Human Resources & Information Technology Committee - Regular Meeting

Thank you. I am calling tonight's meeting of the Human Resources and Information Technologies Committee for January 14 to order. Please rise and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. Thank you. Roll call of membership.

Let the record show that all members are present except Alder Hayden who is absent and excused. I will move on then to item number 20 six-thirty three, approval of the minutes from our December 11 meeting which was the last time we met.

Move to approve. Second.

We have a motion and a second but I would like to make a correction please, if I could. If we could please note that Alder Jones was present electronically that day. That's a part of our council rules that we will endeavor to make that note. So if that can be added, does that need to be Attorney Berwind, does that need to be is there a vote on an amendment for that? Or can we just approve as noted?

I

think just for safety purposes, it would be worthwhile to vote on that amendment.

Okay. I would like to make that amendment, please. Can I have a second? Second. Motion and a second. Any discussion on that one?

All

right. All those in favor of the amendment, please signify by saying aye. Aye. And then since that is amended, I would entertain a motion no. Do I have to entertain a motion for that? No, I don't. Is there any discussion on the item as amended? There is none. So all those in favor of the item as amended, please signify by saying aye. Aye. All right. Our minutes are amended and approved. We have no public hearing or appearances so we will move on to our action items. The first one on the list is 20Six-thirty4, request to approve the updated salary administration policy. I assume that is Director Rachman.

Alright. There you go.

Great. Thank you, Chair. So I've been working with the police department since about June to talk about community service officers and providing premium pay when they train new community service officers. I think as everyone probably knows, community service officers, they're they're part of a pool of funds. They're not really table of organization positions.

And what happens is police is able to hire as many as they need to fill their schedule, but they have to stay within their budget. Community service officers tend to be short term, limited term positions. Many times, they're students who want to get some law enforcement experience or someone who's looking to make a career change and wants to get some experience working in law enforcement. So a great opportunity for someone to learn the profession, but also it's been good for the city because we've hired a lot quite a few of our CSOs to become officers. So the change is to add a premium pay, and it's actually on page five of the salary administration policy that any community service officer acting in a field training officer capacity during a shift will receive $25 premium for for that shift.

So it's just just over $3 premium when they train, and that's generally gonna be an eight hour shift. The reason we're bringing this forward or reason police had approached me is we have some longer term CSOs who do a great job of training. They tend to get tapped on the shoulder probably most often because they do a good job, and this would provide, a little bit of premium or incentive for them to do that. So it's a win win. The the annual cost is about $4,000 total. And in speaking with the chief, this would be absorbed within the existing community service officer budget. So they are not seeking any additional funding, which is also why I told the chief I could handle this one tonight, and she did not have to come for it.

Thank you. Alder Jones. So just to confirm, their shift pay goes up to 25. It is not a 25 on top of what they are making.

So what'll happen is they will get paid their hourly rate of pay, and then they will be given a flat $25 premium.

Per hour?

Not per hour, total for that full shift.

You. Any other questions from here? All right, there being none, all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Attentions? That passes four-two-zero. We'll move on then to Item Number 20Six-thirty 9 Request for Approval to Create a New Position of Valley Transit Administrative Support Specialist. Now I'm told oh, we have a motion to approve. A motion and a second. I am told that director our general manager, McDonald, would like to speak in this on this regard. So there you have it.

Thank you, Chair. So yes, the request before you is for a new administrative assistant position. We have transitioned to an enterprise account manager that will be handling all of our finances. Much of the work, financial work, the day to day stuff, we do much of it on our own. And so this position would come in and takes care of some of the daily tasks, whether it's issuing the purchase order, whether it's taking care of accounts payable, accounts receivable, those kinds of things.

So then our enterprise account manager can wrap her arms around the bigger projects like the grants, the oversight, and things like that. In talking with Director Rachman, he basically said, I think it's probably overdue at this point. We had it previously in a position. And we realigned the duties of the current position and kind of transitioned away from that for a while. And now we're back going, Okay, we need it.

And so that's why we're here today. We really want to fortify the finance department within Valley Transit. We work with a lot of grant money that takes a lot of effort, a lot of reporting, a lot of oversight. Oversight. And we just we need staff to help us get through that.

