Alright, I'm gonna go ahead and call our uh six o'clock.

I'm sorry, it is six o'clock.

Our uh off Monday work sessions order from March 9, 2026.

Uh, we have two items on our agenda this evening.

First is a city communications discussion, and then we will move to go into closed sessions.

So I see that Sydney is sitting at a microphone.

Hello, and the city girl and you want me just to kick it to Sydney.

All right.

All right, good evening, Mayor and Council.

I'm Sydney Olson, our engagement and public communications manager.

Um, I have a few slides to go through, nothing very long.

I think you may be familiar with some of this, but please feel free to stop me as we go if that is easiest.

So we wanted to talk about a few highlights tonight, and this is regarding the new communications department.

So we'll talk about the vision and goals for that department, how we aim to achieve those goals, and then our strategic communication plan goals at a high level as well.

So this department is going to serve as a strategic hub for citywide messaging.

Um, it's built really around a hybrid model, so it is not centralized, but this department will be able to provide some flexibility and support for the other departments.

I think one important thing to understand is that this department will incorporate creative services and marketing engagement and public communication staff and our contact center staff as well.

So each of those three areas will be coming together to form this.

Couple key takeaways.

So this is not a centralized communications model.

So for some context, our key different departments, most of them have what's called a public information specialist who's responsible for pushing out communications from their department.

Those individuals will still stay within their departments and report to someone within those departments as well.

But this new department will help support and coordinate messaging while not controlling their messaging specific to their areas.

Um a big role this department's gonna play is ensuring citywide branding and messaging consistency, and we'll talk a little bit more about that.

And then this approach will just provide some consistency for our media members and also for our residents so they know what to expect.

To back up a little bit, I think it's important to highlight that we understand that our departments oftentimes have their own voice.

Um, and we talk about this one example would be the Columbia Police Department provides a different kind of messaging and a different tone than perhaps our convention and visitors bureau.

So this will allow us to maintain that and be cognizant of that while still providing more support.

So some of our goals, uh, we want to enhance external communications.

We push a lot of information out on a weekly basis as a city a lot.

Um, but we want to do a better job of telling our story on some of those bigger picture things.

And so while we oftentimes do a great job of getting messaging out about opportunities such as interested parties meetings or work being done in the different areas, we don't always do quite as well telling the story of our successes or maybe facilitating some of that citywide messaging.

And when I talk about this, I primarily think about topics that are citywide and potentially impact more than one department.

An example would be like our pedestrian safety ordinance, messaging around that.

Media and public relations.

Um we have a lot of reporters in this town, if you have not noticed.

And so we want to make sure that we are responsive to their needs, and um, this can help us provide some flexibility and support for the departments and ensuring we have consistent messaging and proactively pitching stories to our media partners as well.

So we're a little bit of a unique um media market.

We don't really need to pitch stories because there are so many reporters here, but I think there are opportunities that we miss um in telling our stories and just being proactive and providing information.

And then crisis communications.

Um, this is a big one.

So, as you know, we had a tornado this year, and that was a prime example of why you need to be prepared.

And so, crisis communications is a point that this new department and department director can take point on and help collaborate with the department so we're as prepared as we can be for incidents such as that.

Or yeah, yeah, it's okay to interrupt.

Okay, oh can you go back slide?

Yes.

I'm so sorry, I didn't sound release.

What'd you say, platform?

I don't think yeah.

If we just go back one slide.

I think I went past where you're I think you did.

This is where we were.

This is back one.

That's it.

So you're talking about brand and message consistency.

This is where so far I can see the challenge being.

If you've got these different departments with their own staff that are doing communications.

Yeah, you want to maintain some consistency.

Can you give a real world world example of what that might look like?

Yeah, so we have uh brand identity, and we're in the process of updating that.