City Council - Regular Meeting

call this meeting to order. Uh, welcome to our city council workshop. It's our first meeting in our new city hall. So, welcome everyone here this afternoon. Our first presentation is on our mission, vision, and values. And so we have Miss Addington here this afternoon.

Yes. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, council, for what an honor to be the first one to speak in our beautiful new chambers, but what a special topic. Um, so I can't think of anything better to really kick us off here than our mission, vision, and values. So, Mr. Mayor, that was your idea. Um, and it's a great one. So, I just I just hope and pray I do it justice today. um because it's extremely special to all of us. But what you have in front of you is a couple of um documents or maybe one document. And we were going to have you fill out the quiz um that all employees had to fill out back in the day and still do at times. Um but we decided to just um kind of get rolling here. So, um, this document though in its pretty form, we're going to kind of go back in time and do a little, um, history lesson on how we got to where it's at today. This was the original form. So, I actually found this in my documents. Uh, this is the word document. And if you look super close, I decided not to print it out for all of you because if you look super close, you will see a type. Um, but this was a result of Thanksgiving weekend with me sitting with my laptop hammering out values. Um, and then we kind of fine-tuned them as we went along. So, um, here we are. Here's a look back. So, just for context, in July of 2016, we had new city administrator. And just my point of reference being his first hire, I hired in October of 2016. So this was an urgent, this was a top priority for the organization to have a mission, vision, and values. So in November, a committee was formed and it

was formed of David Cameron, myself and a few other ELT members. I am the only one that is still employed after the initial creation of this document. So thought it was appropriate to talk to you about it today. And this was kind of after you took my word document. This was kind of the original um that was actually presented to council in a workshop that occurred in January. So January we got all of ELT input approval if you will and then we had a workshop with council to introduce this new document and really the concept because we we really didn't have um the concept that has come to be with this and then in February the very next month it was adopted by resolution. So um subsequently November of 17 that's when the total rewrite of the employee handbook went into ordinance and now it's included on all job descriptions. It is included on all interviews and performance appraisals. So one thing that is incredibly special and I again I I come I am as nervous as I'll get out because I want to do this thing justice. This document is probably the greatest accomplishment I've ever been a part of. Um, and a lot of history went into this. I kind of went 2016, 2017 when we were adopting this document. We have such a success story here. It's incredible. And after my first week on the job, so I'm a new director. I don't really know what I'm doing. Um, I'm questioning did they really hire the right person for this job? And by the end of the week, so on Friday, I send my leaders, it was at the time, David

Cameron and Jared Keeling, I send them a fourpage singlepaced document of all the changes I want to make. And I'm thinking, and some we had to like now. Um, and I'm thinking, but how do I go about doing this? I'm not sure what the right protocol is. So this document and you can imagine multiplying that by a lot of departments having a new city administrator. This document helped us do that. This document told us what we were going to be, who we were going to be, and how to get there. Okay. So, we're going to look at it piece by piece. What does this still mean to us? I love that Mr. Mayor, you brought this up to us because we need to get back to basics. Um, now with Colton here, uh, we have a lot of you all are new. I don't know if you've we've ever officially talked to you all about the mission, vision, and values, but it's still incredibly important to us. It is still our roadmap to success. And so, we're going to kind of look at it piece by piece. First is the mission. And this was the most controversial part of the entire document because there's a couple of words in here that we kind of met with a little resistance. One is aggressive and one is progressive. So progressive um I just want to kind of give you some official and what we were looking at there. We weren't looking at a political ideology in any way, shape or form. Um, and aggressive is kind of negative. We don't want to be aggressive. And so we kind of went back and forth. ELT had a lot of discussions on do we keep this wording? And we absolutely do because in this context being aggressive was absolutely appropriate. And here are some of the definitions that we actually used to justify that. We want to be aggressive.

and and the definition that went along with that was empathetic in effort and intent and driving initiative. We had to drive initiative at the time. There were a lot of things we needed to do, a lot of things we wanted to do. And so that was just very appropriate to have aggressive in there. Additionally, progressive was not the political ideology. We chose the definition of moving onward and forward. And so we want to make sure that through our processes and through our relationships we are doing just that. It is a relentless pursuit to being process driven and having relationships. And you can't be heavy one way or another. They have to have both weight equally distributed. And that is what we learned through all of this. If we have solid processes that are going to back up the decisions we make and we are intent on our relationships and you all know well enough we are staff first. We are a employee first mindset always. We can't lose and we haven't lose lost and that like I said it's a tremendous success story. So when we do all of that right that's where we build trust and we needed to build trust. We needed to build it internally as well as externally. And so the trust edge is a whole another training session that we're actually going to all um sometime in the fall. So I just have I wasn't going to do this. I told Laura this morning I said I'm not going to give examples on a time schedule. Um but I'm going to tell stories. So the mission statement really just to give you a good example of how important this is and how this does drive our decisions. I have two examples from co. So co that time where we can look back and laugh on it now, but at the time we did not know. We didn't know if we were going to furlow employees. We didn't we weren't going to spend a dime. We we were just playing it

really conservative, not knowing, you know, what was going to to truly happen with it. Um I had an employee come to me during that time. We had just gotten back into the offices. We we about five weeks and I had an employee come up to me saying, you know, we could really benefit from this software. Granted, it wasn't a lot of money. It was a few thousand dollars and they would change just a lot of how they did their job. And I was like, there's no way. There's no way we are going to be conservative on our spending. We don't know what's going to happen. And they brought this to my attention, but I thought we were going to be aggressively progressive. And I'm telling you, we need this. So, I walked right into David's office. He met me with the same attitude I met my employee with and that no and I said they challenged me on this and they're right and so we bought the software so we still use it today actually the other was buying the 135 acres that happened during co and we were like there's no way we did it and that's who we are we make decisions based on what may not make sense to a lot of other people and it's because of this mission statement and being aggressive massively progressive and standing by that that has made all the difference for us. Moving on, our vision statement probably the most ambiguous statement honestly in the and that we will grow together by doing the right thing at the right time for the right reason. But there's many sides of right there depends on what side you're on if that was the right decision to make. And so employees have been trusted in that in that moment in their job in their expertise they will abide by this doing the right thing at the right time for the right reason. And we may not all agree on what that looks like. Do we debrief? Absolutely. Do we change our course of path? Absolutely.

But in that moment we're going to rely on that employee to do the right thing at time. And then coupled that vision statement with the values provides additional clarity and context that we'll get into next. Regional. So we decided a long time ago back in 2017 that we wanted to be a regional leader. Well, how do you do that? And that is to become a place where everybody wants to be whether it's living, working, or playing. And so we became that that regional leader in the workplace. The benefits that have been approved by council, the the leave benefits that we have given. We strive to be that regional leader. We have done it by far as a municipality living. We are the top growing city. I mean, you know, it was an SBJ just a week or so ago that we are the top leading our top growing city. We want to grow responsibly though. And then the play, our parks department has done a phenomenal as far as adding the lazy river which was again approved by you, approved by the voters. Um I know people that have moved to republic for that lazy river. So um we are definitely a regional leader on that and our thinking will be unlimited. We don't like boxes. We have destroyed every box when it comes to thinking and we've had some crazy ideas. When Jared presented buying the 135 acres, I thought, "Dude, you're crazy." And here we are. So, that is how we have really just, you know, we've we've grown. We have done things that other people would think there's no way you should do that. There's no way we would do that, right? You're not republic. and then challenging status quo. We can't get comfortable. We have to know our why. And if we are met with, well,

