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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2016-06-15 PACKET 07.A. Cottage J Grove ��er� Pride and Qro�P�rity Me�t Clt�/ COUI'1CII CONSENTAGENDA Acfion Request Form �'A' Meeting Date 6/15/2016 Department Administration Title of Request City Council Meeting Minutes - June 1, 2016 Special Meeting Staff Recommendation Approve the June 1, 2016 City Council Special Meeting Minutes. ATTACH MENTS: Description Type Upload Date Draft Minutes Backup Material 6/10/2016 Cottage J Grove �here Pride and Pr�sperity Meet MINUTES COTTAGE GROVE CITY COUNCIL June 1 , 2016 ST. CROIX CONFERENCE ROOM 12800 RAVINE PARKWAY SOUTH SPECIAL MEETING - 6:00 P.M. 1. CALL TO ORDER The City Council of the City of Cottage Grove, Washington County, Minnesota, held a Special Meeting on June 1, 2016, at Cottage Grove City Hall, 12800 Ravine Parkway. Mayor Bailey called the meeting to order at 6:00 p.m. 2. ROLL CALL The following were present: Mayor Myron Bailey, Council Member Steve Dennis, Council Member Justin Olsen, Council Member Jen Peterson, and Council Member Dave Thiede. Also present were: Charlene Stevens, City Administrator; Rebecca Ahlvin, Management Assistant; Neil Belscamper, Deputy City Clerk; Joe Fischbach, HR Manager/City Clerk; Jennifer Levitt, Community Development Director/City Engineer; Robin Roland, Finance Director; Craig Woolery, Public Safety Director. 3. AGENDA ITEMS A. NovusAGENDA Manager Training Deputy City Clerk Neil Belscamper gave an overview of NovusAGENDA, which is a new software product that the City is trying. He went over the process for reviewing items in preparation for meetings and at the meeting itself. Council Member Thiede suggested having more summary information on the cover page rather than having to go into attachments and he would like to see the budget impact information that had been on the previous cover pages. Administrator Stevens stated that the cover page can be customized but in the past departments often included the information in the staff inemo rather than the cover page. She noted this was a trial of the software to see if there was some efficiency to be gained internally by staff and end users. Deputy City Clerk Belscamper confirmed for Mayor Bailey it was a 90-day trial, with the first month used to do the set up, and it would be used again for the next Council CITY OF COTTAGE GROVE • 12800 Ravine Parkway • Cottage Grove, Minnesota 55016 www.cottage-grove.org • 651-458-2800 • Fax 651-458-2897 • Equal Opportunity Employer Meeting. Mayor Bailey asked what efficiencies have been gained by using the software. Administrator Stevens stated they were not having to do the paper collating process and scanning items and that the system could ultimately be used across the board for the various City Commissions. Mayor Bailey inquired about the new process. Administrator Stevens stated that the creator of the document forwards it to her electronically. She reviews it and has the ability to make comments on any changes she'd like made, and she can send it back to the creator with those comments for any changes. Once approved it goes straight to Deputy City Clerk Belscamper to be placed on the agenda. Deputy City Clerk Belscamper stated that creating items is pretty easy, as the creator just titles the item, adds the staff recommendation, and uploads attachments. He added that the intention is for the staff recommendation to be worded in a way that could be read verbatim as a motion if council concurred with the recommendation. Mayor Bailey stated that was good because they've had issues with that in the past. Administrator Stevens stated she likes the ability to look at the agenda ahead of time and be able to prioritize the items in the correct order. Deputy City Clerk Belscamper agreed it is easier to change the agenda than it was previously. Council Member Thiede stated the PDF items are now searchable, which is nice. He asked how much time is saved in putting the Council packets together. Deputy City Clerk Belscamper stated, from his perspective, overall the new system is easier to use and time is saved putting the agenda together and sending the packets out, but more time is spent on the back end to archive the packet items in the LaserFiche system than with the current method. He felt the main benefit in the system is that it has functionality that the old method doesn't, such as the HTML view for Council Members and Commissioners at meetings, having the ability to add comments and flag items, and having remote access to the system for department approvers. Without the system, he said routing items through Laserfiche to get to a truly electronic system with no paper wouldn't be that difficult to achieve, but the remote access with individual logins, ability to flag and add comments to items, have linked attachments, and some of the other features couldn't easily be duplicated. Council Member Dennis stated that he had had a conversation with Deputy City Clerk Belscamper about the software, but he wanted to hear from the directors in the room to get their feedback, if they liked it, what concerns they had, and if it was creating any challenges, etc. Director Roland stated she thought it was great and it saved her a lot of time and effort, and that she doesn't have to print out documents and can just upload them. Director Woolery felt the same way and thought it was pretty seamless to create something in Word and submit it, and to be able to get back to it and review it. Community Development Director/City Engineer Jennifer Levitt stated that since they produce a large packet, they had some issues to overcome. There were some size issues that they've had to work through, and some of the dropdown menus need to be