government procurement I forgot how many with the city and 10 with us with our city and Shannon of course has been right there as the right hand to Sandra for many years so Jeff probably shouldn't be making the introduction because he oversees procurement but we're so excited that Sandra had such a strong bench and Shannon is our new director of procurement and thank you guys yes congratulations Shannon alright and Miss Wilson did you want to do any other kind of intro before I get started or? No I think council is you know because they this was one of their directives that we move in the direction of also with all of the team we have that we just explain in their roles and responsibilities we also know and recognize as I was just saying that the city is growing by leaps and bounds this council has some significant items that they want to accomplish and a vision that wants to highlight the growth and development of our city in new and fresh ways and so that's really the purpose but in the intent as we have heard it behind putting out for communications and marketing RFP to assist us in that regard but we do want before we put the solicitation out and that's the purpose of today is for Lisa and Shannon and Jeff and Ryan and I to get final feedback on this RFP and really explain the process we're going through as well as the timeline okay thank you we'll start off discussing project need and we initially started out focusing on communications and marketing services as far as project need goes one of the things that we took notes about when we last presented a council was our emphasis on social media and the need for social media growth but also consistency so within the RFP these are some of the things that we're going to emphasize and please give us your feedback we also will talk about getting more of your feedback in a different way as well but we want to make sure we're headed in the right direction. Social media emphasis looking at strategies to increase public engagement and expansion of our audiences basically increasing our number of followers also as it relates to social media consistency across the board as far as look and feel, graphic design, use of fonts, colors, etc. we also want to look at graphic design from an image enhancement standpoint looking at guidelines for social media platforms and consistency also in our publications and that will be across the board for even all city departments since all departments look at developing brochures, flyers, and other educational materials so that from department to department everything doesn't look different at least when you receive something you know it's from the city of Columbia to have a consistent look from area to area we also looked at including national media coverage development this is inclusive it's not limited to newspapers online publications, digital media television, broadcast, radio, etc. looking at increasing our national media coverage about some of the city's larger major initiatives included, yes sir. How about for the local media? One of our struggles and I think we discuss this before is that local media both print and television is not covering all the things that are going on at the city how are we going to, we need to develop that I don't know if it's a relationship approach that gets them more on board. I mean we've had very little coverage for a lot of stuff that's going on in this city for a couple years now and clearly we've got to figure out I don't know if it's sitting down with the management of this stations the newspapers I mean I've reached out to the editors and got zero response from them there's no local presence and you know look our constituents need to know what's happening in the city and there's so much information and there's only so much reach we can do with the other pieces how do we deal with that piece and can we include that. And then the one thing I see missing in the project need which would align some of the economic development and PR related functions is kind of a brand strategy and brand refresh that would be consistent in terms of some of the things you're talking about for publications but also even for example the MyColumbia SC app the font and look and feel looking so different than other things that we have around the city and so I think that's the real missing piece is that this person or organization would come in and really help make all of that consistent and fall under one umbrella brand. We can tag that on with you know you can't spell scout without MyColumbia SC in it right? Just do. So one of the things I think over the years that we heard different takes on is this use of you know brand of the city branding is that the direction you all are wanting to go because I mean I've heard different things about the terminology the brand is it the image enhancement I definitely am following with what Dr. Bussles is saying about the consistency and utilizing the same look and feel I'm just for the purposes of the document and the solicitation and us communicating to these respondents that we want us to communicate that. So when I say brand in like the marketing communications world I think about kind of like going back to the whole telling our story so when we think about Experience SC has a specific brand look and feel in terms of their logo which obviously we already have a logo but the font that they use the brand guidelines for what every department within Experience SC has to use to push out anything related to that refining you know even if it's based off of our logo just kind of the qualifications of what is consistent with our brand and you can use whatever word makes sense in the city world but like I'm thinking in terms of just being consistent in our look and feel because that will then directly influence the type of collateral that's developed about the city for economic development. Well and to add to that too I think we would I don't want to dictate how they do it because they may have different suggestions but maybe get some input on how we can better develop our brand. Well and I think part of that is once we've enhanced and I think we're not looking for a new logo or tagline trying