that's just the way we've always done it. It better be followed with and this is why we do it. If it's not, we become stagnant and it's got to go. So, we got to go back to our mission of challenging our processes, being aggressive on it. Um, but status quo doesn't survive in this organization. Ethical. This kind of goes without saying. We will be honest in our words and actions. Whenever we actually interview individuals for a job, we ask them to pick a value that they align closely with. And we don't even let them pick ethical because we just think it goes without saying that you will be ethical, that we will be known for our integrity, trustworthiness, and commitment to doing what is right. So, we're going to be committed to that vision statement of doing what is right. And it's going to look different. It's going to look different to Ozark and Nixa. It's going to look different amongst departments, but that's why it's so important for our departments to define what this looks like to them. Doing what is right, being committed to what is right. Professional, we will always prevent present, excuse me, a positive image. No matter where we are, no matter what we're doing, no matter what meeting we're at, we're going to be as positive in our image as possible. And it doesn't just mean what we look like. We're going to be positive in our words. We're going to be positive in our actions and follow up and follow through. All of that is included in this. We will publicly declare our commitment to expertise or excellence. And this is something that I have really uh thought a lot about in preparing for this. I of all the things we're going to talk about today, the commitment to excellence, we have got to be committed to excellence. We have got to be committed to doing the very best we can do. But that has to be rooted in grace because fear has no place in this

organization. Whether you're an employee or a leader, it has no place. But we have to be committed. If we just say good enough, that's not good enough. We have to be committed to being excellent in our field and we will have a steadfast commitment to these values and be held accountable for our performance. So again, we have to be held accountable and we unfortunately if they're not the right fit for us, they don't stay in republic because this document means something and this document has to be protected. So we give a lot of grace. We give a lot of great benefits to our staff, but they will be held accountable for that performance. High expectations and high rewards. So urgent. I think this is the black sheep of our values because I think a lot of people hear urgency and they're like, "Oh, we shouldn't be we shouldn't be in a hurry." And urgency has nothing to do with that. It has everything to do with being responsible. And so I saw a good quote the other day and it says urgency isn't reckless. Urgency is being respon wholeheartedly agree with that. So we will achieve results quickly. We're not going to put it on a back burner. Ah, we'll get to that someday. No, we're going to deal with it now. We're going to get the best information that we can to make solid decisions without hesitating. So once we have the information, once we know this is the route we're going to take, we're going to move and we're going to move quickly. That doesn't mean recklessly. That just means, you know, Justin, didn't we tell you we'll get back with you in a week? It was the next day because that's how we roll. We knew we wanted Justin and we're going to make that offer quickly. So once we have that decision, we are going to move and we'll understand our expectations. So every staff member, not

only do they have a job description, they should have and what's required of their job, what behavior if if we debrief on a situation, if we make a call that probably isn't the best for the organization, we need to brief debrief and pivot and they need to know this is what's expected of you every single time and make sure they're met. We don't have expectations and then say, "Oh, but you don't really have to do them." No, that's not being committed to excellence. and we'll press forward and not look back. One thing that um is probably my biggest pet peeve, especially now that I'm a leader, is the blame game. It doesn't matter. We're just going to press forward and look back. We can look back for history. We can look back to remember because I told all the staff, do not forget where we came from. This building is amazing. Don't forget where we came from, but we just can't stay there. You know, if we make a bad decision or we fail in some area, we can't live in that. We got to just move forward and press ahead. Bold. This is my favorite favorite value of all of them. And bold can kind of mean I don't know. It seems a little abrasive. I love it. We will be decisive. And we need leaders that will make a decision. And a lot of people don't want to make decisions because they might be wrong. There might be consequences to those decisions and that's okay. We're going to own what we do. So, we're going to make decisions. Sometimes they're going to be bad ones, but we're going to own it and we're going to learn from it. We're going to grow and we're not going to let fear dictate our actions. Fear has no place here. So, employees shouldn't be worried. They shouldn't be scared to make decisions. We should empower them to do so. And so, fear has no place in how we move forward. Oh, but that might make so and so mad. If it's the right thing to do, we're being true to our

mission. We're doing it and we're going to have fun. So, we purposely put fun with bold because bold can be a little intimidating at times. I know I'm a bold individual, but we do have fun. We make sure we have fun. Fun is just as much a part of who we are as making tough decisions. and we'll build confidence in ourselves and the people around us through our words and our actions. Encouragement is a part of that. If people aren't confident, boy, I want to get a hold of them and help them be confident. So, in our decisions, we're going to back them. We're going to say, you know what, yes, that was the best decision at the time that absolutely they did the right thing. And I told Eric Brown that I was going to kind of um talk about him a little bit. So on the going back to the vision, when Eric Brown says this is the right thing to do, we're going to say absolutely do it. So, you know, we have to listen to those people. We have to build confidence in them. If it's a bad decision at some point down the road, let's talk about it. But our words and our actions should be one of confidence and encouragement. Leaders, every single employee is a leader in this organization. whether it's to another employee, whether it's to themselves, or whether it's to the community that they serve. So, we will be a leader in all areas. We will set the example and go the extra mile in all circumstances. So, that is what we have to strive for, setting the example. It's amazing to me what people are watching us do. It's amazing to me when I hear somebody, oh, I remember when you said this, and I'm like, I don't. So they're hearing, they're listening. Um, and we have to be mindful of that at all times. So we will remove, not create obstacles to our success. If there's an obstacle, we got to find out why and either take it away

or minimize it the best that we can. Now, sometimes the law is not an obstacle, right, Jess? You know, sometimes we just want it to go away and we can't. But the best of our ability, we are going to remove or that get in the way of our success and we will be proactive as opposed to reactive. This is pretty much how I've tried to lead my career and being proactive. Funding is always an issue. You want to be as proactive as possible to do preventative maintenance when you can, you know, buy the software when you can, all of those things. So funding does become kind of an issue um that can be a roadblock in this. Um but we don't want to be reactive. snow. Okay, we got to be reactive, but we tried to be as proactive as possible. Insightful. This was the one value I wasn't 100% sold on when the document was fine finalized, but boy has it really taught me a lesson or two. So, we have to appreciate there are two sides, sometimes three, four, and five sides to every story. But the most important thing and yes I'm using the clicker or the the laser Michael um we have to increase our perspective on issues. I don't want to do this. I do this has challenged me so many times but it's so important to get everyone's perspective to get as much information as we can. Going back to bold we will be decisive. We will make decisions, but we have got to know every side of the story to the best of our ability and seek perspective on issues. Everyone has an opinion. Everyone's voice should be heard. Now, granted, decision needs to be made, but there might be a little nugget in there that we're like, "Oh, I'm glad we we heard that to make some of the big decisions that we're making." We will recognize our potential and our

limitations. So, you know, it's hard to see our potential. It's hard for me to see my potential. I'm thankful for the leaders I've had along the way that have helped me in that area. But just as importantly, we know when it's, you know, we know I know that I will never be the chief financial officer for us. I just I it's not my thing. Um, we have to know when it's too big for us or it's too much for us. Um sometimes those limitations just we need to learn about it. We need to get a certification so we can do that. But we have to recognize both and that is where our leaders really come in handy to identify what that is for us or for the department as a whole. We'll be strategic in our thinking. We have to be strategic. We can't just plan out our day. We got to know that this decision affects that decision. this department affects that department. If we're just looking at what's in front of us, we're not moving forward. And we're going to be more reactive than we will be proactive. And having a clear direction and path for accomplishment. I think we need one as a city as a whole. Where are we going? What do we want to do? But we need one for the departments as well. So, it's important that your staff know this is what we're working towards. And sometimes I, you know, when I talk to my staff, it's like it it seems like a simple decision, but it's going to snowball and it's going to become this. And so it's important for us to know what that is and what that looks like. I'm getting there. See, caring. I hope no organization has a mission statement that does not have caring in it. It's my favorite. Um, we have to care about our people. We have to care

