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[Leming]: All right, welcome everybody to the... Welcome everybody to the Resident Services and Public Engagement Committee of March 13th, 2024. Clerk, can you please call the roll?
[SPEAKER_05]: Councilor Kelly? Present. Councilor Lazzaro? Present. Councilor Strunk-Kelly?
[Leming]: I don't see him on Zoom.
[SPEAKER_05]: Councilor Tseng? Present. Chair Leno? Present.
[Leming]: Yep, Councilor Scarpelli was at the previous meeting, but might be, oh, Justin Singh is, yep. All right, so we'll wait a little bit for Councilor Scarpelli, but I know he was at the previous meeting, so he should be here momentarily. The only discussion item on the agenda for tonight is 24-015 offered by Councilor Tseng, resolution to discuss modernizing council communications and outreach strategy. Do we have any presentations on the floor, Councilor Tseng?
[Tseng]: Thank you, Chair LeMing. I am going to go back to sharing the slides that I shared with everyone last meeting, just to reorient ourselves in this meeting. Give me one second as I set that up.
[Leming]: I'd like to say there is a motion in the previous meeting, which was passed for Council members to submit their ideas for modernizing City Council communications. Nobody submitted anything in the meantime, so just provide an update on that. In any case, feel free to go on with the presentation.
[Tseng]: Thank you. So I got a chance to sit down with communications director Smriti last week, walking through the ideas. And I think the summary of our meeting was that he's very, very supportive of the council taking up a lot of these most, if not all of these initiatives. He told me that he's worked in many municipalities and governments in the past. And it was strange to him that the legislative branch did not. the mayor's newsletter. He didn't have any communications of their own. And so he said he would be supportive of it that he would support us in, um in distributing as well. So he said, um, pending an approval from the chief of staff. He thinks it would be appropriate to, um, boost our monthly newsletters in the mayor's newsletter. Um newsletters as well to If we want to use the city's email list, he would help us get access to it. But he also suggested that we work on further developing our own email list. I know the clerk has one. And I think that's a good jumping off point, potentially, for the distribution of the newsletters. But going really quickly back, so the press releases slash monthly summaries is the main idea is I think it's the headline piece of the communications reform package, essentially to remind residents.
[Leming]: I'm sorry, one moment. We had Ms. Kaya said the sound is not working for the public in the chat on Zoom. Apologies. Okay.
[Tseng]: Just let us know when.
[SPEAKER_05]: I gotcha. Gotcha. All right.
[Leming]: Apologies continue. Councilor Tseng sorry for the interruption.
[Tseng]: Thank you. Um, so from last week's discussion and from my discussion with Steve, the, um. The monthly summaries basically would be created by a rotating group of Councilors who sign up for this duty. And I think it would be best if Chair Leming created the schedule of Councilors who were interested. And essentially each month, this committee at the beginning of our meeting, we would vote and approve a summary of that month's city council activities to go out to the public. So basically just a summary as some Councilors are already doing. Now, the reason why we have decided on the rotating structure is that a lot of our Councilors have individually started newsletters at some point. And because it gets to be a lot, we all kind of drop off after a few months. And sometimes we go back into it, but it's really difficult to sustain over a long period of time. And so we believe that creating the system where we have a duty to bring something in on a calendar system, but also something that's not too demanding on councillors is the best system, and I think the rotating system is that solution. So I would actually move. I have sent the text of these motions to the clerk, but on the newsletter item, and we can vote on these at the end of the meeting, but I would motion to start a city council newsletter to summarize important city council meetings and discussions, as well as inform the public as to upcoming meetings to be distributed prior to and approved at each meeting of the Committee on Resident Services and Public Engagement. Do we have a second on that motion?
[Leming]: Okay, on the motion of Councilor Tseng, seconded by Councilor Lazzaro, Councilor Callahan.
[Callahan]: Sorry, I do have a clarifying question. I just want to make sure we're talking about an email newsletter specifically, or do you mean more broadly the sense of a newsletter that could be email and other things as well?
[Tseng]: More and more broadly. And so the idea is this newsletter, this monthly newsletter slash summary, would be the kind of baseline for us to create short form videos informing residents on.
[Callahan]: I just didn't know whether when you said the word newsletter. No, that's a great clarifying question. That you meant the email part of it, or if you were talking more broadly.
[Tseng]: More broadly. OK. Sorry. That was a great question. Thank you so much. And yeah, and I would, there's a second motion that I think we would need to make. So I'd like to move for the chair of the committee on resident services and public engagement to create and distribute a sign up list slash sign up survey of Councilors who will rotate responsibilities in writing the city council newsletter and or making short form video summaries in collaboration with the Medford community media and to authorize the chair to create a calendar for these responsibilities.