customized. She knew it was taking people on the prep side a little bit longer, and for that reason she wasn't able to note the efficiency or the balance. Administrator Stevens asked Director Levitt if she were to be able to upload something to a planning packet first, and have it just automatically come over, if that would be an advantage for her and her Department. Director Levitt stated sometimes the attachments change between the Planning Commission and the City Council, and the memo itself gets changed, but some of the attachments could be easily converted, and you could save that upload, because sometimes there are eight or more attachments. Deputy City Clerk Belscamper stated she could copy an item and then modify it before it's submitted to a different Commission or to the City Council. Mayor Bailey asked questions about the search function. Deputy City Clerk Belscamper stated he knew you could do phrase searches and simple word searches, but added one thing he'd found when searching large repositories is that these searches often get a lot of hits unless you're able to search for a very unique keyword or phrase. Mayor Bailey asked if he saved a comment on a previous Council packet, and went back to search that packet if that comment would still be in there. Deputy City Clerk Belscamper stated that was correct because that comment remains under your login. Council Member Olsen asked what this system did for the Council for transparency issues if there were public data requests, etc. Deputy City Clerk Belscamper stated the archive right now for City Council documents is in Laserfiche, which meets the standard for permanent archival. Since City Council packets are considered permanent documents under the records retention schedule they have to be in a format that's permanently accessible. The NovusAGENDA interface with LaserFiche may not necessarily convert documents into a permanent format such as TIFF or PDF/A and we haven't gotten a full answer from Novus, but packets can be manually converted to TIFF documents, imported and separated in LaserFiche. Council Member Olsen asked him how much time that took. Deputy City Clerk Belscamper replied that today's packet took him perhaps 15 minutes. Administrator Stevens stated they will also need to replace some of the iPads, etc., so one of the products they're looking at is a Chromebook that the Mayor is testing this evening. Other options will be considered as well. Administrator Stevens stated they had a few items they could bring back and recommendations if they're going to proceed with this, or they'll just go back to the way that they were previously doing it and/or look at any other software that they might want to try out. Deputy City Clerk Belscamper stated he and Brian Bluhm had spoken to a couple of other vendors, and NovusAGENDA was the one that they had chosen. Council Member Thiede stated he has PDF Annotator, so he can just bring up any PDF document and write on it like it's a piece of paper, which works great. B. Community Engagement Workshop Administrator Stevens stated that this item was on tonight's Consent Agenda. Part of the Strategic Plan was to look at a community engagement process and try to do a community-wide visioning process. Management Assistant Becky Ahlvin developed a RFP, which was sent out to four firms; three responded, and those were narrowed down to two to interview, Craig Rapp, of Minnesota, and NEXT Generation, of Madison, Wisconsin. The third firm was Novak Consulting, but their price was so much higher for the same value of work that they were excluded based upon price. Hue Life, who had actually done the Strategic Planning, did not respond to the RFP. We tried to look at some other vendors, but also tried to stay somewhat regional with the vendors. Both of the finalists have good local government experience. The committee who interviewed them consisted of Administrator Stevens, Management Analyst Becky Ahlvin, Director Roland, Communications Coordinator Sharon Madsen, and Mayor Bailey. The committee felt NEXT Generation's engagement was a bit fresher, newer, updated, and kind of going where the people are, looking at some social media engagement, different forums for getting people engaged, such as chalkboards, and there was a sense that maybe we'd get more and different people engaged in the process. With Craig Rapp, they do the more traditional model including focus groups, a community survey, "Meeting in a Box" where you'd have to train volunteers to host a meeting and facilitate the meeting, and then they give that input back. The recommendation is to proceed with NEXT Generation; the cost of the proposal is about $54,500 plus $6,000 in expenses. They propose to use the $25,000 that's budgeted this year toward a traditional survey to go toward that cost, and then we'd also carry over $25,000 to the 2017 budget. NEXT Generation just did Eagan's plan, and is also currently doing Minnetonka's plan. Administrator Stevens worked with NEXT Generation in Willmar, as they did the Willmar Lakes Area's Strategic Plan. Craig Rapp had worked in Faribault. References on both of them checked out and were both very good, but the recommendation is to go with NEXT Generation. She stated Management Assistant Ahlvin would walk through some examples, in addition to what was in the proposal, of what NEXT Generation can do and why we thought their engagement was a little bit more vibrant and appealing. Management Assistant Ahlvin played Eagan's video, which was produced by NEXT Generation. It expressed Eagan's vision, which they termed "Eagan Forward." It was directed toward young people, older people, retired people, as well as immigrants, and included focus groups and a rollout of the Strategic Plan that NEXT Generation