about what we do every day and every single person in this room has a service servant's heart otherwise we wouldn't we wouldn't be here. So to deliver meaningful goods services processes going back to processes we will strive to improve the quality of life for the people we lead in the community. This is actually something that's on my board in my room in my office. I mean, how can we make someone's life better? That should be our thought through all of it. We'll be compassionate and understanding in our personal interactions. These people aren't just doing a job. They have a life. We should be there for them. You know, sometimes it's like, okay, I mean, my office, there's going to be somebody in it all day long. Um, but personal understandings, letting people know you care about them and the work they do. work life balance. You guys have been amazingly supportive in that endeavor. It all matters because at the very very last statement, people are our greatest asset and we believe that. So we will always have an employee first mindset to the organization and not it's not just something we say, it's something we do because when my offer letter had that in there, we understand that people are our greatest asset. So, of course, we had to keep that in our new mission statement, mission, vision, and values. My first question was, tell me how how are they your greatest asset? And then it was followed by, I bet we can do better. So, that's what we will always strive for. We'll never arrive at it. We're always working on it, but that is what um the goal in mind is always going to be people. I love this. Rachel came up with this,

but don't just take my word for it. So, if any of you have ever been on Indeed, you know that the ratings are terrible. I mean, there might be one of the greatest companies you've ever heard of and they might have a rating of two. And so, this is from the City of Republic and our rating is a 4.6, which is crazy high. And number one, work life balance. Employees know we care about them. So just reading some of these, I mean, these are other people's words, um, you know, it all comes around the mission, vision, and values because it's important to us. And this year we're going to have a a a concentrated effort to communicate to get back to those basics which I know the staff are already doing, departments are already doing it, but just a concentrated effort to really revisit um what it means to the department, what it means as a city overall. And then this is a lot to read here, but my favorite part is right here. When employees asked how engaged they were, this is from a 2023 employee satisfaction survey. The last time we did it, 72% selected the top rating on engagement, while 24% were at the second highest. That's a total of 96%. That's unheard of. So if you Google right now what is the percentage of employee engagement globally you're going to see 20%. More nationally you're going to see 30 30 to 32%. 96% and I think that's only gone up to be honest with you. I think it's only gone up. So these were just a couple of

actual comments um from from different employees. And I love I I can't help it. I love seeing this. I've worked for four agencies, you know, and that Republic is different. When we interview candidates, it's like, I want to work here. I'm like, I bet you do cuz it's the greatest place to work. So, we're proud of it. And then I wanted to share a couple of photos that Chief Cells sent me. Just it's everywhere. It should be who we are. We're going to get our pictures up here. We're going to get our documents. um covered the building with it, but this is at the police department just as one other example. Any questions?

Yeah. So, since the adoption of this, what was the attrition rate before and the attrition rate for employees afterwards? Do you have those numbers?

It's amazing, Dan. Uh, you know, we've ebed and flowed over the years, but when I started, the turnover rate, and I will never forget it, was at 27%. And I thought, I didn't even know it could get that high. Um, now we just ended the year, Rachel, are we at 12? We ended the year at 12, which if you look at a government entity, um, if you're anywhere between really 11 and 13, so we're smack in the middle of that, it's a really solid turnover. You don't want zero, you know. Um, but it has about more than half decreased. Yeah.

Thank you. It it's ebed and flowed over the years, you know, anywhere from I think at one year we might have been 15, but we Yeah, we it's gone down considerably. Anything else?

Any additional questions? I don't have any questions, but I would like to make a statement. First of all, thank you so much for that wonderful presentation, and I really do appreciate bringing that back. You had touched on the history of it and gone back to 2017 and as a citizen I was sitting in the audience in 2017 and I still have the handout that everyone gave to us and I had folded it up put it in my pocket and I've even got the crease lines on it from holding it there. So I've had this with me since 2017 as I became a council member and kind of having that understanding of the mission vision values just I got to see it everywhere down through the halls and a lot of ways just in my own it did become something that I just got to see on the wall and then experience at city council meeting and then through this whole process of the understanding of of the constituents and then talking with council members and everyone I really felt like I took more of an ownership in it in the last couple years and it's been one of the biggest helps that I have had as a city council member and as a mayor. Um, whenever I'm dealing with someone that calls me on the phone and it's an uncomfortable conversation or I don't know what the conversation is going to be, I have the mission, vision, values in front of me as well. and it just helps keep me on on the same page as the rest of Republic and and certainly we have elections, we have different things to do. But coming up here with the work that the city does and getting to see that um it's always something that is very near and dear to my heart. And you had mentioned how people are always watching and listening and it's so very true especially in this role and even with the mission vision values. It's just one of the reasons I'm wearing a tie today because I get calls every time that we do something that's someone sees as as outside of that scope, whether it's a citizen, I get to hear about that, too. And so it this keeps me in check as well. And I'm not saying we all need to wear ties, but there's certain things that when they occur at city council meeting, I get to hear about them every time. And it goes back to that being professional, having those professional questions. and and so I really

appreciate you touching on that just not in professional appearance but in our questioning and our interactions with staff and I'm not lecturing anyone here so please don't feel like that just how I've taken ownership in our mission vision and values and the wonderful examples that you've shared with that as well and the other people that are watching as well as people within our region and and I love that regional is one of them because people in our region are paying attention whether it's the Otto whether it's people in Green County whether it's people at the state everyone everyone is paying attention and everyone knows who Republic is and it's been wonderful having this mission vision values in order to go back to. So, thank you to staff for bringing this back to city council so that everyone can have a chance to kind of get the definitions behind that too. That was a big part of that and something I still still to this day when I'm showing this to people deal with is the definition of what progressive means and what aggressive means and and the understanding of that in the context. So, thank you very much for for touching on that, Lisa. Having that clear path, too, is just something so instrumental in in all of this and making those decisions and myself that I don't have to reinvent the wheel every time I'm up here and every interaction I have. I've got the mission, vision, values that I can always lean back on, whether it's for comfort, relieving my anxiety, giving me that confidence to, you know, be the type of mayor I need to be as well. And so, I love to see staff using this. I love to see staff having this as, you know, their mission and taking ownership in this. That just a lot to me. So, does city council have anything else that they would like to add to our discussion on mission vision?

Mr. Mayor, Mr. Campbell,

I had to rob a a mic here, but um I believe Karen gave me this same thing that you have. I laminated it back when I was on PND and it it stood out to me um that a city would have some mission, vision and uh and values so clearly defined. And my challenge for everyone in the room is that in my professional and profess uh professional and personal life I have my own but I run these parallel with those and some cross each other but I would challenge everyone in the room or anyone that's listening to run these parallels with your own. If you don't have your own in your professional life or personal life get them use them for those guard rails. And I just it really stood out to me when I first joined this organization that that this is doable, that it's possible, and that it's in effect, and it's being lived every single day. So, thank you all for the ones that came before me to do that. Thank you, Mr. Campbell. Do we have anything else from city council? Last thing I want to touch on is the part about fun. That that's been something that as hard as this role gets, that's something I always have to lean back on is the fun, the gratitude, you know, finding the good in everything. And so I really appreciate fun being a part of that as well because I know um at least for me that's a huge part of doing this is I have to have fun and that's what gives me confidence on moving forward on a lot of things. So thank you for including that. Thank you Lisa for that wonderful presentation today. So our next topic for today on our workshop, we're moving on. We've got uh a data team presentation and discussion.

Hello, council and mayor.

