FP 2026 08 10

[music] All right. It is 6:18 which we will call immediately following the public works committee meeting. Uh finance and personnel committee is called to order. We'll begin with the role. Alder Brenzer >> here. >> Alder Close >> here. >> Alder Decker >> here. >> Alder Pella >> here. >> Mitchell is here. We have five out of five and a full quorum. Will you all please join me in the pledge? >> I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Right. That takes us to item four then, which is approval of the minutes from the meeting held on July 27th. Is there any discussion on those minutes? If not, we would be looking for a motion to approve. >> I make a motion to approve. >> Second. >> All right. We have a motion to approve by Alder Pella, second by Alder Close. Seeing no discussion, all in favor of approving those minutes. >> I. >> All oppose. Chair votes eye. The eyes have it. The motion passes. Those minutes are approved. Next up is the public comment period. I really prefer there to be at least somebody from the public sitting when I ask, but is there anybody that wish to speak this evening? Do we have anybody online? All right, then we'll move on to items for discussion and possible action. Number six, resolution number 77 of 2627, authorizing the appropriate city officials to file a summon and complaint against Andrew Cleveland, Middle Coast Dwellings LLC and Attorneys Title and Closing Services LLC to recover money owed to the city for a housing rehabilitation loan. >> Good evening. Uh this item is brought forward to you because the finance department in conjunction with the planning department um has been working with uh von reason our outside council in order to attempt to get these funds um from the previous owners at this property. As it notes in the resolution uh the property changed hands and the a mortgage was not paid off. So we are looking to file this summon and complaint in an effort to get those funds back into the city's hands. Any questions or comments from committee? >> Alder Decker? >> Yep. Just quick question. Um, so the title company approved the sale. So that basically they are on the hook for this, correct? >> They did go through and do the closing uh without the loan paid off. Yes. >> Okay. Any other discussion? >> If not, we would be looking for a motion to approve. I make a motion to approve. >> Second. >> We have a motion by Alder Prella, second by Alder Decker. Then seeing no further discussion, all in favor? >> I. >> All oppose. Chair vai. They have it. The motion passes. That one is approved. Next up is item number seven, resolution number 79 of 2627 authorizing the appropriate city officials to execute an agreement with Savage Solutions LLC. >> Good evening. Uh we've been working with Savage for a few months now um building out our architecture, our brand architecture and coming up with overall plan for the city um to help with our new coms person coming in. As part of that process, we're looking at uh branding and where our current branding is at was from 1994, I believe. um and looking at going through a process of getting some of that information updated. And um as you can see in the proposal, they've got um looking at putting up a micro site to help with the branding efforts for the city. >> Questions or comments from committee? >> Oh, they're close. >> Thank you. You said you've been working for a couple of months already. Can you just go over how much has already gone towards this contractor for the work they've done so far? Uh, Caitlyn, do you have that off hand? >> Caitlyn's looking really quick. Um, yes. So, we we initially um we started working with them in preparation of the new comps person coming on board uh to kind of get together more of a architecture for overall branding for the city and um have have in place more of a plan um around marketing efforts and coordination of brand style and just overall city uh the city logos and how the city presents itself. self um so that we've got kind of that basis for the new comp's position to work from. So this is kind of a continuation of that process based on the feedback that they found going through the evaluation and I think Caitlyn is pulling up. I got a followup too if that's all right. >> Uh to date uh the first section of this uh contract was a total of $35,000 and it's been paid from the uh tourism fund where we have um the room tax dollars in an effort to uh brand and market the city. >> Great. Thank you. And one followup if that's um so for the uh micro site videos the copy all of that um do we have any kind of acceptance criteria to apply for when we say go no go for if we are approving that uh the micro site the videos and how we how we like it. Do we have any criteria that we're following or groups that we're working with in order to approve it? uh they have a they have on their timeline some of the groups that they'll be working with um as they move through that process. So there'll be some internal um internal teams and then they have some external teams that they'll be working with um and then obviously the uh video videos that they'll be producing with with uh stakeholder groups or um with select uh companies or individuals that they choose to highlight. um that that'll be kind of the process overall. Um they'll be working with uh internal city staff and with council at various points um before they get to the actual uh launch. And one final final um so and I just want to make sure that uh we're addressing that we are bringing in a third party for this and we did just recently bring in a communication specialist onto our staff. I just want to address what are the gaps that this organization will be filling that we