Council Subcommittee

MINUTES OF THE GILBERT TOWN COUNCIL SUBCOMMITTEE ON COMMUNCATIONS, IN SPECIAL MEETING OF MONDAY, JANUARY 9, 2023 AT 4:00 P.M., GILBERT MUNICIPAL CENTER I, COMMUNITY/OCOTILLO ROOM 202, 50 E CIVIC CENTER DRIVE, GILBERT, ARIZONA COUNCIL PRESENT: Subcommittee Chair/Councilmember Kathy Tilque, Councilmember Yung Koprowski and Councilmember-elect Chuck Bongiovanni COUNCIL ABSENT: None STAFF PRESENT: Town Manager Patrick Banger, Town Clerk Chaveli Herrera, Chief Digital Officer Dana Berchman, Assistant to Town Manager Allyna Bay and Town Clerk Specialist Amy Beyleryan AGENDA ITEM CALL TO ORDER Subcommittee Chair Tilque called the meeting to order at 4:04 p.m. ROLL CALL Town Clerk Herrera called roll and declared a quorum present. ADMINISTRATIVE ITEMS 1. MINUTES - Consider approval of the minutes of the Subcommittee on Communications Meeting of November 21, 2022. 1 A MOTION was made by Councilmember-elect Bongiovanni, seconded by Councilmember Koprowski, to approve the minutes of the Subcommittee on Communications Meeting of November 21, 2022.Motion carried 3-0. 2. COUNCIL RETREAT DIRECTION REVIEW - Review of Council direction received at previous Council Retreat. Subcommittee Chair Tilque shared a presentation outlining the Focus Areas, Outreach and Engagement and Recommendations to Council that was shared at the Council Retreat. She explained that the focus areas were divided under different categories; Town Meetings, Items Requiring Public Notification, Two-Way Communication, and Tell our Story. She said for Town Meetings it was important to have a consistent format and training, a clear understanding of the attorney’s role, and follow-up procedures for communications from citizens, calls and emails to Council. She said some topics to consider under the Items Requiring Public Notification were radius, timeframe, format of notifications, signs, access to notifications, appearance, ease in finding, and consistency were of importance. She discussed the Two-Way Communication category and said one of the topics was to do an inventory of current practices and see what was statutory or codified to improve one way communication to the Council. She said some of the current conversation was from the residents to the Council and Council was not able to communicate back. She further explained some options for Two-Way Communication such as pop-ups where the public could meet with a Councilmember, Town Halls, engagement with homeowner associations (HOA’s) and Councilmember office hours and chats to help with the ability to have two-way conversations and make people feel heard. She said the short-term goal would be for people to get things off their chest and long-term goal would be to identify issues before they become issues and facilitate that in the future. She discussed the focus area of Tell our Story and asked what communications outside of social media would look like and how to keep social media a safe space for the Council, staff and residents. She also discussed Opt-in type of system notifications for various information available and how to “connect the dots” to provide opportunities for residents to understand how the Town impacts their daily 2 life. She concluded the presentation with the timeline for final recommendation to council stating that the report would be given to Council in May 2023 which would include at least two months of community outreach engagements. 3. COMMUNITY OUTREACH/ENGAGEMENT EFFORTS a. Current Community Communications/Statistics – Dana Berchman b. Outreach Opportunities – Dana Berchman i. Survey ii. In-person iii. Social Media iv. Mailings v. Other c. Timeline Town Manager Banger provided a brief history on the Town’s past communications positions stating twelve years ago there was only a Public Information Officer (PIO) and a couple of Audio/Video (AV) technicians who ran the council meetings. He made a reference to former New York City Mayor, Michael Bloomberg stating he understood where the future of communication and resident engagement was headed. He said he later made recommendation to Council to open the position of Chief Digital Officer following Michael Bloomberg. He said if residents were on social media, then we needed to engage through those channels. He also expressed that it was a great benefit for Council to receive timely insight and make decisions on pressing matters through information from digital platforms. Chief Digital Officer Berchman shared a presentation on the Town’s Digital Engagement Strategies and outreach statistics. She spoke about the Town’s demographics and social media following. She said Gilbert had a highly engaged population with 96.3% of households who have internet subscription. 3 She said her team would be reevaluating all platforms for cumulative views and for strategic content examining who was seeing it and on which platform. She spoke of the Digital Marketing Menu which listed the various channels of communication under her department’s purview. She discussed some challenges of traditional marketing strategies such as the high cost, inability to track the Return on Investment (ROI) and content limitations. She spoke about how social media engagement grew during the COVID Pandemic and how the Town reached the residents and provided reliable updates. She spoke of surveys and their ability to provide data backed decision making. Subcommittee Chair Tilque said one of the main takeaways was to identify key outreach opportunities. She said their focus for the next two months was to see how to get feedback from the community and which format would be best to utilize. Councilmember Koprowski suggested to do a survey and tie in an Opt-in notification campaign. She mentioned the survey would run for two weeks and said the targeted timeframe would be in February. She said part of the outreach would be to inform and educate and another touchpoint would be to have further engagement in specialized topic areas and gage what they are. She also suggested to have family friendly events where people could bring their kids. She said she would love to see something that would be more engaging for people to participate in such as a dot poll where they can show areas and topics they were interested in discussing. Subcommittee Chair Tilque said the goal would be to get the information needed efficiently and interactively and for the subcommittee to be there to answer questions. She asked if other councilmembers could join these events. Town Clerk Herrera explained that if another councilmember was present, it would create a quorum concern and said that the Subcommittee would be conducting business as a public body and the events would need to be properly noticed in accordance with Arizona’s Open Meeting Laws. 4 Subcommittee Chair Tilque recapped the next steps would be to do a survey and work out the timing for the survey. She said they planned to have two touchpoint meetings, one at Municipal I building and on at Power Ranch. She said the meetings would have key staff available and be an opportunity to respond to the survey. She said the meetings would have one subcommittee member attend and be structured for two-way communication focused on top issues heard from the survey. She asked Town Manager Banger if he and Digital Officer Berchman would work on the survey topics and questions. Town Manager Banger said he and Chief Digital Officer Berchman would work on the survey topics and questions. Subcommittee Chair Tilque said to come up with a campaign name for this and think of ways it could be promoted. 4. ACTION ITEMS a. Set dates for future Subcommittee meetings b. Other action items as assigned Subcommittee Chair Tilque lead the discussion and scheduled the next Subcommittee meeting dates on Tuesday, January 24, 2023 and Monday, January 30, 2023. She also stated the assigned action items for Chief Digital Officer Berchman to send the Powerpoint presentation and survey data to the Subcommittee members to review and for Town Manager Banger and Chief Digital Officer Berchman to work on the survey topics. 5. FUTURE AGENDA ITEMS 5  Town Clerk Herrera asked if the “Request to Speak” cards were a topic that the subcommittee would address. She said she wanted to ask the Committee for input before any changes were made. Subcommittee Chair Tilque recommended sharing changes at the Council orientation and that it would later be filtered through the Subcommittee. ADJOURN Subcommittee Chair Tilque adjourned the meeting to order at 5:53 p.m. ATTEST: ___________________________ ___________________________________ Kathy Tilque, Chair Amy Beyleryan, Town Clerk Specialist CERTIFICATION I hereby certify that the foregoing minutes are a true and correct copy of the minutes of the special meeting of the Subcommittee on Communications of the Town of Gilbert held on the 9th day of January, 2023. I further certify that the meeting was duly called and held and that a quorum was present. Dated this ____ day of ____________________2023. ___________________________________ Amy Beyleryan, Town Clerk Specialist 6