The meeting was called to order by Mayor Paneda with all council members present. The agenda included recognition of the Innovation Team graduates, life saving awards for two police officers, proclamations for Engineers Week and Black History Month, a property all-star award, a public hearing on the HUD Annual Action Plan, a presentation on the Green for Good sustainability grant program, and the annual comprehensive financial report audit results. The consent agenda was approved unanimously.
Good evening. I would like to call tonight's council meeting of February 23rd to order. If you would please stand and join me with the Pledge of Allegiance at a moment of silence. I pledge allegiance to the floor of the United States of America and to the Republic for which advanced nation under God with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Marcella, can we get roll call, please? Councilmember Condi. Here. Councilmember Garcia. Here. Councilmember Solario. Councilmember Whites here. Councilmember White. Present. Vice Mayor Nielsen. Here. Mayor Paneda. Here. Ron, next item, please. Thank you, Mr. Mayor and Council. Up first is we're gonna have a uh presentation on the innovation team recognition presented by Anisa. Oh, and Torren. And the team. Come on up. Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Council members. My name is Anissa Romo, Senior Management Analyst in the City Manager's Office and Co-administrator for the innovation team. Tonight I have the pleasure of introducing our 2024-2025 innovation team cohort. I am joined today by Toronto Sato, Innovation Team Co-administrator, and our innovation team members Christina Baker and Mariela Gonzalez. So a little background about the innovation team. It's an internal employee training program facilitated by the city manager's office with the core purpose of empowering Avondale employees to foster a culture of innovation that equips staff to improve processes, save money or time, and improve the customer experience. To meet the innovation team's core purpose, each class is tasked with establishing a project pipeline following Lean Six Sigma certification with the primary goal of improving public services and delivering results for Avendale's key stakeholders. Avendale staff members from throughout the organization are invited to apply to be part of the innovation team and are selected through a competitive selection process. Through joining the innovation team, members gained the opportunity to work on interdepartmental projects, building leadership skills and new relationships with departments that they may not normally interact with. This experience provides incredible professional development growth to participating employees. In April 2024, we started this cohort with eight members, with those who have left the team experiencing major life changes like promotions and cross-country moves. At the completion of this cohort, we have three graduates who have been the team leads for their respective projects over the last two years and have seen their projects through successful implementation. So each cohort begins with uh receiving Lean Six Sigma yellow belt certification, and the photo there is when we did our class for our yellow belts. Uh this training prepares members to evaluate processes and identify wasted time, resources, errors, defects, and fixable issues. Throughout the year, members work on process improvement projects and conclude their tenure with the innovation team once they have provided the work group with the tangible solution that is accepted and fully implemented by the department. The 2024-2025 cohort selected two projects to work on as an innovation team. These projects were selected from uh projects proposed by both the innovation team members who uh presented projects focused on improving processes within their work groups, and the city management who presented projects based on high priority uh processes in the organization. After evaluating which projects could have the highest impact, two are selected, the special event permit process and the utility billing electronic work orders process. Our innovation team members will review their work on approving these processes tonight. With that, I will pass the presentation over to Christina Baker to review the special event permit process. Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Council members. My name is Christina Baker. I'm a senior budget analyst with the finance and budget department, and I was the team lead for this special event permit process project. The innovation team was tasted tasked with improving a largely manual special event process that required multiple entries and payments and made it difficult for applicants to understand true event costs and requirements. First thing we did was identify our stakeholders.