to pull everything consistent because we still have street signs out there that say it's a capital place to be you know I mean that's the kind of stuff I think we're trying to get is so that everything that we send out people know and identify this is Columbia South Carolina the capital city of South Carolina they know who it is and it's not so different across the thing it's not so much changing the brand it's more being consistent. Yeah we say like refresh. Refresh. Like just reviewing what we have and making sure that it's consistent. We don't need a new logo or but what can we do in terms of like what Councilman Herbert said like improving upon what we already have and making sure that everything is consistent across all communications not just social media. Okay so basically a style guide that is adhered to across the board that would that may be one way to yeah to implement but I'd love to hear their actual ideas in terms of making our I'm just gonna keep using brand like exciting so that then it can help tell the story for why you should come and open a business here and I think some of it is I mean I got three different pieces here that we're working on and they all some of us are using the skyline some are using the flag some of you know how do we create so it's consistent and you have the style guide whatever you want to have that you have all these different pieces so that when we're selling it people know it's us. Right and so when we yes I agree with everything you just said I think when I was using the terminology image enhancement which is on number two that is what I was really meaning what you're saying so that's why I'm asking because I'm very literal and I want to be very clear as we go down this path that we're doing and trying to incorporate what you all are looking for. So I think I would suggest that we keep the perfect design and you know as its own bullet but then include you know brand strategy brand guidelines brand refresh but you know those are the words I typically hear when I go through an RFE process for communications or PR there might be a better word to kind of pinpoint exactly what we're looking for but I do think it's its own sub-bullet. One of the things that is sort of interesting a year ago this same subject came up and the subject came up under the line of telling your story you remember it's not a new story out there it's a better articulation of that story. The story doesn't change a little bit. Our emphasis ought to be how do we take a story that is already there continuing to unfold itself how do we take that story whether it's in council whether we come out of council into a community meeting community meetings become agents of change and agents of telling their story. I think a rebranding of what we got I don't know if that's it I think that our story is already there we got an energetic council we got an energized city we got a city that is ready for change and the articulation of that story is not to continue to pile in on something that's already there. Now let me say let me put this and maybe you all understand this theologically and spiritually it's not it's I will we're not talking about something new we're talking about a better living of what we already got and that we don't we try to make something new that's already there let's live out what we say is our vision our priorities let's live those things out let's stop tacking on things let's live out what we got in a better and more profound way well you went theological I go hip hop is it LL Cool J Jeff don't call it a comeback we've been here for years I don't know who LL Cool J is you shouldn't and I don't but I but I do know what what the creator says and that's significant we're living out amen brother amen thank you thank you man may I be excused for just a minute. Mr. DeVall then Mr. Brennan I'm no media expert to me I'm not sure if one company can do these things we might need to be looking at different companies to do parts of that graphic design might be done by one group and the social media might be handled by another. I've seen it so for example adventure they just went through a brand refresh keeping their logo but they wanted a completely different look and feel and so they had a company come in and do like a brand strategy that would then be incorporated into a guide for all the staff gave us examples of the colors look and feel in terms of how the new signs would look how documents would look and then what social media would then look like in terms of the brand guidelines of the colors that you use when you're making you know like oh the city is closed today and things these are typically pretty expected functions of large marketing and PR companies. Would the same group be able to take that sort of study and implement it with an aggressive social media campaign yes absolutely and you know some of it would also be then in the city and our existing team here would adopt some of those pieces as well right we have I don't know seven or eight people that also work internally to the city and there would be certain functions that they would take on after this external organization presented and we confirmed and decided what the final action in terms of look and feel of the city is and Dr. Bussells sir go right ahead and then I'll make a point no please please answer well Dr. Bussells that's one of the discussions we've been having within our team and I know Miss Wilson is going to address that a little later about actual execution like are we looking at consultant services that come in and say okay here's the guidelines here's a plan and then that'd be implemented by staff or we're looking at a firm and actual handle I get some hands on services which is a totally different animal which Shannon will get into so that helps provide some clarity alright so as we get on to the five o'clock hour real quick so we are committed we keep saying keeping our logo we have no plans to change from the city of Columbia we are Columbia major logo right correct the and yeah no no no I want to make sure because everything plays off of that we are Columbia I get it so as we I guess you're going to talk about the