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HomeMy WebLinkAboutCity Council Meeting - Council Workshop - Minutes - 09/18/2001 , t COUNCIL WORKSHOP MINUTES SEPTEMBER 18, 2001 COMMITTEE MEMBERS PRESENT: President Leona Orr, Tom Brotherton, Tim Clark, Connie Epperly, Judy Woods,Rico Yingling STAFF PRESENT: Mike Martin,Dena Laurent, Marty Mulholland, May Miller, Stan Waldrop, Dan Meeker, Dea Drake, John Hodgson, Joanne Schaut, Charlene Anderson, Jackie Bicknell PUBLIC PRESENT: Ella Mae Pruitt eGovernment Status Report Information Technology Director Marty Mulholland introduced Dan Meeker, Web Master, and Stan Waldrop, Systems Division Manager. We're here to talk about eGovernment. What we're proposing to present to you is a definition of how we're using the term to define what eGovernment is and to share with you some highlights and some recent successes. There is a fairly exhaustive list of projects and progress in the report you've got, but we wanted to show off a couple of things and that would be our brief demonstration. We'll have a quick conclusion and take your questions. Power Point Presentation: Marty- What is eGovernment? Arguably any investment in technology could be eGovernment, because we're improving what we do, but truly the way we're using the term is in referring to web based services. The city has two web sites, one of which is available to the world. www.ci.kent.wa.us is our Internet site. We also need to address our internal site and what • we offer to employees. It's really important not to overlook that, because often that's a way that we can improve the effectiveness of internal communication. In many cases we've presented the information in groupings that tell you how complex they are to accomplish. Information is fairly straightforward. Ijust put it on a web site,publish the web site,you get it. Right? With communication, we're raising the bar a little bit. Something is happening between the two parties and the transaction could be the most complex and might involve an exchange of money. For example, we are going to demo for you today registering and paying for a parks class on line. I want to acknowledge our web authors. We have over 60 web authors throughout the city, who have been working very hard on information for both our external and internal sites. Why now? We are in a planning phase for our overall technology investment. Tech Plan 1 was approved in 1998 and we're working on Tech Plan IT Certain components of our Tech Plan If investments are very obvious, in that we can work on them internally. We don't need outside input. We know,for example, that we need to replace some of our equipment. We know that we need to work on our network infrastructure, but the web base services and what we do there isn't something that the I.T. guys of the City of Kent should resolve. We want to get input from others about how we should approach our future. Stan Waldrop—As Marty said, we've got two websites, one internal and one external. Our internal web site is called Kent Net. Right now we have over 900 pages of information. All of that is available to city employees for communication and updates on things. Couple of things that were instant wins for information were the policy manual, benefits, some of the safety information. We use . it to communicate internally in I.T.for status ofprojects that are going on. Some of the other departments are starting to look at that as well. Communications—that phone list that all of you have, we put that on line and you can access it to search out all kinds of different things. Council Workshop Minutes, 9/18/01 2 Transactions—right now we've got the ability to sign up for training classes and are looking at • reviewing training history on line. As we move forward with other projects, we'll work on projects like civil service benefits and things like that, but currently these are the things we've done. As far as our external web site, two years ago, or a year and a half ago, it was very, very small,just three or four pages. Now we have over a thousand pages. We get about 35,000 visitors per month. That's a lot ofpeople coming in every month to look at our pages. Some of the information that's really popular are the employment pages, sports leagues, Kent's Most Wanted List from the police. Our permit status check, which allows you to check and see where your permit is in the process, if the permit's been issued, where you are in the inspection process and transactions. We have parks and recreation registration so you can register on line for recreation classes, or to go ahead and see what the status of it is. We had a program guide for awhile, but this just went live last month where you can actually register for a class on line. Councilmember Rico—How close are we to getting permits on line? Stan Waldrop — That's a little bit more complicated issue. We are checking right now, but we have a few issues to overcome as far as how we pay for those. How the fees are done and which ones we actually want to go with. It's nothing that's going to happen before the end of this year. Dan Meeker—Here's our home page. And this is where