Crs Floodplain Management Plan Committee - Regular Meeting

Board meeting in June. And if I may use the prerogative of the seat to start the meeting off with just a few announcements. I had the opportunity to go Monday, and you were there, you were there to this Northeast Park. And I was involved in it previously when i was chair of the park advisory commission get there my advice it's absolutely wonderful uh... and uh... we complement uh... uh... the design company we complement the city mister clinton your team uh... it's a very very very well done well-designed uh... park and uh... I went there Monday and then yesterday I took Mrs. Efren over there and it was packed with children and their moms and dads. And that is great. The pickleball courts are filled. I don't know how they argue who gets next and all of that. And I know that we may want to have an orthopedic surgeon sponsor them because I've heard of friends who have done those things, fallen, and I wanted to say this park is great. Secondly, hurricane guide. And if anyone in the audience doesn't have one, I will give you one. If the committee wants one, take them. These are excellent. I applaud you, Lorraine, for putting this together. People I've given to, it's fresh. The pictures are great. It's a reality of what we have been going through. It's an easy read. This looks professional. People love it. Fortunately, they have printed this, and it reinforces your hard work because one of the things that I've talked up here and you've talked is don't put them just up in police departments and fire departments and hope that people go there. Guess what they're all over and you were at the meeting the other or saw me. You know you tried to dodge me I still have to you took the for what communities you remember when would want to. windward waterford uh sawgrass and pundit south and so we've had the traditional locations but then the untraditional a team from my community is going to staff the farmers market on saturday to pass these out the cooperation that we've received from breon who is not here today has been tremendous and I give you a lot of credit for leading the process and the rest of the committee. For last year's hurricane the city has addressed what we have talked about and please tell your staff how much we appreciate it if you want some just raise your hand and we'll pass them down. The next thing I wanted to say and I don't know all the appropriateness is is here, but we appreciate the media and we appreciate Mister much who received a lot of honors and awards recently and from the chair and the committee we applaud you for receiving many of these awards. And one other thing we have a new member. of our team and her name is Lily. And Lily, welcome. Do you want to tell us a little bit about yourself? There's no reason not to. We want to find out who you are a little bit. He'll help you.

hi i'm lily um i'm an upcoming senior at venice and i'm the drum major of the venice marching indians i'm also a part of the track team and i'm also on the board of directors for the jacker branda public library yeah it's a little about me wow so are you with the band and so we'll see you Yeah.

Throwing the baton up.

Oh no, I'll just, I walk in the front and I hold the banner.

You don't throw it up. Who does that?

The color guard. Oh,

I'm old school, I apologize. This is a great group. This is going to be great on your resume. We talk about a lot of issues and I'm sure you've received an orientation or will receive. The most important person on this group is her, Amanda. So if you need anything, get in touch with Amanda. We have what's called a sunshine roll, and we can't talk any business. You know about this? We can't talk any business outside of this. And it's for transparency. And all political bodies have this role. So I can talk to you about throwing up the baton. But when it comes to any of this business, we can't talk outside of here in any form or fashion, whether it's email or anything else.

Welcome aboard.

Thank you so much.

Okay.

Ma'am, did I do okay? Okay. All right. Let's do a roll call, please.

Mr. Carr?

Here.

Dr. Davis? Here. Mr. DeFalas? Here. Chair Efron? Here. Mr. Ellis? Here. Ms. Moscatelli? Here. Ms. Panfill? Here.

Thank you for all showing up today. Madam clerk is there anyone signed up to speak.

No we do not have anyone signed up for general.

OK thank you. Regarding the approval of the bit minutes. Are there any revisions or motion to to approve. Yes sir. okay thank you mr ellis second by mr okay uh any discussions if not all in favor say aye aye okay thank you um well we're the main thing we're talking about today is our website. And Alex, you're the ringmaster, and I'll let you start and introduce anyone you want at this point to make this, make the presentation. The microphone is yours.

All right. So everyone on the board should have received the statement of work. I hope you looked over that. It's very informative. It's the updated one. And I met with Mr. Navarro yesterday to go over it. And it looks very buttoned up, very good. And we also have Granicus here today to speak about it and to give us a little presentation. And we're gonna find a lot more out there. So if there's no other questions, I think we can hand it off to Granicus.

Thank you, Mr. DeFalce. Thank you, Mr. Chair and CAB. I'm going to do a quick just introduction, and then Lorraine's going to walk through some of the survey results that we had talked about a lot, you know, that we were going to do, and we have a lot of those results. And then Mike Tachikori from Granicus is going to talk a little bit about their approach, how they approach a project like this. They have a methodology for it. It's not to say every website they build is going to be the same, though. That methodology walks through building something that's unique to the city, and he'll talk more about that. So for now, let's start the survey results presentation. For hygiene, for decision hygiene is what we call it. Lorraine and I are the sponsors for this project. I, from a security, ADA back end, we want to make sure this thing is reliable and can grow in the city. Lorraine is the stakeholder and sponsor that looks towards the citizens. How are they going to use it? How do we make sure this thing works well? If it's left to me, it'd probably be a really good solution, but maybe harder to use. So she's more focused on that, on that surface. So that's why she's going to walk us through the surveys. And I'm going to let Mike sit here and he'll walk through his presentation.

Thank you, Roger. Good afternoon, everyone. For the record, Lorraine Anderson, PIO. So you have in front of you the survey that we launched at the end of May. You have the responses. They're kind of exploded out with graphics. And then you also have a packet of expanded responses for some open-ended questions that we also asked. So, like I said, we launched a survey at the end of May, kept it live for about two weeks, got 404 responses. So we asked our respondents to give us feedback on our current site, Venicegov.com. And what I'm going to provide for you today is just kind of an overview of some of the, I think, more pertinent questions, ones that people kind of land on for answers, and then you can look over all the expanded responses at your leisure. So the first question that I'd like to talk about is the select all that describe you because we ask people the respondents to describe you themselves and they could do it in more than one way. And so what we found overwhelmingly is that most people were residents of the city. And then coming in after that at about 87 we had seasonal residents. Then we had people that identified themselves as customers. So they were either involved in the permitting process, utilities, billing, something where they had to interact with the platform. And then fourth, I am a city parks, recreation, and or special events participant, right?

So that's people that are going to our parks, are going to our special events, and are looking for information on that.