proposal process now is it a proposal are we looking for are we going to RF, RFI option or RFP option I will defer to Shannon on that and Shannon's coming up the last piece of the components is the economic development piece the pitch book itself and the slide deck creation we had taught in the economic development infrastructure committee and the recommendation was that Ryan proceed with using Darlin Moore school students to develop content I do think it's really important that all of this is streamlined and consistent as you're talking about so Shannon will talk in a minute about the timeline Mr. Brennan and part of this process will result in an addendum that we give to these respondents because simultaneously that content piece with the Darlin Moore school for the economic development pitch book and slide deck is underway and so we're going to grab that content and share it as an addendum in this process so that they can use that and that will be one of the first items out the gate that if it is the one company Mr. Deval that they would produce is the economic development pitch book which should have that look, feel, brand, refresh that is consistent with everything else will be producing as a result of this process and just before we leave before we get to Ms. Shannon as far as the primary components with the social media I do want to make sure that we are asking for the best strategy with respect to the individual departments and targeting because I do think that I don't want us to do all of this work and have these great pictures and still have no one who really pays attention to it because it gets lost in all of the wide subject matter that we're trying to cover so I would want to hear strategies what they think is good for each department that needs to have or thinks that they need to have a social media presence. That's part of the public engagement because we have lots of followers but I guess when you compare followers to engagement how do we increase the engagement across the board so there's the physical, the OVO, then my development, part of recreation employment it's like how do we target certain areas separate them back out that's what it is but we need somebody to be officially recommend that. And I think part of that addendum you need to say look if you've got to spend, put some dollars behind creating more followers and getting because that's part of what everybody does today through and it's not expensive to do it but you know building up that base so that we're growing we need to consider that. That needs to be part of it because for us to see success we need more views we need that content being shared more and more platforms and I hate to say it but that's part of what you're doing is you're mining more followers and so forth so that may you want to have that in there. So part of the discussion on cost and as these proposals come back we're already internally kind of estimating on the high end but I do think some of those additional features some of the discussions about how hands on they continue to be with us and our team will actually drive costs so we're channel talk about the scalable nature of the RFP process so we really just want to get back everything we can get back put it all out there and then we'll make determinations. I will tell you because this is one of the items on your agenda today that has budgetary implications that we have taught and Jeff and I will make recommendations about utilizing accommodations to state tourism development dollars with the same money that goes already to market the region we ought to be keeping some of that those funds because this is the effort that you all want to put behind it and you've got to pay for it. So we ought to use the parts that are eligible for that that will probably be a recommendation in this budget that we use those funds accordingly. And I think when we get to where we have our branding our component we need to share it with our partner so that there's consistent message. One of the conversations I've had with both the university with the airport and other entities is there's seven different messages going out with Columbia that does not help us recruit and bring here because people can't figure out who we are. We need to be the driver and they need to build up with us. You know the university is going to do but there's a lot of things that they do that they market it needs to be consistent with us just like you know the airport it is CAE so you know we need to work together through some of that and share that information. Thank you so much for the feedback it's vital and we don't want to miss an important part so then we'll also cover what you said before we actually head over into the procurement world I think this is probably a great time to talk about your vision so looking at the project need that's all bulleted out for you and of course we can certainly add to that as we need. I've been writing notes as you all have been talking because I definitely want to capture anything that is important to you. So when we look at a need like this this is communications and marketing so we're jumping back and how can we creatively give this kind of information out to the community at large and what better way to do that but then to give it some kind of special attention. I think the best way to do that might be to record some interviews or have some videos where some of you or all of you could participate. It wouldn't be very long but it would capture the things that are most important to you and what better way to relay that to the public for them to hear it firsthand from you. I would envision those interviews being no more than three minutes in total length. We could use that information to supplement our solicitation materials and we definitely would want to share it at the pre-proposal meeting. Ideas? So we're talking about our vision for the city or our vision for communications and marketing services. So we're talking about our vision for the city or our vision for communications and marketing services. Communications and marketing services. Yeah. If you prefer that we can but I do think that someone will do a video. It doesn't