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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2020/12/08 - ADMIN - Agenda Packets - Community Technology Advisory Commission - Regular AGENDA COMMUNITY TECHNOLOGY ADVISORY COMMISSION By videoconference 6 P.M. DEC. 8, 2020 All meetings of the St. Louis Park Community Technology Advisory Commission will be conducted by telephone or other electronic means until further notice. This is in accordance with a local emergency declaration issued by the city council, in response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. All members of the Community Technology Advisory Commission will participate in the Tuesday, December 8, 2020, 6 p.m. meeting by electronic device or telephone rather than by being personally present at the commission’s regular meeting place at 5005 Minnetonka Blvd., St. Louis Park. Members of the public can monitor this meeting by listen-only audio by calling 1.312.535.8110 and entering access code 177 307 6315 for audio only. Cisco Webex will be used to conduct videoconference meetings of the Community Technology Advisory Commission, with commissioners and staff participating from multiple locations. 1. Call to order – roll call 2. Adoption of agenda 3. Approval of minutes a. Nov. 10, 2020 4. Smart cities subcommittee reports a. Environment/sustainability (Levine, Pires) b. GIS (Heitz, Hoffman, Pires) c. Connected community/citizen awareness (Browning, Pohlen, Siegler) 5. Next steps a. January meeting (Jan. 5, 7, 12 or 14) 6. Selection of chair and vice-chair for 2021 7. Adjourn If you cannot attend the meeting please contact Jacque Smith: jsmith@stlouispark.org or 952.924.2632 by 4 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 8. Community Technology Advisory Commission Nov. 10, 2020 UNOFFICIAL MINUTES 1. Call to order – roll call Meeting started 6:10 p.m. by videoconference Present: Bruce Browning, Kelly Heitz, Cindy Hoffman, Abe Levine, Theo Pohlen, Mike Siegler Absent: Mohamed Mohamud, Rolf Peterson Guests: Aaryn Anderson, Sandeep Sinha, Shawn Wood Staff: John McHugh, Clint Pires, Jacque Smith 2. Adoption of agenda - Agenda adopted as presented 3. Approval of minutes: Sept. 16, 2020 Browning moved, Hoffman seconded. All voted in favor of approving the minutes as presented. 4. Smart Cities Anderson, Insight, gave a short presentation recapping the smart cities workshop of Oct. 22 and its continuation Oct. 28, 2020. He explained the exercise for use case definitions in terms of what they are and what they provide to St. Louis Park residents, and what opportunities exist for smart cities initiatives. Those initiatives were then sorted according to the value they provide to the city, and how they align to the city’s strategic priorities/goals. From there, themes emerged including connected community, GIS, environmental/sustainability, citizen safety and citizen awareness. Anderson provided a definition of each of the five themes, along with their supported use cases. He offered to answer any questions from the group. Browning said it was a good summary and it was helpful to see it in a condensed form. Levine suggested looking at the chart and asked Anderson to share it, showing use case prioritization and the items that came through as high value and high alignment with city goals. Levine observed that the top three themes are foundational and enable other things, but don’t do things on their own. This includes connected community, GIS and environmental. Levine asked the commission members to provide their thoughts on foundational versus active services. Heitz agreed and said at the end of the last workshop, she felt these are good focuses but need refinement to be actionable. She also thinks more collaboration will be needed to understand where the opportunities are. Levine said he thought it would be helpful to look at other items on the chart that are of good value and align with city goals and would be worth having a committee to discuss how to do that. Pires added that for example, we could grow our GIS products, but the city has a lot of capability right now. He mentioned tracking snow plowing on the Cedar Lake trail, which will have a public-facing application for users interested in knowing trail conditions. Pires said the question is, what is the application of the foundational item? Another example is telemedicine, which can’t be promoted without a connected community. We’re looking at two levels: foundational, then what do you with those foundations? That may be the work of the committees. Is the technology driving the use, or is the use driving the technology? Pires said if you have a good use providing benefits to the community, that’s what drives the justification to invest in technology to support the use. He said now is where the hard work comes, with committees thinking about how the foundational pieces can be used to benefit the community – those are the applications. Pires suggested the Insight staff may have some ideas for how to proceed. Sinha talked about some use examples, such as smart light poles, water quality monitoring and others. He suggested the city think about the business benefit to the city, such as if water quality monitoring would help with understanding pump performance. He sees four or five opportunities looking at the chart, that would be applicable to citizens. Levine asked the group to identify two to three committees. He suggested it be simpler items to start. Siegler said he likes