How often do you visit the city website? This was kind of a little surprising. So a few times a month, or only when looking for specific information, were pretty much the ones that rose to the top here. 72% fell in one of those categories. So you've got people that are looking to do something very specific, right? Pay a bill, find out some news, get some information on a special event perhaps. We let people pick the top three reasons that they visited us, our website. Far and away, it was for City News, 257 respondents. And then right after that, special events or the city calendar, which makes sense. They're looking for what's new. They're looking for who's playing at the gazebo, right? How to be a participant in our 4th of July parade, those sorts of things. Then kind of coming in sort of neck and neck were garbage and recycling information and emergency or hurricane information. Kind of what you would typically see is that red bar when you would go to our site. Garbage and recycling information, that makes sense that we see a spike in that because solid waste recently changed our pickup days for residents. So that's probably why we had more traffic. And then also finding meeting agendas or minutes and then pay a bill or utility service. How easy is it for you to find what you need on the current website? So I think what we're going after here is everyone who didn't say very easy. which is over 80%. That's what we're trying to target here, right? We want to make it very easy. I don't even really want somewhat easy. I want it to be real easy. So these next two slides are really kind of groupings from the open-ended questions of what needs to be improved, just the trends that we saw. So first is the search function. People felt that search takes you to really dated material or maybe something you weren't even looking for at all. This website was created seven years ago, way before AI was a thing. The drop-down menus, they felt were too wordy. We have six of them across the top. And when you click on them, one of them can take you to 40 or more categories. Just too many. Basically, the organization of the information needs to be more intuitive. How do we look for information and where? And then respondents also wanted more specifics on who to contact for issues that matter to them, how to report an issue, how to contact code enforcement, schedule a bulk pickup, that sort of thing. Okay, and lastly, what do you like? That's important, right? So the homepage buttons, we have five of them on the homepage. And respondents felt that these were really pretty clear. They take you right to what you want, a meeting, say, or a bill pay, for example. And they also liked the presentation of news and then the special events and calendar. They felt there was a lot of information on that and that they could figure out pretty quickly the special events. and get a lot of information on what they were looking for there. So I included this last quote because overall I kind of saw it in a different variant again and again, which was, I can usually find what I need. It just takes me a while. So that's our challenge, right? Give the user, the citizen who comes to our website, a faster, more efficient experience, less frustrating, and that he can go there, he or she, and find exactly what he needs. I'm going to turn it over to Mike now.

Thank you, Lorraine. Please.

Welcome to the City of Venice and to the Citizens Advisory Board, and we appreciate your role. Could you Give us a little bit about your background personally. Absolutely. Happy to, happy to. Professionally, I'm sorry. I'm sorry? I said professionally your background. Sure.

I'll try to keep the personal stuff to a minimum. But first, I want to thank everybody for having me here, allowing to present to you folks. This is one of the main reasons I'm in this field, is working with the actual citizens in the community. I worked once upon a time in the private sector for large organizations, and for the past 15 years, I've been working directly with state and local government agencies. Thank you again for having me. I currently lead the local government sales team at Granicus Software. Granicus is a large government tech provider catering only to government agencies across the nation as well as well as the world. We do have offices across the country as well as throughout the world as well. I've been with Granicus for a little over two years but again the last 15 years of my career have been specifically inside of state and local government solutions. Right now I have a team that is basically regionally supporting the different territories across the nation. Down here in Florida, we have a couple that are living directly inside of Florida, catering and supporting your communities. So your account executive actually lives right in Davie, Florida, not too far from here. Longtime Florida resident, born and raised, and the community of Florida is the most important thing to her. So you've got a great one supporting it, as well as a multitude of staff at Granicus to help support you folks in your endeavors as you move forward and look to improve that community connection between government as well as citizens. That's our number one goal. Some of that trust that we've had once upon a time has been broken between governments and citizens. Our goal is to make sure that that transparency there, that service is there so that we can rebuild that trust and move forward into the future. So that's a little bit about my background currently specifically supporting the local government communities across the nation. Perfect.

Thank you for that. All right, so let's jump right into it.