have to be everyone. Those of you who would like to participate. Okay. And then Ryan will also talk about from the Economic and Infrastructure Committee there wasn't one point of suggestion that those members participate in hearing the content, the pitches that the students are doing on the ED side as far as content and sort of judging and help give feet back on that. Again it's totally whatever you all want to do but that was something that was suggested previously as well. Right. So what about procurement? Okay. So procurement this is a perfect setup for a request for proposals. We know generally what we're looking for but we don't have all the we have the background but we don't necessarily know what the end result will ultimately look like and we need the experts help. And this is a perfect classic example of going with the RFP procurement method. It will we can look at evaluation factors. We can look at things that are important to you and we can outline all of that out. As far as writing the scope of work we want to make sure again still crafting based off of what we're hearing from you all today but realizing that the sky is the limit on this and are we looking at just garnering advice from a consultant or are we looking at someone coming in alongside us and helping us implement more of a hands-on approach. So not knowing that completely at this point I think it's prudent to go ahead and put both into our RFP and let that consultant come back to us and say this is what I would do in this situation and this is what I would do in the other. And then we'll have both. As far as the contract is concerned I know that we will probably be rolling out different parts of it on different time tables. So Ryan's going to talk about the economic development piece of this and that will probably be the first thing out the gate as far as what we award. And then that will give that firm some time to craft the public relations piece of that. Working with Leisha in the first hand and giving us some good insight into the first three bullet points. And then we'll award that out as that happens. Before you do that could you just mention the goal is that there's going to be a hybrid approach of both help with implementation and consultation, correct? We will ask for proposals both ways. As far as timeline's concerned we're ready to roll out the gate as soon as March 27th. That is a little bit contingent upon if we are getting recordings from you all we would like to have that information no later than the 20th. And you all would get to work first hand with Leisha's staff to record those videos. And then that way we can incorporate it. So shortly after that we will be having a pre-proposal meeting where the public comes in and those who are interested in helping us out as a respondent can ask any question that they have. We'll go through the solicitation fully, answer any of their questions. I understand the content that is coming from USC School of Business. That will be provided in late April. So we would want to make sure that information is handed over as well as quickly as we can. So we're looking at maybe April 26th that that would be provided by an addendum. And then responses would be pretty close after that the first part of May. As far as getting the information prepared and ready for you all to review on June the 20th, that gives us some time to go through evaluations, interviews, crafting a contract, all that. And preparing it for you all slated for council agenda. And we're looking at a notice to proceed for the contract in the first part of July. We're looking to do the economic development portion first. How are you going, I can see where you can get the content done first. But we're not going to know what the look and feel looks like until you get downstream. That's my concern too. To jump to economic development but then not having overarching look and feel that's consistent seems backwards. Now they're going to be working on both simultaneously. We're just saying as part of the award, the understanding will have to be because he's meeting it although we're still hiring people for that office that this is something that's been discussed for quite a while about the need for that pitch book. So that's just one of the elements that the company will need to know going in that they're going to have to incorporate the look, the feel, the refresh into the pitch book that's seamless with everything else that city centric. But that content about content. Can you come explain the content piece, Ryan? The content just on the economic development piece they'll get as an addendum in the process and then once the award happens, this would be one of our first pieces of collateral that we would hope they would produce. Yes ma'am, I think that's correct. Hopefully as they're developing the brand guidelines and some of these other things that we're going to implement, they can kind of be working on a template and a layout for this in parallel going ahead and getting photography and things that we would want for the economic development pitch book and then that way once that's awarded, hopefully they can already have some of that work established and then just go ahead and kind of top of pile the pitch book and hopefully get it done sooner rather than later. The partnership with the USC Moore School actually came out of an economic development committee meeting last year. Jeff Savage who runs the Faber Entrepreneur's Center over there was watching one of our committee meetings and reached out to me on LinkedIn afterwards and was inquiring about our need to put together this and then Councilman Taylor at the time had said his interest in engaging the Moore School and I said well, you watched it on TV yeah, we'd absolutely love to do that and so that coincided well with the beginning of the new semester so in January he went ahead and got his MBA students engaged and so they started working on it and have been kind of pulling together some things for the past few months. It's interesting because this actually kind of took an expanded track so as we talked about it more and more we had the need for the selling points in the pitch book