don't currently have capacity for currently in city staff. Um redesigning the full branding of the city. Um they'll take us through uh kind of establishing that overall brand. That'll that'll filter into um unifying the brand across the city. looking at, you know, we've got as we've went through this process of consolidating uh websites and getting rid of redundant technologies through the throughout the city, um I think we had I believe Matt's here, we had something like 13 to 17 different domains. Um we're able to consolidate that down to I think of four or five. Um some departments had actually went and rebranded themselves a number of years ago, so they're utilizing different logos. inconsistent um you know inconsistencies across how we're applying the brand, what it's being used for. Um so we want to get that uh all consolidated under one. Um I know we've got like the general city logo and then you've got another logo that some departments are using that say spirit on the lake. Um and then obviously DPW has their own logo, transit has theirs, library kind of has their own uh functionality. So, um, we want to try to unify that as much as possible. In talking with the police department, you know, they're going for a logo redesign of their badge and shield. Um, so they want to be able to incorporate a unified branding into that process. So, um, a number of different aspects and our daily operations will be impacted by this. And it's certainly, um, you know, they have a marketing team to help educate and help build us those those policies around marketing. So the new person can focus more on kind of getting up to speed and working as opposed to, you know, this would be a several year process for one individual to even attempt doing. >> Great. Thank you, >> Elder Bzer. >> Thank you. Um, so I just had a comment and one quick question. Um, so I just wanted to say that I think it's great the city's updating its brand. Um, I think it's a fresh modern brand and it's important for tourism and just strengthening our image. Um, and even just looking at the document provided from Savage, I think the company looks really creative and forward thinking. Um, yeah, and I think it reflects the city that we are today and hopefully where we're headed in the future. So, I think this is a great thing. Um, I just noticed on the timeline, which is really nice to see that they have that timeline laid out. Um, it looks like the town hall presentation and the site launch will be scheduled for the same day and then there's like a week-long period prior to the launch. So, I'm just assuming that one of the purposes of having that town hall would be to gain any last minute insight from residents. Is that correct? And then the city and Savage will have like one week to make those changes prior to the launch. Is that correct? >> Yep. That that would be the opportunity to uh get that feedback. Um, so and that's kind of what we're building up to is kind of building that branding and getting all all of that ready and then presenting it at a town hall, getting that feedback and incorporating any that feedback before the roll out would actually happen. >> Cool. Great. >> Um, and this is uh Savage is the company that did the West Alice, so the what's it stall campaign? Um, and then they did South Milwaukee as well. So they've they've got a good track record in the area doing uh rebranding for communities like ours. >> Cool. Great. Thank you. >> Thanks. >> Other Pella. >> Yeah. Just about the cost again. I may have missed what you said uh Krueger about um where where does the money come from? How do we pay for this? The first uh part of the contract, which was the $35,000, came from room tax dollars in the tourism fund. We have a marketing area in that fund that it was used. Um for this portion of the contract or this next step or stage, we are looking at um a couple options for funding. We could still use that marketing um based on if we have good funds coming through from the room tax dollars this year, but we also have contingency and other budget saving areas, including in that uh communication specialist position that was not um fully staffed this year. So, there's a couple options for the funding, so it's fully covered. >> Okay. Thank you, >> Elder Decker. >> Yes. Um just wondering are are we going to be including like visit into this so that like the the tourism because with the tourism aspect of this are we going to be like um encouraging them to use like say if we change logos and things like that that they'll be part of this so that that they they they incorporate some of the those things that we are putting into this. >> Uh we had we've had a number of talks obviously we we partner with visit on a number of different things. Um but leaving a distinction between our brand and their brand because we are not the tourism entity um we felt was important and the feedback that we we were able to garner um through the research that Savage did in this the first go through um that was their recommendation of you know kind of rebranding the city based on you know the the positive outcomes that we're now seeing through the city and you know kind of the different direction um that that we're heading with things. So differentiating oursel from the past and not necessarily tying us in with the full-blown tourism side of things because that that's not our role. Um and one of the concerns was that if we really went, you know, kind of into that role where we're um really seen as the one of the tourism drivers. um you know how do we still incorporate you know this is very much a manufacturing community and you know kind of paying homage to both sides of that. So kind of keeping that branding