Looks like you guys can see. So this is just the title slide really talking about what we're trying to accomplish with you folks here. So we've been teaming with a lot of people inside of the agency here, specifically Lorraine, Roger, Charles Poor, Nikki Martin, Brian Lorenz, and yourselves with input as well as the different department heads across the city from police and fire all the way to engineering, HR, and finance. So we've made sure to get input through the different departments, through the citizen advisory board, and wherever we can to make sure that we have the full picture of what you're trying to accomplish as you move into the future and how we can partner with you folks to make sure we can bring that into reality. So i've really taken kind of a hypothetical approach to what we're going to accomplish with you folks and how we're partnering with you, but it's really kind of imagining the art of the possible right so imagine a place where. Citizens voice matters every voice matters all your residents get what they need faster easier smarter. your citizens are not just interacting with the government, they collaborate to make sure they can build that stronger, more vibrant community, work on things like those parks that Roger was mentioning earlier that are being taken advantage of right now. We want to make sure those folks' voices are being heard and taken to effect as we make sure we're striving into future and more modern technology capabilities. Now think about the government that would be needed to support that, right? So it's one that doesn't just serve the communities but engages and again partners and collaborates with them. What we saw from Lorraine surveys is some of the data that was captured from the citizens of Venice and is incredibly important. I deal with Cities and towns of your size all the time. It's very much in line with what we're seeing out there. People are looking for things easier, faster, and quicker to get the things that they need in terms of the interactions with their local government. So think of a place where, again, every voice helps shape the policy and priorities, right? Feedback's being heard. Services are easy to find and access, and they can get what they're looking for very quickly. And your staff are empowered to make a real difference. It's difficult to be able to make the changes for staff if they don't have the tools and capabilities and the partnerships behind it to make sure that they can strive for those future, more modern capabilities. And then finally, the most important thing here is trust is built through that transparency, the access, and then ultimately collaboration and engagement of the government. Getting to that location is not easy. You know, I spoke to you folks about how I've been working specifically in the local government space for a long time, and the most important thing when interacting with local governments is collaboration and partnership, shedding that old vendor-client relationship and making sure we can be a true partner to you folks as you move forward. So some of the challenges we face as we try to modernize our approach and provide that service delivery that the citizens are looking for is things like shifting responsibilities, rising expectations from the citizens as more people come in and the communication grows, strained budgets at the local government level, fragmented systems and siloed data, and then also workforce churn. Some of the barriers that we see is a lack of understanding of the audiences, the citizens you guys support. So making sure again that voice can be heard and take into effect and account is absolutely critical. There's limited communication channels in place today for that, which we're going to work with you to fix. Things like automated data analysis, those measurement capabilities are lacking and a little bit more difficult with some of the antiquated processes and then as well as a seven year old website. So modernizing those things will really help you kind of bring the solution, the interaction to a more modern capability with your citizens. So just a little bit about Granicus and why you folks should be partnering with us. Right now, we are the leader in government experience solutions. We focus on a multitude of different areas, but pretty much anything you would need to interact with your citizens, Granicus has a solution for you guys to help you with that. And we focus on three areas to make sure that it is going to be a valuable partnership and then ultimately strive to the goals of the advisory board, of the city, of the mayor, and everybody in between. So we really focus on these three items, connected technology. So our solution is a platform solution. It is not siloed data. All the data can be extrapolated from different areas, and the platform can speak to the different solutions to make sure that we're pulling in everything to make sure we're understanding the decisions before we move on anything. We provide and focus on data-driven insights, like the surveys that Lorraine provided, making sure that that feedback from the community is heard, and we're incorporating that into all the decisions that we're making. And then finally, again, around partnership is experience services. Granicus is also going to provide you with a very white glove approach that, you know, in my former companies I've seen was a very large cost capability, but we will provide you at no cost. We will have a white glove service experience partner who really is a Granicus expert, the person that's going to be tied your account work in local government once upon a time. So know the challenges on a day to day basis. and they're going to be person to make sure that again we're connecting the citizens with your staff to make sure those decisions and that voice is being heard ultimately helping you guys and being that consultant moving forward to get to the end goals that the city has for these citizens right now we've got about 7 000 plus customers worldwide about 80 of that is based in the united states dealing with local government all the way up to the federal government We've got about 30 billion digital government interactions annually from our communications platform. The messages we're sending out, the feedback we're gathering back, we're seeing about 30 billion annually of those interactions. And one of the biggest benefits and something to talk about that we saw in the survey results is the grant subscriber network, right? We saw in Lorraine's survey some people are coming really just once a month very infrequently to get only what they're looking for. You guys are doing a lot again with the parks events. We want to make sure that the services are being available to the community. So Granicus actually has a large subscriber network where we can actually surface you guys on your neighboring towns, county, even at the state level for recommendations. For example, if I'm a veteran inside of Venice and I'm very interested in veteran services and events, I can select that. But Granicus will also populate state programs available to veterans. neighboring towns and county programs so that you can help grow that expense or that network as well and that's going to happen same thing with your neighbors somebody who's at the county level can go to their website say hey i might want to look at these things in venice and we'll provide and surface that for you guys as well so you'll have access to that very large subscriber network kind of shying away from people coming for just things that they need to more explore the capabilities and what the city has to offer So speaking again about the platform experience, we really focus on three areas inside of Granicus. One, engagement with our engagement cloud offering. Two, service cloud, which is where we're focusing today, and operations as well. So with our solution and what we're trying to modernize for you folks is really around customer service and engagement and sentiment. as well as government transparency. So we're going to be providing with the updated website. We're going to be working very closely with you guys to customize a version of that website that suits Venice specifically. We help support a lot of your neighboring towns, counties, even the state of Florida, but we have full capability to make yours look like your own, right? We're not going to focus on a templated approach. so you can have it look similar to your neighbors if you'd like or completely unique totally up to you and we'll be working with your staff to make sure we can provide that approach and the look and feel that you guys are looking for as we move forward Now, as Roger mentioned, we've done this quite a few times before. We are the leader in government experience solutions today, one of the top providers of government websites out there in the nation, and we've taken a really formulaic approach to how we engage with our customers and partners moving forward. So the path you see here is really the one we're going to take with the City of Venice, starting with the Grove, really having the ability to increase digital reach and engage those people that we're serving. Two, kind of from the data and survey perspective, understand who they are, what they need, and what they're looking for when they come to engage with the government here at Venice. Three, we're looking to deliver. We're gonna use those insights and the data we've captured reviewing with your teams to make sure we can continually build, inform, and modify those experience deliveries, the experience delivery that your citizens are feeling. And then finally, to finish the circle and we'll continue to grow, we're gonna measure to understand the impact at every point in your journey with that data to back it. We'll have strategic reviews with your team on a quarterly basis to make sure that we're capturing that data, reviewing it, and actioning accordingly with the feedback we're getting from the community. So this is the framework that we've tried and tested with multiple partners throughout the nation as well as world, and this is one that has provided incredible, incredible results. So here's just a little bit about the website project timeline. Again, just a snapshot of the approach that we take and what we've seen historically to be very valuable to our partners out there. So we take it in kind of these five different phases that you see here. First, initial discovery with your kickoff, really understanding what the needs are. Then moving to the user experience and design. Once we've put together the initial design, the feedback approval has been approved by your staff, we would be moving into development. We're there. We're actually going to build the site, the capabilities. We're going to do quality assessment and quality assurance checks. We're going to do accessibility checks. That's another thing we're going to be accomplishing with you folks as we move forward. With the ADA compliance from the federal government currently, we will put you in a position where you'll be fully WCAG CAG 2.2 compliant moving forward. So you'll be adhering to the compliance that's put out from the federal government. Your citizens will be able to access your website, your solutions, your meetings from whatever capabilities they would need. So we'll make sure to accomplish that with you as well. From there, once the site is fully developed, we'll go into training your staff to making sure they're fully capable of the solution. Again, you'll have that experienced partner along the way for anything you might need there. And then ultimately, once everything is approved and finalized, we will move to a launch targeting a March 2027 date. That date, that is more of a worst case scenario that we've put in there. There's a lot of back and forth through the design approval and revisions phase that can shorten that timeline pretty dramatically. So it'll be just a lot of making sure that the communication is there between your staff, our staff, that we're getting those approvals done in a timely fashion to shorten that timeline if possible. Oh, I'm sorry, I skipped a portion of it. I didn't realize this building out there, but just the tagline, so nothing different there. Okay, a little bit breakdown here. Under the UX design, you can see information architecture. As Lorraine mentioned, you guys have about a seven-year-old website with a lot of content that's been added over time, things that probably aren't being used anymore, things that maybe aren't accessed much. So we're gonna go through information architecture with you folks to make sure that we're targeting and pinpointing those maybe zombie sites that shouldn't maybe live on the website. We can archive them so you can still access them, but we're going through that exercise with you folks to make sure that the content on the website is more current content and not that zombie content that's just living up there taking space and um that's it so i'd be happy to answer and field any questions from you folks i'm excited to hear any feedback however we can partner with you or any suggestions i'm all ears to the advisory board so again thank you for having me though alex mike

Sure, I'll get us kicked off here. Sure. Thanks for coming in. So I'm curious, for the UAT testing portion of it, is there any chance that the Citizens Advisory Board could be involved in that?

