Afternoon.

The standing committee for governmental operations is now called to order.

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All questions are to be directed to the committee chair.

And madam chair, all members are in attendance today with the exception of Ms.

Gibson, and you do have a quorum.

Wonderful.

Thank you so much.

I believe we have public comment next.

Is there anyone in the chamber or online who'd like to provide public comment?

Public comment is now open.

Is there anyone here who wishes to address this committee regarding items not on today's agenda?

Madam Chair, seeing none and no one sign up to speak virtually before the 10 a.m.

deadline, the public comment period is now closed and back to the committee.

Thank you so much.

I believe we do not have minutes to approve at this meeting, so let's move on to the meat of the agenda and um in consideration of the items we have.

I'd like to start with the papers for consideration.

So I'd like to amend the agenda and start with ordinance 2026-160.

Okay, thanks.

Item one ordinance 2026-160 to adopt a new code of the city of Richmond to repeal the code of the city 2020 to prescribe the effect of such repeal and to provide for the manner of amending the new city code.

That paper is before the committee.

Thank you.

Mr.

Warren?

Yes, may I please the committee RJ Warren, Council Chief of Staff?

I have been tasked to provide the introduction of this ordinance.

And what this does is it um it is necessary for this orders to be adopted because we have to update the city code per the city charter and state code.

And once it's uh adopted, the uh code the city code will be replaced with this newer version.

It takes out uh redundancies, reserve spacing, and upstates it per recent adopted legislation by this council.

Um, just for your knowledge and those listening, this is uh it'll the the new city code will include uh ordinances adopted up to October of 25.

So anything adopted since then will not be in this.

Um, but uh after this adopted uh a supplement will be included 90 days later.

So any legislation adopted from October to present day will be included and updated at that point, and um uh included in the ordinance online review and probably in your packets is a summary provided by the city attorney's office of uh any updates that may be of interest to city officials.

Thank you so much.

Uh let's open it up to public comment at this time.

Is there anyone in the chamber who wishes to speak in opposition to this paper?

Is there anyone who wishes to speak in support of this paper?

Madam Chair, seeing no one regarding this item, the public hearing is now closed and back to the committee.

Thank you.

Um, members and welcome Ms.

Gibson.

Uh, does anyone have a question about the updating of our code?

So just since new here, um, is this something we do every five years?

Like is this kind of routine?

Thank you, Mr.

Warren.

If you could provide some context, that is correct.

It is required that they do it.

Um, leave every five years.

Uh and um that's why some legislation you might have seen get adopted since your tenure has not been actually included in city code because they have to do a start and like a hard start date, and it was in October of 25.

So, yes, every five years they have to do this, and then they'll do supplements throughout to uh to update it, where you'll see at the bottom of city code sections.

Thank you.

Renew items are being plugged in.

Thank you.

And Mr.

Warren, if uh anyone listening or in the public was curious about what was being updated, what's the easiest place for them to find this legislation?

Uh, if you go to uh to either the meeting details of this committee committee meeting right now, or as you go to the next formal meeting on the 27th, you will see this ordinance on the agenda.

And if you open that up, there is a very large attachment.

It's going to take a while to open this document because it is the entire city code attached along with a summary of some of the more relevant things to perhaps the public and uh city officials.

Thank you.

Um any other questions or comments for Mr.

Warren.

Um thank you.

I would motion that we forward this to full council with recommendation for approval.

Second, the committee is voting on the motion for what is 2026-162 council with the recommendation to approve.

Ms.

Gibson, yes, Vice Chair Abelbacher.

Aye.

Chair Jordan.

Aye.

That motion has been approved.

Wonderful.

Thank you so much.

Um moving on to your presentations.

I believe we have Director Morris.

We had direct.

There he is, okay.

Sorry.

Couldn't see you behind the chair.

Um Director Morris, thank you for joining us today to provide an update on Department of Public Utilities customer information system and billing.

Uh thank you.

Uh I'm Director Morris from the City of Richmond Department of Public Utilities.

Um, so today I'm going to highlight some ongoing improvements that we had for customer service.

I'm going to highlight um the old system, the new system, and then also kind of go through some of the challenges we've experienced as we transition some of these technologies and then also a slight look ahead or a peak preview of what's to come in the future to try to continue this path forward with um enhancements or improvements.

So as many of you know, um, we've been through the process of trying to enhance all the systems within DPU that's ranging from infrastructure improvements of the water treatment plan to improvements in the CSO, but also technology improvements and the customer service that we deliver.

Um we were able to commit to two new customer information systems that went live on May 26th.

Um, so this was over the holiday weekend.

It got us a little bit more time to transition all the data from one system to the other.

Um, and this project began as uh code name project synergy, and then um this actually replaces a old old legacy system about 40 years old.

And so that clunky old system requires you to remember uh key fields, ultimate multiple tabs.

Um it actually froze a lot of times on some of our customer care agents, which would require us to actually reset some of the servers and actually have down periods so multiple hours a day while we try to resolve billing issues.

So it was vastly needed to improve that system.

Uh the new system will enhance and monetize our existing processes.

Um, it will allow us to be in more alignment with some of the best management energy industry standards, and it will actually allow us to accelerate some additional improvements that I'll speak to later in the end of the actual presentation.

Um, and it'll improve scheduling, customer appointments, response times, just general responsiveness from our agents to our customers, which was vastly needed in a yield system.

This is the general time frame of where we are from implementation.

So in 2022, um, this was identified as a need, and an RFP went out.

Um, a vendor was selected in August of 2024, and between 2024 and 2026, we've done kickoff meetings, designs, um, integration planning, uh, and just the full deployment was done, like as I mentioned in May 2026.

That was our go live date, and that's where we are today.

Post implementation.

Um, we're gonna bring on that third system that we spoke to, um, where it's gonna actually be a customer interface portal.

We're gonna speak to it in a couple other slides.

Um, but what that will allow is it'll allow customers to see the real-time meter reads that allow them to start-stop services, account information lookups, some very routine tasks that the customers should be able to do without having to go through the call center, basically self-service for the customers, so it's a lot more seamless in operations.

Um, what we went to is a customer cloud service.

Um, so no longer we maintain these servers, um, they're maintained by our software vendor, uh Oracle.

And so uh it completely eliminates some of the routine maintenance problems you have with servers, and also allows more seamless upgrades.

So you get those automatic updates into your system that you don't have to plan and have outage notifications for and customer service interruptions for.

This gives them a lot more opportunity to enhance the responsiveness, get that leak corrected much quicker, and not have that high bill pop up so they can adjust it in a more timely fashion.

The field service platform, again, it's intention was to fully optimize field service, the daily scheduling of reports, give it unifying information from field service and our cloud-based system, and so it makes it much more automated process, a lot less of the manual paper pushing, a lot more clunkiness in the field, it's more seamless in operation.

And this is the third portal or application I was speaking to.

This is the the portal.

So the portal is going to be available to customers to do more of a self-service.

It will actually open up the mode of operation for 24-7 365 to do those routine tasks.

So you don't have to wait between the service hours for 311 or for DPU call center.

You can call, you can log in any time of the day, do a start-stop notification, move in, move out, check your bill, those kind of things that you don't have to try to move your day around to accommodate those service hours, which will be enhanced uses for our customers.

The schedule or the table I have here kind of just highlights some improvements just in generality, and I'm going to try to go through them very quickly.

Lots of functionality issues.

Instead of having to click through multiple screens, navigate through different tabs, it has everything it needs to make the analysis and quick links for those quick fields they need to investigate, like meter reads, contact information, past billing payments, all readily on one screen, makes it so much more seamless for the call agents to navigate through and get a quicker response to the customers.

It has automated uh calculations.

So a lot of times they had to go in and do manual adjustments, manual uh tuning.

Um, it has a built-in rate history, so the when you go through and you make an adjustment for this physical year or our last physical year, um those rates are built into the system.

So we're going into July 1st and the rates change July 1st.

Um but what happens when you have to make a bill correction when half of your bill period is in June and half of your bill period in July?

Um, it gives you an opportunity for error.

The system in itself eliminates that possibility error and pulls it right from the system.

So those technicians don't have to worry about that.

Um, training on the old system.