Good afternoon. I'll just call you up here. You sit down here. Thank you. Thank you for being here today and thank you for letting me speak to uh what's going on with the data team. My name is Josh Jones. I'm the chief technology officer. And today we're going to give you an update on what the data team is, how we got here. And uh you may remember that you all reviewed and approved a budget in late 2024 that included funding for building this team and some software and some tools. Um early 2025, I did a workshop. I think a lot of you were here for that. So you kind of know some of the some of the things we'll talk about today, but we'll look at them again and then kind of redefine or bring back up to speed with where we're at today. I'm going to introduce you to my team who's here today to both Nick Bour and Aiden Commtock will speak on a couple of slides as well. So, I'm excited to let them uh introduce introduce themselves and show you what they've been up to. But, yeah, today is really about how we how we got here. Um where we are as a team and where we're going as a as a team. So, let's start with how we got here. What brought us here? I don't know if this story was shared in any of the present done previously. So, I'll share today. Um, David Cameron was part of a leadership group in Springfield that had routine talks, various leadership topics and themes. And one of them a couple years ago in 2024 was around AI when that topic really started ramping up. And he was challenged by an individual um with at least close to what this top quote here says. AI is a train. Jump on or you'll get hit by it. And that that struck a chord with him. It resonated. Um, so I was called to his office shortly after that and he asked me he he let me know about what had happened and

he asked me what can we do about it? Can you help me build a plan? Um, so I want to point out what really that triggered. Um, I don't believe in that moment and today David was responding out of fear to a to the word AI. I think he was made aware of a topic he hadn't been focused on and decided to become aware of it and plan for it and that's what he tasked me with and that's what the proposal that I responded with reflected it uh it wasn't a ba a buy a proposal it was a proposal to build an organization that can adapt to what's coming for technology in general so in that sense it's very much proactive and not a reactive proposal that you guys reviewed and approved so to rec recount a a little bit about the proposal. Um, I included a mission and vision for the proposal itself and it reflects a lot of what we heard Lisa talk about. Um, we have such a strong mission and vision and value statement that I wanted that to really drive what we were doing here as a team. And um, the mission statement was to maximize access to business information with aggressively progressive data and process standards. The vision was to create data unity, integrity, and accessibility that removes barriers to good business. Um, what really this does is identifies data and processes as where we start to improve, not going and buying an AI tool. Um, things like AI and automation and any other sort of optimizations we're looking for are only going to be as effective as the foundations of your technology and platforms you're utilizing. So, that's that's the focus here. And uh it was ultimately about modernizing our business, not just buying tools. So to break it down a little further, what you actually approved in that plan um and in that budget was a was first a team resources to work on these things. But that team was going to be an operating capacity with um team members

with capabilities that focus on building that strong data and software foundations. um the interconnectivity between all of our platforms and tools and centralizing our data, our business information, putting it in a single spot and uh making it more accessible and then making it in a very scalable fashion, something that we can grow with as we identify new goals and challenges. So the data team today um in the proposal you had like a one-page handout with some graphics that included that image you see there on I believe it's your right. um that shows a three-man team, a director, a coordinator, and a developer. Today, that's what we have after about a year of working towards that. Um I'm in the director role for this team, and we onboarded Nick Bour, our data engineer, who will talk in just a moment, um in July of last year. So, he's been working through projects and getting familiar for a while now. And then Aiden Comtock, who just joined us in December as the GIS coordinator, um has gotten a little bit of his seat underneath him as we're working together as a team, but we are excited to be fully staffed and ready to put some of these plan ideas in motion. So, so far what we've done in the in the little time we've been together as a team, we've um started with establishing partnerships. you know, our our abilities or our goals of inserting capabilities into the organization are going to be limited by our relationships with the staff. So, that's our priority is to let them know who we are, what we're doing, and why we're doing it. and then learn about who they are as a department, as a people, what they do and why they do it. So that we can open that chain of communication and maybe they'll start sharing with us their pain points, their their big goals so that we can tackle those items with our technology expertise and awareness um that we bring to the table. We have a lot of ERP projects. You've heard that

word a lot in various council meetings. Bob's brought it to the table providing updates where we're at with it. That's a long project. It started last year and it's we're still in the middle of it and it's got a ways to go. Our team is very much a critical part of maximizing the perceived benefits of the ERP upgrades. You can buy a tool but there's a there's an extent of how you can capture the benefit. Um and our our skills that we acquired with our team members are going to um be put to work with this ERP modernization effort and get the most out of that. Um again building scalable infrastructure. focused on making sure anything we do work on is something that is sustainable and can grow with us and is ready to um adapt with the needs of the departments. Delivering early wins just u kind of getting that practice and routine of working with staff. We want them to get comfortable with the feel of working with us that they can trust that when they ask us for something that back to them with the product with a result at least an iteration of that so that we kind of get a flow for how to operate with one another as a service department internally. And then lastly, um, one of the things we've been working on already is developing custom software applications. That's always a piece of what we are going to do because we're Republic. We're outside the box thinkers. We don't like to be held down by, you know, previous previously conceived limitations. Um, and the skills that we acquired with this team allow us to extend tools beyond what maybe they were advertised to do. And, uh, that's what we're going to continue trying to do as we get challenges and ideas brought to us. um some early feedback. I shared a printout of this presentation, so I won't read this, but it's in front of you if you would like to read it. We've worked with a few different part departments already, but this was a couple of examples of um since we've been here as a team, some people who have enjoyed working with us and some of the excitement they have about some of the things that's going on with our team and removing some of those barriers internally with our technology. So, uh,

we're excited that other people are excited as well. All right. So, now I'm going to give some examples or talk about those early focus areas more visually and my team will jump in on this part as well and um, speak to some of this, but I'll start with this first slide. It's kind of a messy graphic you're seeing. It's a something you've seen before in a conceptual in the original proposal. It's at a high level. It's a the idea behind it is pretty simple. We have a lot of systems and we're trying to make them interact cleanly. So, at the center of this graphic, you can see what's called our core ERP, the thing we've referred to multiple times. It's our um it's our core business operations and the software tools we use to to manage them. Around those that core ERP, you're seeing a lot of other icons. Um some of them represent the department specific tools used to complete their services. Um some of them are public facing tools, how we interact to receive whether it's licensing or um applications for businesses, any permits, you name it. Um and then there's a portion of this diagram that talks about integration automation and how it fits in between those that core ERP and that public and staff interface. Um so that ideal diagram where everything we we use every tool we have as a city um is taking shape in our current platform by leveraging those um integration automation tools you see there and then the core ERP we're establishing that integration now and it will kind of morph as we add more tools and make it further along as a data team. Um, the benefits of this is that we're removing data that lives in multiple places and centralizing it to a single spot. You see an item there that's called storage. The purpose is to get all of our critical business information into one place to make it more accessible, cleaner, and easier to report on. Um, we're automating actions

with the those integration tools I mentioned so that we can reduce staff load. And we're building live metrics that uh staff or the admin can use to report on or review our business metrics so that we can um make more informed decisions about resource management and investment and capabilities. The next slide I'm going to pass off and introduce Aiden Comtock. He is our UGIS coordinator. So I'm going to let him talk about this for a moment. All right. Um, hello everyone. My name is Aiden Commtock and I am the new coordinator for the city. Um, I was hired in December, uh, just last December 2025 after graduating from Northern Arizona University in last May. So, it's kind of my first job. Um I'm really excited to step into this role uh that helps facilitate GIS processes and tasks uh across the city while helping maintain um all that geospatial data that we have as well. Um and just a little bit you know GIS or GI geographic information systems is a very essential part of city operations uh day-to-day. Uh we and our department uses GIS in kind of two main ways. Um so the examples that we have on the slide here, the first one is going to be kind of like a individual problem solving maps. Uh that specific example is uh a an analysis of location analysis for the third fire station for the city that uh Nick Bour made before I was here. But that's a great example of kind of an individual problem getting solved uh in a geospace way. And then the second one's going to be that ongoing long-term uh data outlook. So that's going to be that second picture. Uh it's kind of a dashboard. It has some graphs and some pie charts and everything. Um and that's

just tracking permits across the city. So you know, those are the two main ways that we kind of use that uh to help uh other staff members across the city. Thank you.