but one thing that we hit on was our need to also sell to talent, attraction, and retention and so the project has actually kind of been broke up within the Moore School. Jeff Savage is working on the elements of the pitch book. The students have put together surveys so they're going to be going out to local businesses so to city they're going to be talking with the citizens, our business owners and getting together that intel that we need for the selling book. Jeff Reiling who runs some of the marketing programs over there is working with his marketing students and they're actually going to be helping put together some talking points on how we can better attract and retain talent as well and so we're going to take both of those elements and then combine them. That work will officially be completed on Monday April 24th. They will have a meeting at the Moore School at 2 o'clock and as Miss Wilson mentioned earlier, I talked with Jeff yesterday. There's an opportunity for some of y'all to come sit in. We'd actually love to kind of have that participation and get some live reception to what they've put together and feedback as well. As soon as we've got the collateral in hand that day, I think we can pretty quickly put that into an addendum and then flip that right back out to our marketing respondents afterwards. So, I think I hit everything on there. Is it one submission or is it a lot of different groups working and all putting in the students? So it's almost two separate groups working together so Jeff Savage's group is working with the pitch points and then the marketing class is working on it. Okay, so it's not like a design contest. No, and then they're going to kind of pull it together at the end of the day. I think Jeff Reiling said, you know, even with his marketing students, you know, they may present some different scenarios and we could even rate what we liked and what we didn't at the end of it. But at any rate, we get all that collateral back at the end. So we need to put April 24th on schedules, hold some time for that day. Yes, sir. At 2 o'clock at the Moore School and I can provide y'all with the room number. Yes, ma'am. Thank you, Ryan. Thank you. Any other questions for Ryan specifically? Okay. Any other questions for me, Leisha Shannon? We just want to make sure we're framing the RFP. This was really helpful today to hear your feedback. And of course, we'll expect Leisha to be harassing you a little bit about the videos so we can turn those around pretty quickly. But in the meantime, we have good, I mean we have stuff that you're taking on the road with you, Ryan, right? Like marketing pieces. Okay. Thank you all so much. We are moving on to the boards and commissions handbook review. Miss Ashley Jenkins Wood from my office will lead you through that discussion. I don't know if Councilman McDowell wanted to say a few words and this is the product of the administrative policy committee and it's important to bring it to full council so that I think there's been a few questions. From what I understand, there has been some changes in terms of medical errors. Those has been changed. The content remains the same. We've done our work as a committee and I think that there are several questions posed by members of the council and I think those questions has been adequately answered. So the report is before you. Good afternoon. As Council, City Manager stated as well as Councilman McDowell the handbook that you have in front of you is actually the latest version of the handbook that incorporates the changes from last year and even the changes discussed by the administrative policy committee on January 31st at their last meeting as well as some additional changes proposed by several City Council members via email. So what we want to do is just walk through it with you. You also have the minutes from the last administrative policy committee meeting and those minutes actually detail the changes that were discussed at that meeting. You'll see them on the front talking about one through four and then finally on the second page of the minutes that's one through 14. So we're going to go through those points and I can actually point out to you where they are in the handbook and then also if you have any other questions about any of the pages we can answer those as well. Did you all have any questions already after reviewing it? Okay Councilman. I've got two things to that question. Okay first off I noticed that you've got Columbia Tree and Appearance Commission listed as Columbia Tree and Appearance Commission and then in the booklet is going back to Columbia Appearance Commission. I think it's very important that we keep the word tree in there. We are a tree city for 30 years and that's part of our application for Tree City to emphasize our tree canopy. We're the oldest tree city in the state of South Carolina and I think that we need to leave tree involved with that particular commission. Yes sir I know that was actually something that's listed in the administrative policy committee minutes. That is actually number three. I know that change was proposed by a council member and the APC committee discussed changing the name to Columbia Appearance Commission but obviously it's something that still has to be approved by council as a whole so. I would like to ask that we get back to its original name which is Columbia Tree and Appearance Commission for this change I think. At the very beginning. Number one is history that has been called Columbia Tree and Appearance Commission and we know it is. We have been tree city. We need to be able to emphasize that when we send in our application to the Arbor Day Foundation that we are a tree city. We have been a tree city for over 30 years and that's part of the application process. You do have to do things but I think it is important that we keep the word tree in there. When we initially talked about this when Councilman Taylor his particular suggestion was similar to what you're saying was that it was all under the appearance sort of umbrella into other issues as it relates to the tree but I also understand what you're saying. It has been tradition that we looked at Columbia