Because it was a legacy system, it required massive training to onboard the staff so they get familiar with the system so that they can serve the customer base.

That training was actually between six to twelve weeks.

So when we onboarded a new staff, it was approximately three months before they could be available to actually address calls for the customers.

As you can imagine, when you have to onboard staff, that long lead time from bringing them on board, actually being able to serve the customer is a concern and it's a challenge.

The new system, if everything works great, it's about eight days.

Now we built in about a three-week training period right now to try to work through some of those training logistics, but it's much more shorter.

We tend to shorten that a little bit more as we get more familiar with the training and we get more seamless in our operations.

But right now, it's a lot better, a lot shorter.

You're looking at half or even a quarter of the time frame for getting people onboarded, which is amazing in and of itself.

And then handling real customer situations.

Like I said, the old system, multiple fields they had to go through.

So a customer may have a question about certain aspects, and it would require multiple minutes, long hold times.

Now that no longer is an issue.

You can pull up the entirety of the three-year payment plan, the entirety of the three-year usage in a graphical representation.

It's very visual.

You can see anomalies.

So it's a nice little cue to the call agents that there's something wrong with the account.

And so all those things allow the call agents to actually address the issues more quickly, more seamlessly.

And I'm going to speak on error reductions.

The old way, I mentioned it all manual rate adjustments, calculations, all these things have been built into automatic calculations in the new system.

So it eliminates that possibility of error when you make an adjustment on the account.

A lot of times you see those recalls from a customer saying, Hey, I know you made an adjustment, but it's not right.

I think you left off the late charges, or I think you left off this portion of the consumption.

That's no longer the case.

The system does it automatically, and I'll speak to that when we go through and talk about some of the challenges we had with implementation.

And just generally the overall experience, when it works as intended, it it helps just foster a seamless integration and a timely response to the customer.

And that's our truly intention is to make sure that the customers pay for these services, and we want to make sure that the bill that they get one is accurate.

That's our primary responsibility, but also we want to make sure they fully understand what they're getting, and there's an inherent trust with the building system.

The system will allow them to do that and ensure that that trust and the error level goes down continuously in the future.

I'm gonna talk about the same thing for the field operation.

I'm gonna be very generic in this, but it's basically the same thing.

You're removing paper copies of works, their digital copies now, it's much more seamless.

Auto routing and work orders, auto scheduling.

Um so there's no disconnect anymore, no rerouting from the call center to OFS.

It makes things a lot better from a service perspective.

Training time again, dramatically less, mostly because the systems are inherently modernized and more intuitive in their operations.

Um, and then the visibility and work orders, it makes it much more easier to track work orders, no more hunting through different files, more integrated, more filter functions, uh, easier to see what you have to do and what's been missing.

And so you don't get that loss in the cracks kind of feel of a work order, something that they intended to work on the previous day, lost it, and then the next day they come in and they have a massive amount of other work, and then that starts falling off the table, and then two weeks go by, three weeks go by, and that work order that should have been a priority, it got lost somewhere.

The new system kind of built in those supports and guardrails to prevent that from happening.

Um deployment readiness.

I'm gonna talk about how we we moved forward with this.

Um, we had months and months of training, refresher trainings for all staff.

We had two uh dress rehearsals to go over, some dry runs on the conversions.

Um we had sandbox test environments to try and establish, you know, uh play fields for uh employees to go in where they can safely manipulate the data and not feel like they're gonna mess up the production environment.

That helped out a lot.

We actually implemented some test protocols for some of our employees.

I know people don't like tests, but it does check competency and aptitude.

I'm happy to report that all of our customer customer care agents pass those tests, and they're all certified as being able to use the new system.

And then we also went through and did bill comparables, counselor C will comparables, just to make sure that all the new bills that went out and the data fields matched our current systems.

And we want to make sure that tolerance that we're willing to accept on any type of errors or data misalignments were corrected.

The May 26 launch was very successful.

We were able to get the system up and going over the holiday weekend.

We had a high but manageable call volume.

One biggest challenges that we experienced was our software vendor required us to change all of the account numbers.

When we changed all the account numbers, a lot of customers got confused with that.

We went through and we did some social media posts, inserts in the bill.

We also did a couple of press releases to ensure the customer base was aware of the change in the account number.

But the best of intentions, a lot of customers experienced confusion on that when they got the new bill.

They have an inherent some customers were in the system for years.

They got used and they memorized those bill numbers.

And so when they got a new bill, they didn't inherently trust that new number.

We did revamp the account lookup tool.

That's a tool we have on our web page to aid customers in looking up their account number based off their address and some credentials.

And so we were able to update that I believe last week to give customers a new tool just to verify that get that extra level of certainty that this bill is a factual bill and it's a legitimate bill.

So that's helped in some capacity.

But I would say the vast majority of the calls we've gotten associated with a payment issue that they've made a payment process to, or concerns with the account number and not being certain on the account number.

We also, in coordination with this, this is the first time we've gone through a process where we consolidated all the rules and regulations that are delegated to the director of DPU within the code.

So that has been promulgated and published on our website, and it's available to the public there, but also if someone doesn't have availability on the website and they want to come to DPU's office, that's available in the director's office as well for them to read as well.

But that establishes clear and uniform rules and requirements associated with how we manage our customers and our billing operations, gives customers the clear guidance on how they can escalate protocols, what to expect from estimated reads, everything and anything on how our operations works and the requirements associated with the utility, and they give them an extra level of confidence on how they can navigate through sometimes very difficult rules and regulations for leak adjustments or things of that nature.

And it also establishes the payment arrangements, but also one thing that we enhanced with the rules and regulations is we adjusted the metro care cap.

So a lot of you are familiar with the Metro Care Cap and the Metro Care program.

The cap on an annual basis is about $500.

You can imagine with the rising costs of utilities and affordability concerns of some of those constituents, that $500 doesn't go as far as it used to.

That cap has been raised to a thousand dollars for water and gas as well.

So now they have a little bit more of a cushion for those that truly need that assistance, and they can get a little bit more support through that update as well.

We have always targeted, and I say we've always targeted about uh no more than um well, two and no more than three um billing estimates in a row.

And the intention behind that is to ensure that those repetitive estimates don't have a compounding error effect for the customer.

And so we've implemented a couple of new processes.

One um being there is also now a new dedicated staff member that is only going through and doing manual reads for those accounts that have had the electronic uh transceiver unit fail on them, so then go do manual reads to prevent these repetitive estimates.

Um that person just started uh I think last week, two weeks ago.

Um so they are on board it now, and that's gonna help with some of these repetitive estimates to eliminate them in entirety.

Um but we have been going through and updating our meter program as well.

Um, so right now we're at about 36,000 of the 51,000 meters that have been aging out of the system.

So we have about 16,000 meters left in the system that's still at that 15 year age point where they start to have uh failing issues with those uh transmitters, and so as you can see, I kind of highlighted on the presentation some of the numbers pulled from the FY23 audit on the billing system, and you we had about 131,0100 um meter uh or billing estimates in that fiscal year comparable to this year.

You can see we have about 77,355, so a vast improvement, not where we want to be still.

I want to get that number even further down, but it is moving towards in the right direction so we can solve some of these issues, and you can see it kind of references the total number of bills for just uh general improvement.

Um our target is to have no more than two back-to-pack estimates on a customer.

Um we feel that's a reasonable target, something that we can achieve if we can get the resources in the field to support that, and also the infrastructure in the field to make those improvements.

Um I'm gonna talk about some accuracies on the billing system, and this kind of aligns with the mayoral action plan baseline, um, accuracy of the bills, and the way that we judge accuracy on the bill is if we have a bill that doesn't have an adjustment that's deemed as an accurate bill, where there's not a leak adjustment associated with something.

So, in essence, if there is a leak that's a factual uh leak, that's not on this as well.

But this is basically if an error is identified on the bill, you have to go back in and pull it off and make an adjustment, it's quantified here.

So the baseline is FY25, about 98% accurate bill.

Actual to date, we're right around that 98%.

Um, we want to get a little bit higher.

I want I want to get about half a percentage.

I would love to be at like the 99.5%.

Um I think that's a future goal for FY28, maybe 29 to get to that level of accuracy, but that is a future state goal.

Um, and then bill dispute process and issue tracks.