Yep. Thank you, Aiden. I'm actually now going to hand it back to Nick, our our data engineer, and he's going to speak to some of the automation stuff we have going on.

Yeah. So, like uh Josh said, my name is Nick Bour and I serve as the uh senior data and GIS engineer. Uh my role focuses on building reliable enterprisegrade systems that help departments work more efficiently uh reduce risk and make better use of the city's data. That includes designing internal software uh creating automated data pipelines and establishing development practices that ensure that we build what we build is safe, stable, and maintainable. I've built similar systems in previous roles and served as a technical lead, helping establish best practices across the software development life cycle, including work that is currently being prepared for patent submission. At the end of the day, I just love solving complex problems. Um, and I love making solutions that uh create practical um or practical solutions that the staff can rely on every day. And so we're going to walk through a couple of the uh projects and approaches of how we apply this across automation, analytics, infrastructure, and operations. So with automation, our goal with automation is reducing repetitive manual work across city operations. The goal isn't automation for its own sake, but it's about saving staff time, reducing errors, and making processes more consistent and reliable. By using platforms we already license, we can let systems handle routine tasks so staff can focus on higher value work. Oh, got to use this clicker. So an example, one of the examples uh early on whenever I first got here was the parks payroll. Um so whenever I met with the parks department, I was asking them like what are some of the pain points? What are the some of the processes that

you do over and over again because those are the things that we can automate. And right away, uh, Jaden, she had a couple of things that she said take her for forever. So they were doing um with the payroll process having to manually go through each of the um like CSVs or like spreadsheets and uh they had to manually calculate over time move it to a new row subtract that from the last one and they had to do that for like hundreds of lines and maybe over like a thousand I don't know Chris

it's a lot um and she's saying that sometimes it took her like you know five to six hours uh of just like staring at the spreadsheet going through and that introduces errors as well. Uh any manual process introduces the risk of error uh because as humans we just are not perfect uh except for my wife. But um

so what I did is I went and sat down with Jaden. We went over exactly what they did, what she sent in, and uh through with that process, we were able to go back and create a script within I think it was like three hours. Um we created a script that just did it in a matter of minutes. Um so then they sent in, as you can see on that flowchart, uh basically they just email it. It goes in and it does all of those calculations and it also finds the errors, sends back two spreadsheets, one with the updated, one with the errors and they could just keep sending it back but while fixing it in the humanity software they did and then they send it back until it sends back no errors. And so it's able to show them exactly what was wrong um with each iteration. Uh just that helps with um proving that it was working and then also it makes you you know feels a lot better being able to see what the um script is doing rather than just getting a new spreadsheet. You don't know what it did. So the next one was with the sales tax reporting dashboard. Um so I worked with uh Jake and uh finance with this and basically what we needed to do was um just automate the process of and create a dashboard in PowerBI um that brought in the sales tax information and made it in a way that you could grab analytics from it and a very viewable medium. Um in so in Microsoft fabric we use the medallion architecture which is um standard for doing like reporting and things like that. And the reason I I mean I put it up there is just to show that we're doing best practices like this isn't some rag tag kind of you know

vibe code with chat GBT like we're following good practices that are based on principles within science and data science. And so um so we build those models, it sends it automatically to the reporting so that way finance and um some reports to like city council are accurate and they're easy to see. Um this way you're not just scrolling through spreadsheets and like trying to just look at numbers. You're able to actually see them and just filter them out super fast. So, one of the biggest things um that we've been working on a lot and so before uh those are a lot of like pipelines and there's a couple examples. We've done you know small ones here and there but those are for time sake um those are the only ones to do. I mean I like hearing myself talk but I don't want you guys to have to deal with that. Um so with the custom software solutions we sometimes whenever you're building an offtheshelf product or know whenever you're buying one it doesn't always do what you want it to do or sometimes it has way more than you actually need. So being able to build custom software ourselves uh it gives us the opportunity um to build it exactly the way that we want it and like need it. uh as well as letting us um avoid reoccurring licensing cost and being able to integrate it into our platforms and have it so we own the product if we switch from and we're we're doing this right now, you know, like we're moving into new ERPs and things like that, having to transfer data over and that's just like it's a mess if you have to keep doing over and over again. By creating our own custom software, we don't have to deal with that anymore because we have a centralized repository with our data. We

have our it's a since it's customuilt, we own it. So, we don't have to migrate over our data and move it over every 5 years or so. So, this is our uh basically our flagship product I would say right now with our custom software. Um, so it's the Rise system. It's a work order management system that's location aware and um it manages requests from the beginning to the end. Uh it ties to like real world things in the city and this is I mean it's a product that you wouldn't be able to get uh with specific location information within the city. That kind of custom product would just be yeah it would be very expensive to say the least. Uh what happened was basically how it how it started was um the parks and uh recreation department sent sent us over a couple of uh work order management software that they had been looking at for us to kind of review. And as we were looking at it, we just realized that I mean we could build the same, you know, build build things that was exactly what we needed like no more, no less. And so from that we started working with uh the parks department And we built a plan on how to make this uh work order management system that um yeah that just uses our existing uh GIS platform without having to add on any new licenses. And so it's saving us money every year because we're already using what we already had and just utilizing it in a different way. uh it's built to be to not be specific to one department but to be able to be adopted by any other department who wants to use it. So this year we have plans we've been working with the wastewater uh department and they will

be adopting it this year and it will be used for the new uh wastewater treatment plant. So the key capabilities of of Rise is it's one system that's centralized and um that you're able to keep and manage the work orders within it and then also makes the uh progress and um open work orders uh visible by any stakeholders who need to see it as you see in that video. Um, so it's creating this uh work order and it gets the location information immediately upon being placed. You don't need to fill anything out or like any drop down. When you place the point, it'll automatically know where it's at. You can add notes. You can uh do time entries to be able to tell how long a work order took. And then you can track the status from like unassigned and then you assign it to a worker and it triggers web hooks that automatically send out email notifications to all of the stakeholders and it will update based on the statuses based on different events with it. Um but it's uh it's basically just an all-in-one package of everything that you would need for a work order management system. Um and so with those tracking uh we are able to take a lot of insights from that. But uh so the enhancements that are in progress for rise is um adding schematics. Uh so all of the buildings in republic our goal is to have the full schematics of the buildings in the rise work order management system. So, as you can see in that picture, that's uh this building.

And so, whenever you go in and create a work order, you can place it directly on the asset that needs to be worked on. Instead of you describing it for a sync, you can place it on that sync. That sync will be everything that is uh tied to it as a work order will be in its history. So, if you click on that sync, you can see all of the work orders that have ever happened on it. And then you can look at each individual one, it automatically gets the location level down to the room number um just from placing it. And as you can see in the detail, if you look on that stall, you can see the hanger on the back of the door. And so we can get down to a really uh deep detailed what like uh point to where it's um a lot less typing and a lot less selecting. Uh so with that um so in the future we're um adding in uh cost tracking and prevent uh preventative maintenance uh scheduling for the tasks and being able to assign multiple assignees to a work order and I know it's a buzz word with AI uh but I mean if you know if you don't adopt and stuff I mean there's ways that we want to use it that will help a lot. So eventually we're going to be doing an AI agent that will basically look at the description of a work order whenever you place it and it will put it into its category that it belongs in automatically instead of somebody having to select all that. It'll they just type in what's wrong and it will automatically assign those categories. Um, and as we do this, the more work orders we get and the longer that rise is being used, the better it gets because that's when we are able to look at historical insights based on the type of work orders have been done, what things have been serviced a lot. We can

use machine learning algorithms to be able to see what need what uh could possibly need to be replaced based on the amount that it's being serviced and the type of equipment it is. There are a lot of different ways that we can use as we get more data. And so it's just building for the future of it. In the um you see in this flowchart that basically it works by placing a work order on SharePoint or in field maps for field workers and then it oh wait I can do that. Okay. So it goes from the um work order and then it moves it into the feature service. So uh the layer basically creates a a record in that layer and that triggers the notifications to be sent out by email and then it stores those in a Microsoft data versse table which is a fast lookup table which is into the um Microsoft fabric which is our central repository for data applications for analytics and for reporting and then it gets sent to the field crews based on who it's been assigned assigned to and that person will get a notification saying that they've been assigned a task. They open up their application and they're able to see the tasks that are assigned specifically to them as well as other tasks um that if it's unassigned they can go in and they can pick it up. Uh but there's a lot of different things uh that had it has capabilities of um it has bugs and enhancement uh reporting via Microsoft forms and so I mean it's a legit enterprisegrade level application. It's a application that I would feel comfortable selling.