contractors can come in, if they know their permit numbers,which we hand to them when they apply for the thing, they can just type those in here, and they can type in up to 20 of them in there. Marty Mulholland--I'm not familiar with their status outside of the City of Seattle. The City of Kirkland and City of Kent are the only two cities that I'm aware of that have this ability so far. Dan Meeker—So, here are some of the permits that I entered. The ones that start with an "R", if you • know something about the permitting process, those are the applications. The "CNST"s are actually the construction permits after they get issued. We can go in and look at the South County Journal. This one shows a little bit of information at the top to make sure they've got the right permit, and then shows all the different steps that they are taken through in planning review. This one is finished. We go all the way down to the bottom and it says, has been issued and picked up. If it were ready to be picked up, this would be in red and would say your permit is ready to be picked up. If it was in the middle of things,you would see it kind of stop in the middle and you can tell exactly where it was. The status would say it was being held for resubmittal or something like that. We usually have the contact information, so the contractor, if it's stalled somewhere, they know exactly who to call and ask what's going on with that. This information is live. As soon as the permit center staff makes a change in their database it is out thereon the web. This is for those people who want to know up to the second information. They could just sit here and keep hitting "refresh". This is something at the golf course, and you can see that here are these inspections, and they passed them. Shows the dates on which they pass, department phone number. We take a look at web-reg, which is registering for recreation classes on line. We also have a thing called tele-reg, which is on the phone. It is interactive voice response via the phone that gives us equal access. Not everyone has internet access but we can be pretty sure they all have a phone. This is the one that says -push Ito register for a course, and takes your credit card over the phone 24 hours a day. If you've ever used Amazon, this is a pretty standard eCommerce type of thing. Look through a catalog and find what you want, and as soon as you see something that you like you add it to your basket. It needs to know who you are, so you have to login. A week before we went live with this we sent out 6000 letters to everyone who had registered in the last year, with all of their family numbers and codes so they could go ahead and use this. It doesn't let you add classes that have already started, completed, or cancelled. Some of the team sports, where we really need to know the 1 Council Workshop Minutes, 9/18/01 3 kid's age or their schools, T-shirt size, those types of things we don't offer on line. They can take a • look at it but they can't register for it on line because we would need a lot more information. We need to know who you are to be able to sign you up for the class. The reason we can't just have you come in anonymously is that you are charged different fees depending on whether you're in city or out of city. For all the senior classes you have to be a specific age. There's a lot of information when you're trying to register for a class. It's checking your age, address, account, which is why we need you in the system before. Rico Yingling— So what happens after the information goes on there. Does a human have to take that information or does it automatically? Dan Meeker—It's automatic. There are more processes that run that pick up the registration information as it goes through the course. If the class is full, it asks them if they want a wait list and puts them on a wait list. It is sort of a manual process to check the wait lists. I think they do it every day or every week, they run through the classes and apply people to them. Councilmember Tom Brotherton—One of the things you don't seem to have on there is a paying system already set up. In your write-up it says you need to establish on line payment system, so you're looking for other venues to pay with? Dan Meeker—This one is very specific to the class software that we use and it goes hand in hand with that. We can't really expand it to use on other things. It also clears using a phone line, which is relatively slow, so we are looking for something more generic, more general that we could use for permits, or t-shirts, because right now we can't run them through the same system. Where did we get this input on what people want to do? One thing that we do is we track our web sites very closely. We have wonderful statistic software that tells us where people are going to,what the popular areas are. We can actually trail people through and see what pages they're seeing. That's one area. From . the departments, they just come up with a lot of great ideas. I'll combine that usually through the web authors. We have web author meeting once a month where we get together to look at some new and different