Welcome to business session.

First item is approval of minutes for business session of July 31, 2025.

Is there a motion?

It's all right.

They moved and seconded.

Moved by the mayor pro tem, seconded by Councilman Curls.

All right, all in favor, okay by saying aye.

Aye.

Aye.

All opposed.

Motion passes.

Our first item is the city auditor report.

The people's auditor, Mr.

Shaw.

Testing.

Honorable Mayor and members of the City Council, thank you for the opportunity to summarize and discuss the city communications audit with you all today.

Mr.

City Manager, thank you for the cooperation of you and your team throughout our process of gathering information and writing the report.

I'm here with two members of my audit team, Clint Pullham, who recently became the office's audit manager, bringing with him a wealth of experience from the state of Arizona, where he served in a similar role.

And Ben Fortney, our lead auditor for this report.

Ben joined us earlier this year after a decade working in the federal government.

We'd like to structure this presentation based on the flow of the report.

First, we'll review the audit objectives.

Second, we'll highlight the spotlight on successes.

And third, we'll discuss our findings and recommendations.

We'll leave time at the end for the city manager to discuss his response, which has been appended to the report, if he so chooses.

And of course, we've welcomed the opportunity to respond to your questions.

So if that works for you all, we'll move directly into highlighting the substance of the report.

As you are aware, the city auditor's office was directed to conduct a performance audit of the city communications office to assess its policies against local government best practices, including whether to decentralize some or all of city communications functions to departments and evaluate its policies with the city's values of transparency and accessibility.

With that in mind, we scope this audit to address those issues within the 90-day time frame allotted.

Let me start off by saying that we decided to add a section to our reports that highlights something positive.

That's what the spotlight on success or successes in this case is.

To that end, we first wanted to call your attention to the Office of Language Accessibility and the relatively rapid progress it has made to establish capacity to address citizen access to language services in response to an ordinance passed by council in 2024.

I want to point out that the emphasis here simply isn't on the nuts and bolts of upstarting an office and program from scratch.

It's also about effective governance, how this council manager form of government can work well to respond to citizen concerns.

The second success we wanted to highlight was how City Communications create uh created effective connections between the City of Kansas City and its citizens through targeted branding campaigns.

We know how important communications and branding are in the age of social media, influencers, AI, and the like.

Branding is crucial in both creating narratives that drive tourism, investment, and in showing how local government is responsive to its citizens.

It also helps us helps fill a void with positive narratives that otherwise could be filled with negative information.

So we wanted to emphasize the effort City Communications has placed on branding because of its importance and because of its effectiveness.

Moving on to the core of the report, the findings and recommendations.

We have three findings and three recommendations that resulted from this particular audit.

Our first finding was that previous city management leadership did not communicate to communications staff or the departments a new organizational structure that centralized decision making at the assistant city manager level.

When the previous communications director left his position in 2022, city management leadership did not replace him.

The former assistant city manager told us that she was neither the acting communications director nor had she explicitly designated anyone as such.

However, testimonial and documentary evidence suggested otherwise.

The former acting assistant acting acting assistant city manager made decisions and directed the actions of subordinates on communications related decisions.

Feedback to us suggested subordinates were confused about her role, their roles, and their autonomy to execute broad communication strategy within their purviews.

This lack of clear organizational leadership was disruptive and resulted in confused messaging, lack of strategic direction, low morale, and operational inefficiencies.

Many staff were fearful of reprisals and making mistakes.

The second finding that city communications does not have a comprehensive plan to guide its operations, messaging, and public engagements, focuses on deficiencies related to operational execution.

We noted in the report that city management leadership's decisions were ad hoc.

Decisions were reactive and unstructured, and managing people and processes appeared improvised.

Associated with this was a notable absence of policies and procedures to guide routine operations.

While operating without a plan offered latitude and flexibility for leadership, it undermined the ability of staff to perform efficiently and effectively internally and led to some confusion among external stakeholders as well.

City communications was not appropriately responsive to the media.

It did not always provide complete or timely information.

In some cases, that hampered the media's ability to inform the public, which we know is a key and critical component of effective governance that, among other things, ensures transparency and accountability.

The last issue we would like to point out with regard to this second finding is that city communications subordinated public information to public branding.

You'll recall that we highlighted public branding as a spotlight on success.