Um, but we can't. I found out. And so, um, so, well, before I get to this part, I do want to give a a big shout out to Brad Stalls and, uh, Kennedy Means. uh they were really integral to me um to making that application because as as far as it goes I mean I'm not an expert in maintenance you know I'm not an expert in a lot of things it's if it's not for these people who are working with me or willing to work and um give me all the stuff and you know put up with my persistent questions and um I can't build things the right way if I don't have that information and that's where this team has been really good because I mean like we can't do it on our own. We have to work together with other people to be able to build it in the right way. Um so for uh all of this is made possible by the um the back end that people the the part people don't see. Um so we are really focusing on a scalable infrastructure that way no matter how much Republic grows we don't have to update our system. it will grow with the city with our infrastructure with the way everything's set up. um this is the way that you know more mature largecale organizations uh in the private sector as well this is how they build uh their infrastructure and this is how we're building ours um and so we're adopting things that uh like DevOps and CI/CD uh we're making it so our uh in RTS online which is one of our biggest platforms for GIS with a lot of our services that we offer for the city um on the website with our maps and Uh we set up the backup and recovery. So basically our services won't be down because we set it up. It's called a blue green deployment. Um it's whenever so if

one of our services got corrupted or went down, it automatically switches the other one in and so we won't have any downtime. Uh making changes that we make in our development environment, we're able to through scripts and stuff, we push it to our production environment without having any downtime. This ensures that our uh field workers and everyone else can still be using our applications without having um to stop for us to be able to deploy things and it makes it a lot easier for us because manual processes like I said before introduce errors. Um so having all of these things automated helps us to not have as many errors. Yeah. So, basically, um, we're doing a lot of stuff. It's really,

really neat stuff. That's my technical way of saying it. Um, no, it's I mean, there's been a lot of projects. There's a lot of things to do. Um, just from being here for a little bit, I definitely see the direction and I mean, we have a ton of potential, especially for setting things up the right way to where we can grow and we can do some really cool things that um, other people haven't done yet. And so, I think that just fits the the message of what I've seen from Republic. And yeah, we'll just keep going.

All right. Thank you, Nick. Um, we're going to continue a little bit longer here. Um, we got some more projects to talk about, examples of projects that are coming up, but um, that really spoke to the core elements of the things we're focusing on. Now, we're going to give you some specific examples um, before we close out. Some major projects coming up. The some of these are in the works. They have been for a while and we plan to roll them out soon. Um, they're just various examples. The first one is street closure applications. The city, as you might know, gets a lot of those from time to time, whether it's for construction purposes or events. Um, but there's a lot of people who need to know about those. Um, school systems, emergency management, and they need to be aware if it's going to impact their routes and services, and the city operates as the the entity who receives those requests, reviews them, coordinates with internal and external parties. Traditionally, that's done very manually. We're going to overhaul that, utilize GIScentric systems to receive those applications, streamline the review process with our staff, coordinate with those external resources, provide them all of the information that we get through that system, and then they're going to have the visual um tools to do a thorough review, and then make that awareness more clear to those third party resources. And all of that communication will be automated with these tools in a similar fashion. the way Nick pointed out, another project um that's in the works. This is one we've started in the last few months and it's still very much in the works, but it's in front of staff now and we have a little ways to go from some refining to get it where we want it to be. But basically, it is a project tracker for us as a city staff, as administration, things that we're prioritizing as department leads and as a city as a whole. Um this is a web tool that they can update their list of projects every week or two. Um just showing where they're at along the way, how much um time is left, what the risk level is, what the status is, what the

priority is. And it keeps everything a very high level so that when we meet every now and then as a leadership team, we can get an idea of what resources are being tied up and for how long that will be and what nature the projects are. um this as we finish up the staff version, we are going to make a council version and share that with you all so that you can have some insight into what's keeping our plates full and then what's ahead. Um there's some more changes that will coincide with the release of this. So, we're going to wait to time that appropriately, but you will be hearing from me as that finishes up. Another project that um I've been excited about for a while now, but knew that we needed the right team in place to build it out appropriately and sustainably is making more smart utility dashboards and reporting. We have a lot of good infrastructure for our utility. That data is critical to operations and um capturing that in a way that serves the administration so that they can do planning and investing is uh is very important. I realize that and I want to be a part of the solution with the team to get that tool in front of them. We have various ways right now to connect to our our wells, our lift stations, our treatment plant and then our customer water usage and billing information. Centralizing that and creating the relationships between those and putting it in in front of our administration for just a real time answer to all of those critical questions is one we'll be focusing on in the future. And actually, I'm gonna pause and bring Aiden back up one more time to talk about some more GIS functions. Right. Hello again. U this this is a project that I've talked about a little bit and with Chris Taber and this is a little bit more of like a collection of projects uh that we'll working on. Um so currently the community development

department uses many GIS functions on a weekly basis. However, they're looking to expand uh their how they use GIS improve their apps, create more efficient processes to maintain their data and just some of those projects are going to include upgrades to the permitron system which they all the time um and a change to the Republic project tracker map which is um that example that you see um in the picture. Uh that's a really really heavily used app uh especially by you know people in the city and the p and the public. But unfortunately that um service that it uses through RGis is kind of outdated. It's going offline. They're pretty much ending a lot of the support for it or if they haven't already. Um, so Chris uh and I are really looking to uh upgrade that and make sure that that uh stays active, it stays um updated and it uh is available to everyone uh to use and maybe make it look a little bit better, but you know, we'll see. Um and then they would like some new map layers as well. Um just some more stuff to help them out with their processes. Uh and and an improved map request process. Um and the main ones for those ones and then and then we have a bunch more projects uh as a department that we will be focusing on uh in the near future. Uh core ERP automations, new website and features, financial boards, perron upgrades which I talked about earlier, and then asset inventory and payment processing uh for GIS. all things that we have on our plate and are looking at right now. So, okay. So, that's wraps up the projects we have on our list that we're going to talk about and I'm going to close this

presentation out here shortly. But, um, what I want to talk about next is how this is going to look internally. Um, as a team, we're going to have a cyclical nature and how we approach our work. We're going to meet with departments routinely. We're going to do process and data and software evaluations with them. Like I mentioned earlier, we just we got to create that chain of communication. Let them let us into what they do, what their problems are, how they want to improve, and we're going to bring the technology expertise to accomplish those goals. And it's going to be iterative. We'll start with the with the the most return on investment items, things that serve the whole city the best. try to serve every department equally but really identify the priorities first and then come back around and do it again and exist in perpetuity in that fashion. Um so wrapping this up, what does this enable for a public? Why does this why did this proposal get invested in and how are we really going to see the benefit? Um, simply put, these efforts ideally bring an improved organizational performance and that should result in public value in the way of our services being improved. Um, the efficiency of it is not the goal. We've talked about that a lot um and the benefits of it, but I want to point out that the mission and vision that we read earlier really speaks more about capability. We're building a team that can support the organization to be more capable to provide good good services because of the platforms, the quick access to data. Um, but the efficiency is important. It's a it is an outcome of these efforts that results in faster processes, um, cleaner interactions between departments and more awareness of each other's um, information, less manual work for the staff, and fewer errors. As Nick mentioned a few times, the uh the result should make us be able to digest information requests faster, interpret those requests much better, communicate the results clearer, and act

quicker as a organization. And to close out here, this is a permanent capability. You all invested in this team and then the resulting changes to our processes and then our abilities. This wasn't a pilot project. This wasn't just a quick reaction to a to an AI scare word. was a it's a team built to be operational to make us better. Um it gives us clarity and our business information and makes us adaptable. It makes our data better so that we can make better decisions. And ultimately your investment ensured that we're not just reacting to what comes in the future, but we're building an organization that's ready for it. And with that, thank you for your time and I'll take any questions you have.