Thank you. Just questioning the timing of this and then also budget dollars. Where does this fall then, general manager McDonald?

Great question. So in our budget, last year, we started an overhire to replace our current administrative person, administrative manager. We budgeted that position, the administrative services manager who's retiring in just a couple of weeks here. We have that budgeted through the whole year because we didn't know how long that transition was going to take. We assumed we might need some additional help, but we wanted to get through the training process with the new individual that's in there and to just kind of see how it unfolded before we came back charging and say, hey, we have to have more help.

I wanted to make sure we actually needed it before I came before you. But we did budget. That position was budgeted for part of the approval.

So there is budget dollars for this position in addition to whomever is going to be taking that other That is correct. Okay. Excellent. Does anyone else have any other questions here? Or do you want to add anything, Director Rachman?

Sure. So I've known this was coming for quite some time, as our general manager had mentioned. And timing was all about when that administrative services manager would retire. I think it's also important to stress why I'm in support of this, this for a couple reasons. One, this model exists in other departments. We have an enterprise accounting manager that supports the utility, and they have administrative We have a fiscal resources manager at Police, and they have an administrative position that also supports it. So it's important when you have these high level positions that you are getting the administrative support to let them focus on the accounting, the finances, etcetera. So no doubt the work is there. I think it puts the work at the level that it belongs. I'm in support of this.

Thank you. Any other questions from up here?

All

right. There being none, all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? That passes Four-two-zero. We'll move on then to item number twenty six-thirty five Request to approve sole source emergency notification system.

Do I

have a motion?

Move to approve. Second.

Motion and a second. Director Popp. Director One. There you are.

Thank you, chair. This item before you tonight was actually part of the 2026 budget that IT submitted last year and was approved by council in November. This is a CIP for emergency notification system for city hall, otherwise known as duress buttons or panic buttons. So the amount budgeted in the CIP was $35,000 I'm here tonight to request $30,000 to begin procurement of this system. That's based off a $25,695 quote plus 15% contingency.

If you look at the quote, the labor is estimated. So I believe we'll come in under the 30,000, well under the $35,000 on that. This is a sole source request for a couple different reasons. When we began this process, I had reached out to Response Technologies who's a manufacturer of this product. This product came as a recommendation following testing from our officer B's at the police department as part of the assessment of city hall.

It was the system that he wanted or that he suggested we use here. We did a couple other tests with some other systems, text based, teams based. This was really the system that it came down to. On that note as well, our risk manager from human resources was also part of the process of reviewing the system along with the police department. So that said, Response Technologies referred me to their Fox Valley vendor who's Nielsen Communications, otherwise known as NCI. That also is the same vendor that put in the same system for the Appleton Public Library, which is another reason for the sole source. They know the city. They know the police department. They're the right people to do the job. And attached to this memo is the approval from the city's purchasing manager.

So with that, I'll take any questions you might have on the system.

Thank you. Any questions from up here? None. All right. That was simple enough. And all those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. That passes four to zero. Thank you. We'll move on then to our information items. We'll begin with, obviously, item number twenty six-thirty six, creation of a part time non benefit eligible Valley Transit Recruitment Sourcing Coordinator position. Director Rachman will speak on Great.

Thank you. The reason this is being brought forward as an information item versus an action item is we're not looking to add to the table of organization. Valley Transit has part time dollars that they're able to use as long as they stay within budget. So this is ready within their authority to use those funds for this position. I wanted to bring this forward, however, because it ties to the work that we do in the HR office as well as to Valley Transit.

I think this committee knows we've worked pretty hard collaboratively through the years on staffing. And staffing at transit, particularly for the bus driver position, is a challenge, and it's not unique to Valley Transit. It's a national trend. But one area that our general manager and I've talked about is wanting to spend more time upfront sourcing or recruiting to get people excited about this profession. So getting into the high schools and maybe into the middle schools to get them thinking about the career as a transit driver, getting out at community events, etcetera.

Also having someone that when someone says, I'm interested in the job, but maybe they haven't filled out an application, they fill out a job interest card. Having someone who can spend more time with them to talk about the job, to get them excited, or to find out what are the barriers that are preventing you from applying. Maybe it's the application. Maybe it's something else. Unfortunately, we just don't have the resources today in our office to do all that front end work.