the concept of the connected community and fleshing out specific examples, along with goals that tie back to council strategic priorities. Browning said that seems like a very basic foundation as without connectivity it’s difficult to do anything else. Levine said he likes the idea of public 5G or WiFi, but said it will take some time to work through specific ideas. Siegler said if several ideas are brainstormed, can we then get feedback from the community on how they’d prioritize them? Levine said yes, but need to be really careful about how we get feedback. He said every committee would probably want to know something from the community, so should there be a committee that focuses on public input? Siegler said it makes sense, but asked how public input has happened in the past such as for trail snow plowing. Smith said in that case it was an idea from a city council member, and no public input was obtained. It was in line with the strategic goal of transportation and providing ways to get around the community safely. Levine asked about telemedicine; Pires said it would likely be a collaborative effort with the health care community. Siegler said we want a community that people want to live in with a superior environment, which will be part of gauging importance of various initiatives. Levine said the first committee had been created with Siegler, Browning also joined – connected community. Levine asked who would like to be in charge of the community input committee; Browning volunteered. Levine moved onto the GIS committee, Heitz volunteered for that committee. Levine asked Heitz what interests her; she said the use of already existing data internally to identify where processes can be improved. Pires volunteered to serve as staff liaison for this group since he supervises the GIS coordinator for the city. Hoffman asked about Vitals app that is in use for people in the city and participation is voluntary; she asked if GIS was used for this app. Pires said the app uses GIS but he recollects this is a Hennepin County program. Hoffman said it was a county project. Anderson said he wanted to be sure that just because it’s being done, doesn’t mean it’s being used to best advantage. Smith brought up the public input committee and said it was very important, but wanted to ensure we come up with initiatives and bring them to the council before going out to the public. She also mentioned a community needs assessment conducted earlier in the year as part of cable franchise renewal that may have useful data for the committees. Smith will send out that information to the commission members. Hoffman said she’d also work with Heitz on the GIS committee. Levine revisited citizen awareness and asked if it should be a committee. Pohlen said a lot of things in citizen awareness go back to connected communities. For that reason he wasn’t sure it should be a separate committee. Siegler said he could see citizen awareness being the dashboard or mobile app for residents, where connected community is how we get the information to the public. Pohlen said he’d be on citizen awareness and Siegler also volunteered. Levine said the first charge for the committees is to provide basic requirements to get this done. Levine then showed a suggested committee structure. Pires said there will be overlap between the committees. Pires said environmental shouldn’t be overlooked since the city has a 2040 climate action plan and he would strongly recommend a group of people look at that, then work with Emily Ziring on city staff. Levine agreed, he volunteered to work on the environmental committee. Final committees: • Connected community: Siegler, Browning • GIS: Heitz, Hoffman, Pires • Citizen awareness: Pohlen, Siegler • Environmental: Levine, Pires (with Pires to recommend other city staff with environmental expertise in his place) Levine shared his proposed smart cities committee framework which outlines deliverables, including charter goals and deliverables and have those ready by the week after Thanksgiving. Siegler agreed. Levine asked if it would be a public meeting; Smith said any time there’s a quorum it’s a public meeting and needs an official notice. Levine asked who’s available the week after Thanksgiving; but had also stated the first week of December. Smith suggested an email collection of ideas rather than a meeting, since Dec. 10 is already on the calendar. Levine asked for the commission input. Siegler said he’d like more collaboration. Levine said that argues for writing it up and sending it out. Siegler said if we plan on Dec. 10 public meeting, then work to take place prior to that with committees meeting and coming up with deliverables. Pires asked if Anderson and Sinha could chime in with any suggestions. Anderson said it was a good outline. Be sure to focus on objectives first, rather than solutions, and this is a good place to start in defining the goals. Levine recapped the committees; it was decided that a public input committee wasn’t needed. He reminded everyone of the Dec. 10 meeting. Smith reminded everyone to be careful of open meeting laws, which applies to email, text and in-person meetings. 