City Commission - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to this workshop meeting of the Delray Beach City Commission this Tuesday, September the 8th. If the clerk could please call the roll.

Deputy Vice Mayor Markert.

Here.

Commissioner Mollica. Here. Commissioner Cazale. Here. Vice Mayor Burns. Here. Mayor Carney.

Here. Thank you very much. Would you like to introduce... We're doing... This is pursuant to an original request by Commissioner Malika. Yes, sir. As it relates to trying to improve our external communications with the public. Yes, sir. Kind of what we're doing, what we're up to, and et cetera, et cetera. So I'm going to turn it over to you to introduce. Our Director of IT.

Actually, thank you, Mr. Mayor. However, before Chief Technology Officer Jay Stacey, otherwise known as Director of Information Technology, I will offer a few words on behalf of the Department of Communications in terms of what is it that we attempt to execute relative to communication, external outreach, what that looks like. And this is all in response, as you mentioned, Mr. Mayor, a consensus initiated by Commissioner Judy Malika to offer such a presentation so as to provide an opportunity for the Commission to outline and further underscore their expectations regarding external communication. So the predominance of the presentation will be facilitated by Chief Technology Officer Jay Stacey so as to advise in terms of capabilities because of since the time consensus was offered to have this workshop meeting I've spoken to a couple of you all individually about some specific ideas you may have. And quite frankly, the update we'll be offering this afternoon fairly well aligns with it. So with that, ladies and gentlemen, I'll go ahead and proceed with the first page and the PowerPoint presentation. So if I may, please indulge me. So the Department of Communications, small team, big impact, consisting of the Department Director of Communications, Gina Carter, of course, I previously committed leave, and the reason she isn't here today, so I just thought I'd offer this brief overview. You have a public safety information officer, Ted White, public affairs and outreach, digital media manager, digital media coordinator, and digital media coordinator part-time. So a total of five full-time positions that functions as our Department of Communications. Much of their work, of course, aligns with the creative arts school and some other ancillary activities for which they're involved. So several focus of interest, marketing, media relations, and executive communications, developing proactive communication campaigns to promote programs, services, initiatives, and accomplishments, managing media relations and responding to inquiries, preparing city officials for media interviews and creating talking points, speeches, quotes, and media replies for the executive leadership team and elected officials. creative services, including photography, videography, graphic design, and creation of promotional materials citywide. So all departments work closely with the Department of Communications to engage that outreach and communication. Occasionally, believe it or not, we do experience crisis communications. Establishing protocols for communicating during emergencies and natural disasters. Supporting public safety messaging, emergency alerts, evacuation information, storm updates and other time sensitive communications. Postmaster and internal communications. Coordinating the distribution of official city communications and supporting employee awareness of programs, policies and initiatives. In addition to that, emergency management systems, alert PBS and cities AM radio station, maintaining and utilizing emergency notification channels to provide critical information before, during, and after emergency events. And of course, we have public meetings and outreach, supporting public meetings, workshops, hearings, and community events. developing outreach campaigns, presentations, frequently asked questions, and other materials that help residents understand city projects, policies, and decisions. This also involves providing communication support to engage residents in encouraging meaningful participation in the city's decision making process. And of course, this is facilitated via numerous social media platforms. Interestingly enough, ladies and gentlemen, the city of Delray Beach has grown to support 15 social media platforms, if you will. Over 230,000 followers across Facebook, excuse me, information technology, there you have it. I think I ran ahead of the presentation flow, please forgive me. So in any event, over 230,000 followers across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn, promoting city programs, services, events, and initiatives while providing timely public information and responding to resident questions and comments. digital newsletters, city news, updates, events, programs, services, and important public information to over 41,000 subscribers. So via the social media platforms and other mediums, we have the opportunity to secure subscribers up front. Of course, we are all very pleased with the functionality of My Delray Beach app. Over 2,000 subscribers with dozens of functions connecting residents directly to city services, information and resources, Design of all digital and printed publications. Graphic design, layout, and production of city publications, brochures, flyers, reports, newsletters, promotional materials, public information campaigns, and other communications. Atlantic Avenue Magazine. This is of course an external production, but the city of Derry Beach does have a direct working relationship with this publication. There's the state of the city, over 100,000 readers each month. So it is an excellent opportunity to engage and execute on an external basis as well. Digital displays city billboards. Digital messaging displayed throughout the city, including city facilities, beach pavilions, and high visibility locations along Interstate 95. Used to promote events, programs, public safety information, city initiatives, important community announcements. Of course, many cities have taken the approach involving a city podcast opportunity, so that's available via Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube. and of course the city website, DerryBeachFlorida.gov, as well