From our perspective, it wouldn't be an issue. From our perspective, I would lean on your staff to make that decision and your council. But if they're open to it, then we could absolutely have you be a part of that.

Okay. And just UAT testing, user acceptance testing, it's before launch where you're going in and you're clicking around. So it's not necessarily like a technical person's going in there and testing it. It's more of like, hey, we want end users going in there and seeing what they could break or what they could put that would cause an issue. So, cool. Also, I'm curious about the post-launch phase in the SOW. You said it was going to be 30 days of coverage. In the past, have you typically kept under that 30 days? Or is it kind of like to that 30 days you've remediated all bugs for the project?

That's a great question. So historically, I've seen it go beyond that. The reality is, again, we partner with local governments. So whatever we can do to do right by you guys, if it does extend that time, then we will make exceptions to honor that capability.

OK. And with the given project? I know it's hard to say, like, you know, what do you see in the future, but do you see that going beyond the scope, given what we've asked?

I don't think it should, to be honest with you, but in case it does, you will absolutely have the resources to support you guys beyond that timeline.

Okay, cool. Those are my two major questions.

Okay, let's hear any other questions from the board. Mr. Ellis?

Given the timeline that we have in front of us, where are we at right now?

So we are just starting the project. Could you put that slide up again?

Oh, yeah, sure.

This one right here? Yeah. Perfect. So right now, we are still in the very early phases of the project timeline. You have been assigned your service experience partner, your project manager. Those meetings are being held now for the discovery and kickoff, but we are just in the beginning phases of the project.

Okay. Got other questions? Yes, go ahead, Mr. Carr.

Two questions.

Under the training...

Yes. On page 12 of the of the um sow statement of work that you that's where you mentioned the training and it indicates there's there's um three remote sessions with up up to 10 users each which is 30 people so are you playing because there's more than 30 people on staff in the city i believe are you planning on having them be key people and training other people as they go along

That's a great question. And you're spot on. That is correct. It's more of a train the trainer mentality where those power users will be capable of training and up leveling those other users that aren't necessarily in the training. We do have supplemental training. You've got the experience partner who can schedule additional trainings as well. We also do have Granicus University online, which is an on demand self paced training that you can become fully capable of the solution as well.

And my other question, on page 13, it mentions moving the domain name from venicegov.com to venicefl.gov. Is that something internal, or would that be a change for staff and board members that currently have a Venice City email address?

So that would be changed internally. Roger, looks like you wanted to speak to that.

We'll do it in partnership, of course. Our email addresses for all of you and us is venusfl.gov. That's our domain for our email addresses. But our website is venusgov.com. So that's been a disjointed thing. All governments are moving to .gov for good reason, for clarity, transparency, and security. We just haven't done that. We knew this project was coming eventually, and here it is. So we're going to combine the new website with that change of address. Now, the old address will continue working. It's a very technical backend thing. So if you hit a link for one of the old domain names, it'll redirect automatically to the new one. But it's something we will do in concert along this project. Good catch.

Thank you very much. Sure.

It is a common thing we're seeing. Anybody who's not on a .gov domain name is looking to move that specifically for the security. And just the confusion. If I'm a citizen going to a website, I'm more used to seeing a .gov website for the city websites. And if I'm not, then I might be hesitant to, you know, make sure that's the right one. So it's a kind of a security perspective as well. Please. Dr. Davis.

Yeah. I'm interested in the AI portion of this. people have a distrust knee-jerk reaction to it that sort of thing so I saw that there's going to be a portion where staff in the city have a chance to draft questions, answers to likely frequently asked questions that will, my understanding was to kind of train the AI, not just let AI go uncontrolled into it. If someone asks me how AI, what I would like to hear from you is a brief answer. If someone asks me how is AI being used in this, what do I tell them?

I can answer. So AI is going to be an option that our visitors can use. It's not going to be forced upon them. They can visit the site like they would any other. They can search the site like they would any other if they choose. We started talking about what we might call this agent, this AI agent. Right now the brand name is GXA, so I'll call it that, the GXA. So this GXA client is something that you can click on the right hand corner and bring it up and have a conversation with it and search it. So you have the choice. You can search and interact with the AI or you can choose not to and browse the website like you normally would. We think that's the easiest and the best way, give people the option to do so. Now an important thing about AI, AI can, when you interact with it, can answer from anywhere in the world or we can ground the AI is what they call it. And we're gonna ground the AI to our website. So if somebody comes and asks about the parade, the 4th of July parade, the answer is going to be grounded to the information on our website. It's not going to answer with the city of Sarasota's or the city of Venice, California's 4th of July parade. So that's an important thing. We're working in partnership. One of the good things they are doing is grounding their AI. Some vendors don't do that. They're like, AI, let it search the world's data and answer you with somewhat random information. We're not going to do that. And the last thing I'll mention is a point that Mr. DeFalas brought up is this user acceptability testing, UAT. You all might do that. We might get some high school students to do it and help from a non-technical perspective. That's going to happen for the website. independent from the AI and there's going to be another UAT for just the AI because we would like to interact with it and see how that answers. So those are distinct and different and they have different like swim lanes. They have different activities that we're going to do. So those are a few ways we're going to make sure the AI isn't like answering with crazy data. But we're not going to feed it every question it's going to get and feed it every answer it's going to give. That would be nearly impossible. But we are going to ground it with the data that we have and only that data. Does that help, Dr. Dibbs?

