Council Subcommittee

MINUTES OF THE GILBERT TOWN COUNCIL SUBCOMMITTEE ON COMMUNCATIONS, IN SPECIAL MEETING OF MONDAY, JANUARY 24, 2023 AT 10:00 A.M., GILBERT MUNICIPAL CENTER I, COMMUNITY ROOM 202, 50 E. CIVIC CENTER DRIVE, GILBERT, ARIZONA COUNCIL PRESENT: Subcommittee Chair/Vice Mayor Kathy Tilque, Councilmember Yung Koprowski and Councilmember Chuck Bongiovanni COUNCIL ABSENT: None STAFF PRESENT: Town Manager Patrick Banger, Town Clerk Chaveli Herrera, Chief Digital Officer Dana Berchman, Digital Media & Marketing Deputy Director Jennifer Harrison, Digital Engagement Coordinator Kelsey Perry, 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 10:05 a.m. ROLL CALL Town Clerk Herrera called roll and declared a quorum present. ADMINISTRATIVE ITEMS 1 1. MINUTES - Consider approval of the minutes of the Subcommittee on Communications Meeting of January 9, 2023. A MOTION was made by Councilmember Koprowski, seconded by Councilmember Bongiovanni, to approve the minutes of the Subcommittee on Communications Meeting of January 9, 2023. Motion carried 3-0. 2. COMMUNITY OUTREACH/ENGAGEMENT EFFORTS a. Outreach Opportunities i. Survey ii. In-person iii. Social Media iv. Mailings v. Other b. Timeline Subcommittee Chair Tilque opened the discussion stating they would continue the conversation about community outreach opportunities, discuss public comments and request to speak cards and action items. She asked everyone in attendance to introduce themselves. Digital Media & Marketing Deputy Director Harrison presented on community conversation themes stating recurring topics were mainly related to growth. She showed some comments that were posted online for various posts said a lot of recurring comments were about water shortage, apartments, developments nearby, traffic, budget/spending and safety. She spoke about the survey stating that it was user friendly and accessible from mobile devices and said that keeping the survey short and sweet was preferred. Chief Digital Officer Berchman said participation might be lost if survey had too many questions or was done too often. She said the National Community Survey later this year would also be an opportunity to customize questions and get further feedback. Digital Media & Marketing Deputy Director Harrison continued her 2 presentation stating surveys typically run for two weeks and are broadcasted across all channels. Councilmember Bongiovanni asked if there was a way to track the IP address of the person filling out the survey so that the same person would not be submitting multiple times. Deputy Director Jennifer Harrison confirmed and there was discussion on capabilities and limitations. Committee Chair Tilque asked about including open ended questions in the survey stating open ended questions would provide the opportunity for the public to express any comments they wanted. She said not everybody will come to a meeting and since most responses would come from the survey, she didn’t want the discussion to be limited to the topics on the survey. Councilmember Koprowski said she appreciated a short and sweet survey and suggested having additional comments at the end of the survey but not for every question. Committee Chair Tilque said public involvement was key in their recommendation. Digital Engagement Coordinator Perry presented the draft survey questions and said the first idea was to list topics and ask public to pick top three topics of most importance to them. Councilmember Koprowski said she liked the list and it was comprehensive but said asking to select top three topics was too limiting. She suggested to list top five topics or instead of ranking to score each topic on a scale of 1-5 of importance. Town Manager Banger asked if incentivizing a longer survey was ever discussed. Chief Digital Officer Berchman responded that they had not discussed incentivizing surveys because they had high public participation. Digital Media & Marketing Deputy Director Harrison said this survey would get high level top of mind topics and the National Community Survey later in the year would dive deeper into the topics. Digital Engagement Coordinator Perry continued with the draft survey questions and said the second question would ask which platform the public got their information from. 3 Subcommittee members discussed the remaining draft survey questions and suggested revisions to the questions and changing the sequential order of the questions. Town Manager Banger spoke about the challenges of public engagement and said one of the struggles was the Council not being able to engage with the public speakers during council meetings beyond thanking them for their time or responding to criticism. He asked if there was a way to make the speakers feel heard at the council meetings. Assistant to Town Manager Bay asked if there was a way to evaluate at which point a resident became vocal about their concerns and how to capture that and engage before reaching that point. Councilmember Bongiovanni asked if a post-speaking survey was ever done to ask a public speaker what their trigger point was to speak at a meeting. Doralise Machado- Liddell, Gilbert resident recommended to ask the person who continued to go to meetings and said that person will say what triggered them to go to the meeting and speak. Subcommittee members and Staff further discussed the list of topics on the survey questions and suggested including categories from 311 services and to use simplified common terms the public could easily understand. Subcommittee members voiced their commitment to reading all survey responses and recommended an open-ended question asking how the Council could better communicate with the public. 