Um, this is how we we track what comes in and out of the utility.

Um there's a lot of issues that come in.

Some are not related to billing disputes, some of them are related to things like wanting to just know their account number, their balance, uh, move ins, move outs, stop start service, um, general inquiries, or um sometimes they get uh wanting to go in a payment plan.

There's a their whole litania of uh things that come in from billing disputes.

So they're not all high consumption or billing error related, but uh we get about uh I would say about 2600 uh issue tracks closed on a monthly basis.

That's the average where we're floating right around now, and they range from all those aspects.

Um, and then our goal is to close all those out within like 30 days at least, 30 to 60 days of when those issues come up.

And some of these issues require uh a technician to go out and look at a meter, do a leak adjustment, repair the meter, leak adjustments done back in the office.

So it takes sometimes one billing cycle to get an actual read to make the adjustment, and so that's why we try to shoot for the 30 days past the fiscal year to close all those out.

As you can see in 2024, we had about a 94.9 percent, 2025, 96.9%.

Um I had a goal in 2026 physical year close out to have about 100% with this conversion.

Um, we've had a large number of customer inquiries come in, several thousand more than we normally get.

Um I'm gonna try my darndest to close all them out within 30 days, but I don't think I'm gonna get to that 100% this year just because of that shear volume and and the timing of that conversion.

And I want to highlight also a new process that we've done for the customers.

A lot of times what we've seen is a general concern from the customer that they feel like they go into a black hole when they reach out to DPU, they're calling the call center, they're back and forth, not getting a resolution, and they feel like this is not getting escalated.

So what we would like to have happen, and we've put this out publicly, we've had social media posts, this is a part of our new rules and regulations, but this is a standard escalation process that we like our customers to know about.

So it there is a reasonable expectation that customers get a response and have something resolved within the time frame specified from the call agent, or at least 30 days.

And if it doesn't happen within 60 days, it should be escalated to the DPU director.

And also when we go through an appeal process, there has to be an official appeal process because sometimes customers feel like they go back to the same call agent and they've they made that same statement.

I've experienced this multiple times.

Many of the council members have reached out to me with a constituent where they're having a billing issue.

I'm able to go in, look at the account, very timely get a resolution and address the issue, mostly because the data is present, but there needs to be that protocol where it gets escalated so that management, upper management, can see some of the inner workings of those concerns to get it more expedited to ensure those customers aren't waiting three, six or in some cases, when I first started years.

I don't think there's many years left, but if there is one, by all means, I ask the customers to call me or email me directly, and we'll try to get that resolved as quick as possible.

But that should not be the standard.

The standard should be 30 to 60 days to have all these resolutions complete.

And so I'm gonna highlight some of our future uh plans for you.

The uh route smart plan, um, but we are right now going through and uh optimizing all of our metering routes, and so what that means is I don't know if you ever guys seen what looks like a shotgun painting, but but like it is not optimized.

So most of this is done by field, historical knowledge of the neighborhoods, it is not uh the best routes that need to be done.

So we're going to use a computer-based system to optimize the routes.

Um we're gonna try to do it from time management perspective too, so that we have contingencies when somebody calls out on contingencies for holidays, things of that nature.

So you can streamline and get all those routes done.

With our system, we have to maintain certain speeds as well to make sure that those meter reads get captured.

We're gonna implement that with the route smart options to make sure that they can drive safe speeds through neighborhoods, make sure that they can pick up the meter reads, and all that will ensure that more reader reads get picked up through the routing process and less manual reads and less estimates in the system.

I mentioned the portal that's coming live in the fall, that consumption data is gonna be available to them.

Um, we're also going through uh AMI replacements, um, and this is a gas meter that's on the screen.

But what this is the actual next iteration of what it looks like in technology improvements for the utility.

And I just want to highlight some customer experiences that we've gotten through uh promise pay, some gas customers, just general city employees, individuals that participated in the citizen academy.

Um, a lot of individuals go through the bill dispute process, and sometimes it looks good, sometimes there's resolution, but we do experience a lot of customers that are very grateful for our payment options and also grateful for the experience.

Um we can do better, but these are some highlights on the customers that have expressed gratitude for the uh experience that they have with DPU.

Um, and this is one item I think you guys have always requested just a general audit update.

Um, I think technically there's uh this one in and of itself is on the table to be removed.

Um, and so I think within the next one to two weeks, um, if the auditor's nice to me, um, I might be able to get this removed.

He's sitting right behind you.

Best of buds, and I'm gonna explain why.

Um, we we had about 45 audit recommendations um when I started in January.

Uh, we have been very dedicated to trying to improve those audit recommendations and institutionalized all of the recommendations that's been recommended by the auditor, and just changed the way we do business in DPU.

Um, we've been very successful, um, sometimes challenging.

You can attest to it that uh we have some heated debates on um closing some of the items when I felt like it really we had addressed it, but I think within the next two weeks um we'll we'll have a goose egg up there, and um that's a huge accolade both to the auditor, our DPU staff, um, and and your guys' support as well, making sure that we have the resources to do make those changes.

Um that's going from top of the list, most audit recommendations to having zero um over a year and a half.

Um, so that I think is an amazing feat in and of itself.

Um we missed some of the deadlines that were established, but um we have been trucking along the way to try to make sure that is uh complete.

And with that, um I do want to highlight um I I've gone through all the customer experience.

The only thing I didn't go over was some of the challenges that we experienced with the the conversion.

Um, one major challenge we had um was our our payment processing vendor, uh, mid-integration uh swapped out uh the servers um that they were going towards.

So we went from a Canadian-based server to a US-based server, and um we're not told about that.

Um, and so everything had been mapped appropriately, tested appropriately, and a lot of our uh payments that customers were making were getting stuck in the queue.

Um that was a challenge in and of itself to find out what was going on and also to fix it.

Um we also had um some issues with our uh our payment plan vendor um sending out notifications to people that were delinquent that were not delinquent.

So we've turned off that notification system, making sure that all those payment plans are our payment arrangements and payment uh gets processed through our system so they don't no longer get those boss notifications.

Um all in all, that was about like 15,000 payments in collectively for that process.

They got hung up in the queue.

Um that is one of the main reasons why we have a large call volume.

Um, one of the longest ones we've had on record um since I've been in the director position.

Um, a long wait times.

I think I've even seen Jamie, I think an hour and a half um individual on hold, which is completely unacceptable.

Um we've onboarded a couple more contract staff to help with the call center as well to try to de-escalate those numbers.

Um they have been slowly going back down as we pushed out the information, did some press releases, added FAQs on our website to assure people that these issues have been addressed.

Um we have gone through and is part of that new technology, all the late fees associated with any of those accounts were seamlessly wiped off those customers' um bills, and so the next bill that they get will show both that payment and those late fees removed.

So customers don't have to worry about that, um, it'll be automatically adjusted for them.

Um so that's a very generic discussion on the issue, and I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you so much, Director Morris.

I'll open it up to my colleagues for questions.

First off, Director Morris.

The fact that you went from the top of the audit recommendation list to almost a goose egg is just absolutely incredible.

So I commend you, your team, the auditors' team.

Um I don't think that a year and a half ago sitting here, we would have expected that.

So bravo.

Um I wanted to ask a few questions.

Um, in my, I think you've gotten quite a number of um escalations from my district um around the new billing system.

I can I just did a little tally.

I've had 34 um DP DPU issues um come into our office since June 1st.

Um a lot of them are around the new billing portal, and I actually just looked at my bill and realized that a payment that I paid did not actually apply.

I guess one was like that server issue, a part of that.

What can we share with people outside of the FAQs to kind of assure them that these are all going to be resolved and that they don't have a few people say like, oh gosh, well now the EPUs, you know, they're turning off utilities.

We want to make sure that we pay the bill, but we already did pay the bill.

What kind of things can we tell people?

Certainly.

So we're not doing disconnections right now.

So there's a level of assurance for that.

We also uh postpone our flow restriction campaign on temporarily so that any of those concerns with, you know, did my payment go through, um, is it a process?

Am I going to be disconnected?

That's not gonna happen.

Okay, so um, but yes, that that server issue is the uh driving force for why those payments didn't get processed.