[Callahan]: on the second, but also a question.
[Leming]: Yep. Councilor Callahan.
[Callahan]: Thank you. Um, so I I'm assuming that this, um, sort of voluntary sign up will be available to all because and not just those are this committee.
[Tseng]: Yes, that's the that's the intention. And we can add in language in the motion to clarify that. Um, I can email the clerk after I'm finished speaking. That's a good detail to pick up on. So that kind of speaks to, I'm going to go quickly to this slide, the idea of creating short form videos. We know that some residents, especially for younger residents, it's easier to engage with government in a visual form rather than in reading. And so creating a short form video, nothing more than a minute or two, that summarizes what we've written in the monthly summaries, I think would be really helpful, particularly for residents closer to my age. And I think it would be the algorithms on social media apps also do tend to promote this stuff, too. And so if we want this, if we want our contents to be going out to a wider audience rather than a limited audience, I think it would behoove us to create short form videos. I think at the same time, we talked to Kevin from Medford Community Media last week. He basically gave us the structure of how we would execute this. And so essentially what we do is, Councilors who are interested in doing this would create their own Medford Community Media accounts. they can go into the studios to record or record something at home and send it into To the Medford community media and they can post it on their website and have it run on the loop on public access TV Yeah, so that that's a short form video part I wanted to to talk about it real quick because that was in the last motion as well Now I would also like to On the idea of distribution, I think there's continuous work to be done on making sure this reaches the widest audience possible. We talked about that a lot last week, from using city email lists to developing our own, to creating social media accounts, to working with a senior center to put in their newsletter as well, to working with whatever forms of print media might arise. I wanted to create a cash haul motion to authorize the chair or a designee from this committee to work on that process continuously, to basically empower the chair or that designee to work on it. to work on creating those connections. And so I would like to move for the chair of the committee on resident services and public engagement and or his designee to work with our communications director and other city staff to distribute the city council newsletter and create an email list for the city council to use.
[Leming]: Do we have a second for that motion first? All right, thank you, Councilor Callahan.
[Callahan]: This is how we do it, if it comes to me for questions. No, it's great.
[Tseng]: No, the questions are really helpful, yeah.
[Callahan]: So it seems to me that in addition to an email, like having our own email list, specifically because of the laws around opt-in, that any list really should, if you want to have an email list, then you'll have to be opt-in. If we want for people to be able to get access to this information, they should be able to opt in. They should also be able to follow a social media account on their preferred social media platform. So I want you to reread that. But to me, that sounds a little vague. The language, I wasn't sure exactly what you meant by it. And I wonder if we can very specifically have something that's more talking about the creation of, um, followable distribution platforms, which would include things like an email list that people can opt into, um, a, uh, you know, an X account, a YouTube account, you know, blah, blah, blah, like accounts on those specific platforms.
[Tseng]: So I have a motion coming up that addresses that. I wanted to do this motion slightly before, but since you're talking about that already, I can go to this slide. On the topic of the email list, I've included that in this motion to create an email list.
[Callahan]: I'm sorry, what's the third motion?
[Tseng]: So the first motion is to create the newsletter. The second motion is to create a list of councillors who will rotate responsibilities. The third motion that I just read out is basically to work with city staff and the comms director to develop ways for outreach, for distribution. and to create an email list for us to use. And the best way to do that might actually just be working with the city clerk. But I think it'd be something that we should work on. That might take quite a while to set up. And so I think we should empower someone to work on that outside of a committee meeting.
[Callahan]: When you say that, it might take a while to set up.
[Tseng]: The email list, yes. On the topic of social media, because you brought that up, I think on the question of distribution, it's really important to find as many ways to distribute as possible. As you said, it's important for folks to be able to follow on their preferred networks. And so I think with that goal of distributing news in a more rapid manner, in a way that folks prefer, in a way that is more casual and accessible and widespread. I wanted our committee to discuss a little bit the creation of social media. Now, this is a little bit more complex, and so I wanted to get feedback from the committee first about it. I do see Steve has his hand raised and I want to give him, I would love to give him a chance to speak.
[Leming]: Absolutely, Mr. Smierti. Can you be unmuted?
[SPEAKER_03]: Hi, thanks for having me, Steve Smerdy, Communications Director. Yeah, I just wanted to, just to clarify, we can definitely, the city can definitely help with promotion of the newsletter or any other type of outreach you're doing. I think when I was talking to councilors saying, I just mentioned that I think the actual distribution though should be coming from the city council side. So if, whether that's the clerk or a designated member of the council that's sending out the communications, I think, I think that would be kind of a more effective use. Yeah, and then in terms of assisting just with, you know, any other types of if you want suggestions or insights or help setting up accounts, things like that, then obviously more than happy to help.