5. Communications from the chair/commissioners – None 6. Staff items – None Browning moved, Siegler seconded to adjourn, all voted in favor. Meeting adjourned 7:18 p.m. 1 COMMUNITY TECHNOLOGY ADVISORY COMMISSION BYLAWS ARTICLE I – THE COMMISSION 1.1 1.2 1.3 2.1 2.2 2.2 2.3 Name of the Commission. The Commission was officially created as the Cable Television Advisory Commission by Ordinance 1783-89 on April 17, 1989, and reestablished and renamed the Telecommunications Advisory Commission (“The Commission” by Ordinance 2216-01 effective January 1, 2002. Commission members voted August 7, 2019, to change the name of the commission to the Community Technology Advisory Commission Powers. The powers of the Commission shall be as stated in section 2-184 of the St. Louis Park City Code. Relation to the Ordinance. These bylaws supplement the Ordinance, and in the case of conflict, are subordinate to the Ordinance. ARTICLE II – OFFICERS, MEMBERS & STAFF Officers and Members. The officers of the Commission shall be the Chair and Vice- Chair. There shall be at least seven commission members, one of whom is appointed by the St. Louis Park school board and one of whom is a youth member. Chair. The chair shall preside at all meetings of the Commission and is eligible to vote on all matters coming before the Commission. The chair shall appoint all committees. The chair shall have the responsibility for calling special meetings of the Commission and for conducting all meetings in an orderly manner. Vice-Chair. The Vice-Chair shall perform the duties of the chair in the absence or incapacity of the Chair. Staff Liaison. A staff liaison to the Commission shall be appointed by the city manager and shall be subject to the administrative rules and regulations of the city. The staff liaison may facilitate or assist in the meetings and shall be responsible for recording attendance of commission members and for preparation of minutes. The staff liaison is responsible for keeping the city manager informed regarding the business of the commission and shall communicate to the city manager any problems or issues that may arise. The staff liaison shall also be responsible for assisting the commission in considering their financial needs and, if deemed necessary by the commission, shall request appropriate the annual budget process. ARTICLE III - ELECTIONS 2 3.1 Elections. A regular election shall be held at the first meeting following city council boards and commissions appointments in May. Officers shall be nominated from the floor by any voting member of the commission. 3.2 Term of Office. Officers will assume office at the first meeting following an election. The term for officers shall be one year and the chair may serve for up to two consecutive years. 3.3 Succession of Office. The Vice-Chair shall succeed to the office of Chair in the event the Chair is vacant by virtue of any inability to fulfill the duties of the office. Should the Vice-Chair thus move to the Chair, a special election shall be held to fill the unexpired term of the Vice-Chair. ARTICLE IV – CONDUCT OF BUSINESS 4.1 Voting. Each regular member of the Commission including the Commissioner appointed by the School Board and any Youth Member appointed by the City Council shall be entitled to one vote on all matters brought to a vote. 4.2 Quorum. A majority of commissioners shall constitute a quorum for the purpose of transacting its business. A smaller number may adjourn from time to time until a quorum is obtained. ARTICLE V – MEETINGS 5.1 Meetings. All meetings of the commission will be conducted in accordance with the Minnesota Open Meeting Law. Proceedings of the Commission will be conducted as outlined in the Standard Code of Parliamentary Procedure. 5.2 Regular Meetings. The Commission will hold at least four regular meetings each year. Regular meeting dates shall be set during the final meeting of each year for the upcoming year and shall not be held on any of the holidays recognized by the St. Louis Park City Council. The meeting time shall be 6 p.m. promptly. Meeting dates shall be posted in advance in the city offices. The commission may change the regular meeting time or date as deemed appropriate, provided the public notice requirement for a special meeting is met. 5.3 Special Meetings. Special meetings of the Commission may be called by the chair or three commissioners for the purpose of transacting any business designated in the call. The call for special meeting shall be delivered in compliance with state law. Notice of the date, time, place and purpose of a special meeting must also be posted on the principal bulletin board of the city at least three days prior to the date of the meeting. Commissioners should be notified of the special meeting before or at the same time the meeting is officially posted. 3 5.4 Emergency Meetings. An emergency meeting may be called by the chair due to circumstances which require immediate consideration. Notice must be made to commissioners by any means available. A good faith effort shall be made to provide notice of the meeting to any news medium that has filed a written request for notice of meetings. The notice shall include the purpose of the meeting. 5.5 Record of Proceedings. All minutes and resolutions shall be in writing and shall be recorded in the journal of the proceedings of the commission. Records shall be kept in accordance with MN Statute and rules regarding preservation of public records and the MN Government Data Practices Act. ARTICLE VI – ATTENDANCE 6.1 Absences. If a Commissioner is unable to attend a regularly scheduled or special meeting of the Commission, that member shall notify the city staff liaison of this fact no later than 4 p.m. the day of the meeting. 