Thank you, Mr. Jones. We have any questions from city council? didn't sound like we have you had a great presentation. Uh really appreciate how you worked in the mission video. That was perfectly fitting to have that before, but yeah. Wonderful presentation, a lot of information, and I really appreciate that understanding of how that information relates to what we're looking at up here on C.

We don't have anything else from city council. Um oh, and I did also want to say welcome welcome to Republic to Nick and Aiden as well. A wonderful job today. So, I appreciate you being hereation to us. We're going to have a quick break, uh, bathroom break, whatever you need it for, a couple minutes, and then we will come back here for our last item on the agenda, which is our AMI update. So, at this time, we'll go ahead and take a short break.

Everyone's ready. Uh, we're ready to get started again, continue our workshop meeting. Our third item on our agenda for today is an AMI update. Do we have

our AMI? Who's giving our AMI update today? Eric Brown. Eric Brown. Mr. Brown. There he is. We're ready for you.

Afternoon.

Afternoon, Mr. Mayor, council, staff. I'm Eric Brown, operations manager for the public works. So, today we're going to go over AMI and uh AMI for water. So, last week you guys approved RFP to move forward with uh the installation of AMI cellular devices and meters. I think we had nine um RFPs and we selected one and we're about to roll that into construction phase get that going. So what we're going to do starting off with what is AMI both cellular and water meter. Water meter physically measures how much water a customer uses. Under AMI, meters older than 2016 are replaced with a new modern meter designed for long-term accuracy and reliability. Today, over half the city city's meters are read manually by staff and are older than 2016. We'll get into that a little deeper as we go forward. Um, cellular device will be installed on all the meters, about 8,000 plus meters in the city. Many remaining meters use an older radio technology that requires staff to drive and walk near uh each meter to collect reads through the imi. It'll be done just a push of a button at a computer. You no longer have the physical response to go out and check and read a meter. Um and then it tracks uh usage and frequent intervals throughout the day for leak detection. That'll be both on customer side and city side where where we choose to to apply that to and improve customer transparency.

Once it's fully uh built out there will be a website where customer can go on a portal and look and see their usage. I think you see that often with electric meters and stuff like that. Now we'll have the same capabilities once it's fully built out. Why? Why the AMI upgrade? This is to take care of what we have. Address aged infrastructure. Uh secure complete and accurate inventory. So a little bit of translation there. Anything an average meter is 15 to 20 years life expectancy. These these are going to be a digital electronic meter where we've had mechanical ones in the past. We will still have those any of them that are 10 years or younger. we're going to continue to use. They are compatible with our AMI cellular devices. Anything older than that will be replaced and um that will definitely improve accuracy and u uh reduce uh labor intensive amounts of physical work. Um streamline everything. U this supports the group keep keep up with the customer's growth by reducing operational cost of adding a new meter. Um it will improve efficiency all the way across the board both labor and financially. Uh improved billing uh will include removing delays caused by extrrenuous manual reading and corrections and validation. So what that translates to is um right now we read the meters. It may be they may be reading cycle one while they're putting out cycle two. We have two cycles. There may be a delay between the time we actually get the read and that the bill actually gets processed and sent out. That will be almost instantaneously. As soon as they're ready to start, they collect

them reads. These are live so it can be almost anytime. Um also anytime there's we we call them exceptions, corrections, and validations. Anytime there's a high read or a low read or something unusual, we have to physically go back out and look at that a second time. sometimes even a third time depending on how serious it is. Determine if it's if it's a real read or a mistake or if it's a got a water leak or anything like that. This will all be automated now. So, for example, their day will look different as a meter technician. They will come in and this meter contacted us, sent us a notification and said it's got flow for seven hour or 10 hours or whatever constant and hasn't stopped. It'll tell us that they possibly have a leak. Well, on the customer side, we we help them not have a leak that goes on for another 30 days before we read it, we're going to catch it now. So, also has other notifications such as uh freezing. Once it gets down to a certain temperature, instead of waiting till it freezes, customers out of service, or it even breaks, we'll get a notification that says, "Hey, I'm at 37 degrees." We'll go out and address that then before it freezes instead of after. There's there's all kinds of co uh notifications that they will get on a daily basis. Um if it loses communication, which it can communicate several times throughout the day, if it loses communication, we'll go out and diagnose it, fix the problem, and and move on. Uh so customer transparency, delivery, enhanced usage, um monitoring tools to the community, empowering personal usage, and custom or cost management. that that's what that applies to. They can actually get on, see what they're using, see where their you know uh their main use is during certain times. It it gives pretty detailed to

the minute uh usage and and flow. Uh cost-effective upgrade both meters and radios are key processes for effic again that all goes back to labor. Um accuracy accuracy is the biggest thing that will be accomplished through this uh full scale implementation provides greatest cost to benefit and approach and in the next page I'll I'll uh kind of share that with you guys. So here's a map and this is just kind of a an idea the greens and the reds. So the the reds are manual read meters. Um the greens are what we have existing right now being radio. Understand difference between a radio read and what we're going to radio read. They still have to physically go to it. They can be anywhere from standing on top of it to the end of the street and it'll read. Well, first thing this thing say this map says to me is we never fully got to capitalize even on the radio read. Um where I hope to have that whole thing changed to one color and that'll be all AMI within 12 months. And that is that is going to fully capitalize on the investment that we put into it. It also is going to upgrade our system uh the aging meters that are more than we we we chose 10 years to be the the changing point. So we can because the anything 2016 and newer is capable of AMI or radio depending on what device we put on it. So, we will utilize our initial investment because it's still good, but eventually it will go from a a completely manual system to a completely um digital. And and in these totals here, you got um we got about 8,000 meters. I think it's probably closer to 8,400 meters. We active meters is usually somewhere around, it fluctuates every month,

somewhere around 76 to 7,800 every month. Um, of those meters, a good 50% of them um are 2016 or older or uh manual reads that will be converted to they they'll get a new meter and uh I brought if anybody wants to see what the new meter is going to look like, I'll I'll set it out to display. This is what the meter itself is. And then all the meters are going to get this device is the AMI device. This is the cell phone that's calling and talking to it. And this is what you're going to see on your lid. Some places will have two holes. Some will have one. I'll set this out. If anybody wants to look or ask questions about it, it'll be that's just a common residential meter, which is, you know, probably well over 5,000 of them in our system. Uh obviously commercials are bigger and stuff like that. So any questions up to now guys?

Yes sir.