Yeah. Yeah. So that last part, um, you will ground it. So there, you're going to be frequently asked questions, I suppose, and that's going to be less AI and more staff driven.

Yes. That's a 20. Some people may not want to interact with the eyes. So they'll go to the kind of the more regular frequently asked questions and the regular search.

And just to add on to that question, Dr. Davis, this solution is the only purpose-built solution for government agencies out there today, so security is paramount. We are only training it, to Roger's point, with information that you are providing us, content you are providing us, so it is not going to crawl your neighboring town's website. We were seeing that in the industry with some of these solutions before ours came to market, where I could ask it a question around procurement policies, and it may pull the neighboring towns and neighboring counties or neighboring states potentially. So we make sure we put up those guardrails so it is only being trained on the content and data you're providing to us, as well as some of those more frequently asked questions we can train it with. But to Roger's point, we can't capture every question. It's just some of those more common ones that we can put in place that we know what the answer should be. But All the security parameters are in place to make sure your content is protected and is providing the right information back to the citizens.

Other questions? I have a couple questions. How long is the contract with this company. By the way I think it's great that you hired a company who has specialization in government and functions. But how long is this contract. I see it's launched in March. So do you have access to the part of your contract after its launch in case there are other issues.

We do in a few different ways, Mr. Chair. We have ongoing support. They also host the website. We don't host it out of our data center. So if we go down for a hurricane or something, the citizens can still get to that. They have multiple data centers, so it wouldn't be cost effective for us to do that. So we do have an ongoing contract that that covers that hosting. It also covers support. So if we need some help posting some odd content or making odd changes, we have, that's included. And we pre-negotiated the future years because we wanted to lock those in, make sure they don't go up on us and our citizens so that they'll be there for a while.

Okay. Second question is when you launched this, had you thought of a public session where the public can can come in to learn about the features of this or and I have you thought of having a training video that short that people can click on to understand. You know what's new or something like that. So and duck them into this very important phase of city government.

We haven't decided on one. We've talked internally to the project team. If we need to train people on how to use a site, we've done something horrifically wrong. It's just my technologist and user customer service mind says, if we have to train them, we haven't done this intuitively enough. Now, launching other very large websites in my past, worldwide websites and other things, sometimes you want a big release, and other times you want what you call a soft launch. And we've talked about it, do we want this massive thing or do we want the soft launch where people, after we do our U.S. testing, people come to it little by little and we watch the data and modify as needed. Lorraine will be the decider on that, kind of what approach we have.

Okay, so what I hear you saying is with the launch of the website, most of the citizens get it. In other words, they can navigate. They don't need to have special training sessions and videos because people can navigate it because they're used to dealing with it. There's nothing unique about this, except when are you going to tell the public How are you going to launch to the public the uniqueness of this so that they know that their taxpayers, as taxpayers, I've gotten my money's worth on this. And I don't know what the cost is or anything.

Yeah, sure. I mean, as far as marketing approach, I think we're just going to have to work with the team and just kind of decide how we want to roll it out. We can certainly make some short videos, put them on social media, put them on our website. I mean, there's there's various things we can do. We just kind of have to see where we're at in the process and what we're kind of getting back.

Well, if I may say it was just one person here and Mister clinch is really directed to I think it is important to have some marketing part component of this and if you need a to bounce this off somebody. I know nine people who you are more than happy to bounce it off in terms of your marketing approach. Those nine people would be more than willing to, before you market it, to listen to what your game plan is.

great feedback a lot of energy and resources are going into this website it's been a long time it's certainly something we want to highlight not just to brag about what we've accomplished here but to get people excited about it and using it so point well taken and we would be happy to utilize our social media channels and reach to us as well promote your websites too if that's something that would be of interest

Alex you want to bring this part to closure or anything else he wanted to say or next with what's the next ever going to have more briefings or what.

I'm unaware we have more briefings I can work with Mister Navarro and miss Lorraine on that subject. I do have one more question though, but I'm curious. I don't know if you would know this off the top of your head, but how many of your current city websites that you've created? Do you have an AI component like an AI chat bot or something like that?

That's a great question. So the solution was generally general availability at least was last fall. So we've got about Only a handful of customers that are live, but a lot that are going through implementation currently. So we could absolutely provide examples if you'd like to go test and see what that would look like. I'll also provide some instructions because one thing we're doing was capturing data on those virtual agents to make sure we can make the appropriate changes and adjustments. So if you could just follow the instructions that we're leaving that out of the data collection portion, because these are live virtual agents you can go test, I'd be happy to provide that to the board.

I would appreciate that. For sure. Also, I am curious. I don't know if you can answer this as well, but how often are new customers asking for an AI component? Is this kind of every new website's like, hey, we have to have this, or is it more of like a 50-50?

So that's a great question. We attended the ICMA conference. That's the International City Managers Association last fall. Every single city leader was asking about AI, very much akin to kind of what we saw during the cloud explosion. Every city leader is like, I don't know what it is, but bring it in here, right? I need that. It's very similar. I think this is a fantastic approach in the way you adopt AI, because as opposed to a larger solution that may run through your entire tech stack, this is just a portion that's sitting on top of your own website, accessing only databases we're allowing it to. So it's not gonna run rampant out there, Pretty much every conversation I have with anybody in charge of a website, they are asking about AI in some fashion. They may not know exactly what they're looking for, but they know that they're being directed to at least explore the realm of AI, how they can incorporate into that city, county, state website and practices as well.

Cool. Anything else on this? Did you want to say anything, Mr. Clinch, regarding this topic?

Yeah, I just had a comment and then a question for our team on kind of when we'll be checking back in with CAB. So just back to the point of the AI, some great conversation today. We're really excited about it. I think something that showed through in the surveys was question five, when someone can't find something quickly, what do they normally do? And you'll notice, even with our demographic here, people prefer to search the website than picking up the phone or emailing the city. That wasn't true 10 years ago. And so you've seen a change across the country where people want their information quickly, they want it concise, and they want it at their fingertips. So I look at this AI chat bot as a great opportunity for those who want to use it to get information really quick, really easily so they can move on to their next task. We're still going to be here to answer the phone. You know, we're not going away, but it's just providing another tool for folks, which I think will be well received. And then I just wanted to kind of in closing today, kind of, if you wouldn't mind, Roger, checking back in on what the next task will be for the cab. I know we'll be keeping Mr. DeFallis updated throughout the whole process, but just so they know what the next check-in point will be.

