Speaker numbers apply only to this recording.
The Hollywood City Commission held its regular meeting on October 21, 2026 (the published agenda listed a 1:00 PM start time). The meeting included a robust consent calendar covering legal settlements, infrastructure contracts, and social service grants. Scheduled presentations updated the commission on police and fire awards, a downtown retail recruitment strategy, the quasi-judicial Harry Berry Park improvements, and the introduction of the Youth Ambassador Program. An ordinance correcting scrivener errors in the Employees' Retirement Fund received a first reading. The latter portion of the meeting focused on approving a new citywide professional answering service, citizen comments, and detailed administrative reports from commissioners and staff.
Thank you, youth ambassadors. Looking forward to uh joining you all soon. And I know our commissioners will as well. All right. It is 4 50. That means we have 10 minutes to get through item 27. We can do it. We can do it. We can do it. We could do it in 30 seconds. All the favor say aye. I know these patient gentlemen in the audience have been since one o'clock. Hear that magic word I. Joanne, why don't you go ahead and give a quick overview of uh of this uh modernization and customer service initiative and um give us the highlights. Yep. Thank you. Thanks, Mayor, Commissioner Joanne Hussey, Director of CMED. Uh before you today for consideration is a resolution approving and authorizing staff to execute an agreement with the highest ranked firm, 22nd Century Technologies Inc. for a citywide professional answering and informational service and in an annual amount not to exceed $772,013 with an initial three-year period. I'm gonna get a little bit more into that in just a second. Mayor, as you know, is part of the city's strategic plan. One of the strategic focus areas is communication with the goal of facilitating two-way communication between the city and the people it serves and enhancing public information. As you know how important customer service is, we're also committed as a city to providing excellent service to our residents, visitors, and our business community. Now, I mentioned before how we um in the last presentation that we had a phone tree. We still have a phone tree and how it operates, and that there's many branches and callers have to wait through a 55-second message with options from one through nine, which could then bring them to another set of um options and so on. So the goal of this service really is to move away from that self-service model and the barrier between customer service to an immediate how can we help you? And that how can we help you with the service will come from an AI agent, a staff member, or a live call taker stationed within the United States. So just a quick bit of background to improve this call uh phone call situation in October 14th, 2025. A request for proposals uh were posted for a professional answering and information service. 26 firms responded, and that list was narrowed down to five with 22nd century technologies ranked as the highest after a file ranking was compiled. We came before the commission on May 6th of this year, and you approved and adopted a resolution to authorize staff to negotiate um an agreement with 22nd century technologies. We did that, and before you now is the agreement with them for a first touch AI agent that sends uh to city staff and then also to a live agent, six dedicated live agent seats stationed in Virginia to serve as an additional layer of answering the phones and for call routing, a live chat bot on the city's main website, city ownership of the Amazon Web Services Program licensing and software tools, and an annual amount of 71,830 with the 10% contingency goes up to the not to exceed number that I mentioned prior of $772,013. This is a three-year term with two one-year renewal options for a total of five years. Payment of this service will be made on a monthly basis. It is not a one-lump sum. And we do have termination clause if we ever needed to end the agreement. To improve accuracy of the information that is provided on a consistent basis, improve access to that information in native language, improve operational efficiencies, and really move the city forward with the use of this AI technology. And we could potentially generate long-term uh cost savings by reducing some of the redundancies within the other call centers that we have. So our next steps here, um, assuming approval would be a project kickoff to discuss our milestones in the payment schedule, share preferences for the dashboard and what analytics we will be tracking. We will do a transfer of knowledge to train the 22nd century staff, but they're also going to be training us on the software tools. We will grant a system access. We're going to launch a demo environment for full testing before we go live. So joining us here today from 22nd Century Technologies are Mo in Sand Deep. And with those introductions, Mayor, it concludes the presentation and any questions you may have. Thank you so much.