would do. Council Member Thiede asked if the video was a way to try to get more people knowledgeable about Eagan or involved; Management Analyst Ahlvin stated it was both as it gave all of the options available in which citizens could participate. Council Member Thiede asked if it had had any effectiveness with the community. Administrator Stevens stated her experience with the Willmar Lakes Area was they were able to engage people, who are now in their third year of being involved. A citizen group started movies in the park, the citizens have recruited junior hockey into the community. Eagan probably has some different strategies that they're now working on. What comes out of it is not only the strategies but how to actually move those strategies forward; some of those are City driven, some are community driven. Mayor Bailey felt the video that was shown was more of a recruiting video to try to get people involved, and Administrator Stevens agreed. Council Member Thiede felt they'd spent money previously and while some good ideas came out of the survey, not much actually happened. Director Roland stated there were two phone surveys done; in 2012, the City spent $12,500, and there were 400 people who were polled, but it was a much shorter list of questions. In 2007, the City spent $20,500; there were 154 questions and 400 people polled. The same firm did both, and the questions in the 2012 survey were more precise regarding parks, a community center, etc. as the City was more focused on those particular items, but it was a shorter list of questions. Council Member Thiede wanted to know what they'd receive as deliverables and the relative value of that; essentially, the City would be paying at least three times more than we'd done in the past for NEXT Generation to do the survey, plus other things. Administrator Stevens advised this would not include a community-wide survey; it's more of a bottom up process of engaging the community and asking the question, e.g., what do you want to see in the City of Cottage Grove in the next 15 years, 20 years? They would have four community-wide meetings, two other meetings to perhaps reach populations who were harder to reach, and online engagement. For example, Eagan had Facebook Friday, where they posted a different question every Friday, and they used the responses as input. Eagan also used community-wide chalkboards, as did Willmar, and those were placed around the community. It allowed people to just come up and write a response to a question; those responses were captured via photo and synthesized into end themes, etc. Eagan used a similar process but asked a slightly different question. They took that data and synthesized it into Eagan's plan of what the strategies were to move forward and roll that out to the public, and some of the video engagement. She felt with SWCTC, they could do that type of video internally, so they took that out of the proposal. Administrator Stevens stated a survey is a snapshot; it will be based upon who responds to the phone survey. With cellular/mobile phones now, sometimes it's a bit more challenging to do phone surveys. If they want to engage people a bit more and then engage them in the community, actually working on some of the strategies and vision, then this would be the way to do that. She agreed that the cost is high, and they looked at what the other communities were spending. Eagan spent $60,000 and Minnetonka is spending $73,000; a few years ago, Faribault, a smaller community, spent approximately $40,000. Based upon all of the proposals they received, that amount seems to be the cost for doing this type of work. Council Member Olsen stated there are also intangible benefits of engaging people of different backgrounds, ages, and experiences. There is significant benefit, as there is in a business environment, in finding those pearls of wisdom from the ground up that oftentimes get missed when you target the same population time and time again, as you do with a phone survey. He felt this sort of approach is building ambassadors and advocates in the community that you don't really get with the other approach. People feel like they're part of something bigger than themselves, which is truly the role of a citizen. He felt it would give the City a broader base of feedback than just a normal survey would. Mayor Bailey stated the lady who would be working with Cottage Grove has a passion for what she does, and they will also be attending events in the City to try to get feedback. Council Member Olsen felt this approach was a much more organic approach, "What do you think?" and it leaves a lot of space for feedback of many different stripes, instead of, "If you had to choose between X, Y, and Z, what would you pick?" He thought what they'd learned from past surveys is many people would say they're all for a YMCA, but when asked how much they'd like to pay for it, they were surprised to hear they'd have to pay for it. Just asking a question about a community center, for example, and where they'd like it would gather a lot more pertinent information. Administrator Stevens stated they could also ask, "Are you willing to work on this?" which is an entirely different approach and challenges people. Work groups developed based on what people felt was needed in the community; if it was something they felt strongly about, they would be more enthused about engaging in the work. Council Member Thiede asked if there was any guarantee from NEXT Generation of what percentage of the community they'd actually get involved. Administrator Stevens stated that no, there was no guarantee, but from her personal experience indicated that they'd gotten a more diverse population involved. 4. ADJOURNMENT The meeting adjourned at 6:54 p.m.