ways of doing things, and they also have great suggestions there. A lot of email from the public. I'm the web master so I'm the lucky soul who gets the web master email box. I think Jan with the Mayor gets a lot more than I do. Then, we had a community meeting that some of you were at back in February. That was a great time to really bring in a lot of people from the community. I think we had 65 show up at the Senior Center. We just sat down with them and asked them what they were doing with the City of Kent right now, and what would they like to do in the future. That gave us a lot of good things to do. The permit status and registering on line came out of that. There are a lot of smaller ones that are in your packet that we've also already implemented from that community meeting. We're also part of the e- Gov Alliance, which is the 22 King County cities that all work together on creating our own e-gov strategies,which is part of what this document is. It's just a great chance to network, also to see nationwide what some other municipalities are doing and locally to see what the different ones are doing. I'm very proud to say that Kent is pretty much in the lead. There are some things Seattle is way out in front with,but for the South County I think we're doing a fairly good job staying ahead and providing a lot of good service to the customers. Marty Mulholland—Our purpose was to present you with these many, many tables of progress that have been made. Also, to share with you that we really attempted to listen to every source of input that we could think of to shape how we might approach this in the future, and what projects we might propose as part of Tech Plan II. I want to take a minute, as I did at the beginning, to acknowledge not only the web authors,but also the efforts of some of our staff. Dan, and others in parks and in the permit center, who helped with those functions. That took a lot of testing and a lot of input to make t Council Workshop Minutes,9/18/O1 4 them happen. I really feel that we've got a framework for the future for proposing projects because • we have a sense of what the community wants and what our employees want. Sister City Update Sister Cities International Coordinator Joanne Schaut—Our mission is to establish our relationships through various means of educational, cultural, recreational, governmental and economic exchanges, programs, and projects. Also it's connecting with not only our foreign sister cities,but reaching into our own neighborhoods to extend the cultural sharing that we have the opportunity to do. What I want to do is take you briefly through our goals that we've worked on for 2001 and talk a little bit about how we've accomplished those goals. One of the things that we're always looking at is communication and how convenient that we have a web site that we can work in, too. We launched that this year. It's been moderately successful. I believe it's been a struggle getting our stories and information in, but Dan has been very patient and we've worked through that. We've had comments come back to us from as far away as New York, Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, and neighboring Puget Sound sister cities and folks that have looked at our web site, so that's been interesting to have that feedback. The very first one we received came from Texas, and he wanted to know a little bit more about Yangzhou because he had spent two years there. One of the other things we have done, over time, is the Sister Cities Newsletter. You've probably seen this periodically. We have one in the works now, which will be out just within the next couple of weeks. It has a lot of the same information that's on the web site, but with more pictures and more little interesting articles. In the package I sent out are some pages from our web site and they're a few we picked at random. Each of the sister cities has a cover sheet that gives a little bit of background. Who they are, a map, where they're located and then it has a news section on the web . site listing the various stories that we have to tell on exchanges and so on. So, when you have a chance, drop in and look at our web site. ♦ The Young Artists Program is another goal that we've managed to handle successfully this year. It was interesting because we increased our participation in this program by 65% this year. We had eight Kent schools, four countries, and 83 entries. Kent School District always partners with us. Greg Worthing, as you all know, has been the one who has really been our key to the Kent School District. These are some photographs of the artwork. ♦ Kid's Spring Camp is another program that we've partnered with and this time it's been with the Parks Department. This is the second year that we've put this program on and it's held during spring vacation. It's a fee program, so parents actually sign up and spend dollars to send their kids to this camp for a week. We go in dressed in our sister cities costumes and share the culture. It's food, dance, music, song, folklore, artifacts, and is just great fun. This year we started with the flags of the different countries, brought