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Home My WebLink About2021/10/07 - ADMIN - Minutes - Community Technology Advisory Commission - Regular Community technology advisory commission meeting October 7, 2021 6 p.m. Official minutes Community technology advisory commission Members present: Abe Levine, Michael Siegler, Bruce Browning, Kelly Heitz, Cindy Hoffman, Rolf Peterson, Konnor Slaats Members absent: None Staff present: Clint Pires, Jacque Smith Guests: None 1. Call to order – roll call Meeting called to order at 6:01 p.m. 2. Approval of minutes – July 15, 2021 Browning moved, Siegler seconded, all approved the minutes as written. 3. Smart cities initiative committee check ins a. Connected communities Siegler reported there have been several small group meetings, including with Comcast. Two major items of focus: Internet Essentials program and Emergency Broadband Benefit (EBB) extended indefinitely. Verified with Comcast how program works and how to advertise availability. With that knowledge, we can put together a more focused campaign to make people aware. Pires asked if the EBB was for Comcast or all ISPs; Siegler said he believed it was all ISPs. His understanding is not many people are taking advantage of the program. Levine said that AT&T and Verizon don’t have a structured program around EBB, where Comcast does. Pires added that CenturyLink also has a structured program. Pires said when advertising, we would talk about the EBB and not promote one ISP over another. Three parts: awareness, access, service (volunteers, how do we find those folks). They’ve also started to discuss marketing (web, social, email, print). Next steps are to discuss how to pay for that, how would we form that. Pires suggested using the racial equity staff as a way to access hard-to-reach groups. Smith said that this program was advertised in the July Park Perspective and John McHugh has received calls and helped people with signing up for the program. b. Environment Peterson said he installed the plug load monitoring system that monitors 16 or 24 circuits in his home. He said it took weeks for him to understand the data. Siegler Community technology advisory commission meeting October 7, 2021 said the insight is around Peterson’s key takeaways. He said they’ve learned to unplug things they aren’t using. He also learned you should combine things, for example a clock that has a USB plug in it to charge cell phones, instead of separate plugs. Also learned cell phone chargers barely register on the plug load monitor. Siegler said it’s the big-ticket items that matter, and Peterson suggested Energy Star is the way to go for appliances. Levine said it’s not so much about scale but summarize key findings and put on a dashboard. Levine said a next step might be a newer house, then Peterson could summarize what he learned. Siegler said you could build a controlled test environment with a comparison with one item on one circuit. Levine talked about a company he follows called Electreon that was recently certified by the United Nations and European Union to be used anywhere. They will be electrifying 200 buses in Tel Aviv. c. GIS-enabled applications I. Housing Heitz reported housing has a couple of items: one dashboard focused on Met Council goals (every six years) that will address if we are meeting a goal. Pires said the dashboard is nearly done but awaiting some final data. The first tab is where we’ve been, second tab is where we’re going and uses bar charts rather than maps. Pires said by next meeting we can show that. Planning and zoning will now build a dashboard related to developments. Heitz said she has been contacting apartment management companies to see how they manage their data. She has two apartment buildings (4800 Excelsior/Weidner and another) putting her in touch with local administration. She’s learned marketing is very site specific and very manual. She is hoping in learning more about it there may be marketing opportunities. II. Police department use of force Levine said he met with the police advisory commission and Lt. Garland in September. Levine said the whole idea was to show use of force data in a dashboard. He said Heitz raised the point of who is going to do this, and he also brought it up with Lt. Garland. The first meeting, set for Oct. 12, is to get organized around why we’re here and the main goal, and who is in it. Heitz said she had emailed Pires, and he said Dan Castaneda could assist with creating the dashboard. The PAC liked the housing example that Castaneda had developed as being user friendly. Levine suggested a group to focus on marketing alone rather than each committee doing it. Heitz suggested an approach for shared data, once there Community technology advisory commission meeting October 7, 2021 are more dashboards out it would be more interesting to package. Pires suggested there could be a tab such as city maps on the city website. Pires suggested that as it’s described now, effort should continue to identify the project itself. If it seems at some point it’s a larger effort requiring an additional CTAC committee, there should be a return to the city council for approval of a revised workplan that would include a new committee for policing. Levine and other commission members agreed to continue for now without a new committee. III. Race equity Heitz said she and Hoffman met with the race equity staff, including Nichole Salaam and Yariet Montes-Huerta. Dan Castaneda showed some dashboards. Heitz said there was a lot of discussion of the Just Deeds project. There’s also a desire for a second dashboard, although not sure yet what it will show. Possibilities included city employment demographics and contract budgets/vendors used. Pires said he met with race equity staff today – Just Deeds and city workforce still of interest. Pires also let the commission know that while Salaam has resigned from the city, it shouldn’t hold up collection of data and development of dashboards. 4. Preparation for officer changes in 2022 Siegler agreed to run as chair; Heitz agreed to run as vice-chair. Formal elections will take place in November. 5. Staff updates Pires reported the city council approved the building readiness ordinance, which will go into effect Jan. 1, 2022. It defines broadband requirements in all non-residential dwellings, which is multifamily dwelling units and commercial buildings. Requires 4-inch conduit from dwelling to curb for future high-speed broadband providers. Also included amplification of 400 MHz for public safety, and emergency call stations at each level of garages and egresses. This is beyond the state building code, but feel these items are defensible in terms of public safety and moving the community forward. Siegler asked if there was a plan for solar requirements; Pires said yes there are some for new buildings receiving city funds. Pires said he did an inspection recently of the Quentin building off Old Cedar Lake Road. The owner is providing high-speed internet only with a certain speed included in rent, along with public WiFi. Pires reported US Internet closed on a property and plans to build out St. Louis Park by 2025. This provides more competition and fiber to the home (in the ground). Browning asked what’s being built on Minnetonka Boulevard. Pires said Hennepin County is putting in fiber for traffic management. 6. Adjournment Siegler moved to adjourn, Browning seconded. All approved. Meeting adjourned at 7:02 p.m. Community technology advisory commission meeting October 7, 2021 ______________________________________ ______________________________________ Jacque Smith, liaison Abe Levine, chair member