6.2 Attendance. Commission members are expected to attend regular and special commission meetings and assigned committee meetings. A roster of attendance shall be maintained. Repeated absences shall result in the chair contacting the member to ask their intentions about continuing involvement on this Commission. 6.3 Request for Council Action. Should the member not wish to continue to serve on the Commission, or should the member have continuing absences, the chair shall inform the City Council of this fact, recommending the Council appoint a replacement. ARTICLE VII – AMENDMENTS 7.1 Amendments. Amendments to these bylaws may be proposed by any voting member. All proposed amendments shall be submitted in writing to each member of the Commission at least fifteen (15) days prior to the regular meeting of the Commission at which that amendment is to be considered. A statement explaining the purpose and effect of the proposed amendment shall be attached to the proposed amendment. Amendments shall be considered only at regular meetings of the Commission. Adopted January 27, 1983 Revised August 23, 1984 Revised March 10, 1997 Revised December 5, 2002 Revised May 5, 2005 Revised December 7, 2006 Revised May 3, 2007 Revised August 7, 2019 Committee work plan framework • Committee topic selection (done before any committees are established) • Determine members (no more than 3 total from Commission, City liaison, plus others as we determine) • Establish Committee Chair (must be a Commission member) • Insight to support and guide committees. • City liaisons serve committees in providing information as needed. Committees develop initiatives. • Tentative date of final deliverable – end of January • Deliverables o Definition of charter, goals, and objectives – Due December 8th. Must include tie to a specific City goal, perhaps more than one o Definition of deliverables and timeline – Due December 10. Includes statement of support needed from City and others o Final Deliverable and report to Commission – End of February? Deliverables include:  Statement of charter, goals and objectives and outcomes that define success, written report to City Council January 25th. Work to date, actions to take, seeking Council comment/questions on CTAC direction, modifications to consider, first level checkin  Adherence to City Council strategic goals by describing how the initiative supports CC strategic goals  High level definition of the application and how it benefits City residents, or provides operational efficiencies  Very High-level architecture, i.e., phone app, communications, back-end processing, data flow, etc.  City Council briefing March 8th. Flesh out what was presented January 25th incorporating comments and further progress  Potential product vendors, some idea of required custom development. Provide examples of where this has been tried along with results and outcomes  City residents feedback obtained, if any, and if required • Meetings as frequently as determined by the Committee, location/method to be determined by Committee • Committee chair to keep CTAC chair informed of progress on an on-going basis. Include City Liaisons • Potential interim full Commission meetings to hear how’s it going. Could be via email or Zoom/equivalent • Members agree to ensure that they adhere to their action item responsibilities and attend all meetings to the best of their ability Community technology advisory commission Connected community committee charter The goal of the CTAC Connected Community committee is to establish citywide modern networks for residents and visitors to use mobile and internet-based city-based information and services and for general private online use. This will include all aspects of wired and wireless connectivity, access to computer and communications tools and managed services required to enable them to fully participate in online learning, work and healthcare. The committee will conduct its work in support of city council strategic priorities involving leadership in racial equity and environmental stewardship and building social capital through community engagement. Committee work will investigate existing and forthcoming technologies such as private LTE and 5G, metro ethernets, use of fiber optics and various other network solutions. Chief deliverables from these efforts will be recommendations and alternatives for implementations. In addition, the connected community committee will investigate applications that would benefit from citywide mobile and high-speed networks such as distance learning, remote working, virtual healthcare, personal communication and citywide services and information. Initial steps of the committee are: • Review the Comcast survey results gathered from focus groups as part of the franchise renewal initiative conducted in 2019-2020. • Review possible network infrastructure alternatives, including an analysis of existing and planned infrastructure. Develop a gap analysis and consequent high-level design. • Review application opportunities that would use this infrastructure and help drive infrastructure standards and architecture. • Build out solution bundles that address each use case. Examine public-private partnership opportunities. • Finalize proposals for the broader CTAC and city council. • Consider equity goals in any design and work with appropriate commissions and volunteer organizations. Consider prioritized deployments reflecting equity, infrastructure, and topography Community technology advisory commission Environmental committee charter The