in to the music of the Olympics. The kids thought it was just great. They learned a lot and they asked a lot of questions. These are the things that are of value, when you can give them to kids that young. ♦ Kaleidoscope is another event that we participated in this year, partnering with Kent School District, the Kent Diversity Advisory Board, and in the background,but certainly the glue that held it together, is the Parks Department. Most of you, I believe, were there at the Senior Center. We had attendance of approximately 1000-1500 during the day. We had cultural events from static displays to hands-on crafts, dance lessons, games for the kids, and a northwest black pioneer history display that took up the full center section of the Senior Center. Lots of great things and lots of great compliments. Council Workshop Minutes,9/18/01 5 ♦ Cornucopia is another event that we did again this year. We have a booth in the central location during the Cornucopia event and it featured our display boards, one for each of our sister cities. We had a map that folks could stick a pin in and identify the origin of their hereditary home city or country and we identified 53 different countries represented with pins in them. We never sell anything. We've tried different gimmicks to get people to come in,because we're not giving them anything to eat or drink, so how do we get them in to look at things they have to read? We had a drawing and people were interested in signing up for that. They signed up at the same time if they were interested in any of the sister cities, and there were about 50 people that signed up. Of those, we've had numerous contacts since. We had a great drawing with gifts donated by various people in the city, such as Sally Goodgion with the travel package to Tillicum Village, and Mayor White awarded the top ones we had. We had the two top winners, gave them certificates and pins of the city and took their picture. They thought that was great. He was originally from Iraq and she from Hong Kong. Another goal we have this year, and it is going to take place over time but we are working on it, is to make inroads that strengthen the Kent Sister City Association by broadening our community base. By doing that, we can open the door to synergies with organizations that exist doing parallel projects with parallel goals, sometimes in the same cities where we have sister city relationships. We are actually in the process of expanding our board. Currently, as it has been for several years, we have had just two or three officers and a chair from each one of the sister city committees that comprise the board. We're expanding that board to include representation from the Kent School District. We'll have two co-directors. Green River Community College and Highline Community College are both in the process of identifying a director. The Kent Chamber of Commerce has identified a director, as has the Lions Club with two co-directors, and in the process of identifying new board members are Kiwanas and Rotary International. These folks, when they come on board, will be serving as full governing body members for KSCA because the more wisdom and experience and ideas that you can collect the better you can move forward. So we're real excited about that. I expect it to really take shape and to be moving forward in its new capacity by the early part of 2002. What we're doing with our sister city partners is focusing on the work plans. In other words, work plans that we've developed that identify the different projects we're going to do each year may be vague. They may not identify, for instance, why we should have a particular exchange. If you're gonna have a group of business people come to Kent why would they be coming? What do they want to see? So we're focusing on those so when those exchanges are made, we know and they know exactly what the expectations are. One of the great things that has come out of working with these work plans is the ability to work with and, in a partnering aspect for instance,with the Kent School District such as we are with the Yangzhou committee in developing a teacher shadowing program, and that's a teacher exchange where a teacher would go to China and one come here, but rather than teach, they would actually shadow during the teaching day. That's an element that would be in a focus work plan. ♦ Norway. We had four folks that just returned from a friendship delegation to Norway and while there they met with Rotary and Kiwanis in establishing those links and I have already worked to establish those links here in Kent. They signed a 2002 work plan,which contains one that we're excited about. It is the development of a scholarship program through Green River Community College, PLU, and the Norwegian government. We should have had, right here today, with us a volleyball team from Sunnfjord, Norway due to leave a very few hours after the WTC event and obviously cancelled. But they were on line within a day or two and Council Workshop Minutes,9/18/O1 6 they would like to reschedule for the spring or the fall. Our group went over last year for a volleyball tournament so