In our view, the city's branding works.

It's effective.

Some would argue it's required in the current information age.

On the other hand, public information is also equally important.

The difference, of course, is that we do not create narratives in the public information space.

Public information simply is what it is, positive or negative.

As a form of governance, public information ought not be subordinate to public branding.

We found that at times city communications employed various methods to slow roll the release of negative public information to ensure the branding message remained consistent.

For example, city communications instructed staff not to release information on the prevalence of sexually transmitted infections because of its potential negative impact.

Our recommendation in response to finding number two is for the city manager to direct the communications director to create a comprehensive communications plan to guide staff actions and interactions to include the dissemination of public information.

Before moving to the third finding, I want to say a word about best practices.

The council tasked us with evaluating the policies of city communications against local best practices.

We did not overlook that requirement.

We simply could not fulfill the request.

And here's why.

Best practices are benchmarks, not simply independent elements of a particular practice or plan that compare our city's communications operations to that of other cities employing the same or very similar model.

To that end, our assessment of best practices for city communications first would have required us to identify whether city communications employed a decentralized, centralized or hybrid system, then measure its performance against top performers in other cities operating under the same or very similar model, evaluate effective practices in cities employing that same model, and then compare those practices to our city to determine what in our what could work in our particular environment.

We therefore could not benchmark it against a similar model to come up with best practices.

Said another way, more directly, we had nothing to benchmark because city communications had no identifiable organizational strategy structure to assess.

Here's what we were able to do.

We surveyed approximately uh we surveyed several cities employing a form of municipal government similar to that of Kansas City.

Of those that responded, we found no universal best practices for operating a city communications office.

We concluded that centralized, decentralized, and hybrid systems all could work successfully.

What was most effective, we determined, was picking one model, having consistent, strong and effective leadership that outlines clear policies, procedures, and expectations.

Once the city of Kansas City defines a model, we would welcome the opportunity to contribute to helping the city manager establish best practices associated with the particular organizational structure it selects.

Regarding the third finding, this was not something the council requested explicitly in the ordinance.

However, we thought it was worth mentioning.

As sometimes happens during audits, we came across information we thought useful to include.

We initiated a general inquiry into the length of time it took the city to respond to Sunshine requests after various entities noted during our investigation that they had resorted to filing sunsigned law requests because city communications was not providing information or not providing it in a timely manner.

On this issue, we found that city departments took an average of 14 business days to fulfill sunshine law requests.

Our associated recommendation for this finding, therefore, is for city communications to track sunshine law requests and report that information to city council through the city manager.

Such transparency could help us implement measures to improve timeliness.

This concludes our formal summary.

We noted at the beginning that the city manager's response is appended to this report.

We will leave to his discretion whether he would like to comment.

Otherwise, we are happy to respond to any questions you might have.

Thank you, Auditor Shaw.

Any questions from the council?

Okay.

Um this, sometimes I believe that the staff that's subject to review is entitled to a response.

I don't know if the city manager has some thoughts or words to share with us in connection with this.

Uh thank you, Ms.

Mayor.

Um, I've had the opportunity to review um Auditor Shaw's uh audit of uh the communications functions.

Uh first of all, I want to thank you for the time that you've provided and spent and the insights you uh revealed in your report.

Um generally I'd say that I agree with all the three all three recommendations that the auditors have made uh with respect to the hiring of a communications director.

Obviously, our uh intention is to pursue uh to the hiring of a permanent communications direction that has a distinct role from one of our assistant city managers, but uh also that uh somebody that understands what the role of communications department is within the city environment and the city framework.

So it isn't just media relations, but it's also the event planning, managing our our our channel, uh channel two, um managing our public engagement, um, and above all is you know being transparent and truthful to the public and the communications that we provide.

Um with respect to the communication uh to the recommendation related to the public information officers.

Again, I think our role that our goal there is to develop a uh consistent training plan and protocol for um the information that needs to be provided by the public information officers.

And part of that work is uh working with city departments and understanding you know what their needs are, what the communications needs are.

It isn't um so that our public information officers uh can be um uh knowledgeable, uh empowered to provide uh uh the the correct information to the public when uh when the needs arise.

So in that I'm sort of um maybe forecasting more foreshadowing to you that that uh a framework where uh a decentralized uh process for PIOs might be appropriate because of our complex operations in the city.