goal of the CTAC environmental committee (CEC) is to determine uses and applications of technology to further the city’s efforts in support of its strategic priorities, specifically to continue to lead in environmental stewardship. A key target of the committee is to further the use of advanced technologies in support of the city’s Climate Action Plan (CAP). The CEC will work with city departments – most notably building and energy – other CTAC committees and city commissions (such as environment and sustainability commission), state agencies and utilities to determine what actions are in progress; where and what type of technology is required to generate and access relevant data; integrate disparate sources of data. This information will be used to display information to relevant departments and agencies and to city residents. The CEC will also study efforts in other cities that could be useful such as road electrification for public transportation and city vehicles. Initial tasks will be to work with groups and projects outlined in the current phase of the CAP, including kickstart projects and goals 1, 2 and 4; as well as determine requirements and opportunities such as efforts underway at Westwood Hills Nature Center. Opportunities for investigation include: • Dashboard on a CAP webpage to let residents see progress toward goals and obtain information Creation of a central database and Integration of data sources such as those from Xcel Energy, the city and other sources. This will aid in analytics and removal of the need for manual entry of data from multiple and disparate sources into applications such as the Energy Star Portfolio Manager which supports initiatives such as the Efficient Building Benchmarking Ordinance. • Building awareness in the community about existing electric vehicle applications through inclusion in appropriate webpages and dashboards. • Use of the interpretive center at Westwood Hills Nature Center as a smart building testbed. • Sensing air quality and integration of that data with a central database for display and analysis. • Bike and pedestrian sensor system on sidewalks and trails to measure the impact of Connect the Park projects. Community technology advisory commission GIS committee charter The goal of the GIS committee (GISC) is to determine opportunities to enrich the GIS (Geographic Information System) platform to enable other committee endeavors and to find opportunities to use existing platform capabilities and data to fulfill city strategic goals and initiatives more broadly. Of note, most data used by internal city departments is geographic, so the GIS system has provided an integrated source of truth on many areas of city operations which can be commonly accessed and provide helpful context for city employees. GIS data allows for nuanced consideration of city metrics and trends, which means development of GIS capabilities is foundational to pursuing all five city strategic priorities. The GIS Committee will work with city departments, especially GIS specialists and technical experts, and in collaboration with other CTAC committees, city commissions and community partners. GISC will also study achievements and implementations in use by other cities, such as use of layered data to inform efforts; communicate transparently with the public; and generate more equitable and sustainable policy decisions. Initial tasks will focus on improved data availability to both city departments and community members, particularly for the goals outlined in the strategic priorities. Another key task is investigating what data might still be needed within the GIS platform to enable meaningful engagement with the strategic priorities and opportunities to integrate additional geographically located datasets in use by the city. Using the work performed for GIS, the committee will work with city departments and other CTAC committees to examine existing data silos and new integration requirements. This will allow the city to provide data for numerous applications for the near future and beyond. Opportunities for investigation: ● Implement the trail plowing application, currently in beta for North Cedar Regional Trail, more broadly. This would serve both the environmental stewardship and mobility strategic initiatives and allow future applications for residents showing the status of snow plowing. ● Expand use of dashboards for internal and external topics. Dashboards specific to the city's strategic initiatives could be used to better communicate efforts and progress to the public. Integration of GIS databases and tools by GIS providers would enable this transparency between city efforts and city residents. ● Integrate additional data sources used by the city, but currently not available within GIS. Examples include enterprise utility billing, Xcel Energy data and social media data. ● Expose more GIS platform data to citizens directly. Open data is an increasing trend across even small and rural cities. Making highly requested data sets available, with sites available to visually explore the data, can decrease time spent on routine data collection by staff, improve transparency and result in richer community dialogues. ● Find opportunities where analytics or prediction based on GIS data could provide greater efficiencies or smarter policy recommendations for existing city processes and services. ● Expanded use of mapping applications for tracking traffic, facilities, and city assets and resources.