We'll continue to support Valley Transit when it comes to helping recruit, run candidates through the process, doing the coordination of the hiring, interviews, medicals, etcetera. So that's what this position is. We're looking at about up to twenty hours a week, but that's flexible. So if we have a lot of job fairs, maybe it's twenty five, and then the week after it's ten. So this could be attractive to someone who's seeking flexibility. It might be attractive to someone who's looking at getting back into the workforce. I just don't know what the pool's going to look like. But we feel like this is something we've been talking about for a while. We want to try it. And I guess we'll just report back to this committee as to how things are going.

Could you just give us a brief estimate of what you think that this job will cost as far as like, is there an annual estimated amount that you see that will come out of the part time pool dollars from Valley Transit?

So the one time I didn't grab my calculator, but we're looking at about twenty hours. We were thinking originally of about $25 per hour. So if anyone has a calculator and can help me out.

That's $500

Yep. And then if you add on employment taxes, so let's just say we had another 20% onto that.

That's $600 is 20% additional times fifty two weeks presumably?

Correct.

31,200.

Yep. And again, that can be flexible if we find that we can do this in fewer hours and we have the right person to do it, that's Okay, too.

And the expectation is that this will be an hourly position, obviously.

That is correct.

Okay. Any other questions from anybody up here? Thoughts, comments? Right. Thank you.

Oh, sorry. Alder Woolf. It was a late one.

That's Okay.

Might it be a better option to potentially pay salary for the position other than hourly?

So so when it comes to paying a position hourly versus salary or exempt versus nonexempt, there there's a certain standard or test that you have to do to legally be able to do that. Because this position doesn't act with a lot of autonomy, they don't necessarily are making certain level decisions, I don't think we would probably qualify to do a we could do a salary, but we'd still have to pay them over the hours of 20. I just don't think legally that that would be Okay. Great.

Good question. Thank you very much, Dror You're welcome. With that being said, let's move on then to item number 20Six-thirty seven, Website Traffic Highlights and Emerging Resident Engagement Trends. This will be our communications director, Andy Ann. Andam. Did I say that correctly? I cannot say that. District 2 is your mic. I'll make you live. There you go.

All right. So here is a one year performance. So our website went live on 01/01/2025. And this particular year to date website performance is from 01/01/2025 to 01/07/2026. Apples and wigov.gov, and that takes us to the key metrics.

So if you look at one glance, it's active users at 294,000, new users, 300,000, Total interaction, and when we I say interaction, interaction means how people are engaging with the site, which includes opening the site and clicking, searching, scrolling, or using a form. And that's why we never take impression with interaction. Impression is always about visibility. That means somebody just came but didn't do anything, so that's not a good metric to check on. So that's why we take interactions.

And average engagement is one minute sixteen seconds per user. And it continues to be a primary service information platform for residents. Most used pages and services, if you look at this, the landing page got 729,000 views to be precise, which means most of the we tried to make the web website three click website. That means people should not get lost in the pages after pages. That means they because of the features like easy as one, two, three, updating latest news and resources, what has happened is they're finding the information way too quickly, and that's why you are seeing way more views on the home page than the other pages.

But top pages by views as we intended for City Of Appleton home page, parks and rec, police department, yard based drop off sites, overnight parking, building inspections, and community events. Of course, it goes with the time whenever we have those parades. We get a lot of traffic on the website. So residents relies on the website for daily services and community events. And we continue to talk to the community people all the time during open office hours and different age groups, and I always try to get that those insights that are you having some problem finding the information?

What can I do better? Can I add something? So we have tried to do a lot of improvements based on those feedback. So recent seasonal engagement, this is from last twenty eight days. As you can see, it's from 12/11/2025 to 01/07/2026.

The key metrics were 29,000 active user within that period, 24,000 new users, 281,000 interactions, average engagement, one minute per per user. And SEO, it's it's completely through organic SEO. So we have not put any single penny in getting this SEO thing out. So it whatever is happening is basically the social media, and, of course, word-of-mouth has brought that traffic back to the Apple and wi.gov website. So how people are finding us?

