I want to go ahead and call to order our finance committee meeting for November 24th.

Randon, stage is yours.

Good evening.

So this evening we have Clerk Van Meter has the council presentation, City Attorney Tamil Arrison, and then we'll get um to public service and engineering.

So the questions submitted for council are after Clerk Van Meter's, and then the questions submitted to the administration are at the end.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council, for the opportunity to present on the council office department's priorities for 2026.

I do want to direct your attention to the screen.

We have three main bullet points that I want to highlight to give some more context for the viewing audience and those who may watch later.

The first bullet enhance onboarding and development for council boards and commissions.

So our office is going to be no different from other every other department here, and that we will be making a big transition to a new facility, new modern state-of-the-art facility.

What that includes is since we work with nearly 50 different legislative members, that's council, that's all of our different boards and commissions.

Some of those people will be newly appointed, some will may uh come back as reappointments, but everyone will need to acclimate to the new environment that we'll have set up at 825 Tech Center Drive.

So that's everything from learning the new technology that will be available to us in our modern council chambers to navigating updated facilities and meeting spaces, understanding building access and security protocols.

Additionally, with this, we have set aside investment in the development of our board and commission members proposing funding for professional development.

This will allow members to begin to attend local conferences, trainings, or online webinars relevant to their duties and areas of work, ensuring that they're prepared to serve effectively in their roles.

We already have identified some of the opportunities that we will begin to communicate to our boards and commission members in hopes that they take advantage of those in the coming year.

Additionally, outside of our normal operations this coming year, Charter Review Commission will be a big undertaking for our office.

This commission will meet from January through June of 2026, and we've been preparing extensively for that work that's ahead of us.

As you can recall, our Morpsey intern, Nathan Graves, developed a comprehensive roadmap that documents the history of past commissions, summarizes the amendments over the years, and outlines the operational steps to needed to administer the 2026 charter review process.

So I believe that his work has positioned our office well in supply in supporting that body for an efficient and well-organized session.

Additionally, we have added funding for legal advertising in this budget, anticipating some increased costs there.

Ironically, earlier today we received notice that the daily reporter, a newspaper of general circulation, and really a primary outlet for legal notices is ceasing operations.

The gentleman that was speaking earlier was mentioning legal advertising in the Columbus dispatch.

That is very costly.

And so we have budgeted accordingly to offset some of that statutory notice requirements that we anticipate will need with charter review commission next year.

So in addition to the required legal advertising, we're going to leverage, of course, our city's existing infrastructure for communications to broaden public awareness and engagement with our Charter Review Commission.

We do plan to live stream our Charter Review Commission meetings so that there's transparency and accessibility throughout that process.

Exploring artificial intelligence, AI tools for improved records management.

I'm gonna skip this for now since this was uh a question that was asked, and I'll I'll return to that later.

The third main bullet point is to expand inclusive community engagement and digital communication.

Um part of this includes what's called web content accessibility guidelines or WCAG, and really to try to keep this as high level as I can.

As part of our work to expand inclusive communication, our office is focusing on improving digital accessibility, specifically through WCAG, which is a set of international standards designed to ensure that online content is perceiver, perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust for people of all ranges of abilities.

So, in short, this helps make digital materials that our office produces more usable for everyone, especially those who are relying on assistive technologies.

Our management analyst has started a WCAG compliance checklist for us, tailored to the types of documents and digital content our office produces.

I've asked her for several next next steps to help us understand what implementation of that would look like for our office, which could be a list of tools, whether it's free or paid, that could support our compliance, which would involve taking different screenshots and examples showing where our current content could improve.

We do now kind of under this bullet of inclusive community engagement.

We do include HTML versions of our agendas and minutes online, but most of our legistar materials are still in PDFs, word files, or Excel sheets.

So understanding that accessibility capability with the tools we already have, and those we may need to add is essential to meeting these WICAG standards.

And I'll also note that this works directly, actually, it aligns with the recently adopted strategic plan.

Under the goal for the city of connecting our community to be a welcoming, accessible community that fosters a sense of belonging, promotes active living, and celebrates shared experiences.

Beyond WCAG and the technical accessibility aspect efforts, our community engagement efforts next year will consist of local partnerships with Gehanna Jefferson Public School staff and the local historical society to foster stronger community connections through our archival materials.

We have already initiated some partnerships with these community groups for presentations next year that'll highlight key pieces of the city's history and bring those stories alive.

So that's all I want to say at this point, give you a little bit of a teaser, but a lot of really exciting stuff that our office is looking forward to showcasing.

All right, thank you, Miranda, for the next slide.

The questions.

So on page 59, where our office is discussing the challenges and opportunities.

I did note the city continues to experience a growing number of public records requests, underscoring both the community's desire for transparency and the need for expanded capacity.

While timely and thorough responses remain a priority, additional support is essential to manage complex reviews of exemptions, redactions, and evolving case law.

Strengthening staff and officials' expertise through targeted training and public records management will be critical in continuing to meet these obligations.

So with question one, the targeted training and public records management.

Is this happening happening?

If not, what funding or other support is needed to make this happen?

So targeted training on public records management is happening, particularly around the fundamentals of records retention and disposal.

So each department within the city is designated a records liaison who works directly with our records coordinator.

That's Deputy Clerk McGuire.

Together they ensure consistent application of the records commission's records management manual, which covers everything from what records are public or exempt, the records lifecycle requirements, organizing and naming conventions, improving RC2 retention schedule descriptions, proper storage, security and file formats, and the required forms for disposal or transfer.

So this foundational training is ongoing and it's embedded within departments.

Where we see the need for expanded targeted or advanced training is in the more complex aspects of public records management, particularly again with the exemptions, the redactions, and the change in case law, trying to keep up with that.