Um, I've gone through multiple accounts now that have been escalated to me to just review all of those are showing on our our accounts, they're all accurate.

Um, I've had even concerns, uh, some questions like, well, what if I make payments or are there been any uh duplicate payments?

Um, normally we don't see duplicate payments for this, but there may be instances where a husband or wife uh go through or spouse goes through and makes two payments.

If that ever happens, um there's two options available for them too.

Um they can leave it on the account and it'll get trued up eaten up by the next consumption for the next month, or we're happy to do a credit and then in and of itself we'll issue a check, or if it's an auto draft, we'll credit right back to the account that happens on.

Um so I think there should be a high confidence from the consumer base that um the bills are accurate.

Um, we're moving forward with our system works.

It works as it's intended to.

All the accuracy of the bill is there.

Um, we've we've enhanced the the metering system.

We've got about 16,000 meters to go, so there may be some um meters in the system that still have those failed ERTs.

And one word of caution I will give uh the community is if if you are getting a bill with a failed ERT, um that meter is still tracking, and so um the consumption still registering on that meter, and then when it is shrewd up, all that consumption will register all at once.

And so if if a customer thinks that they're getting a good deal because the Earth's showing uh a zero or a goose egg on the account, um, we will get to it, but it's better for them to reach out to us in advance so we can uh immediately address those issues, but it will be corrected.

So I don't want to think people thinking that they're the zero is gonna be the the value.

There's a concern, I've experienced this multiple times, um, that customers um only pay the base charge for a couple months, and then that four CCF, seven CCF, eight CCF consumption on the account triggers for two or three months, and then they get a bill that's almost double or triple um what their normal consumption is, and it's a true and accurate bill, it's for all the consumption that was on the account, and there's nothing that we can do for making a type of adjustment on that.

Um we can set up a payment plan for the customers, I ease the financial burden.

Um I just want people to be cognizant of that concern that those bills are accurate if that happens, but there is an inherent improvement, reliability in the system.

This new technology is vastly superior to the old technology.

It is well above where we should have been a long time ago, and it's where we need to be in the future to make sure that we can integrate more and more technologies, more improvements uh into our systems.

You and then my last question is um, you know, again, I think 3060 days for resolution is is great and certainly the wildly better than it was in the past.

I also have had a DPU bill that went two plus years.

Um, you know, one of the things that I've noticed anecdotally of like having escalations is that um it seems like there, you know, you said it it will go to the supervisor and and manager, and then you know you at 60 days, it it does seem like there is still a lot of resolution that has to happen at the director level, which I know that you are dealing with 5,000 things at once.

Do you feel like as we go into this new system and you're creating sort of SOPs for continuous improvement that there will there will be less and less that actually needs to go to the director level?

Because I I always appreciate your the most responsive, but it's terrifying to me that you have to be the person to kind of make to move the needle sometimes.

Yeah.

I think the system's built inherently to address those issues more quickly.

Um we've actually gone through and does a couple of process improvements in conjunction with the integration.

Um those should address um issues more quickly.

And one of the things is that we've given multiple methods and discussions and trainings with staff on how to do um different uh methodologies on how to do leak corrections if you don't have the data available.

So sometimes you don't have to wait for 30 to 60 days.

Um but trust in mind too that I'm dedicated to the city and the customer base.

Um my staff can attest to this, I'll stay till midnight if I have to to get through a correction to make sure the customer feels like they're valued and we get the correction to them.

Um that's what I'm dedicated to, and all my senior leaders on the DPU team also have that same dedication.

So they're all working around the clock to make sure that the customers' concerns are addressed.

But yes, the the system in itself will improve that.

So hopefully I don't have to stay the midnight um some nights.

Um, but if if it happens, I'm more than happy to do that.

To be clear, I know you stay after midnight, and I I know that you are dedicated to the city.

Um my concern is that that is that is an untenuous situation for any one person to be in all the time, and we want you to stay with us for a long time.

So whatever we need to do to invest in the processes to make that so that you and your senior team are not here until midnight working on those problems.

I think you know, this this body wants to be a part of that conversation.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um Councilmember Gibson.

Thank you.

Um, and I I share uh the appreciation, this this um transition is a huge amount of work and um and I can appreciate, you know, as we you know all of us can um the value and having access to more information online, to you know, not have to make uh a lot of phone calls to get you know accurate information.

Um I think that that will be a wonderful you know change if people get used to it.

Um I have I do have some questions about um about the rollout.

Um so it it seems like part of the challenge, and and to be clear, I think we have both uh county customers as well as Richmond local customers, um, so from a communication standpoint, you mentioned social media a couple of times, and um, and I'm wondering, you know, how key is that given the fact that we have many customers that aren't in Richmond.

I don't I'm wondering are the those updates are made through like a Richmond City count that some people may not follow.

Um I'm wondering in terms of putting it in the bill, um whether how many months did we do that?

Just you know, looking back, are there ways that we could have um, you know, provided more notice for folks to let them know about this change, both to promote, you know, to give them a heads up and to also say, hey, this is great.

Yeah.

I I I think the question is is um what level of uh customer interaction do you want?

So um we we attempted multiple media streams, so social media, uh billing inserts, uh newspapers, um, to try to push out those those uh uh information.

Um we did it right before, like the first two months right before the go live to try to um engage the customer base.

Um could we have gone a little bit longer than that to try to just reinforce that?

Um probably that would have helped a little bit.

Um but in conversation with several customers the inserts themselves got overlooked.

And so um, even though we did that, you know, very tenuous, making sure we we we mail it them out.

Some people get a lot of electronic bills.

They don't see the inserts, that's why you want to do social media posts and press the release because some people miss those.

Um there's different avenues we can pursue.

Um, we're also right now doing a a post uh like a card, a postcard that's going out to customers that's outside the bill that they're gonna see, just with a uh QR code that kind of links you to the account lookup tool and kind of a generic statement that kind of highlights the change and transition, the improvements.

Um I think we could do a little bit better in the future with these type of transitions to put a little bit more on the front end just to try to catch those individuals.

Um is it going to be 100%?

I don't think so, but um we can definitely enhance that opportunity.

Um just to piggyback on that question for a second.

So um sympathize, that is incredibly frustrating to have this other vendor push out text messages that ended up causing more confusion.

Why aren't we able to take advantage of that same text messaging to say, sorry, this is what's happening.

I'm still getting text messages about promise pay.

Yeah.

So if you are, um I need to have a discussion with them because they were supposed to turn that off.

The way that that um payment plan is post-or the their text messages is supposed to occur is anything that's 45 days past due, that's when they reach out to the individual, um, not 15 days or 30 days.

Um so they actually have to have a pass to a balance on there.

Um, our contract set up with them is a little bit restrictive, but I could have the conversation with them to see if we can do some type of text message push to the customer base, um, but I may be restricted just from the contractual obligations and we may have to do a change order, but I had to give a procurement to see if I can do that.

Thank you.

Councilmember Gibson.

Thank you.

Um I appreciate the additional question.

Um, so given that there will be some corrections that need to be made um to address late fees that had been applied and um mispayments.

Um is it possible and is there discussions about some type of post-launch audit to ensure that um any corrections that are that are made are applied accurately and that you know all of the billing information has carried over from the old system to the new system?

Yeah.

Um so just for clarification on that, all those um uh late fees have already been adjusted.

So there's there's nothing that needs to be due going forward.

It's just not reflected on the past bill.

Because what happened in this scenario is uh we made we mailed the bill, the payment hadn't processed, and so um the customer saw a zero payment on their bill, and so then we made the correction in the system, the system shows uh the account being paid in full or the payment applied to it, and then all the late fees adjusted off of that.

So the next bill cycle, they'll see that.

Um we stood up basically during the entirety of the transition period from the the onset to um we're still doing it today, um, just looking at ways we can improve and optimize basically a daily stand-up to go over um new customer concerns that have been coming through, um, what needs to be addressed uh sequentially.

Then every single time when a correction has been made, um, the staff have gone through and verified it's been applied to the account.

Um so I'm happy to go through and see if we can do a more uh cohesive level of audit, but I feel very confident that the protocols we set in place to make sure those corrections occurred are effective and they were highly functional.

Thank you.