3. PUBLIC COMMENTS AND REQUEST TO SPEAK a. Discussion on proposed updates Subcommittee Chair Tilque shared a video which showed the audio recording of the rules of decorum and process for public comment from the Town of Queen Creek’s Council meeting. She said she liked that it addressed the process and that it also 4 expressed the Council may be looking down at their screens but that they were still very interested in the speaker. Councilmember Bongiovanni suggested to have a video of the rules of decorum and process for public comment instead of only an audio recording. He also said playing music or a short video of current Town events prior to the Council meeting starting would be nice. Chief Digital Officer Berchman said it would be nice to have a visual and that maybe the Mayor’s Youth Advisory Committee (MYAC) students could be in the video. Town Clerk Herrera spoke about public participation, request to speak cards, online public comment cards, and the disclaimer notices on the Town Council Meeting Agendas. She stated the Clerk’s office recognized that the current process was dated and caused confusion and was looking for feedback and direction on the proposed changes in an effort to be transparent and informative on the processes. She showed the current request to speak card and said that the Town Code allowed Communications from Citizens and Public Hearing Items but the request to speak cards showed an option to speak on Policy Items and Administrative items as well which was an issue to residents who may think they have the opportunity but then were not allowed to speak on those items. She also said that the Agenda also includes a section for Consent Calendar Items which was not listed as on option on the request to speak cards which caused inconsistency. She discussed the recommended changes as having three different cards for each request type, one for Communications from Citizens, one for Public Hearing Items, and one for Other Items such as Consent Calendar, Policy and Administrative Items. She said each card could be a different color to easily distinguish the cards’ purpose. The importance of such change was to eliminate confusion, clarify process, consistency, ease of process going forward. Councilmember Koprowski said having served as Vice Mayor and running this section of the Council Meeting having a subject or general topic being discussed on the cards 5 would be helpful in sorting them. She also suggested having phonetic spelling of the speaker’s names on the card would be helpful in pronouncing their names. Town Clerk Herrera discussed the Public Hearing comment card explaining that it mirrors the online public comment indicating the item number, if they wish to speak or not and their position if they were for or against the item. Councilmember Koprowski suggested to have a board visible with the Public Hearing Item numbers. Town Clerk Herrera discussed the request to speak cards for Other Items indicating that it would notate Town Code did not provide the right to request to speak on items in the Consent, Administrative and Policy sections and authorization to speak on these sections was at the discretion of Mayor and Council during the meeting. Councilmember Koprowski said since speaking on Other Items would likely not be done at the Council meetings, she suggested to include a section on the card for contact information for the Council to follow up via email. Town Clerk Herrera said there weren’t many requests to speak on Other Items but wanted to share as an option to offer. Subcommittee Chair Tilque said this could be discussed with the rest of the Council but she preferred to follow the processes from before and to reserve the Other Items Request to Speak Cards for now. Doralise Machado-Liddell, Gilbert resident asked what was required by the Town Code to be completed on the request to speak cards. She said any information that was not required should indicate that it was optional. She spoke of concerns regarding safety and protection of citizen’s information. Town Clerk Herrera said that adjustment could be made to the speaker cards and stated that private information was protected and if cards were requested sensitive information was redacted before being released. She said she would share a revised version of the Request to Speak cards at the next meeting. She shared the current online comment card and said the cards were not being completed correctly. She shared the proposed new version of the form which was designed with Typeform and allowed a guided 6  process to ensure the cards were completed correctly and corresponded to the correct meeting and item. Lastly, she discussed the current agenda disclaimer and stated although it was important information, most of the information was after the fact at the start of a meeting. She recommended removing the meeting disclaimer language and including the link to the website where the information was posted. Subcommittee Chair Tilque said she was in favor of removing the disclaimer from the agenda and streamlining it online. 4. ACTION ITEMS a. Set dates for future subcommittee meetings. b. Other action items as assigned. Subcommittee Chair said that future meeting dates would be set at the next meeting on Tuesday, January 30, 2023. Assistant to Town Manager Bay reiterated the action items stating Digital Government will work on revisions to the survey as discussed, Clerk’s office will revise Public Request to Speak Cards as discussed, send the Typeform online comment card to subcommittee members for review and remove the discussed Agenda Disclaimer notices from the Agenda template as soon as possible. She also stated some possible action items to be explored were potential follow-up surveys from public speakers at public meetings, displaying a board with public hearing items visible for public speakers, and color-coding public speaking cards and agendas to correspond to each section. ADJOURN Subcommittee Chair Tilque adjourned the meeting to order at 12:09 p.m. ATTEST: 7 ___________________________ ___________________________________ 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 24th 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 8