as AI Chatbot, known as Piper. Providing access to event calendars, press releases, city commission information, department information, online services, public notices, projects, initiatives, and resources for residents, businesses, and visitors alike. providing 24 hour day, seven day a week assistance to residents and visitors by helping users quickly find information, navigate city services, and access answers to frequently asked questions. So the third page of the presentation, social media analytics from October 1, 2025 through October 31, 2026. So most recent information, over 20 million impressions, over 188,000 followers, over 772,000 views, over 29,000 clicks, over 2,000, nearly 3,000 posts I should say, over 170,000 reactions, over 31,000 shares, and nearly 16,000 comments via the various sources for which we make available. So again, Communications manages 15 accounts. City Twitter, City Facebook, City Instagram, City Newsletters, City YouTube, City LinkedIn. Fire has Facebook. Fire has Instagram, as in Fire Rescue. Fire Rescue has Twitter, as does Police Department, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, as well as CAS Facebook and CAS Instagram. Thus, the metrics are pretty comprehensive in terms of outreach and fairly well engaged communication throughout the community and throughout the public. Nevertheless, this information is being made available so as to convey not only to elected officials but the community at large the level of investment that the City of Derry Beach has executed in recent years to get to the absolute best place possible. Given the fact that technology is evolving on a frequent and consistent basis, I'd like to now give Chief Technology Officer Jay Stacey an opportunity to enlighten you with respect to existing capabilities, followed by an opportunity for the Commission to offer additional thoughts and consensus as to how we should proceed above and beyond what's already being executed, a la your newly found knowledge with respect to current capabilities. Mr. Stacey, if you would, please.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Commissioners. Jay Stacey, Chief Technology Officer. After the Commission made the request for us to produce a post-meeting recap of Commission meetings, City Manager asked me if we have the technology that could help produce the desired content. And the short answer is, yeah. We've got the technology to do this, I believe. We have a comprehensive full-cycle meeting management system called Legistar. And Legistar is a suite of tools with the following functions. Agenda item creation, tracking, and approval. Department heads begin by uploading drafts of agenda items into Legistar. They are then automatically routed to required reviewers. such as purchasing, finance, or the city attorney's office. Once tentatively approved, the system produces a draft agenda, and the executive leadership team meets as a group to go over the agenda. If all goes well, items then move through the system, ultimately through the city manager's office and to the city clerk, to make it into the final agenda. Legislature helps with final agenda preparation and packet creation. Since Legistar now holds all of the agenda memos and backup material, it assists the clerk's office in producing the final agenda and the agenda packet. All of the information is available to the public on the Legistar website prior to a commission meeting. And the city clerk's office then sends a link of the final agenda to subscribers on their constant contact newsletter. Live meeting management. During the meeting, Legistar has tools built in to assist the clerk in managing the meeting, and it has video streaming capabilities that allows us and IT to stream meetings over the internet. We also provide a separate YouTube feed, but that's really just as a backup and a more familiar platform for the public. And then post-meeting transparency. Commissioned decisions and outcomes are recorded in LEGISTAR for the public to view, and the system retains a historical record of meeting agendas, outcomes, and also the recorded video. Now, our deputy city clerk gave a great presentation of the public facing components of LEGISTAR a few weeks ago. But today I'll just talk about what's available on the LEGISTAR system post meetings. So this is the page I recommend to get an overall snapshot of a past meeting. You'll see the video recording off to the left. To the right, you see the official agenda. And that agenda has links to backup material for each item, and if applicable, whether the item passed, failed, or otherwise. And to the lower left, you see an index of all of the discussions. If you click on any of those indices, it will take you to that section of the video. This is because the city clerk records these times during each meeting and enters those times into the Legistar system. As you can see, Legistar also has a very nice mobile phone view of the same agenda and content. So what can we do with all this? Well, short term, As I said, the city clerk's office already sends out a newsletter prior to the commission meeting with the official agenda to their constant contact subscribers. So my suggestion is we start sending out this link to those same subscribers after the meeting. They'll get all of the information about what transpired at that meeting, and they can click on the individual meeting videos if they need to. But we can take it a step further. We don't have direct access to Legistar's source code or the database. That's proprietary. But they do expose an interface that allows coders, like me, to get our hooks into the system and extract data. So as a sample, I wrote a program to pull the relevant information from Legistar and create a more readable document. This could be the basis for a more traditional newsletter similar to what is being sent out by the city of Boca. We can improve the formatting and the content as we deem necessary. And for the future, our legislature is adding AI capabilities, which will help with search features, which I know we've gotten complaints about that, and it will also add summaries of agenda items because agenda items are pages and pages long. So it's nice to get a great, great summary of it. And I got to see a demo of it just last week. And it looks really, really good. And I think it's going to be a big help to our community.