Um, so um there's also been um some news coverage about folks that um you know had some type of issue with their bill, um, oftentimes you know not their own fault and um and then saw their water access restricted um, you know, due to uh because of the flow restriction program.

I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the flow restriction program.

If it is it still in progress, and are there changes being made to ensure that when an account is under review for billing errors, that those customers are not impacted by uh uh seeing their water cut off or restricted.

Yeah, completely understand.

Um, so one of the items I mentioned earlier was we're we're not doing the flow restructure campaign right now, it's not active, mostly because we wanted to give that level of surety that if you had made a payment, it had been processed.

Um, so that has been temporarily paused.

Um we will pick it back up as soon as we have a high level of confidence in the system and the new bills that are gonna come out.

Once once I get uh a zero error rate, I'll feel confident that I can move forward without having an impact of the customers.

Um, so that in and of itself has been paused.

And I'm gonna speak to a couple of the uh guardrails have been put in place for the flow restrictor campaign for auditing purposes.

Um so any um account that has a uh payment plan on it is exclusively um removed um as a protocol.

Any any account that has an active issue track on it, an issue track is how we track all the issues that come in, um, that's also excluded.

We also implemented a 100% verification process on the accounts, it's slowed down the implementation of the uh flow restrictors.

As you can imagine, um, if you have like 200 or 300 accounts that all have to be manually reviewed before somebody go out and do a flow restrictor from each district, that's very time intensive.

But we've implemented that as well.

And so uh the finance group is looking at that, the customer service group is looking at that, our field service group is looking at that same tracking spreadsheet, and they're able to decipher if there's a customer concern already on the account, and to pause on the flow restrictor.

Um we also hang a door hanger on the customer's door about five days in advance before anything's done to their property.

So, in the event that a customer does get a door hanger on their door for a flow restrictor, and they believe that their account is the open port uh investigative hold, I highly encourage them as soon as they see that door hanger to call, and the things happen, mistakes occur, um, things get overlooked.

If they call immediately, um the care agents will remove them from that list and address their issue.

Um, with all those protocols and guide rail or guardrails in place, I feel highly confident that we'll be able to minimize those erroneous uh flow restrictures on our customer base.

Thank you.

And um, you're the presentation calls out um on page 16 uh talks about bill accuracy as part of the mayoral action plan.

Could you um explain how that bill accuracy metric is measured?

Is that an industry metric?

Um, yeah, it's not an industry metric.

Um I mean, it is uh an industry measure in the sense that you want to make sure that you have as accurate as possible, you want to get as close to 100% as possible.

Um but the way that we are are doing the calculation, it's looking at the adjustments on the bill.

So if there's an instance where there's no adjustments that counts to the accuracy perspective, um the intent of this is to not have any type of ancillary adjustments that's both in the positive and in the negative.

Um but yes, the industry there is no uh best management industry standard that's like 99.5 or 99.8.

Everybody wants to get to 100%.

100% is the ultimate goal.

Um, we want to get as close to 100% as possible.

Thank you.

Um, and then my final question is around the uh program you talked about, the um well, just about the meters in general.

So um, so currently I understood that we had budgeted for like 50,000 new meters to replace those that were over the 15 year mark, and we're currently at 34,000 of those.

Um, I'm I'm curious to know how um, you know, what how many are in that 10 to 15 year mark and and how that's budgeted as we you know look look ahead in terms of our needs there.

Um I also was curious when you were talking about this new um automatic metering infrastructure, if the meters that are now being the new meters that are um being placed, um, uh if those have the functionality for this new AMI measurement and um and what the cost and timeline is to implement that.

Yeah, so um uh twofold.

I'm gonna answer this in a couple phases because it's a multi-tiered question.

Um the number of accounts that are in that 10 to 15 range, um, I don't have off the top of my head, but um what we are going to be doing going forward is I think it's 51 and we're at 36,000 or 35, 30, almost 35.

So I think we have 16,000 left.

But the intention is if if you wait and and do these in batches, you're gonna run into the same issue that we we had this time, which is mass failures of meters, um, so that it's like this wave that hits you all at once, and then you have this mass sprint to the finish line to try to get everything fixed.

That's not where you wanna be.

You want to do this slow, decisive and planned.

So what your intention is is you want to be replacing about one fifteenth of your meter um on an annual basis.

So once we get through this hurdle of where we are, the intention is is we're gonna start um depleting our inventory for all of our active inventory because we want to be responsible stewards to the ratepayers, and we don't want to use what we've purchased, but those new meters will be the AMI meters and they will be integrated into the new system seamlessly once that portal is live.

Um, probably going to give you guys probably the the first bite of the apple for those new meters so you can test it out and see it.

Um, you like being the guinea pig?

Don't mind um working through the glitches with you guys if it doesn't hurt the customers.

Um that's something we're gonna do.

Um, and and results like there's two ways you can do this.

Um, the the encoder on the meter can be swapped out so that you can convert it to a new um meter AMI.

The the problem is it needs to have either a repeater system um or a uh cellular-based uh transmitter, um, so they use a cellular signal to transmit the data that has to be stood up.

So that has to be changed out.

So any of the 51,000 meters, we can convert them if we need to as a age out or the encoder goes bad or the ERT goes bad.

Um, but we'll be placing the other meters in the system as that one one fifteenth of the replacement per goal on an annual basis.

So slowly will be so that it's a manageable load, so you don't have this massive wave of meters that come out.

Uh the the meter technology changes based off how much it costs is, um, but you're not looking at uh a huge expense from that.

You're looking at tens of thousands of dollars to hundreds of thousand dollars for the actual meter infrastructure itself.

The platform, sell your services, what is gonna be the most costs and that that uh that feed into the portal that's gonna be a cost of service that has to be accounted for.

I've not gotten a quote in that, so I would be reluctant to tell you the cost associated with that, but it won't be the same level of cost that we did for the this massive meter rollout because that was a significant cost to utility.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Abbebacker.

Just a quick follow-up question, um, and this may not be for you, it may be for the director of IT or or the CAO's office.

Um, the conversation around the vendor switching servers without kind of informing the city, uh I know in in prior years and we've had conversations about just uh vendor accountability and making sure that we're holding them strictly to their contracts.

So I don't know if there's something you know that's in that contractual language, but I know that um the mayor was really committed to ensuring that when vendors, particularly technology uh vendors were in some sort of breach of contract, that we actually pursued action against them because the it's well known that a lot of technology companies take advantage of these mass procurement projects, knowing that cities and municipalities are not going to be you know following through on that.

So, you know, it it sounds like things are getting worked through, but it also sounds like there's a lot of like money and time going into that.

So I would encourage the CAO's office or the director of technology to work with you to see if there's anything we can do in terms of procurement to recoup some of that loss.

Yeah, I will definitely have a discussion with the procurement director to see contractually what we can do.

I can tell you that I I got a customer satisfaction survey um from them, and it was not um very good um in my response, um, and I laced into them on the responsiveness and on this level of effort.

Not that that matters too from our citizen base, um, and every given the option uh to not use them again.

Um, I'm probably leaning that way just because of the the level of uh coordination.

But it sounds like that might be something like the I know that the tra chief transformation officer, that was you know, maybe part of that role, so maybe that's something that she can pursue as well.

Yes.

Thank you so much, Director Morris.

We are approaching an hour in on this, and I know we could probably spend another hour because you touched so many different parts of our constituents' lives um thank you again for coming down with this update and I'm gonna follow up with you with some other outstanding items but um I think we unless Councilmore Gibson did you have your questions answered okay all right thank you and thank you to everyone on your team thank you anytime thanks welcome good afternoon council members you guys hear me clearly perfect um my name is David Levine um and I serve as the um uh and director of elections for the City of Richmond Office of Elections I just want to thank the three of you starting with the chair chair Jordan Vice Chair Abelbaker Councilmember Gibson for inviting me to speak at today's meeting my my first year in this role has admittedly been both busy and eventful and I appreciate the opportunity to share some of the work our office has accomplished to provide updates on recent developments and discuss the changes in this year's primary election from its traditional June date to August.

If I may and I'll be real quick before I begin I'd like to briefly share some of my professional background for some context prior to rejoining the city of Richmond when I was the deputy general registrar from 2012 to 14 I served as a senior fellow at the University of Maryland Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement and as an adjunct professor of election security at George Mason University.