As I said, it's organic Google search, direct traffic, repeat users, social media referrals. Geographically, our top cities are Appleton, of course, Chicago, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, and we get a lot of queries about our website from our, Brown County and other, periphery cities. So that's a good one. And then we go to the summary that what it confirms that this functions as a core resident service, seasonal and even communications reliably drive engagement, content alliance well with how residents search and navigate, regional traffic reflects growing visibility beyond Appleton. Overall, digital engagement remains pretty strong for the municipal website for a year data.

It's actually, it's very, you know, positive when we compare it with other cities. And on top of that, we are also creating more and more pages in the sense that use that is that has some use, not like for the just for the sake of creating pages, we are creating pages, but we are trying to add more FAQs so that there is less confusion. And due to the use of website, we are seeing we are seeing a drop of the phone calls otherwise our front desk used to get. So there is again a huge surge in the search, but we see a downward trend when it comes to all those calls. So what are our next steps and ongoing focus?

That's continued seasonal and event based coordination and aligned website updates with major events and seasonal services, use the home page and event page as our primary traffic driver. Second is strength in search visibility and community reach. Of course, you know, adding pages, actually is very useful to the residents. We can drive more traffic. And we are also trying to make our website less worthy, more engaging.

So in the coming months, you will see even when their people are paying bills, there'll be very straightforward information, very intuitive information. For example, instead of calling it a utility bill, we can call it a water bill or make it clean, like, what exactly u bill means. So those kind of updates might come soon. And use engagement data to guide content planning. That means identifying high interest topics.

This is very important for us to understand exactly what our residents want to hear more about. So I am always in touch with my other communication director peers in the other cities to see what what trends they are seeing so that we are with the trend. And then applying insights to improve clarity, discoverability, navigation, and ongoing updates for the top visited content. Anne, thank you. If you have any question, I'm here. I'm going to

take another shot at Communications Director Anim. Can you explain to me why the engagement

periods are so short? This is very typical for service space that said, and I knew this question is coming. Residents come with a specific purpose. And when when they need that, they get that, and they go out. So, basically, it indicates efficiency. For us, we look for that. We hope. So if it's less time, that means we did well. If they're, like, scrolling all around and they're not able to find maybe a parking citation question. So what we did was people were not able to find that. So what we added was easy as one, two, three in a couple of different scrolls so that they can find the information as quickly as they can. So this is for us as an efficiency.

Great.

Any other questions from

up here? Stole my question. I do have to say that Doctor. Jones. Oh, sorry. I apologize.

I didn't speak.

Thank you.

But we're

just having a conversation. I forgot who it was, but I was trying to show some of my constituents how to access certain parts. And there was someone from the city who was visiting and was like, oh, the easiest one, two, three, scroll down, the agenda and minutes are right in the bottom. And so I forgot who it was, but it saved me, like, five minutes. Oh, wow. So even better. Thank you.

Of course. Thank you. Alder Woolf.

Thank you, Chair. So I want to say, in knowing both websites, I definitely really like this one more. But that's a bit simplistic because it's an obvious choice, right? One, really good job. Thank you for the presentation. Thank you. My question is, have we gotten a lot of feedback since then? I'm assuming it's been very positive. But still, my curiosity is public feedback on our website, if you have any of that.

So what I do is, as you see, I move a lot in the community and many of my most of my motive behind that is asking how they're finding our social media content as well as the website. And based on that, we continuously improve that. It's not a one day thing. I I like, for example, we we did a citywide listening session to understand what our staff are doing and how our residents are finding the information and what exactly they're confused about. So one thing they told us, like, okay.

When we have we have to call the city, there's only one phone number that was a general inquiry number, which always used to go to the library. Now let's say they wanna talk to somebody from utility. So they have to go back to general inquiry line, then they will go to the utility billing, and that's where the people get start start getting frustrated. So what we did was we took away that general inquiry line, and we put a we put a thing called city phone numbers. So now when they go to city phone numbers, when they click it, now they have all the frequented numbers, billing, library, and yard based so that they can find exactly which line they are looking for.