[Tseng]: Councilor Tseng. Thank you so much, Steve. Thank you for clarifying. I think what I meant was just more for, you know, like the mayor's newsletter does link often to other newsletters. I think that's what I was more referring to, and Steve can nod if that's possible. He gave us a thumbs up. So something like that, maybe putting in when we have something really important, putting in a few points for us. But we did talk and he did think keeping the independence of the city council is important. And so having us develop our own systems for distribution will be really important as well.
[Leming]: We only have one person raising their hand at the moment, so Ms. Kaya, would you prefer to speak? And then Councilor Bizarro.
[Patty Caya]: This is Patty Kaya, One Monument Street, and I'm sorry if this isn't the appropriate time in the meeting. I apologize, I don't know the protocol. But I do have a question and also a comment. So I think my comment is this is a great idea. It's great to improve constituent communication and to reach constituents where they live in terms of demographics. Young people prefer certain mediums that older constituents might appreciate the newsletter. So I think that's a great mix and I appreciate the initiative to improve and expand communication. But I do have one concern and it might be a question for the communication director with the city. I would like as a constituent to understand the boundaries of official communication And is there any policing of what constitutes official communication? Because I'm concerned that this type of informal communication could easily go from simple fact-based reporting of events that have occurred and will occur in the future, opportunities for constituent participation. I'm concerned about spin, just to be quite honest with you, that this could easily devolve into furthering each or any one of your sort of political platforms. And so that's why I'd like to understand better what the mechanisms are so that official communication is one thing in the world, and then your personal opinions is something else, and how you represent it to the public, kind of that dividing line matters. So I don't, I know it's a big question, but I'm, I would like to understand it better. Thank you.
[Leming]: Mr. Smearty.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, thanks, Patty. I guess are you kind of, are you just talking about how you kind of differentiate between official government communications and then like campaign communications? Because I guess if that's... I think that's a good question, yes. Yeah. I mean, there is a body, I think, or a an agency that kind of is the one that oversees, you know, whenever you kind of use your government. What's the word for it? Just like whenever you're in a government setting and you're campaigning when you shouldn't be. I forget exactly what agency that is, but. Generally, that is something that is self-policed. And I know, obviously, from the communications that we put out, the mayor has her own official government social media platforms, the newsletter, the website. That's all her government page. And as a government employee, obviously, I don't put out campaign communications. This is not my job. And that would be against the law, obviously. So I just don't think that whatever is being put out on the city council side is right. I mean, you're correct. It cannot be anything that's campaign related, but I don't. I don't see that, I guess, as a, as an issue so much is because that's kind of how. You know, everyone understands, I guess, the ethical component of that. And they're going to be putting out kind of their government work. And then I assume their campaign things will be supported on their campaign pages. know that answers the question. I know it's a little complicated. And I don't exactly have the mechanism for which that's kind of that oversight happens. But just in my experience, people tend to abide by that rule, because you can, it's definitely unethical. And I think legal, I didn't get fined, I don't I don't exactly know what what happens, but something that's very strict. So
[Leming]: Yeah, sorry, there's two at the moment, but Ms. Kea, did you have a follow-up that you wanted to add to that? You raised your hand again. Not sure if that clarified the question for you.
[Callahan]: Just I was going to answer the question.
[Leming]: Yeah, I was going to help answer.
[Patty Caya]: So yeah, I wouldn't mind if you could give me just another second to clarify. I'm actually not talking about pure campaigning. I'm actually trying to understand better how in this forum that you're suggesting, how you enforce news versus propagating an opinion about, like, I'll give you an example because I'm obviously doing a very poor job of explaining this. So, for example, I attended last night's meeting. which I thought was a massacre, no matter what side of the issues you were on. So the first thing that came to mind when I heard this proposal was, huh, so how would members of the city council characterize the work that was done last night if they were using all of these very informal social media channels, for example?
[Leming]: I know that Councilor Lazzaro was first, but Councilor Tseng if you could answer if you want to provide an answer to the question, I would like to answer.
[Tseng]: I saw that Steve had his hand briefly raised if he if he wants to speak to that first, that would be helpful.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I mean, look, I don't want to I don't want to talk for city council members, but I know, you know, in terms of the mayor's communications, like, I mean, the mayor is going to put out her own opinion on policy. That's kind of like that's what she'll do. And I think that's her prerogative as an elected official. So I I'm not exactly sure, I guess, then what what your question is kind of referring to, just because I think as elected officials, you're going to be in a position to advocate for your stance. And that is a government, it's part of your government job. So that's, I guess, my answer to that.