Is it summaries of the discussion that happened during the meeting? Or is this just of the agenda?

Of the written agenda.

So pre-meeting, it's the pre-meeting agenda.

But I have... I have explored using AI programmatically when I was generating that document to create a summary of the discussion. And I was real clear with AI about not giving any opinion, not quoting anyone, but just give a short description of what was discussed so at least people have that information. And then they can go to the video to get the actual discussion.

Can I ask you a question? So just from a legal standpoint, so I know too much about AI, I know. But it is listening to what's said, and it is drawing conclusions, and it is making decisions about what's being reported. How does that translate to... what we're required to do as a government body in terms of reporting? Because AI, it can do summaries, but we don't know 100% if it's exactly right.

I think we have an obligation to, before we publish something, to review it for its authenticity, clarity, accuracy. So, you know... We have an obligation to provide minutes. We don't have an obligation to provide a transcript. So minutes are really just a summary of, and our clerk does it. But honestly, the most important thing with AI is that, and I think we have a policy on this, we have to just always ensure that we're not just taking the work product and just publishing it. That someone's actually using their mind and their brain Make sure that it's accurate.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you. The reason I ask is I did a podcast last week, and they use a tool there that summarizes what happens on the podcast. And after I read it, it was pretty darn accurate. It did miss a couple of things, and that worried me about how AI translates here in case it misses some things in our legal requirements on reporting all that stuff. So you're saying a person has to review it to –

Or at least we would put a disclaimer on it, you know, that it is created by AI and, you know, it may not be entirely accurate. My preference would always be to have a human fact check and verify everything before we publish it so that at least we can tell the public that, you know, we can certify the authenticity.

That's great advice. Thank you.

Will we have to review that like the minutes and approve it, though? Because I have to tell you, sometimes... I think that if you're basically summarizing what's going on in the meetings, how do you know if it's getting the value or, you know, who's going to decide that? That's subjective. I mean, won't the commission, then are you going to email this to the commissioners post-meeting, ask us all to read it, provide back input?

No, there's no summary of the meetings. Just a summary of the discussion? The initial question was, what is Legistar doing? And Legistar is going to offer a summary of the written backup material. Okay. Later, I said I did explore using AI to summarize the conversations. That might be something we could include in this document, but I don't have it in there right now. Everything in here is factual. Okay. Everything is pulled straight up.

So that's what it would look like?

Yes. This is what we have available. What I was talking about with AI or something maybe in the future.

But how is this any different than anyone going to that link and just clicking on the video clip on the item? This is exactly the same as what's up there. You're just doing this is the same thing.

Versus going to find it.

Right. I think that's the issue is it's all there, but people aren't clear how to find it. So that's why I was suggesting we take advantage of the Constant Contact newsletter that the city clerk is already doing when they send out the agenda prior to the meeting. They could send out the link to this page so that everybody gets the recap of what happened. And they can watch the video and watch the clips. Or if we wanted to, we could, I went the wrong way, We could produce a document like this and send that out to them so they don't need to go to a web page. They can read through it, see which items they're interested in, and then either go view the item and read the backup material or click on the video.

How many people are on the constant contact list? Clerk, Madam Clerk, how many people are on our list? Do you know?

