05-26-2020 Council Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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MINUTES OF THE ORONO CITY COUNCIL MEETING Monday, May 11, 2020 6:00 o’clock p.m. _____________________________________________________________________________________ Page 18 of 22 Johnson indicated it is not the City’s responsibility to make sure people read what they are sent. The City needs to brand themselves so people know where to get information, and the City needs to communicate to people how they are communicating with them. The City needs to have an article in the newsletter, front and center, about the City’s communication plan: where people can go to get information from the City. The City needs to advertise about where people should go to get information but is not responsible to make sure people read what is sent. If somebody calls in and says they did not hear anything about the huge increase, that’s when Staff says that it was put on Facebook, it was in the newsletter, there was a mailing, etc. Residents have to take some responsibility; the City cannot spoon-feed it to people. Seals agreed with Johnson that the City is not taking advantage of all of the avenues available. She would argue that $22,000 is more than enough to take care of the issue in this digital age. She indicated Staff would not get more money from the Council because they are cheap when it comes to that. When she ran for Council, she remembers telling Printup to do Facebook and do the paid posts which are pushed out to thousands of people for about $25. She said there are simple solutions, but people have to be willing to say what was done yesterday did not work, so how can we do it better with what we have. Johnson said it goes back to Rief tapping into the resources available on the City Council. Printup and Seals have ideas and experience. Rief should bring forward a plan and get feedback so everyone is in it together, so when complaints come in everyone is unified in saying, “We are doing everything we can.” Rief stated a couple of other things they are doing internally are weekly communications/emails from departments to Administration so they can have a discussion about it at their Tuesday Staff meetings. They will add bi-weekly communication meetings with Administration to their agenda, which is not something that was focused on before. They will work on a standardized form so there are not any misses regarding putting something in the newspaper and also in X, Y, and Z. He understands communications need to go through every avenue, but they want to standardize how that looks rather than a standard email. They have an email that is only for communications and all those emails go there. They will establish a protocol on how they answer phones. When people call in for a utility billing, they are going to figure out a way to work in questions like, “Would you like to sign up for more communications?” He said they had a conference call with Wayzata, who recently changed how they are doing their communications. They support a full-time person for communications; they have a lot of businesses and Chamber-related events. One good idea they had was a community survey on communications. Orono will look into how that works. Since it is an election year, they are looking at offering that as a kiosk or a business card. He noted there are rules around elections so they will need to work through that. They have emails captured, but they may be confined to one of the software programs related to Citizenserv. The emails are not getting over to the notification side so there is a disconnect, and it maybe could be worked on. They will work on different ideas over the next couple of weeks. Johnson asked if Rief could commit to a time period for the Council such as giving them a specific meeting date with the comment that he would have an outline of the communications. Rief agreed and said the meeting after Memorial Day he would commit to bringing forward an outline for all of their ideas for the Council’s input. Johnson suggested that it could be done at the Work Session. Rief said he would double check but felt it could be brought to the Work Session.