it will be great to have them here. ♦ Yangzhou. We've had a business, a municipal, and an educational delegation to Kent this year as well as a China/UN small town delegation and that was independent of the committee but came to Kent to kind of study how we do business. I believe May Miller made a financial presentation to them. A lot of time we have groups come through a little bit outside of the sister city relationship,but nevertheless they fit within things we can offer for them. Also had two youth ambassadors that visited Yangzhou for three weeks and they had a great lifelong memorable experience. We'll continue that youth ambassador program through Yangzhou. The Yanzhou Committee has gone through a couple of facilitated work plan development meetings. They are the committee that is pounced on so by their sister city and given laundry list of all the sort of things that they could do for the next thousand years but let's do it all this year. They have to put the brakes on a bit and be a little bit selective but also make sure that they are addressing the needs and wants of their sister city counterparts. So, they worked very hard in developing the work plans. Right now,they have a business delegation in Yangzhou comprised of folks from the Hong Kong Club, Seattle Chamber of Commerce, and committee and business members. We're kind of excited to hear what they'll have to say when they come back. ♦ Kherson, Ukraine. Is still limping along. It's been a very difficult relationship because the communication is just so limited and so poor and also because of the political influence and division within the particular municipal offices in Kherson. However,the chair of that • committee has visited Kherson about four times over the past year and has had in-depth conversations with the deputy mayor and other municipal officials. One of the things that they have basically accomplished through those discussions is getting down to, if we go forward with this relationship, what is our focus? The focus is humanitarian and doing it well. Through that humanitarian project we would support a children's kindergarten for children with gastric intestinal diseases and support them through medical equipment and whatever other means of support that we can give them. We've already done some research with the University of Washington and Harborview Hospital in how we can acquire the type of equipment they'd like to have replaced. We've got a little bit of information there to work forward with. The next step there would be humanitarian with a fact finding mission to Kherson itself to ascertain exactly what needs to be done and begin the mutual planning for that. ♦ Castlereagh,Northern Ireland. We had a soccer exchange with Green River Community College that was also assisted by PLU. We have a pen pal teddy bear exchange,which is a great event. It is 12 elementary schools in Kent and 12 elementary schools in Castlereagh, Northern Ireland sending letters back and forth with teddy bears and I have a picture here of some of the teddy bears when they arrived back here. They are all dressed, a pair each from each of the schools, and they came with letters,postcards, and pictures, and it's just a great way of sharing and the kids have just had a great time with that. Castlereagh also has written, directed, and produced two original mystery theaters. One of them at the Bereiter Home was very well received and was a lot of work but a lot of fun. The Bereiter Home gave the facility for no charge in return for all the members of the Castlereagh committee joining the Historical Society. It was a nice thing. ♦ One of the things we expect there soon is the signing of the sister college relationship between Castlereagh College and Green River Community College. It's been in the works for quite Council Workshop Minutes,9/18/O1 7 some time and we also expect a delegation sometime early next year from Castlereagh College to Green River. Castlereagh has talked about establishing additional sporting exchanges and perhaps one is with their ice bowl after our facility is opened here. Also, there was a mention of perhaps joining in a soccer tournament during Cornucopia next year. Both partners have mutually committed to jointly expand their work plan. I can't say much more beyond that because the work hasn't happened,but I'm sure that there will be some concentration on business elements. ♦ Kaibara. Mayor Umegaki visited here in May. It was his first visit to the United States. He participated in the peace pole dedication on May 41". The peace pole was a program that was brought to us through a church in Kent. They designed and had built a peace pole with two particular peace phrases on it that were written in the five representative languages of our five sister cities and reading those phrases were also people representative of the five sister cities in their native tongues and Mayor Umegaki spoke for Japan. They also sent over 10 or I 1 junior high youth ambassadors to Kent in August and currently we have a one-year high school exchange going on. Howard Olivers of the Norway committee's grandson is in Kaibara. He arrived