Um and with respect to this, you know, um manage uh tracking responses on on sunshine law requests.

Uh again, we agree with the auditor's recommendation.

Uh we do need to have a system in place that that tracks uh and provides timely response uh to uh um to those requests.

Um the one thing that we want to evaluate is whether the that function needs to reside within the the communications office and or whether it should um reside someplace else.

That's an assessment that I would make uh as I begin to um analyze the the future of the of the of that office.

So thank you, Ms.

Mayor.

Thank you.

Uh Mayor um Councilman Patterson has uh thank you.

First of all, good job.

I think this is your first presentation that you've done before us uh since you've gotten a job, and um I was pleased with your report and how thorough it is.

I guess my question is is to the manager in terms of the report uh revealing some concerning news about uh particular staff person and kind of the behavior and impact that's having on other staff people.

And so um I think we've had quite a few conversations about personnel.

So um overall, what are you gonna do about that in terms of um feedback about personnel?

I understand that there's a human resources review board that I somebody in the community told me about.

I've never heard of it.

Um I don't know its function or how it operates.

Um, but so what about that and just in general personnel?

Well, I think you know, the audit revealed that you know um the engagement by the manager's office in during the prior term, you know, created confusion um and maybe uh uh create an environment of um that was not uh conducive to productivity or and and created some royal problems.

Of course, that's something that we hope what that's one of the characteristics that we would look for in a new communications director, you know, a team builder, uh, you know, somebody understands and respects the roles and responsibilities of all staff members.

Um, and when there are you know issues of um you know management and personnel and and and employee relations, we do have a process in place um, you know, to deal with um grievances and then and complaints and all those kinds of things.

So um we obviously that's a separate issue, but it is one that we also take a look and make sure that um it is effective, not just for this department but for all departments.

Thank you.

Council, oh sorry, Councilman Duncan.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Uh I just wanted to express my gratitude um to the to the auditing team and uh Mr.

Auditor Shaw.

Um this is exactly what we've been looking for.

Um how do we respond um to ongoing issues in a quick and efficient manner and have the information to to make um informed decisions?

Um when we know better, we do better.

Um we know better.

Um damning information, but this is the first step to being an accountable and transparent government, which is what we are striving to do.

Um so thank you, Mr.

Auditor.

Thank you, Mr.

City Manager.

I know um that you will take this information and run with it.

So looking forward to uh seeing the the solutions be implemented.

Council uh Mayor Pro Temp.

Thank you.

Um I echo those uh comments as well.

Uh thank you for the um excellent thorough detailed uh audit.

Uh the question I have is in regards to um in your research with other cities, is it common or typical that the city communications oversees sunshine requests?

Is that done out of a law department or a different department?

Do you know that?

So the short answer is no, we don't know that.

Um we just because we just have the 90 days and and and uh and a number of things to look into, uh, we did not look into that particular aspect, but happy to at a different dime if that's something that we're interested in.

I would just ask, assuming that you have made some uh relationships as you have been talking with other cities, um, if you could just find out if that is typical.

Um I know that's been some discussion that I have had with uh some individuals here in regards to whether or not city communications is necessarily an appropriate department to oversee that.

Um and then I wanted to uh also just inquire a little more about the recommendations for you know the structure, the organizational structure, and I know that um you all have and you indicated in your findings that you didn't necessarily feel comfortable making a recommendation of centralizing or decentralizing, uh, but just really wanting to maybe understand a little more about um knowing what knowing what your investigation revealed here or your audit revealed here in Kansas City, um, given the and I know we've had uh there's been a lot of transition, so wanting to make sure that the city manager has adequate information moving forward uh with you know the existing staff under his leadership.

Is it um I'm trying to figure out how to phrase the question?

In that um, and this and I don't actually know the answer, but um the question was posed to me is why doesn't our city communications department why does it doesn't it function like other internal other departments where it has its you know separate uh director separate uh you know director in its own infrastructure, its own organizational structure, not necessarily tied to the city manager in the direct way that it is still with everything I know flows to the city manager, but I wonder if there's any insight or information you have regarding that.

So let me just answer generally and then I'll turn it over to Ben because Ben did a lot of that actual digging.

So a bit about the methodology.