Gina said at the last meeting it was less than 200.

It's not a very big list.

Yeah, I think we need to promote it a little bit more.

Do we want to, for example, in our water bills, do that little whatever they call that QR code, right? Sure. To allow people with their phones to do that, to be able to sign on to the city site. First of all, it'll give the city more email addresses in case they need to contact residents on emergencies or whatever it is. Right. But I think it might be easier for most people to, rather than sign on and try to, if they give them like a QR code with their water bill, they're going to look at it and they're going to say, you know, you describe what you're trying to do. If you'd like to see the minutes of the meetings, if you'd like to see the meetings and you're interested in the agendas, just hit here and we'll put you on the mailing list. I mean, I'm all for trying to get as many people on this mailing list as possible. I mean, I've been emailing them to my mailing list, but there's no question the city, if they really put their mind to it, could get a rather extensive, you know, voluntary list.

I wasn't aware of the newsletter myself until I started looking into it, so I know it's not well-known. Neither was I until you mentioned it.

And I've kind of been around for a while.

Yeah.

The only question, Jay, is I think we're living in a time right now where there's plenty of information out there. And I do know if you want something, you can find it if you dig around a little bit.

What I keep hearing is people want summarized information.

They don't want to go through a whole two-hour video and watch us up here. They want a point. They want to go find.

Which is what that is.

Yeah, and if you notice on the last one, because the others it's not applicable, but on the very last item, item six, whatever that is, I can't read it, the very last item, I do include the outcome because the city clerk is putting that in after the meeting. So they can see the item, they can see what the official title of that item was, and then they can actually get the outcome.

But when you say outcome, it's like pass or not pass, whatever it is. Because the comment regarding the summary of the discussion, which is in our minutes, it's a very good comment because... They are permanent records, and we need to make sure that whatever is being said about what one of us said or all of us said or whatever it is is accurate. And we've always had the opportunity, for example, here when you're presented with the previous minutes, although I think we get them, we're looking at trying to do some in August that we're now in September, but that's another matter. we have the opportunity to review them and make whatever, you know, corrections there are. So that would have to be in place before you send out summaries, or at least the ability to ensure the accuracy. It's a good point.

Well, I think this is sending out the video, so that is definitely what we said.

i i think this is brilliant and then the minutes are i'm sorry the the minutes will not be ready the next day the minutes take several weeks no no i understand i understand but i'm just saying when we create summaries that are our minutes we need to make sure that right before they are disseminated so to speak understood and i do think we should be reviewing minutes faster here as opposed to you know i mean one of those reviewing today is minutes from a july meeting i think that's kind of too long um but We need to make sure that the public also has an accurate description of what went on in the meeting. Of course, they can watch it, which is always definitive, too.

Commissioner Mullick, I cut you off. I apologize.

Oh, that's OK. If I could stand and clap, I can. awesome. It gets sent to me versus me having to go find it. I mean, I'm here, so I don't have to. But in the past, I had to. But I think this is lovely. It's lovely. And you can just watch the clip if you don't know what was said. Beautiful.

Okay, great.

Great. We can get that 200 up pretty quickly.

Are there any other comments from anyone up on the desk here?

Great job.

Thanks for the work, Jay. I think this is a massive improvement. I mean, I think it's great, and I think it's been very innovative, and I... Looking forward to getting the newsletter. All right.

I'm going to sign up.

Send me my water bill. I'll do it.

So that's the extent of the presentation. So I would love to secure your support. It sounds as though everyone's pretty enthusiastic with the direction we're going. And this is fairly consistent and congruent with some of the ideas that haven't been spoken about prior. So we will likewise get to work in the coming days to make these opportunities available. Opportunities that otherwise would not become possible.

Yes, absolutely.

Mayor, if I may?

I just got a text from someone in office. He said we have 1,207 subscribers. Oh, we're growing.

That's wonderful. We have 47,000 registered voters, give or take, right? So let's see if we can get as many of those as we can.

More to come.

More to come. No, but that's good. That's a good number. That's a lot better than the 200.

We should do something else for a half hour.

Well, I'm thinking of going to Publix and getting some more Fritos. Anyway, are there any other items coming in front of us today? Then this workshop is closed. Adjourned.