[Leming]: Councilor Lazzaro.
[Lazzaro]: So every elected official has an obligation to tell their constituents what they're working on, and we have been kind of remiss in not carrying out that part of our job thus far. So what I would say about what happened last night is we voted on, so for example, about the real estate transfer fee. I would say last night at the meeting, we heard public comment and we voted to send the real estate transfer fee to the planning and permitting committee. which is what happened. If that's what we, like, if that's the information that we were sharing in the newsletter, that's how I would present it. But every government, every elected government official is sharing information with their constituents about what work they're performing. And constituents can be in favor of that work or not in favor of it in the same way that we would share information about like the vote to, in favor of a ceasefire, that then we shared a letter that we sent to our federal delegation that was then shared with President Biden. We would just share it as like, this is what we voted on and this is what was passed. And these were the other things that happened during the meeting. We would just, I think that's how it would go. And one of the reasons why we would have a rotating group of I'm Councilors participating in this is so that it wouldn't really be editorialized, but it's not. It's not really something that you can editorialize. Just kind of going through what we're what we're doing and how the votes went. If that clarifies things.
[SPEAKER_05]: That's what I'm saying.
[Tseng]: I think Councilor Lazzaro put it really well. The vision of this is just to say, we voted on this item, this is how that vote went, and link to that item as well. And occasionally, if we're just doing a release about one agenda item, posting the text of that resolution as well. We did, I spent quite a lot of time thinking about how we could make this as official and as not politicized as possible. And that, as Councilor Lazzaro referred to, that is the idea of having this rotate amongst a lot of different councilors to have that switch, and also to make sure that we are approving them as a committee together. Now, Councilor Scarpelli is usually here. He doesn't really miss any of these meetings. I, you know, there's a reason, I mean, there's a reason why he's on this committee in the first place, but there's also a reason why, why I wanted to have this committee approve it, right? Because him and I, we don't usually vote the same or we vote the same way half of the time, but we have our major disagreements. And I want to make sure that he feels comfortable with those press releases that we're sending out as well. And so that's the idea of having it approved by a body of five people first. Councilor Callahan.
[Callahan]: Thank you. I agree with both of y'all. And I just wanted to add that I'm probably even more excited to put into the newsletter things that are upcoming than things that already passed, because that allows for people in the community to participate in the decisions to be involved in engaging in democracy. So those are difficult to spin. We simply just state what is coming up and what is going to be on the agenda. And that way, people will know when to come if they want to speak out about something. Thanks.
[Leming]: Councilor Lazzaro.
[Lazzaro]: One of the, I think one of the most important things that came out of the meeting last night to me was that a lot of people were uncertain about what was being discussed and there had been a lot of misinformation and rumors that had been going around misleading people and a lot of people were here because they were angry about something that was not true. was not true information about what we were going to be talking about, that I learned from talking to people after the meeting. I think we could have avoided that if we had been already implementing something like this kind of system. If we had already had stuff on social media that was clarifying the stuff, we could have headed off some of those misinterpretations of what we had been trying to do. So I'm really excited for this kind of process to avoid situations like that in the future. I also think that the short video format will be really good for that. It'll catch people's attention and it'll be able to clarify things really quickly as you're like scrolling through and it's part of your day. Not everybody has like a big chunk of time to devote to learning about what's going on in city council or what's coming up in city council. that is going to apply to their life, but they might have 30 seconds to see, oh, there's gonna be a discussion that's really important to me coming up. I'd like to be at that meeting. And if it doesn't apply to them, or if it's something they already like the idea of, and they sort of trust us to go ahead, then they know about that too. So I think all of these things are really important going forward, and it's just gonna help us all work together to make sure that we're doing things work for the most people possible.
[Leming]: I guess just to offer my own point of view on the question, as part of my campaign website and whatnot, I maintain a blog and a newsletter myself, and that's just pretty much the form where I say whatever's on my mind is directly as informal as possible. But there is a distinction between that and something coming out of an official government body, in my view. I personally would see the newsletter as just straight up facts about what is actually being discussed in City Council, what we're doing, what we're voting on, what we have voted on. And I think that if if we were voting on something that were coming out of my personal campaign website that there would obviously be a lot of disagreements on that. But if we're as a city council voting on something that is just supposed to be very fact based, then that's everybody can agree on, you know what we're discussing and what we're doing. So it's really just the goal would really just to be keeping keeping people informed of current activities. Councilor Callahan.