separate from what tourism is doing we felt was more valuable. Um but obviously you'll see the the logo and partnership you know with tour with the tourism entity uh quite frequently as we do partner regularly on events and things with them. >> Okay. Thank you. Any other discussion from committee? Okay. If not, and apologize if this was already answered, but just to confirm, you know, there's a couple items on the timeline that look like they may indicate this is the case, but will council have the opportunity to review the final uh branding designs before they're adopted? >> Absolutely. >> Thank you. Then my only other comment is that for as long as I've been doing this, I really thought eventually I'd stopped saying it longer than I've been alive. But 94, you beat me by a year on this one. So it seems more than reasonable that it's probably time to take a look at this and make sure that we actually are all speaking the same language and have a unified language behind what we do as a city. Ask one more time if there's any other comments. And if not, we'd be looking for a motion to approve. >> Make a motion to approve. >> Second. >> We have a motion to approve by Elder Prella, second by Elder Brezer. Then seeing no further discussion. All in favor? >> I. >> All oppose. Chair votes I. The eyes have it. The motion passes. That one is approved. Takes us to item number eight, which is resolution number 80 of 2627, authorizing the appropriate city officials to execute an agreement with City Bouch Incorporated. All right, good evening again. Uh, so we're going to be looking at adding a chatbot to the website. We've went through two separate uh chatbot iterations for the new website. Uh, neither one of them worked out. Um, we spent a lot of time and effort um, under the contract with our existing vendor. We have a a chatbot that is in in the contract. Uh we're going to be removing that from the contract and looking at um this is a separate third party. Citybot is used nationwide is one one of the more common ones across the country. Um not a whole lot in the state of Wisconsin, but um all the other states use it very heavily. So um definitely kind of I'd say one of the more established chat bots and that was one of the things they're uh commonly using um things like uh Municode across the country. So they're already have the plugins and the integration with that. Um so we would like to move that and essentially that would reside on our website and essentially answer any questions folks would have. One of the nice things about this is that it has um I believe about 160 different languages. Um and we did confirm that they do in fact have mung um which is not a na uh not a uh recognized language in most of the uh language sets. So we did confirm and we did test uh on some of the other public websites to make sure that it was working effectively. So, um, obviously as we get closer to launch, we'll work work more with some of the specific groups to make sure that, uh, the language services are working fine there, but this would then allow, uh, folks that utilize different languages to be able to, um, go on our website, search in their native language, and get responses in their native languages. So, it'll help interpret the material and get things back. Um, this would be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. So even if the city is closed, they can go and get basic questions answered. Um likewise, as a part of this contract, you'll note that there is an AI chatbot that is also added in with this. Um I believe we have 10,000 minutes in the quote. Um the intent here is to add this onto our uh phone tree so that folks don't necessarily have to go through the phone tree, but they can have dialogue. um working with departments, we're going to commonly asked questions, things like that will be uh trained into the chatbot and then obviously the information or the the phone answering bot and then also the website information. So common questions that come in uh the AI agent would be able to answer those. So folks that necessarily um you know don't have a computer or things like that, they could come on and get these 24 hours a day as well. Um and then it can also route callers to uh various departments based on the questions that are asking or um to other agencies if the questions are um in regards to things that the city doesn't handle. So um our intent here is to try to uh reduce the workload burden that is put on the existing staff. Um, just for a point of reference, they they quoted us the 10,000 minutes because they that's the average amount of minutes that they see of a community of our size across the country. Um, our inbound calls last last year um when uh it looked it up was 55,000 minutes. So, um we're going to start with this and see what kind of success we have and if that helps bring those numbers down, then we would look at increasing it. But um even reducing staff call volume by 10,000 minutes and getting quicker responses to the public I think is a win-win on both sides. So um if this is successful we'll continue it. If it's not then obviously we'll discontinue it. But um other communities are using this um in other states and have been very successful with it. >> Questions or comments from committee? Oh they're close. Thank you. One comment to just say I am very glad to see that we're moving in the direction of a chatbot. I've seen a lot of success in a lot of communities where they've been able to field a lot of questions very quickly. Um, of course, one concern that I do have is in using an AI chatbot, a lot of the hallucinations and things like that happen. Um, I'd like you to speak a little bit more to what support is going