Before that I was the senior elections integrity fellow with the German Marshall Fund of the United States a transatlantic nonpartisan public policy organization and earlier in my career I served as elections director for Ada County Idaho where I oversaw the administration of all federal state and local elections for a jurisdiction that made up approximately one quarter of Idaho's population.

So with that I'm just pleased to go over our office's work and discuss several important election related developments including for the primary election.

I think that shifting the primary which normally here in Virginia would be from June until August means that this year's election will look frankly and feel different uh from previous years the change brings a number of important adjustments including new voter registration and mail ballot request deadlines revised early voting dates different holiday schedules to navigate and recently enacted state laws that will affect election administration in response to these changes and others our office has implemented many operational improvements designed to increase capacity enhance transparency strengthen election administration improve the voter experience and expand public outreach and we've accomplished this while operating within significant fiscal constraints and frankly preparing for a fundamentally different election calendar I know something that at least the vice chair if not the other two of you have alluded to as well um so just come in here turning to early voting um voting for the August 4th uh 2026 primary election began on Thursday June 18th and because city offices were closed for that Juneteenth holiday uh at our office um on June 19th voting did not place take place that day um similarly there will be no voting on Friday July 3rd due to the independence day holiday um from June 18th through Friday uh july 17th early voting will be available at our office from 8 30 a.m.

to 5 p.m.

Monday through Friday.

Beginning, you can see it up there on the screen, Sunday, July 19th.

Early voting will expand to include both our office and city hall uh Hickory Hill Community Center will not be used for this election due to pre-existing facility commitments.

However, we've been advised that this is a one-time scheduling conflict, and that Hickory Hill is expected to remain available for future elections, which, of course, is what the ordinance calls for.

To be clear, the addition of Sunday voting is the result of legislation that was enacted during the most recent General Assembly session, and it requires that all Virginia localities offer voting on both the second and third Sundays preceding a given election.

Friday, July 24th is also an important deadline.

Excuse me, to request a mail absentee application, as well as the deadline to register and cast a regular ballot before the start of same-day registration.

On Saturday, July 25th, same day registration begins.

Voters who register and vote on or after that date, July 25th, will cast a provisional ballot, which is consistent with Virginia law.

Both our office and city hall will both be open for voting on July 25th, and again on that Sunday, July 26th.

So the 19th was the third Sunday before the election.

The 26th is the second Sunday.

And I want to just to add a point to that.

That legislation requires that there be at least five hours of voting on each of those two Sundays between 11 a.m.

and 5 p.m.

And our electoral board at a previous board meeting approved early voting from 12 p.m.

to 5 p.m.

on both those Sundays.

Early voting concludes on Saturday, August 1, and election day will be Tuesday, August 4th.

This slide simply provides a reminder of the location dates and times for early voting.

I would also like to note that absentee ballot drop boxes, where you can put your mail ballots, those are now available for absentee voters who want to be able to return their mail ballots in person.

Under normal circumstances, ballot drop boxes are available during the same dates and hours as our early voting locations.

However, because, at least in part, Hickory Hill Community Center is unavailable for this primary election, our office made the decision to open the city hall drop box beginning Thursday, June 18th, even though in-person early voting at City Hall doesn't begin until July 19th.

This additional drop box availability provides voters with an additional convenient option for returning their ballots throughout the early voting period.

And I just wanted to sort of thank the City Hall staff, including Dr.

Winborn, for their assistance and flexibility in making this accommodation possible.

Okay.

Um, this slide right here provides an overview of the August 4th primary election ballot in the city of Richmond, as well as some examples of recent state law changes that will affect election administration.

As you can see to your left, uh in Richmond, there is only one primary contest on the ballot.

It's a Republican primary for United States Senate, and the three candidates in that race are listed on the slide.

The slide also highlights some new state requirements that will affect this election to stay within my allotted time.

I've only included a few examples, right?

Uh, these include the addition of Sunday early voting, which you can see, clarification, right, that certain restrictions traditionally associated with polling places also apply to early voting locations, right?

So, you know, I think for example, electioneering.

That piece of legislation around our HB 909 also has a prohibition on knowingly carrying a firearm within 100 feet feet of most election-related locations.

Uh, and of course, the the third piece of legislation you see down there, and forgive me for not having my glasses to better see that slide, but um that third one uh provides additional time for localities to complete the abstract of votes following a primary election.

Uh, this was sort of a change that was made by the General Assembly to clean up some language so that we now have 10 days to do an abstract of votes for primaries, like we do for a general.

Um, I did want to make sure, and it's worth noting that we discussed many of these changes.

We discussed many of these changes in greater detail at last month's electoral board meeting, and I'll be happy to provide that additional information to anyone's interested, as well as, of course, the meeting which we we have uh electronic copies of and can share out.

I also wanted to make sure to thank, among others, and I'm sure I didn't I don't remember everyone, so forgive me for that, to thank the City of Richmond Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, Troy Cotton from the City Attorney's Office elect the Virginia Department of Elections and my staff for their assistance and monitoring to monitoring sort of these new requirements.

Um that's the sort of quickly, right?

I think some of the election related stuff.

Um this year, when I'm now going to shift in for these next few slides, and I think I was given about 10 minutes, so I'll try and uh go as quickly as I can through these, but is to walk through some of the broader improvements our office has made over the past year, which coincides, I guess, with when I when I came on.

Um of my highest priorities, frankly, upon returning to the Office of Elections, was filling long-standing vacancies and rebuilding our operational capacity.

As the mayor noted in his 2025 Mayoral Action Plan, um, you know, transforming the organization begins with doing the basics well.

And filling critical positions has allowed us to strengthen our day-to-day operations, improve service delivery, and frankly, better position the office to meet the demands of administering elections.

This slide right here highlights several of the key hires we've made over the past year.

They include Tina Crump, who admirably led the office's interim director, now serves as this department's deputy director.

Um, Dr.

Cassandra Harris, who joined as election operations and services manager after serving in leadership roles with both the Virginia Department of Elections and RPS, and Stephen Labis, our soon to be voter services manager, whose prior experience includes similar positions in Albemaro and Culpeper counties.

We've also added a research and policy analyst, uh Aliyah Daniels, to help strengthen our capacity to monitor legislative developments, conduct research, and support policy and operational planning, as I think all of you know, right.

Election administration continues to grow more complex with evolving legal requirements, increasing public scrutiny and ongoing resource constraints.

Ms.

Daniels has already become an important part of our efforts to address those challenges along with others.

The slide finally includes two others that you see there.

One is Nicole Hicks, our communications and outreach coordinator and Farm Good, our facilities coordinator.

Ms.

Hicks brings extensive experience in communications strategy and public engagement, including the Virginia Department of Social Services, while Ms.

Good contributes valuable experience and expertise in facilities management and operational support, which is particularly critical in light of the fact that we lease not own our building.

And together, these additions have strengthened our ability, frankly, to serve Richmond voters and minister elections effectively.

It's also worth noting that our office is taking steps to strengthen, right?

How residents and stakeholders access and understand the election process.

We recently overhauled our website to provide clear information on election procedures, election types, and ongoing updates.

And frankly, this is an evolving thing.

We're going to continue to expand and refine this content in the coming weeks and months, in part to reflect, but not solely because of upcoming legislative changes.

Earlier this year, we also resumed offering, and I touched on this a little earlier, electoral board meetings, both in person and virtually, improving public access, increasing transparency around the work of the office and the administration of elections.

And in addition, right, we are reorienting our outreach efforts to better connect with the Richmond community and increase understanding of the voting process.

For example, last fall, we partnered with Richmond Public Schools to visit each of the city's high schools and register eligible students to vote.

We're also in discussion with court officials about opportunities to engage new citizens following naturalization ceremonies.

Our communications and outreach coordinator continues to lead these efforts, helping the office identify opportunities to share information, engage with the public through a particularly active election year.

This slide right here, you know, I think it's worth noting that last year, I think some of you are all familiar, City Hall, right, implemented enhanced security measures to help ensure the safety of all visitors.

And the Office of Elections has a largely aligned our practices accordingly.