[Callahan]: Thank you. Um, so I assume this is because I only had four hours of sleep, although it could also be because you only had four hours of sleep when you wrote these. But I didn't fully understand the first three motions. And if it's okay with you, because, hey, we're in a body where words matter, do you mind reading those slowly? And I think I will probably make slight amendments just to the wording to make sure that that wording is easily understood by everybody. Is that okay? One at a time.
[Leming]: Great. Yeah, yeah. A motion of Councilor Callahan to have Justin Tseng read all the motions.
[Tseng]: So I'd be happy to read them without emotion. So the very first one is the motion to start a city council newsletter to summarize important city council meetings and discussions, as well as inform the public as the upcoming meetings to be distributed prior to and approved at each. I should amend this to say to be distributed to committee members prior to and approved at each meeting of the committee on resident services and public engagement.
[Callahan]: The only thing for me is the word newsletter to me, it means email newsletter. So I wonder if we can call it a communications plan or communications or I'm not sure. I don't know if there's a better word and if everybody else thinks it's fine, that's fine with me. But like I was confused when I really thought you meant an email newsletter.
[Tseng]: I defer to my colleagues.
[Leming]: I personally think newsletter is the best, the best description for that kind of thing.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[Leming]: Cause well, I feel like people that are more like certain generations would understand a newsletter is like an email older generations might understand the newsletter and it's more original, like physical things. It could be. I think that's pretty much the clearest word we're going to get out of this multi platform.
[Callahan]: That just, that just feels like it. I think that's difficult because... If you guys understand it, that's fine. To me, it meant something different from what you meant.
[Leming]: I get what you're saying. I definitely understand what you're saying. It's just that it's one of those things where I feel like attempts to come up with another word would just make it a bit more muddled. That's just me, though, personally.
[Tseng]: I think with multi-platform in particular, I see this written newsletter as the basis of everything else. And so if we say multi-platform, we might fall into the space of we don't know if we would have to keep voting on every single video that we send out.
[Callahan]: What if we say monthly newsletter content?
[Tseng]: Newsletter content. Yeah. Yeah, I'd be happy with that. Yeah, and we can we can decide at a further time what exactly to call it if we want but no, I just Only because it meant something different to me than what you meant. That's the only reason so thank you I think this is something that we can uh, we can just say newsletter content for now and then at our upcoming meeting where we do I assume we'll have
[Callahan]: and when we will have perhaps left a little bit more.
[Tseng]: Yes. Yeah. Well, well, with the with with the plumbing meeting next month, I'm assuming that we'll have one draft on our desks. And at that point, we can we can workshop it.
[Callahan]: Yeah, I didn't realize.
[Tseng]: No, no, it's a great point. The second motion was a motion for the chair of the committee on resident services and public engagement to create and distribute a sign-up lists of, I guess, instead of sign-up lists, maybe sign-up form, sign-up form of councillors who wish to rotate responsibilities in writing the city council newsletter content and or making short form videos, summaries in collaboration with Medford Community Media and to authorize the chair to create a calendar for these responsibilities.
[Callahan]: As long as it specifically includes any city councilor, not just this Okay, I'll make sure that yeah, beautiful. Thank you. Love it.
[Tseng]: Just give me a second. I think the best way to do that would be to say to create and distribute a sign up form. Create a sign up form and distribute to city councilors to all city councilors who wish to rotate responsibilities. Yes, yeah. I'm also going to resend this in a new email to you.
[Leming]: Did you get the original email? I got the original.
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm already pasting it in the report. So it's going to be easy for me to type in just the individual edits. All right. The second motion should be that we open the email to not just your member.
[Callahan]: Beautiful. Great. Beautiful. And so it is.
[Tseng]: great. And then the third motion you asked me to read out was a motion for the chair of the Committee on Resident Services and Public Engagement and or his designee to work with our communications director and other city staff to distribute the City Council newsletter content and to create an email list for the City Council to use. Perfect.
[Callahan]: Love it. Thank you.
[Tseng]: Just adding the word content.
[Callahan]: That does it.
[Leming]: I think at this point... I just had a question. This could be something that Steve can answer, but in terms of getting the email list, what would... Is there any... I understand we just talked about opt-in laws. Maybe this was covered earlier on in the meeting, but where would we get the emails from? Would we be like... Yeah, Councilor Callahan, the clerk.
[Callahan]: Oh, I was just going to say like, you know, if the mayor helps distribute or any of these other email lists agrees, then what they do is they don't just distribute our content as if it's theirs. They say, you know, sign up here, like here's the content sign up here. And that gives everyone on their list the opportunity to opt in.
[Tseng]: And if, if I might jump in quickly, I, for my conversations with Steve, it seemed like that was actually the main thing that he could do in helping us is, um, like what they do with other departments and their newsletters put in a link on the newsletter saying here's a new city council newsletter sign up.