Yeah, I almost want to know from the cab when they would want the next check-in point. If we can bring up the project timeline here. It's a great question for Michelle, where we are. So we are into the UX, content print, content rationalization is a pretty complex topic. We've kicked that off a few weeks ago. And information architecture, also really difficult. We've kicked that off. So we're here now. Next time you meet is in about three months, is that right? August. Two months. It'd be August. We don't skip any for summer, okay. You know, we will have, one thing that I had said last time, I'm gonna wrap myself out a little bit. I thought we would have what we call the wire frames, wireframes are like think about a building I think of a fire station to getting built. A few months ago it was like columns and you could really see the fire station that you could see a little bit but. In other words it's not very pretty so wireframes aren't that pretty and we've we've gotten base wireframes I decided not to bring him here because you'd be like holy cow that's what our new website can look like but no it's it's not so I'd say in the next 2 months it would be good to for us to show you beyond the wireframes. Those are renderings, maybe some of the stylistic choices that we've done with buttons and the flow, like somebody's flow through the website. We call it the journey. Like when you get to a park, you journey through the park. When you get to the website, you kind of journey through it. And I think by next time, we'd have some visual representation of that. I think that could be helpful.

um for feedback and um we'll be ready for you at for you to test it so that's kind of a question uh for you chair and the board is would you like at least our team we won't have granicus here every time but if we can have our team check in with where they're at at the next meeting we're happy to do that you recommend that ellen i mean i think it would all information's always beneficial so yes our ring leader advises us too does anybody have any opposing viewpoints

Perfect.

And then the testing we talked about, when would that actually be occurring? Um, I don't want to be later in the process, right?

Yeah.

I mean, it's, um, it's pretty far, it's out in the development training area. So that's probably a ways out. Yeah. If I give you the code of uncertainty is so wide out there that if I give you a number, it's, it's going to be made up by next time. I think we can give you a more, you know, if I can't give you the timeline, I'll give you by when I can give you the timeline. So I think by next meeting, we'd, we'd have a good timeline timeline for you up.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. This has been very, very helpful to us. On my notes here, it says that there is a motion. Is there any motion here for there's no approval? This is the FYI mainly. Okay. Next on the agenda is board discussion of any comments and about anything that related to the role of our committee or will ask. Mister Redmond to start. And I apologize and don't know your last name but Lily is there any comments you want to make her questions. OK. This Moscow Kelly would you have any questions or any comments. OK. Mr Ellis. Dr Davis.

Can I ask staff a question.

You can ask Mr. Clinch Mr. Clinton question.

What's the status of the update of the park master plan.

Thank you for asking that question.

Could you hold that for a minute? Of course, sure. Just for a minute. No problem. I'll tell you why. I apologize. We'll table that one.

Yes. I'm sorry? We'll table that for the moment.

Yeah, we're going to talk about it and the broader issues of what else are we going to do as a board, what's on our future. Today was just one item. And and I want to make sure that we're not but we're using our maximizing our time is a board and so that's right there if you don't mind. Okay, car. I like saying. All right, I'm ready to dig into that I think it's under that. I am. had a conversation with the mayor one-on-one about our role and today we meet and 52 minutes we completed our agenda and I sort of ask a broad question is are we doing enough. When is the master plan going to come before us and as you may know I went to City Council and told them what our priorities would be and what is left over like the bicycle level to gold the city website we're doing at this point make recommendations on city council on environmental sustainability so those are all in the future and the question is do do we have enough work i don't want to bring you in if there's limited time, although this is important. So if I could call on the mayor at this point, along with Mr. Clinch, to talk about what's on the horizon and how soon it'll give this group an idea as to what to expect and how substantial the meetings are. And one will be that. So I wanted to tell you why I wanted to hold that off. Okay. Who would like to start? Welcome, Mr. Mayor.

Like any good city manager who yield to me but I'm actually going to let James speak about parks master plan before I go into some of what I have to talk about before I yield it back over James, I just want to welcome. Lily tour for meeting and congratulations on getting selected to the board and I know you'll serve as well. I'm looking forward to seeing what you produce so with that I'll give Mister clinch the floor to speak about the parks master plan and then I'll talk about a few things.

Thank you, Mayor. Parks Master Plan is really getting going well. Our consultant GAI was selected. They are under contract and they had their kickoff meeting with the city team last week. So they came in, met with all of our department directors that are involved in parks with their team, and then they did a tour of city parks on Tuesday last week so they could get their eyes on everything that they're going to be working on. The next steps, they are planning to come speak to you all at your next meeting. So your August, I think it's August 19th meeting, they will be coming to speak with you and hopefully to get some guidance, direction, and feedback. So that's exciting. They are working right now on kind of information gathering and the demographic park trends, evaluation criteria, understanding what our park system is and getting that already and then they're going to start in August as well the public outreach phase of their of their program so that will involve you as well as other public outreach methods and they're also going to be coming to speak to the planning commission and city council in September so it's getting going it's going to be much more involvement coming coming soon especially in starting in August

That they have any other questions about that specific.

Well, the is the charge be specifically looking at all the parks and they tried to merge in anything with the multimodal long range plan that the city has done.

Well, you know, part of their task is to look at all of our other master plans. So certainly they will be taking that into consideration. And connectivity is very important to parks. So that is something they'll be looking at. While they won't be planning out new transportation elements, they will be looking at the connectivity of our park system overall.

From a coordination point with the city, we have coined the phrase ringmaster. Dr. Davis, Alex, does that system seem to work best to having one person here that works with the staff and you?

From my perspective, it's been fantastic. It's the best system, especially because we can't talk to everybody all at once due to the Sunshine Law. So assigning one person to be the leader is very productive so that we can get things done between meetings.