Uh mo most all apartments have one meter for multiple units. Yeah I can't really think of too many places. There is one one commercial unit that has a meter for every unit to be individualized, but as far as apartments go, it's usually one big meter for everything. Okay. Um, so this is just kind of an ideal project timeline for the 12 months. Um, obviously in the first month we're going to be kicking off communication with the selected DB uh utility that we've I think we even have a meeting this week kicking that off with Josh uh within the second month. We are going to do a pit survey. So I kind of want to focus on that for a second because what comes out of the pit survey is more than just what it sounds like. You all have heard about the lead and copper service line. We are fortunate enough that we are a noled system and we've gotten through that and completed it. But what EPA wants is all the documentation we can have to verify the lines. Well, in this process, we've got to identify size and meters and they come in lengths and stuff like that. We're going to be able to capitalize on that and it's just going to add to our inventory. So we'll be able to be able to if customer calls up and says do you have any idea what service line I have I might have that information available through them. So that we get more than that and uh obviously the survey is intended to go out and get an inventory of the commercial meters that need to be set so I can order them. While they're doing that we will go ahead and start doing residential and and while we wait on the inventory they come in different lengths. So if you have a 2 inch, it could be a a 13, a 17, a 19. We don't have that information available to us, but through this survey, we're going to get it. And it's it's part of their

process. So we're going to be doing a lot of GISing. Um they're going to GPS. If you look on our maps, uh the boys are always updating locations and stuff. It's going to update all our GPSing on our meters as well. That's all part of the there's quite a bit that comes out of that one particular um action. Uh and then we'll initiate um start doing installations and coordinate that with our contractor. Um and then the 3 to 10 month that's that's what that'll be. So we we figure to do it in a 12-month timeline is going to be roughly 3 to five uh routes per month. Um we will uh if we need more they can do more. If we need less they can do less based on inventory. Um in the 11th month, you know, we're going to finalize. We're going to work through any issues. We're going to check quality control the the whole nine yards and then close out within 12 months. Um I think that's a very reasonable timeline. As I originally dug into this, I I I didn't know if it was a 8,000 meters seemed like a lot and but after um visiting with all the contractors and seeing their abilities, I think I think the potential to get it done in less than 12 months is even possible. So, I'm flying through this. So, if you guys have any questions, feel free to ask away. Uh DB is the contractor we have chose. We are going to be working with them getting things and this is just some of their criteria. They they've installed a little more than 8,000 or 87,000 AMI meters uh nationwide. They they uh have experience with all brands and meters. We found that to be true as we work through their um RFP. the structured installation process with GPS in ver verification, photo

documentation and integration into the utility system. They they do a very extensive amount of that's one of the reasons we chose them be able to capitalize on all that inventory for GPS and then GIS and and just our infrastructure in general. Um uh rapid rapid moilization and scalable crews again that's what we talked about. They gave us an idea what it would take 12 months and they are capable of increasing that or to match whatever we are asking for and and that's been really promising and of course like any professional they're uniform trained safety focused field teams ensuring quality customer interactions. Uh they are definitely a professional in this field and this is their expertise. Um all right and the how uh this is this is kind of just a layout of how we think this is going to go. It's going to be by route development uh installations are completed and defined in routes allowing work to move sim simultane systematically excuse me across the city and minimizing disruption. uh dictation installation of crews. A dictated installation of crews contractors crews are assigned specifically to this project supported by coordination and oversight. So we we will um oversee this. There's a level of involvement that uh my staff will have to have, you know, broken meters, uh lids that come up. there's going to be some commercial upgrades that'll have to be done to to utilize those meters. So, we will be fully engaged with doing the outside of the installation uh to assist them. And then, of course, the contractors uh

existing meters are removed and documented and replaced with new meters and cellular radios using standardized procedures. Um that's pretty self-explanatory. And uh and then more importantly, the city it we're going to staff them, centralize them out of my one of my bays. That's where they'll pick up inventory. We supply inventory and everything. And then uh they'll have data entry and stuff. We've already uh set that up and got that as a plan to give them central location and work with our staff on communicating where they're going to be. and and that that comes up with customer communication notification access. So residents and businesses receive advanced notice with additional coordination for commercial and special access for locations. So we're going to I I visualize a public notification, but we're going to probably dial that in closer to routes as well. So, you know, they may I don't want to tell them we're doing route 12 and 13 and we don't get there for we will do that most likely through some utility billing. I think we visualize a some kind of a map on online through the website or something that will show where these crews are working. I also need to coordinate that with my team, not interfering with their cycle reads and stuff. So it won't be it'll be an ongoing task when it comes to the customer for the commercial side. We will physically contact every one of them. Downtime is not an option if it has to be after hours or or overnight or something to make that transition. It's really not a huge one. We will coordinate that with the contractor and we will do that directly as city staff will be maintaining all of that. And uh city processes and activations, newly installed meters are verified, entered

into the city system and activated by the city staff to ensure the accuracy and billing. So when they they install a meter, it's my understanding it's it's active and immediate right then. So this transition once we get through the software and stuff, get everything set up should be instantaneous. You know, it should be live and going immediately. I think that's very exciting from my standpoint. So, uh, targeted installation and pace is approximately 3 to five months per route, supporting full project completion within the planned timeline. And then the city staff will be the call center. It's my intentions to inform them and let them know the information they need so they can call. We're going to try to do the majority of the work during business hours so they always have a contact. Of course, we have after hours, you know, emergencies and stuff as well, but we are going to be the call center for this and theformational center for u trying to get this out and having people have a place to call and talk to. So, and finally, and I went through it pretty fast, so I don't know if that's good or bad, but uh the vision and benefits th this project reflects a strategic investment in the city's ability to manage water respons responsibly and effectively. Modern meters and real-time data improves system accuracy, reduce water loss, and brings aging infrastructure back within industry standards. Just as importantly, the program provides the commi community with better tools to view, understand, and manage their water use. Together, these improvements support informed decision making uh operational readiness for continued growth and water system

designed to serve the city reliably today and into the future. That's my presentation. Thank you, Mr. Brown. Uh, do we have any questions from city council? Mr. Gerky will have information about interrupt service.

The only time it would interrupt service is if we do a meter change out. Keep in mind, we're not doing all change outs. So, it's about half. I suspect it's a little more than that. more than half for a resident. It'll be off for a few minutes. We will definitely make contact on the door before we take it. Um commercial, if there's a meter change out, they will have disruption in service. You know, typically we're talking about a 10 to 20 minute window. It's it's very small window, but yes, there will be. And not all customers will see that. You know, a radio is just changing the device. They'll drill a hole in the lid. Um I've got that here like showed you. They'll drill a hole. None of that requires them to shut service off.

Thank you, Mr. Kirky. Mr. Neil, what powers those? They have a battery in them with a 20-year life. Yeah, great question. Thank you, Mr. Neil. You took the mayor's question. That was a good question. 20 years. 20 years. We're getting somewhere with 20-year batteries. I think they have a warranty on them that's pretty pretty extensive. Excellent. Excellent. Yeah. Yeah. I'm excited about this. I think about the history and and everything we've been through. It's pretty interesting.

Absolutely. Yeah. That's stepping into the modern age. That's pretty impressive when you can have that sort of data at your disposal. And for the customers as well and talking about leaks and identifying those leaks and being able to identify that before it becomes a 30-day water bill of a toilet running 247. So, especially those features and and how that's going to help the citizens. That's a I really appreciate you sharing all of that. Thank you. Any other additional questions from city council?

So, Eric, thank you very much. Great presentation. I really appreciate that. Appreciate everyone's presentations today. Mission, vision, values, the data team's presentation from all of that. That's a wonderful group of information. And the more it's shared to me about the SVJ article even recently, it's uh just truly impressive and it goes back to our mission, vision, and values, professionalism, and uh truly the work that staff here does for all of us and to help us as a city council and to help our citizens here in Republic. So, thank you very much. Thank you for everyone for being here today. Uh again, our first meeting and our new home. So, yeah, glad to be home. Thank you very much for everyone here today. Meeting is adjourned.