05-11-2016 Council Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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Newsletter: In past community surveys, the City’s newsletter has consistently ranked as a very effective communications tool. I believe we put out a quality product without overspending to achieve our objective. Cost to print six issues for the calendar year is budgeted at $12,000. Bulk mail postage adds $7,200 to that amount. Included in the budgeted figures, we also pay Kris Pechman, former city employee who has a business that prepares newsletters for other communities, $500 per issue to format the information. This brings the total out-of-pocket costs to $19,200 for six annual issues. Preparation of the newsletter is coordinated by City Staff. The writing assignments are determined by a committee that meets to discuss information to be included in each issue. Jessica Jagoe then oversees the production of articles and coordinates production with Kris. Jim Morelan does the final edit review before it is printed. If there are suggestions for improvements to content or the process, they should be discussed at the workshop. Electronic Bulletin Board: Vanessa VanAlstine is working on the development of our Electronic Message board (Information Center) in the lobby of City Hall. This board will contain pertinent information such as legal notices, meeting notices, agendas, and other noteworthy items to keep the walk-in public informed.” Comment on electronic bulletin board – at this point there is one bulletin board system feeding the cable channel (soon, if not already, to be both CenturyLink and Comcast) and the lobby monitor. The walk-in public will see the same content as runs on the cable channel between video programming. Once the system is more robustly populated, there is always the option of purchasing a second unit to have unique information streams to the different sources if that would be beneficial. The Tightrope Carousel system does have the ability to create slides from various RSS feeds, including Twitter. I’ll have to look into whether it supports Facebook as well. But there could be the potential to cross-post information from other sources directly to the electronic bulletin board. Public Improvement Communications: I believe our current practice in this regard has done an adequate job of keeping the public informed. Presently, we utilize neighborhood meetings to introduce the project. Depending on the sentiment of the neighborhood or the need for the project, we then move to the improvement hearing. Assuming the project is ordered, the City Engineer then typically has a 90% plan review meeting with affected property owners so they can review items such as tree impacts, grading changes, and the installation of rain water gardens. Then prior to the start of construction, he delivers a project information sheet to provide more details on timing of work,