there the early part of April and was immediately immersed in Japanese. All his lessons, all his schooling is strictly Japanese so it was a quick start. He said in his little emails to me it was hard for him to even think in English now and worse yet he says I can't write in English any more. One of the things I wanted to share with you and to me this is kind of the essence of friendship. Mike was so good with them and just had a great time. Asking lots of great questions. They answered well too. These are some of the messages that we've received over the last week and some of them have come to the city and some of them come to us independently. They are the essence of our friendship. This is from Andre Atshenko, the deputy mayor of Kherson, Ukraine: ♦ Dear Joanne and Jim White: I watched all Tuesday's events on your country with absolute horror. I was completely shocked. It is impossible to fully comprehend the evil that would be conjured up by such a cowardly and depraved assault upon thousands of innocent people. There can be no cause or grievance that could ever justify such unspeakable violence. I express my deepest sympathy on behalf of Kherson citizens and all Ukrainian people to all American people in this fatal hour we are with you. Andre Atshenko. ♦ This is from Katya Deguya and Zeno Saraquino who are due to leave Kherson on the 4`h of October to visit us here in Kent. At this time we're right on the cusp of making the decision of what to do. I received this message from her today. Dear Joanne—Some days ago I watched a TV set. The news is terrible. I console you and your country and I think all will be okay. But this people that did this with New York and Washington are terrible. I am looking forward to hearing from you. ♦ From Igor Denolay. Like the rest of the world we are shocked and dismayed by the sinister act leveled at the proud city of New York yesterday. We would like to take this time to say our thoughts and prayers are going out to the victims and their families. Our family condolences to all American people in connection with the tragedy. We feel deep sorrow over the victims and we trust that common sense and love to the people will triumph. ♦ I read one from Grant Dillon who is a former counselor with Castlereagh,North Ireland and you may have had the opportunity to hear him sing. Dear Joanne— Words fail me as to how I can express my sorrow and how I feel having witnessed the dreadful scenes in New York. As someone , s Council Workshop Minutes,9/18/01 8 who has lived through the threat of terrorism all my life I understand the many mixed feelings that you and your fellow citizens are going through. Please pass on to my friends, and of course Mayor White, my sorrow and the knowledge that you are all in my thoughts and prayers. God bless you all. God bless America. Grant. Rico Yingling—One of the goals you said was strengthen the KSCA. What does that mean? Joanne Schaut—Strengthen KSCA through the strengthening of the board to give us a broader community base and that in turn would bring strength back to the organization. Let's grow it and have wider visions. Rico Yingling—Any more funding? Joanne Schaut—To strengthen it. No. We've been kind of drawn down to a central core as most volunteer organizations of people that do 80% of the work. Your visions become maybe sometime a little bit stale, or maybe not as broad as they could be, and it's always great to have new visions and new input. That's where I see the strength coming. Dena Laurent—I just wanted to thank you and May for your support of the program but also to recognize Joanne in front of all of you that she has taken this program at a part time status to a place I would never have been able to make happen and we are lucky, lucky to have the right person for the right job and at such a bargain. Councilmember Judy Woods—Like part time pay for full time work. Dena Laurent—We pay her. She works. But she works a lot of hours out of her own personal in the project sometime. She does great work. Councilmember Tim Clark—I just want to say how pleased I was with the Kaleidoscope Program as I thought that was unusually comical having been through some other types of kid's fairs. They're interesting but that one was exceptional, I thought. Very well planned and executed and I appreciated that. Just also to appreciate Joanne and I find myself going to some of these early morning or late • evening meetings and there she is and it's not a convenient job and I appreciate what you do. Finance Director May Miller—I did get a letter from Yangzhou, China expressing their sorrow and shock at the disaster and offering their sympathy to all the American people and all of their families especially and finally offering, was there any way that they could help us at all. I was really touched by that letter also. Dena Laurent—We received some type of communication from every one of our sister cities. The workshop adjourned at 5:56 PM. • Council Office 2°d Floor, City Hall 220 4`h Ave. South,Kent,98032 PLEASE SIGN IN DATE: Name Address Phone Number Ld Y6 2 CITY gj— �-€AJT- ►To X `16 0 GUI�h-gy p ��r/ o4�- T I -F X 4 b o-7 �•1 i ' 5