[Hurtubise]: Just to provide a little context for what we do in the clerk's office with council meeting agendas and committee agendas. We, as a matter of course, in addition to physically posting it in the office and then posting it on the website, as a matter of course, we send it to an email distribution list, which includes all users in the city of Medford. email system, and then there is an opt-in that's been created over the last several years. There's a lot more opt-ins than there are opt-outs because everything has to be, I can't just blindly send somebody a newsletter, they have to opt-in for it. Even if that's the council agenda and it's an official communication, they still need to opt-in for it. So we sort of have a rather clumsily curated email list that gets copied and pasted into an email that goes out every time we distribute a council agenda or a committee agenda. But the important part that I'm taking a long time to get to is that it's entirely an opt-in system for the Medford residents and other constituents who want to see those agendas. If I may?
[Leming]: Sorry, I just saw that Steve had his hand raised on Zoom.
[Tseng]: Oh, Councilor Tseng. So on the clerk's point, I think that's a great basis for us to go off of. It may be something that we can do as a committee is find ways to publicize the opt-in and to really do some work into building that email list up. I think the clerks work really hard to get the list to where it is right now, but we all have our personal networks as well. Our own constituents who reach out to us and want to learn more and if we if we can point them to that direction say Here's a link to opt into this list And we're gonna start posting newsletters on that list then that might be it Put it in your email signature Steve
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, no I was gonna add to in addition to adding it to the news to the mayor's newsletter. We can also obviously add just a direct sign up link on the city council page. I don't know if you've ever went to our alerts page but that's, we usually try to plug that pretty periodically for sign ups, and then it allows people to go directly into our like or newsletter platform to sign up. I'm not entirely sure. I don't remember if Councilor Tseng mentioned the platform that you wanted to use for this system. We use Constant Contacts as well as other departments, I think Health Department and PDS do as well. And that's been really effective for us getting signups. It's a pretty easy system to use also to create. So that would be my recommendation. I also was not aware of the sign up for the email for the agenda. I was just curious how that works. How do residents sign up for that?
[Hurtubise]: Clark, yeah. I should also add that before we started this new software, Steve and Emma in the communications office actually would help us because they would be the ones posting it to the website when it needed to get posted. I mean, they've always been sort of involved in this when we send them agendas. I mean, they're right away, you know, posting it within, you know, five, ten minutes of getting an email. Steve, in terms of the In terms of the opt-in email, what happens is it's sort of really analog. People call us. They stop in the office. They send us emails and say, how do I get on the city council agenda list? And they only have one option. They're either on the list or they're not on the list. In other words, I don't have a separate list for committee meetings. I don't have a separate list for council agendas. I don't have a separate list for the monthly meetings that the president and vice president set out when they set out the proposed monthly schedule. it's all the same list. So once you're on that list, you're on that list until you're off that list.
[SPEAKER_03]: Gotcha. No, I, for some reason, assumed it was like an actual... They were able to sign up online or something like that, or through an email system. Yeah, but I didn't realize... Yeah.
[Hurtubise]: I wish I was that smart.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right. Yeah. But yeah, anyway, that's definitely something that we would be we could do to help get more signups is just promoted obviously across our platforms and the city platforms, and as well as on the website for the city council. We also briefly discussed revamping portions of the website to, to better fit the needs of the council.
[Tseng]: Councilor Tseng. Thank you so much, Steve. That's really helpful, and that would be excellent. I had a question about constant contacts. Is there a subscription fee that the city has already signed up to that we could create an account with, or would we have to subscribe separately as a city council? Would you know the details about that?
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know. There's definitely a fee for that. I don't know how many accounts we have under our subscription. We may have already met that threshold. I just don't know for sure. Because like I said, we do have a few departments already utilizing that. Um, that is a fee. I think, I don't know though, if like MailChimp may not have a fee or there may be other ones that are, are free to use, but I can definitely look into, um, if you can get a account under constant contacts.
[Tseng]: Thank you so much. So I think these are all questions to keep considering. I mean, I think we already have something to build off of, so we can use that for now. I believe the second motion that I introduced would empower Matt or Matt's, Chair Leming or Chair Leming's designated work, keep working with Steve and Adam to work out if we can get on an official platform or if there's a better way to build out. I think a lot of this future action is already there's already a motion for it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I just if I could add one thing to I also think you need to kind of develop a policy around your social media. So just so you know how your accounts work and how who has access and things like that, because obviously you don't want to kind of leave yourself victims anything. So I would definitely recommend setting some sort of policy in place before you kind of launch these things.