We now have two security officers on site during normal business hours, one to the front entrance and one to the rear, both of whom report to our facilities coordinator.

And with assistance again from Dr.

Winborn, we've also installed a weapon detection system at the rear entrance and a handheld screening one at the front entrance, with support from the administration and city council.

We anticipate, we believe we'll have funding in the next fiscal year to purchase permanent screening equipment for both entrances, right?

Well, you know, I wish this wasn't something, frankly, we had to do.

Unfortunately, I think this is this is frankly a reality and something we need to do.

So this will frankly um improve screening consistency, hopefully, in due course, reduce waiting times during early voting and enhance overall access to the facility.

In addition, the electoral board has adopted an updated election observer policy that clarifies how observers may monitor the process without interfering with election administration.

Slide nine over here.

This slide here focuses on some steps we're taking to improve the voting experience.

And again, these are examples.

We can certainly get these are not exhaustive, and I'm happy to talk about these or other things that you may want to talk about.

Um it's worth noting that for this election, we've deployed right a ballot on demand printing system.

These are printers that you can use during early voting to help voters receive their ballots more quickly and accurately, right?

So when somebody comes and they request a ballot, we have the ability to print out the proper ballot type, which can help frankly speed up the check-in process and ensure they're getting the correct one.

Admittedly, I'm the first to admit that we only have one ballot this go around because it's just the US Senate primary race, so perhaps not quite as critical, but still useful for us to do, particularly in an election like this one, as opposed to piloting it in a busier, more complex one.

Um, but these printers, right, are gonna help not only will they help uh in bigger elections, but also small ones, help um voters receive their ballots more quickly and accurately, help reduce the need for surplus ballot orders, improving our ability to manage ballot supply more efficiently across the election cycle, and just to sort of put that in a plain English, right?

I think for us, part of this is before what we've had to do is order ballots from our vendor, and we want to make sure we don't run out of ballots.

So you would always order, frankly, more ballots than you needed, right?

And by a healthy margin, I might add, based on what you can project.

By having this system where we can print ballots during early voting, we won't have to have quite the same surplus because we will be able to print out additional ballots, not only for voters at early voting, but we also have a printer that will be able to print out ballots on site if necessary, so that we're able to be a little more uh narrowly tailored in that approach.

Okay.

Um, in the next fiscal year, which of course begins in gosh, only a couple weeks' time, we we also will have funding to purchase new ADA compliant voting equipment, right?

Our current equipment is frankly sort of antiquated, um, and and this will this equipment uh will ensure that voters with disabilities, as well as frankly, any voters who prefer an accessible electronic voting option, have access to that updated and more modern equipment.

And then finally, um, our office is revamped election officer training to include more hands-on practice.

Um, and frankly, we believe this will further improve our poll worker readiness and enhance services to voters.

So I hope I kept within my 10 minutes.

And if I didn't forgive the council here, we certainly could go into more depth if necessary, but if you have questions, I am happy to take them.

Thank you so much.

And really, we wanted to provide this opportunity to raise awareness about the August primary and um and all the good work that you're doing over at the Rogers' office.

I imagine we'll have some specific questions about ongoing issues.

So with that, I'll open it up to discussion.

Councilmember Gibson.

Um, thank you for for coming.

I appreciate the insight.

Um, can you share um why it is that Hickory Hill is not available for use the thing.

Absolutely.

So, you know, Hickory Hill indicated that they had pre-existing obligations that prevented them from being able to um, you know, serve as a facility.

Um, you know, unfortunately, as you all know, right, we don't normally have our primary elections in um in August.

And I believe, but I don't quote me, but you know, you could speak to the folks over there.

I believe they have some sort of educational or camp program for younger children, and they were unable to make right, to be able to make alternative accommodations.

And so, you know, they've again indicated this a one-time thing.

They will be back with us in November, right?

They obviously know they're part of the ordinance, but that's why they're not available to Scobra.

Thank you.

Could you um could you share how those folks who normally vote at Hickory Hill?

What what will be communicated to them?

Will they receive um, you know, opportunities for uh mail-in or off-site, you know, voting?

Yeah.

How no, no, no, I uh, I really appreciate the question.

So let's put a little context around this and then dive into that question.

So the last time we had a US Senate Republican primary race was 2024.

There were about a hundred and fifty people that voted in that race across 45 days of early voting.

So I do want to sort of that that doesn't mean that we can't have more, can't have less, but I want to put a little bit of context around this.

Now, what I would say is a few things that we're gonna do.

Number one, right, we're gonna make sure when we have right that we're doing that folks are aware of what our other options are to be able to vote, right?

Both in terms of early voting locations, be it our office or city hall, as well as the opportunity to take advantage of absentee voting, right?

As well as the opportunity to the extent that you view absentee voting in drop boxes as different.

Uh, and it's also worth noting that we we will have, right, all of our 72 locations, right, or 72 precincts voting and available so people can make use of election day.

Um it is our intent to make sure that we've got signage, right, that makes sure that if folks go to Hickory Hill, that they're of course informed.

If they don't, for example, check our website or necessarily hear an interviewer here at this meeting, for example, that they're made aware that again that Hickory Hill won't be available, but there are these other options that are available, uh, that we can direct them there as well.

Um, but those are some things that we'll be doing to do that.

And and generally, just so the council and the public is aware, when a location isn't available, we generally will we'll send out certainly for election day, and certainly could look at this on the early voting side as well, but for election day, we will we send out notices to voters letting them know, right?

That that location is available.

Now for election day, we let them know what the other location is that will be utilized.

Um, I would need to check back with my folks to see if something like that would be arranged.

Obviously, for early voting, as you know, it's a little different because anybody from anywhere in the city can go vote at any of the locations.

Thank you.

Um and the presentation also talks about the security measures.

Um it sounds like you're not concerned that that crowds will be a concern for the um for the August election, but um, and in this year's November election and and subsequent years.

I'm wondering, you know, are there concerns about those security measures causing lines to be longer, slowing down the process.

Yeah.

So no, again, Councilmember, I really appreciate this question, right?

I would say a couple things to this.

So we began to put some of these measures in place when we had that special April special election, and that we did have more turnout there, and you know, I think additionally on day one, if I'm being honest, people had to get used to it.

In fact, and we confiscated some stuff, and we don't have to go into details, um, you know, some things that, you know, some weapons and other sorts of things, but then basically people more or less got got accustomed to it.

Um, and and we had few few few issues, um, you know, talking with my facilities person, talking with security, talking with voters.

Now, that's obviously anecdotal.

Um, but I would add as well, um, you know, that I don't have too many issues.

Again, I would also want to make sure I cabin this correctly, right?

Those security measures are for our office, and of course, our office also has an early voting location.

Um, that makes it akin, I guess, to sort of city Hall, right?

As an early voting location, which has those measures.

Hickory Hill does not, right?

Currently have that.

Um, and nor do our voting locations, election day as a general matter.

So, you know, insofar as this relates to our office, you know, I I am not too uh new too concerned about that.

And I and I guess part of that is because again, we've had some decent amount of success in April, though it's not November, and I think that people are understanding of the situation.

And I think you know the other thing that I think is is is probably helpful if I'm being honest, is that again, you know, early voting now exists in most of the country, but we certainly are at one end of the spectrum here in Virginia in terms of how much early voting we offer, beginning 45 days in advance, and that's even more so, I would add, in light of the fact that we now have two Saturdays and two Sundays of voting, and so I think that ends up helping spread out that voting process that allows other people to notify and communicate that to others.

And so I think you know, we end up being in a pretty decent place.

But you know, if it turns out that we have something like that that you know happens on the other side, you have questions.

I'm happy to talk about it then.

Thank you.

Um Councilman Robert Bacher.

Thank you, and thank you for um this presentation and for all you've done in the office to date and your tenure.

Um, you know, one of the things that was recently in the news was that um Richmond Public Schools was considering the idea of not being polling locations.

I'm assuming that you are I mean, I hope that that does not become the case, but I I am curious.

Like, are you scenario planning for that and um sort of what is that relationship look like right now?

Absolutely.

You know, I I think you certainly I was was made aware of that.

I know that we've had some you know contact with some folks at RPS, our board has been engaged with them, our staff has been engaged.

Um, you know, and I think you know, one of the things that we want to be able to do is be a resource to sort of talk that through.