Tree Service We need to keep our tree canopy at the forefront of our mind. And of course when we talk about Folk Wanted to Cut Down Trees we talk about in communities which were Folk Wanted to Cut Down Trees one of the main issues of course is that we talk about that tree canopy and how important. Now personally what has been the tenth of other members of this committee related to that particular issue? So I believe If you don't change it I think the thing came from people who were on that committee saying we don't really talk about appearance that was the whole reason it came from the committee. There's no reason to have this massive discussion on the committee. We know that there was an interest in terms of taking on beautification issues and so we were trying to encompass that into this committee. No, I'm just saying that's why we made this. That committee, the tree and appearance of the people who said changing to appearance. They're not the ones that have called. They may say why are you all changing it? I would be opposed to the change simply because I just think when we're talking about trees we're going way beyond just appearance. We're talking about we have to put the new trees and I'm not a tree person so I'm not going to get too I'm just being honest but I do know like when we go and plant the trees in the neighborhoods and go to these different Arbor Day things it is more than just quote appearance and if you were to just make it Columbia appearance I think you do lose the emphasis that the committee has tried to make with respect to trees, maintaining trees, planting trees and the like. I can't even join this. It can't be a decision. Who cares. Leave it the way it is. Move on. I've got one other. We've got people getting shot. Well that is true but the staff and I need clarity. That's why we're doing this today because one thing is said in the committee and we have everyone's given their piece so it doesn't matter to us. We just want to know with clarity which way you all would like for us to have it. So is it? Long be a tree and appearance commissioner. We'll have to change the stationery. Is that consensual? No but I don't care enough to fight this one so well I'm not going to put myself over a limb or an arm. So if we You are. I'm not. You've got a lot. Let's go with what we've got. Let's go with what we've got. I mean it would have needed an ordinance change probably anyway whatever. The other thing is just a question. One of the things we asked the committee to do was to go through all the commissions and see which ones of the positions were designated by state law that they had to be that particular qualification. Design Development Review Commission is one. I'm not sure if that is state law or whether that's something that the city put in and there are a couple of others that also have qualifications and we will I think try to remove as many of the city specified qualifications for appointments so that we could get a broader pool of applicants. And what qualifications in specific are you? Well under the Design Review Commission at least one should be an experienced architectural historian. At least one should be an experienced city planner. At least one should be a real estate developer or licensed estate broker and one shall be an architect with historic preservation experience and the remainder if any shall be persons with experience or education shall be qualified for service on such commission. Joe and I had talked about that particular one and architect with historic preservation and we said we changed the word to say a person with demonstrated historic preservation experience and take the word architect. And that is is that the item that is on their agenda for the 21st? Okay. So that was we had this discussion and agenda review this morning and I was asking the staff I think it was that one. It was the architectural historian. Yeah, that was hard to find. Architectural historian is the one we had at the hard time and that was in is that in our ordinance or is that a state requirement? So and that is the that is the amendment that you're sponsoring, sir. It was Will. What I was about to say it's on your agenda that's coming out today on your draft agenda. You should read meeting track. Is it on meeting track? We don't have it yet. It's on minute track. That's why you're reading the wrong track. So is that the only one we're cleaning up? Do you have to have an architectural So those are those are the certified local government guidelines from the state historic preservation office and the federal government as well that allows us to be a certified local government from SHPO to apply for grants. We have to leave that one on but we can take the other one out. So what you're doing that you all had asked for that amendment is you're adding to the architectural historian demonstrated preservation experience or so you'll have a wider pool. Thanks, Christa. I'm sorry. Are you done? Mr. Debal. I did have one question on automatic terminations page 10. It says absent from two consecutive meetings without a notice then you will be notified that a third absence may result in automatic termination but then on page 11 under number three we have absence from two consecutive meetings without notice can lead to automatic termination. So I'm assuming that's supposed to be three. Is page 11 supposed to be three? We'll make that change. I don't know that there is a state requirement that we have an oath for commission members and we've got an oath. I've been on this here. This was in the 90s. I did want to clarify to the 11, I'm sorry. The limit of 11 members and so I will off the top of my head. That's actually listed on page nine. Yeah, and so do we how many organizations or boards of commissions is that going to impact, are they already aware that this is the new recommendation or 11? The maximum of 11, we have a few of them that have more than that and so what's the process of a roll in a mile? Yeah, I'm not talking about that one, but I do know that we have some of them that are ours, is it that they roll off or they'll have to reelect it? They would be rolled off based on their terms, how long they've