[Leming]: the social media accounts would all be maintained through the clerks up as I imagine.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, well, I was just thinking like Facebook, for example, I think like you need a personal Facebook account to set up like a, a page. So you just have to take that into consideration as well.
[Tseng]: Right. Councilor say, I think that's a good segue into the social media conversation. And so I guess I, I had two big questions for the my other Councilors here tonight, the first one being which platforms we should set up. I've heard. I've heard people say Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, YouTube. We could do all of them and assign different ones to different Councilors, maybe have one Councilor take up more than one and work with the clerk to maintain it. We can talk about the policy part later, but I think the first thing is to decide which platforms we think are worth using. I think the second thing to decide is, what does that policy look like? And I guess if it would be helpful for the council, we could motion for me to draft the policy for social media and then come back next meeting and then create the social media accounts at the next meeting. That could be possible. But if the committee prefers creating an account now and then just to set up an account now, I think that also works.
[Leming]: Yeah, I do like just just kind of something that's on my mind while we're talking about that. I do feel like we do need to treat each social media platform as sort of an environment in itself. So there's plenty of precedent for having city council type pages on like Facebook, for instance, but I feel like. reddit is kind of a different environment for that sort of a thing it's where a lot of people get their information but like an official reddit posting it yeah it is definitely like the specific policy is definitely up for discussion uh councillor i thought you were first okay councillor callahan um if we really want for this to get to as many people as possible um i suspect that we need to
[Callahan]: really make an effort to be on all of those platforms, because that's kind of the point, is that each platform has its own subset of people that actually check that platform and prefer that platform to other things. I think we should not neglect to at least consider texting, WhatsApp, discourse. These are things, so especially like texting and WhatsApp are used by a lot of less affluent immigrant communities. And so if we don't even discuss them, and I understand that texting probably would cost us money, but if we don't at least consider those, I think that we are sort of blocking off certain people to engagement and specifically people who tend to be the least engaged. So I would love for us to consider those as well.
[Leming]: I definitely agree with that. I just with with each platform, I think that it would be good to have a specific strategy in mind to look at what other folks have done for that, because with what's that we would need a way to get lots of different phone numbers for that, which may not have a moment. That is pretty that could be a very intensive process. But I definitely hear your point about different communities and, um, what? Not using these different social media platforms. Councilor Lazzaro.
[Lazzaro]: I would agree. I like where your head's at. In the same way that we would want to have hard copies for people that aren't connected, we need to be thinking in a progressive way about folks that are connected in a different way. I just would want to say that if our content is going to be functionally similar and start with the newsletter content, I think maybe this meeting is gonna have to like top off with the newsletter and then we should come back to social media next time.
[Leming]: Mr. Smearty.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I mean, I don't want to get like too into the weeds. So you can stop me definitely if you don't need to talk about this. But I would just, I would also, you know, it might be helpful if you put out some sort of survey to your constituencies, and then see where they consume their news and their information on what platforms. So you can really identify where you want your messaging to go, or at least where the predominant amount of your messaging to go. Because I agree, it'd be great to do texting, but you just want to make sure that you have people that are utilizing that and getting information that way, because you don't want to overextend your bandwidth either, or your workflow. Um, sorry, I was gonna say one other thing too. Oh yeah, I would definitely also, again, this is all for your planning purposes, but I would definitely set up a calendar, like a social calendar so you know, so you have enough content to fill all your platforms and that you don't kind of have a drop off in content, because then you're going to lose followers or lose likes and things like that. And you want to maintain all of those different platforms so people know that they can rely on that. So that was my input.
[Tseng]: Thank you so much, Steve. I think that that's really helpful. And the idea I think it's really good. I think, in general, I also agree. I think Councilor Callahan brought up a great point about the texting and WhatsApp. I would love for us to do everything, but I think we should talk about bandwidth as well, and I think that is something for us to think about over the next few weeks. I'd be happy to pick up the social media conversation at the next meeting, and maybe in the meantime, either one of us could create a survey and post it representing the committee, and we could have a motion for that, or we could just not have a motion, just have one of us create a survey, not representing the committee, but just surveying people's media usage. I don't know if there's a preferred path. I think one of us would post it on Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, Instagram.
[Leming]: I feel like a survey would be kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
[Tseng]: That's a thing. Yeah. Right. I did think that, yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: So maybe you don't do the survey.
[Tseng]: maybe we think about it over the next few weeks. But I think in the meantime, it might behoove us, in order to speed things up a little bit, for one of us, I can do it, to create social media guidelines, like a policy, for us to walk into these apps with. I'll give them a sec. I'd like to make a motion on the social media thing then. Yes, I'd like to motion for this committee to, do you want me to do it?