So there'll be another ringmaster that will ask. Now, here's the problem. The first two ringmasters have hit home runs. All right? We do not want singles or doubles or triples. That's all I want to say. You take it the way you want to take it, but that's the truth. Okay. All right. Mr. Mayor, the floor is yours. Talking about future assignments and tasks for this

Yeah, so you highlighted it earlier. You know, there's four specific items that we recently approved for you guys to do outside of your normal duties, and that was elevating the city's bicycle level to gold, continuing the work on the parks master plan, the website evaluation recommendations, and the review of Venice Code Section 46.5 regarding the policy for renaming city-owned facility or park to make recommendations to improve that process. So I think that's probably the one item I would look at right now and say we need to focus on that because we've had a lot of park activity. You've got a park master plan coming. So I think making sure that we get some kind of policy in place. It was a little complicated the last time we had to deal with this naming slash renaming. So if you guys can get that handled, I don't want to say in quick order, but I mean over the next few months, next few meetings, that would be something that's going to have to go through a process to get to the council and approved and all that kind of stuff.

The renaming?

The process in which. Okay. So you guys have to take that and tear that apart, look at how we want to do that. You know, it's... Politically, it's a different animal because if anybody just shows up and says they want to rename a park, there really should be a substantiation as to why they can do that, not just because Mayor Pashota walked down the street and boy, he's an awesome mayor, let's name a park after him. I mean, we want to try to make this so that you know when somebody when somebody has a park named after him it shouldn't be super easy to have that done but it should definitely not be super easy to undo it. So and recently we've had some some I've seen some discussion in the public about naming a park that we have on the northeast side now and it's kind of one of those things that I think there needs to be a very careful process in which that happens And that's kind of where you guys are at right now. You're the, no pressure here, but you're the pinnacle on making sure that this is successful and how we do that so that it's not unpopular or overly popular. We want this to be a fair process and appropriate.

Let me stop for a minute. Are you going to fairness that information to this board and can we have it next meeting and the second question is are you going to be the contact for that issue as Roger has been the contact basically for the website. Help us with understanding the framework.

Sure. So I agree. We need to provide you with the background information. So I'm happy to have let's have that as an agenda item for the August meeting and we'll give you all the information and then you can assign a ringleader. I will say I will be the contact for now. We may end up delegating it to another staff person, but at least from the beginning, I'm happy to be the contact. And I'll do some research on my end, too, to make sure I have all the history on how our current policy got set up and then where we're looking to go in terms of a little bit more formal process, perhaps with some better guardrails, and doing some research, which this will be more in your court, but how do other people do it? What are other cities doing in terms of that renaming process?

And I don't want to take away from staff and the excellent work that they do, But try to think of yourself more independent of staff. They're here to kind of make sure that if there are any pieces of legwork, we have a mechanism for that, right? Because we can't direct staff, so they're your liaison. But try to own that one yourself and run with it versus letting, if you let staff direct the process, they're going to feel obligated to do that. No offense to James or his staff.

Good advice.

Yeah, so so and I find myself as well I don't want to be a burden on staff so usually hey what can we do to help you make this process easier but try to think of it differently as you guys have free reign on these topics that we've assigned you right so so not necessarily give staff a bunch of work to do or direction but but on the process and use them as as a as a bumper of along the road.

What else. Looking forward to seeing our campus.

All I can say for the August meeting right now, we'll have the park renaming, and I'll just bring you the information that's available, and then we'll have the parks master plan update at that August meeting.

And where are we with the bicycle issue at this point?

Mr. Chair, I could jump in there. Because I am the liaison to Darlene Culpepper, who's essentially in charge of the project. So we've met twice. She's developed some strategies. looking at trying to complete. You'd like I can get to the August meeting. I'll meet with her and whether she comes or whether I have a summary report we can do an up to date. Nods you like to do that.

Nods a little mean yeah sounds reasonable with no special vote. OK so there are 3 things that we can tackle at this point. Anything else. Let me also say in my conversation. You can surface an issue that relates to the city. And I would just have to go and correct me if I'm wrong to City Council to have it blessed. Yes, you OK to tackle that so we can initiate something of value of of interest.

Through the legislative referral process, absolutely.

Yes, yes. Yeah, there's a process, but it can start here. So when we have board comments, if something is on your mind, when we talk about board conference, you can surface it, and we can discuss it, and then if necessary, we can bring it to council's legislative referral. I think I'm correct on that.

Yes. And one other thing I wanted to point out is I learned this in the LDR process. That was kind of something I came in in the middle of. And I often sit here and say, well, you've got plenty to do because you've got all these master plans. But I don't usually explain that process. And I realize that today that I haven't. When I came into the LDR process, I had a lot of research and time that I had to devote to looking at the previous land regulations and then what the recommendations were and where we're going. So one thing I would just caution everyone on is if you have not read our previous master plans and you're about to be taking on a new revision to a master plan, you may want to get that document and give it a once over. I'm not saying you got to study it and know everything inside of it, but I mean, some of these, and our LDRs, I mean, it's massive. It is a process that I cannot do in one day. I mean, some of you are very astute and educated and can do that kind of stuff, but I don't have the brainpower to sit down and review an entire LDR, you know, book in a short order. So I would just caution everybody that these master plans are, they're big. It is a big deal and it's meant to be something that's going to take us many years ahead. So I would just say now is a great time in the lull of things which, you know, there's going to be a lot of stuff going on with these master plans that it's a good time to review that now. And be prepared to maybe have some discussions amongst yourselves at these meetings about what what you could see changing. I mean, don't don't get too deep. But I mean, start having some preliminary discussion since you can only do it in the sunshine. It might be a good opportunity for you guys to have some just preliminary discussions and just make sure that you're all up to speed on on what it was and what we might be looking at for the future.

Thank you. Any other comments at this point? Dr. Davis. Go ahead.

May I take the mayor up on his suggestion that we have a discussion, at least a brief discussion, on one of my concerns?

As part of your comments? Sure. The floor is yours. It falls within the realm of this organization. Sure.

yeah I asked about the status of the updated a park master plan from the point of view of this board representing not only the arts and parks but also the environment and my review of the previous Master park plan is is abbreviated and not not. Not a great master plan was there really was no environmental consideration to it and. I'm. looking for ways, opportunities to bring the board into that aspect of it. And I say this from personal experience, and maybe I don't remember if I addressed the board on this before or not, but Whatever the city does in its parks, and it's visible to the residents, the city's modeling how residents should be taking care of their own property, their own land. For an example, I made a comment to my condominium association that we're in a drought, maybe we shouldn't be irrigating so much. And they said, well, the city's doing it. And, you know, as far as planting native plants, can't we in my condo, I would like to have more native plants. Well, the city's not doing it. And so It strikes me that we have an opportunity here to bring a portion of the park plan into more current thinking on the environment. We have lots of resolutions that the city council has has passed like promoting. I don't know. One of the things I'd like to do is get a list of the resolutions that the city has so that they could be considered for inclusion to improve the management of our parks and that sort of thing so I don't know what the board thinks about that that's you know I'm clearly an environmental representative on this board would I have this do we have support for looking at the environmental aspects on the park plan

In my capacity.