been on there? They have not because this hasn't been finalized, we're still in the draft format. So we didn't want to issue any statements without it actually being approved by council and what we're finding is that since we've deferred some of the appointments the boards like Food Policy, Citizens Advisory Committee to Community Development, Bicycle Pedestrian Committee, they would have had over the amount, but since the appointments have been deferred they're not over. So we can determine what we'd like to point to those up until 11 members if council decides to keep that limit. Yes, Mr. Mayor, not at this last meeting but at the meeting before before when Joey was still here we attended that Food Policy Committee. There was a mention of a member because I think we got up to about 25 persons in that Food Policy Committee. In that meeting that evening it was expressed to them that that was going to be talked about and that it was going to reverse itself to whatever. But they still won't because we hadn't made any we hadn't done anything with Food Policy, is that right Tina? I mean, Ashley, we hadn't done anything because the whole issue of restructuring. Yeah, it's not just Food Policy at several boards so the appointments have been deferred, yes sir. And Ashley, after this process on the 21st do we take a final vote on this handbook and make it final? If you all have additional changes we'll make those changes and then from there. I know Ms. Hammond said that she would like for us to vote on it but it's not required. I'm just anxious to now get this going with some of the things that would have to go into place right away in terms of some of the memberships and some of the expectations around attendance and things like that. Understood. That's for record purposes though it would certainly be good if this could be approved. Yeah, agreed. If you don't mind, can you go ahead and look at the second page of the minutes that we provided the list numbers one through fourteen. Page two of the three for the minutes from November 16th, 2022. Those numbers one through fourteen some of them you've already discussed and we just wanted to bring that before full council. In case you all have any questions. Like numbers one, two, three, and four. I know we've just, there was nine and ten changes that remain. I can actually give you the page numbers for those. Ashley, yes. Going back to number four it says applicants must reside within city limits but on page six this does say unless the member is required by federal law state law ordinance or other by-laws establishing the board or commission to represent a specified organization agency group category of profession. Not exactly sure what that means but that is an exception to the residency requirement. It is. It's probably, it would probably pertain to a land use board for example. But yes it's an exception. Again this is all in draft mode so if there's something you want to discuss to eliminate our change we can do so. I was going to ask you. Well so I had an example here I was like so let's say you needed to have a banker because I'm just trying to see where would this apply. Well no I just want to understand an example of when it will apply. Are the boards like the comment? Okay. No I just wanted an example of when it would apply. On page. And those on hours. I'm not really worried about those. I think it's going to be all of them are in this document though. There's it's broken out in here the intergovernmental one for example. So it may apply to one of those then a governmental. It's in the unless you all just only want the city ones in this book. But I think y'all are trying to be comprehensive. I think I'd like to keep it as is. Boards and a governmental boards funding board. That has been the overwhelming question. If you lived somewhere else and worked in the city you would have a lot of work. We're not doing that anymore. Do you remember how we talked about how Richland County doesn't allow city residents to participate on their board so we want to be able to have as much representation as possible from the city. Same committee for another jurisdiction. That was important for the policy committee so we want to bring that to your attention and then the boards can only serve on one committee at a time except for the appeals board because that you got to be on that and you're on two boards when you're on that board. So we had to keep that that way. On the third page we did talk about on page eight you got to make there's a standard four year term for boards and commissions even the ones without term limits. So that was important to the committee that there was only a four year term to get some rotation and some new blood but they can serve up to two terms because sometimes we have people who were on boards and commissions for a long time and they weren't rotating off. We eliminated the non-voting and they appointed and the non-voting and the ex officio so that was great. I want to see if there was anything, any other ones that we wanted to make sure you guys were aware of. If you could say a word, this is a new say a word about page 55. Yes sir, I'm sorry. That was inserted in this right. Page 55 54 and 55. Yes, we added those oaves in that code of ethics. They were previously in old handbooks so we just incorporated them in this one and then we also added 56 with someone signing that they received this handbook because we felt, you all felt as a committee that that was important to acknowledge receipt of the handbook. So we added those documents as well. We'll make the cleanups, we'll add that third one. Yes sir. If you all think of anything else between now and I guess. You got your tree. We put this on the 21st or should we try to do it for? Yes please. It's almost April. I would like to put this on my first. Okay. Absolutely. Go team, go A team. Thank you Ashley. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. DeVall. Are you ready ma'am? Yes. I'm going to turn it over to executive session for receipt of legal advice relating to matters covered by attorney client privilege pursuant to sdco 30-4S78-2 data request. Motion is there second sir. Motion is second.