In 2013, there was a bipartisan presidential commission on election administration.

It was led, right?

This was during President Obama's term.

It was led by Bob Bauer, prominent Democratic election law attorney, and Ben Ginsburg, a prominent Republican election law attorney and election officials and others.

And they were pretty clear in that report about the importance that schools play as polling places, right?

They talked about the accessibility that exists, they talk about the fact that people are aware of those buildings.

They talked about um the the measures that are in place that enable, right, and facilitate that voting process.

Um, and you know, one of the things I think that was spoken about was to the extent that people had concerns, right, with schools as polling places that you know, one compromise that I think we've seen use elsewhere is being able to have in service days, right?

School and service days where this kids aren't in school, maybe staff is, and you're able to conduct that voting.

That's something we've begun to see over and over again.

But again, you know, I think one of the things I've instructed my staff to do, and we're trying to do amidst preparation for this primary in November, is to is to sort of make sure that we pull together, right?

Sort of what what our materials so that we can be able to show folks in due course, not only what our current polling places are, right, but some backup polling places we have, and even perhaps what future locations might be, depending on, for example, if there were to be redistricting or other sorts of things, so that folks sort of have an understanding of what that matrix looks like, right?

You know, if you you know, ideally we want to have polling places in the precincts, right?

Um, if we don't, there's you we can have them outside of it, and the vice chair and others are aware of this, but again, there's some difficulty or challenges and considerations with doing that.

Um, and so you know that you have to be able to sort of be make make be able to understand what those trade-offs are and make them in an informed manner, and again, you know, we stand ready to sort of assist whomever would like, right, as how to sort of talk through that kind of thing.

But certainly if you want a robust, a robust election day process, right?

You have lots of election day polling places, and you're in a situation where people can only go to their polling place in their neighborhood, you know, it is you know, it would take a certain amount to sort of think through what those alternatives could be if schools were not part of the equation.

Thank you.

Um kind of along those same lines.

I I do appreciate um your particularly you, um, but also your office's responsiveness to my office in regards to our uh query around uh polling locations at uh two of the Richmond fire departments.

Um I would just be remiss if I didn't put in a plug for um those two fire stations and and ensuring that we continue to try to find a way for um those locations to be adjusted.

Um I think it's one thing for polling locations to be at at schools, but um, you know, when we have first responders coming in from the field and they've gone through something traumatic, uh, I think it is incredibly valuable that they have the peace and the wherewithal to be able to go into their what is their home for 24 hours and not be kind of inundated by the public.

Um so thank you for you know speaking to us about that and and thinking creatively about it.

I know that that's something ongoing, but I wanted to name that when I talked about RPS.

Um my last question is just around um, you know, uh awareness with um the Sunday early voting and the second and third Sundays before election.

Like, what are the you know, you heard us talking about this with Director Morris.

Like, what are the mechanisms you're using to get out the word um so that people realize the breadth of options for them to vote early?

Yeah, no, I I really appreciate uh Vice Chair you asking that question.

I would say a few things that we're doing, right?

One, of course, is and you know, I think we've we've sort of overhauled our website and tried to direct people there, right?

Through the through the inquiries that we get via phone, though of course we try and talk with them through um, you know, the outreach efforts we do, right?

Whether it's speaking with local Republican, local democratic committees or going to sort of outreach events through our social media channels.

We have a pretty sort of robust sort of Instagram um uh Twitter following, and then of course we try, you know, and I hopefully we can do more of this, but obviously reaching out, for example, to the liaisons with the city council and others to sort of share some of that uh information.

Um I'd be remiss if I didn't know that you know, one of the challenges that we're in a little bit, and I think everyone here is aware, but I just have to put it on the table, right?

Is that you know we had a November election, and then we had a special January election that wasn't part of the budget, and then we had an April election that wasn't part of the budget.

Um, and you know, to be fair, that June election moved to August, but even a certain amount of that election is still in this current fiscal year after all early voting started last week.

So this office really has had to unfortunately really focus right very you know uh definitively around sort of the statutory obligations.

And so, you know, when I'm talking to you about that outreach, we've been looking at sort of those low budget, low-cost kinds of things, right?

Um, you know, uh, to sort of try and get the word out, right?

About that, you know, we'll have a little more flexibility.

I think even when we get into the next fiscal year, but even in that case, right, we'll have that election, and we'll have November, and then we'll very certain almost certainly have a June primary.

And and our budget, which was approved right earlier in the year was done with the idea that we'd have two elections.

So, you know, again, I think that there's a there's a conversation to sort of be had um about that.

But those are some of the ways in which I think we're trying to sort of get the word out, whether it be myself, the board, our outreach person, or some of our other staff, um, to try and sort of let people know again about what those what those options may be.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Well, I think we'll have follow-up with your office certainly when it comes to budgeting uh as a topic.

I it it would be amazing if we only had two elections a year.

It certainly seems like we're starting to have four and five, and um it's it's gotten out of hand, obviously, when it comes to trying to accommodate within your existing budget.

This just seems impossible.

So appreciate making sure we have a communication about what your costs are and the city's um you know role in making you whole, and then thinking about as we go develop our legislative package going forward, like are we getting enough help from the state for our local elections as well as federal elections, right?

No, I you know, I couldn't agree more, vice chair.

I know that you know, right after the April election happened, I actually went went to to to DC with some other election officials to sort of again to sort of you know talk to others in congressional offices about just informationally speaking, of course, about sort of the need for more election, you know, federal election security funding.

Obviously, this is a hearing with you all and not for Congress, and I don't need to sort of touch on that, but I but I do think you know it's an issue that you guys are familiar with.

Obviously, Virginia, the funding largely comes from the local, you know, is the locality based, right?

The states help with the an occasional right?

A presidential primary and and even when they helped with this April special election, again, I want to be clear on this, and I know I sent this information along to some folks, right?

We we spent about $500,000 in direct cost for the April special election.

General assembly bill calling for that special, included about five million as a reimbursement.

That's about equivalent to the number of registered voters in the commonwealth.

We have about 165,000 registered voters in the commonwealth.

So my guess is that what we're gonna get back is likely about 165,000.

So then the question becomes, of course, how do you make up for the other 300 and you get the idea 330,000 plus?

Certainly, you know, it is an ongoing challenge.

And I just want to be clear for for you all, because I appreciate the support as well as the administrations.

You know, budgeting for special elections is a is that are unforeseen is a tough beast.

Um, and having you know worked in other offices before, you know, do you decide to start including money into that?

Right and then pulling it away, or do you end up trying to figure out something as you get further down the line?

But happy to be part of those conversations and do what I can for my end, and I appreciate the support.

Wonderful, thank you so much.

And I know we'll also be following up when it comes to the referendum for the schools tax, and um look forward to having that conversation.

But thank you for being down here and for all your great work, and um we're just grateful for what you're doing and all the volunteers and staff that make our elections possible.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, um, I believe we have a staff report when it comes to our standing committee schedule.

Yes, ma'am, thank you.

Um Madam Chair Will Perkins for the committee staff.

Um I captured one action item from today.

We'll follow up with TPU on behalf of Councilmember Gibson about the um age of some of the the water meters, um, and then to look ahead to your schedule you've got in July.

This committee will meet again on Wednesday, July 22nd at 1 p.m.

Um, we'll hear from 311 um about department SOPs and service level agreements, as well as a review of your proposed schedule for presentations in the fall uh into February of 27.

Thank you.

Wonderful.

I believe we were also going to discuss the possibility of moving the time of Gabas back to potentially 130 to allow more flexibility for folks to get to the meeting.

Yes, um, I'm happy to facilitate that now.

I believe at the previous meeting we were down one number, so again, I think you were uh hoping to float that with your colleagues here and and discuss if that's um available.

Comment that would be great.

All right, let's let's look ahead at what would be a reasonable time to start implementing 130, just to make sure folks' calendar is kind of accommodate that um is a comment from our our city clerk.

We could do it immediately.

Okay, well, to be continued, we will let folks know if we implement that for the next meeting.

I just want to check with the folks who are on schedule for presentations first, right?

Anything else for the good of the order?

Nope.

Okay, thank you.

With that, this meeting is adjourned.