[Lazzaro]: I feel like Councilor Tseng is taking on a lot of responsibility for these tasks, and I feel like it's a little unevenly distributed. Would you like to not have to do a direct social media policy, and maybe I could do it, and just put something together that we could review as a committee next time? I'd be happy to. So I'll motion that I can draft a social media policy for the committee to review at our next meeting.
[Leming]: On the motion, do we have a second? Seconded by Councilor Tseng.
[Lazzaro]: Settle down.
[Tseng]: I'm so grateful. I'm so grateful. I just don't want, you know, it's such a project that I've been working on that I don't want to put work on you guys that you don't want to do, but I'm so happy. I'm very, very happy for people to take things on my desk. Didn't we want to lump all these together? Yeah. Okay, yeah, I think that makes sense. Or we can voice vote. I just want to quickly go to, if you'll let me, just the last few slides, because I have some ideas about how to proceed with those ideas, but I don't think we should necessarily move on everything tonight. And so actually, this one I did actually. No, no, no, no, just ideas to discuss. Um, but this one I do actually have a motion for. So I, um, I've talked about this very briefly at the last meeting, and I didn't really have time to go into depth about it. Before the last budget as a person like as a Councilor myself, I put out a survey for feedback about what people would like to see in our budget. Um, And I posted it on all the social media, sent it out to email lists, asked other Councilors to help distribute it for me. And it got a lot of responses. It might have gotten 300, 400 responses. And there was a lot of great feedback in that survey. I would love if this committee would to do that. So instead of doing it as an individual Councilor, doing it as a public engagement committee, I think that would be really powerful and impactful. And we can, as in that case, as Councilors, we can all distribute that information to all of our lists, and we would all be empowered to. I would, I'd love for us to talk about this, but I would like to motion for me to present a draft of a budget input survey at our next meeting. Do we have a second?
[Leming]: The motion of Councilor Tseng, seconded by Councilor Lazzaro.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yes. How many motions do we have?
[Tseng]: Yeah, it should be five. Yeah.
[Leming]: We don't have to do a roll call, by the way. Yeah, we can just move to join and approve. Councilor Callahan.
[Callahan]: I apologize, I will have to leave in nine minutes. I move that we join these and approve them.
[Leming]: Okay.
[Tseng]: I'll second the move.
[Leming]: Thank you. On the motion by Councilor Callahan to join and approve the other five motions. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed?
[Tseng]: The last two things I have on this slide are, so Steve mentioned, we talked briefly about the City website and he had some ideas about what we could put on the City website on the Council page. Oh, sorry. I didn't ask for you to recognize me.
[Leming]: That's right. Sorry, I literally just looked up. I just wanted to move the question on the, because we, we, we motioned to join them. We didn't actually vote on them.
[Tseng]: I think it was join and approve.
[Leming]: Oh, nevermind.
[Clerk]: I thought it was just, I thought it was just joined them.
[Tseng]: We kept you up last night.
[Leming]: I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. It was something. Anyway, I would like to recognize my esteemed colleague, Councilor Tseng.
[Tseng]: Thank you so much. So Steve and I talked really quickly about some ideas that we could do on the city website, like putting the newsletters on there, sign up for the email list. We talked about building out pages for Councilors with bios and for us to put out our own press releases if we need. I think this is a future discussion because I think I would love to, there is actually a paper in committee about meeting to discuss reforming the city website. I'd love to meet in a future setting where we can publicize that meeting really widely and get people to come and give us some feedback as to what they would want to see in a reformed city website, especially on the council page. So that was just my kind of note on that one. And the very last thing, which I think we should create another paper for it. So I think it would make sense for Councilors to introduce it as a resolution on a meeting agenda, but meeting with underrepresented groups, we talked Councilors are and I were at the senior center and we mentioned doing a coffee hour with senior residents at the senior center. I know I've talked with Councilor Callaghan during the election season about an idea like this where we do a listening tour with underrepresented groups. I just wanted to bring this up because I think I was just saying that I think the right course of action would be to create a paper number for it in the future. but that's all I had, thank you.
[Callahan]: I can be that person creating a paper to report and putting on the agenda at some point?
[Leming]: Yeah, I can work with you.
[Callahan]: All right, yeah, I better.
[Leming]: Yes. And do we have any further comment from members of the public? Seeing none, do we, Councilor Callahan?
[Callahan]: Move to adjourn.
[Leming]: Do we have a second? Okay, on the motion by Councilor Callaghan, seconded by Councilor Lazzaro to adjourn. All those in favour? All those opposed? Nay. The motion passes. Have a good night.
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