We uh reached out to 10 or 11 cities, uh similar size that follow the the council management form of government manager form of government, and we um we we only got responses from four or five, but in those we um they had the there were there were a variety of different um uh models that they employed.

Centralized, decentralized, some uh had hybrid systems, and what we determined was um all of them were effective in what um in sort of uh what the cities set out to achieve.

And so the effectiveness was more related to how uh they executed like a plan and their policies, the leadership from the top the top, and those sorts of things rather than specifically on whether it was a centralized system, a decentralized system, or a hybrid system.

And so we just kind of put that out there because there's a lot of things uh that we found were involved in sort of making decisions on what sort of a uh a form um a model to follow.

And so um a lot of things that sort of our city does, Kansas City its size, its geographic size, um, sort of how we communicate would be involved in that decision making uh process.

So um we couldn't really determine what was best for Kansas City.

We just sort of offer that information um for the city manager to take and sort of run with it.

If that does that uh somewhat it somewhat answers the question, um yeah, thank you.

City manager has a response.

Yeah, Mayor Pro Tem.

Um the question that you're raising is one that I have sort of been noodling with for a little while because um one of the points of confusion on the communications director is well, who what is his role and who does he work for?

And and I think in the in prior administration, there was a confusion that the director worked exclusively for the city manager, and the reality is the communications director works for the entire city.

It's unlike you know, similar to the city city attorney that represents the entire city.

And so I think as I'm looking forward to in a structure for a communications department, I will try to push that direction, but I will also have probably a public information officer of my own that will be that will be separate from the communications director, because I do feel like I need to have the ability to engage with the public and you know provide the information that's truthful, but do it within a framework that is under the purview of a more responsible person that you know, but not somebody that feels like they have to be um uh beholden to me at all times, right?

Because I think I do want a communications director to be um independent, professional uh above all.

So great, thank you.

Councilman Willard.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Uh thank you, auditor, for your report and your work on this.

Um, I think the number one thing is and the reason why I strongly supported our city manager is the fact that the principle of always tell the truth.

You always need to tell the truth, even when it's not convenient to folks.

Uh this is not a spin operation, just that simple, and um I'm confident our city manager that will take uh recommendations and put together a good plan for us going forward.

Councilman Curls.

Thank you, Mr.

May.

I I too would like to echo the sentiments of my colleagues in regards to this audit.

Uh I think that it's uh it gives us a good roadmap in regards to addressing some of the concerns and some of the issues that uh a lot of us have dealt with from the communications department.

My question would be, and it's probably not directed to you per se, but maybe to the city manager, and that is is do we have a timeline or are we looking at a time frame in regards to implementing some of these?

I know that there's uh uh I look through this audit and it says that the city manager should appoint or um have a director or a person over communications.

So uh the city manager should direct the communications director to complete a comprehensive plan.

So we're talking about plans, and so I wanted to know if there was a time frame that you're looking at in regards to implementing some of these, because I think that we need to have something in place sooner rather than later.

Uh, because I won't speak for anybody else, but I know that I've had some real difficulties dealing with the communications department.

So I would like to see something happen as quickly as possible.

Not to put you on the spot, but putting you on the spot.

I was afraid we're gonna say that.

But no, I I think you're right.

Councilman, I think I think that the time frame for to bring somebody on board and to identify a framework for the effectiveness of a uh um communications office is something that needs to be in place probably by um by the beginning of uh of next year of 2026.

Um we want to be prepared to handle influx of folks into our community, uh and you know, a new staff person's gonna need some time to ramp up um uh with our office and with our with the various things that we do throughout the city.

So uh that's something that we intend to provide um have in place by early 2026 questions uh auditor shawl, thank you so much.

We appreciate the time.

Understanding that it seems like we have a a robust uh crowd outside, but we still have some closed session stuff that I think it's worthwhile to cover now.

We'll ask for one and we'll try to be as efficient as we possibly can.

We're gonna take a motion for closed sessions.

Honorable mayor move that we go into closed session pursuant to uh revised statutes of Missouri subsection one, twelve, three, and thirteen.

Second.

Any discussion?

I hear another clerk call the roll.

Raya bunch girls, Park Shaw, Boo Duncan, O'Neal, Willie, French, Rogers, Patterson Hasley, Robinson, Lucas, hi, 12 members present.