With VABBY, I'm doing an all-native forest. It's within the city limits, mostly, and would obviously support having some native plants being used wherever we can. Because I think, one, they survive really well. In this environment into for the most part, they're relatively drought resistant, you know, so any help you need in that regard, I'd be happy to jump in.

Okay. Very good. Mr. Clinch, could I ask a question to Lorraine at this point?

Mr. Efron, before I excuse myself, if I could just one more thing before I go. Dr. Davis, you kind of, you know, struck a lightning bolt here across my forehead. Part of your responsibilities, it's okay. I'll be okay. I'm a paramedic. I'll probably take care of it. Thanks, Lorraine. I appreciate that. You know, one of the tasks that you guys have is educational programs. So perhaps maybe, you know, I'm not discounting your idea inside of the Parks Master Plan, but in addition to that is looking at some of the information that's currently offered by the city, whether it's through our arborist or through our partners, VABI or whomever it may be, Maybe there's not a good resource for native plants that could be drought resistant and maybe you want to develop as a board some of these educational pieces. I'm not saying programs as much as maybe just even a flyer that tells people the top four drought resistant plants for newcomers into the area. These are things that when you look at what Babby does for our community as far as the plantings downtown and how wonderful our downtown looks, These are things that would be a wonderful accent as a newcomer to the area. Look, the city of Venice has a brochure on what four plants. Think of the number of plants that you see that you think are native that are not really native. That may be something that's legwork on your guys' part, but a lot of you guys have very specific specialties, art, engineering, all these areas that might be of your interest. You guys could probably develop an informational program just by putting a piece of each of your specialty into this and making it educational about being a resident in Venice, being a resident in Florida. I'm sure there's a disaster response piece in there that you could put. Think about that as maybe coming up with an educational program that would be beneficial to newcomers or people that have been here for a long time that just don't know anything about native plants. There's a lot of things. I'm not saying recreate IFAS and all the work that they do, but maybe use that and enhance it. There's a lot of opportunity inside of these. It's just that I don't think you want the council getting so specific to give you a task versus giving you the autonomy and the freedom to come up with your own project and program. So think about that, because I know we had the discussion earlier about you want more work. You guys might have to generate some of that work. And I'm not saying go out and find 20 things to do, but I mean, That's something I saw when you started talking about them. Why don't you guys do that? You've been stirring about environment for a long time, so I think it's a great idea for you to now take it and do something with it.

Watch what you ask for.

I'm on my way out the door, so I really leave it to Vice Mayor Bolt.

I'm sorry, if I can just expand on the lightning bolt on the forehead. Yes. This morning I woke up and was thinking about the urban forest and how people love the urban forest and why can't we expand the urban forest through the city? We could do that.

Okay. Well, we have a lot, do I call you when I, should I call you when we have too much work also?

Hey, Dr. Davis said it, be careful what you ask for, sir. Yeah, yeah.

Lorraine, thank you. I'm going, I started the meeting talking about this wonderful brochure and if I remember that started when Mr. Clinch was assistant manager and uh frank ms cheapkins came to made a presentation um and then uh from there uh we took over if i can say that and provided some input and as a result this was developed and uh correct me if i'm wrong you have broadened and expanded the distribution of this

I have to really give credit to the DTIO, Brianne Lorenz, who is really her pet project.

Brianne. Brianne.

Yes. And she has really taken it to the next level for the city.

And I've, in speaking with her, asked her to come here today, but she's off. Please compliment her. Could you give a short summary as to how this is being distributed this year? Maybe different from previous years.

Well, it's really more Brianne's, because you have worked with her, but I know that we've got it digitally online, so anybody can go and download a copy. We have a QR code. Set up at points where people would come in and see it our building department at our information desk We're bringing them to Places that make sense to bring them to we had quite a number at the hurricane Expo I believe we had four boxes leave the hurricane Expo and that's about a I want to say 175 maybe or so a box maybe a little bit less and So a lot went out there and then we're putting them in the hands of communities as you know chair.

I wonder also businesses this first year you've had him at the art art center. Yeah, the previous year and we talked about the various communities. I know the believe the rotary is involved in this. It's been a wide effort to get him to our residents. Various communities House of worships of all that are in the city we've delivered not we the city has delivered. to individuals. So we made a recommendation. You really come through. Give my best to Brianna as I said will be at the farmers market. Great job on this which started with with our group. Yes sir.

I'd be happy to take some over to the chamber too. We haven't been delivered there and we haven't haven't been to the chamber yet. I don't know. OK. I'm just asking.

I thought that was on the list. believe it is on the list okay and by the way if it's you can take some but i think it's already been delivered but if not uh you can call brianne and she will call you back listen i can't mess with brand system or she'll come after me yeah yeah james anything you want to say

I just want to thank you, Chair, for engaging the network of the community to get these out there. So thank you to our staff for putting this together. But the extra effort has really made a difference this year. And I got to brag on your chair for a moment, because I saw him at the park. And it's not as simple as just handing one of these to folks. He actually holds them captive and makes them start to read it, which is the most important thing. It doesn't do you any good to hold it. You have to actually open it. Thank you, Chair, for that.

I do know how to stand in the way of people. Mr. Mudge might have nodded, you know, but other than that, by the way, it was a great opportunity. And having you there and you there and giving them out, it couldn't have been better. Anything else? I'm going to announce that we appreciate our next meeting is August. August 19th will you be here. Please tell us the council will be on break from. Over on council break for the last 2 weeks in July in the first 2 weeks in August. OK OK so things just love that it's been a good meeting.

I appreciate one way we think.

Attaway. All right. Throw that baton up and catch it. Did you have something you wanted to say?

I'm going to be absent for the August meeting. I will be in far north. Where is that? Virginia?

North part of Minnesota. Oh, boy. Let's hope it snows then so that he gets a feel for Minnesota. Thanks, everybody. Thanks for coming. This meeting is adjourned. Have a good day.