And that re I think that really reduced the number of call repeated calls our people were getting. So it helps the front desk people as well as it help the residents because both sides get frustrated, and that's when we see starting seeing the turnovers. Like, you know what? I'm not I'm not able to keep up with this. But when we have the information all cleanly laid and streamlined across channels, that really helps drive that traffic the way it should be.

Thank you. Well, when people know what they want to talk about, they don't want an operator that's going to try to direct them to where they want to go. They want to go immediately there because it's Right. Just another else from up here? All right. Thank you very much, Andy. All right. The last item on the agenda is information item number 20 six-thirty 8. It's the recruitment status report for 01/08/2026. Director Rachman.

I'm sure I'll give you two highlights and then certainly any questions you have, I'll be happy to go through those. But give you the the new year update on bus driver. So the number we're striving for is 26, but that's a that's a soft number. Of course, we're gonna try to staff and even beyond that. We're currently at about at 24. That's the number today. However, we have six that are in training. So even though that that's there's optimism because they'll get out of training, they'll help with routes, it still leaves them pretty short staffed, especially when you when you factor in, like, FMLAs, etcetera. So and then the other update is we our finance director position, we posted that on January 2. I think we had, as of today, 11 applicants.

We're not waiting for a certain date to begin screening. We have started to have conversations already with a candidate. And we'll continue to do that until it's filled. So not a traditional process where you have an application deadline. It's open, and we'll continue to screen as candidates apply for that job. So we'll keep you posted.

Thank you. In regards to that last question or that last item, is there like an executive search for that? Or did we just open it up as a city and just get that many applicants into the pool?

So we are running the process in house. And the idea behind that is we want to see what response we will receive, what sort of applicant pool we will generate. If we're unsuccessful, then we will have to switch gears, come back to this committee and seek approval to hire an outside firm to figure out funding for that. We'll try to avoid that if we can, but we know finance director can be a difficult position to fill. We also know that there's a number of finance director positions locally that are also vacant. But right now, we're trying to do it ourselves.

Excellent. Alder Jones. So thank you, Chair. Stick with me on this. So when I look at this, I obviously need to dig into it, but it's like, oh, we have 21 positions open.

But when I look at the status, well, offer accepted, panel interviews, medical pending. So it's I feel like, well, you're a lot further along than the 21 would make me feel. Right? So would there be an interest in instead of just number of openings and status of five columns of, like, recruitment, interviews so that it's more of a true true situation that it is just numbers? Or is that just me putting too much work into it?

I think it depends on what this committee would find valuable. The the difficult part about putting columns is every process is different. So, for example, if we we have a, police officer position, you have panel interviews, chief interviews, police and fire commission backgrounds, psychological polygraphs. Right? The columns would be huge Okay.

Versus versus, like, an account clerk position in finance, you might have interview one, two background references. That's why we try to provide the detail. But I think you're spot on in that a lot of these processes were were far along. I think the other thing is, again, didn't bring my calculator, but if you take 21 divided by the 630 or 652 positions that were budgeted for, that vacancy rate is low compared to national averages.

And I I and I know that, and it's more of, like, giving you guys more credit for the work that you're doing, that you're much further along than the 21 would imply.

I think the credit is when you see when the position's vacant and you see the, the activity. In that activity, first is like a position that's just sitting out there that says, it's been out there for six months, and we're determining next steps. That's where we we put it on hold. We we tell departments we're gonna put that on hold, so there's full transparency. But I I think the credit is here

Okay.

From my perspective. But if there's something you would find more valuable, happy to do it.

Just smile and nod, and I think that's the best answer.

Right. Sounds

good. Yep.

You're

welcome. I think there's value in what Alda Jones was saying. But the concern then is that this becomes a make work project. This RSR becomes so in-depth that constantly moving the little check mark to the next box for, you know, thousands of things that are occurring. Too many balls up in the air. This is I think there's value here as long as we are willing as committee to dig into it. And I think that's acceptable for me. Anybody else? Any other questions, thoughts, concerns? All right. There being none, we will move on to item number eight.

Motion to adjourn. Second.

Oh, we have many motions. Not many. And a second. All those in favor, aye. JULIET Aye. JULIET We are adjourned. Thank you.