to look like going forward and specifically um, will the city be able to audit answers? Will we be able to take a look at uh the logs, source content, things like that? So that we're guaranteeing as this is being deployed uh that we're actually giving correct answers going forward. And just a little bit of more detail about how it'll be supported and um how we'll be able to remedy if we do see that it's providing incorrect answers or referencing incorrect information. >> Yep. So that's uh that goes back to the the chatbot training and that that's ultimately why we didn't deploy the first two. Um we couldn't get chat bots that weren't hallucinating. Um so that they failed the the test process. So we'll we'll put it through a very rigorous test process to begin with. Um but you're absolutely right. It you still can get hallucinations. Um, and being able to have a partner that can go quickly pull the audit logs and point us to what caused that to happen is very important. So, um, we do have, uh, chatbot obviously has ongoing support and they would be able to go pull those records and help us analyze. Obviously, we would, um, be able to go pull audit logs also to see what's being asked and where where those uh, hallucinations are happening at. So um you know one one issue we ran into was um in one chatbot it was actually pulling uh there was very simple question of you know who's who's my alder um and it actually went and pulled board minutes from the '9s and provided that as a response. So um you know something that simple that it should be able to pull that in reference in proper areas of current versus past u you know making sure that those things are fixed and it you know that does cause a hallucination in the system it's pulling you know an errored link or it's pulling uh repeated data things like that. So um we we did do a lot of work to make sure that the website didn't have that when it when we launched earlier this year with the new website. So, um, you know, from from it's perspective, and then from, uh, chap or citybot's perspective, it'll be, you know, trying to stay on top of that, making sure that we're not seeing those errors, and then periodically auditing, um, just to make sure that we're not seeing inconsistent errors. So, um, it's an ongoing process that, you know, I think it's not even just at the start. It's going to have to be ongoing through the life of the chatbot because as we update the website, we need to make sure we're doing it properly and we're not putting redundant documents on there because those create hallucinations. So, um, you know, proper records management and uploading them properly and deleting no longer used documents is going to be vital. >> Great. one followup if that's all right with you. Thank you. Um so you had mentioned earlier about uh we had been able to utilize Mong as a language in this chatbot which as you mentioned is unheard of in a lot of these types of chatbots. So that's fantastic. Uh but I do want to ask for the testing process and the roll out and the deployment of this chatbot uh will we be partnering with any community organizations to make sure that the language is properly being displayed or it is ADA being complied with and things like that. >> Yeah, this will be fully ADA compliant. Um, so and as far as the community groups, we do have staff internally that we we plan to work on testing with and then once they feel that it's at that level, then we'll reach out to uh various community groups to also have them test and see what their feedback is on it as well. So, um it'll be a a relatively longer process than just running a scan and running some internal testing, but yes, that was already the the plan. um looking at kind of a little more of a prolonged roll out. Um so and we'll we have this roll out and then we know that we're going to be replacing in January our MUN code immunity minutes. So we'll have an update that we'll have to do to this as a part of that process as well. >> Great. Thank you. >> Thanks. Any other discussion from committee? If not, we'd be looking for a motion to approve on this one. >> I make a motion to approve. >> Second. >> We have a motion by Elder Prella, second by Alder Decker. Uh, seeing no further discussion, all in favor? >> I. >> All opposed. Chair votes eye. The eyes have it and the motion passes. That item is approved. Next up is item number nine, resolution number 82 of 2627 authorizing the mayor and city clerk to enter into a termination and mutual release agreement relating to the Marriott Spring Garden Inn by Wateride Hospitality LLC. Hello all. You are aware that the development agreements that the city has does have clear expectations, guidelines, and timelines. Um after uh talking to the developer specifically on this project, it was uh made clear to staff that they were unable to fill or they they they were unable to fulfill the obligations associated and laid out within within this development agreement. Because of that and because of the way that the development uh agreements are written out, the city had exercised its right to file a default of notice. um basically saying that the developer is not fulfilling the obligations that they had agreed to. With that being said, they do have to pay the city the costs associated with this project. Um and in turn, the city then can explore a different developer associated with this project. I will say that this project has garnered a lot of community support and a lot of excitement. With that being said, the city um has been reached out to by other developers that are looking to take this this this project on. Um so the city is looking to explore those as soon as as soon as this default notice is signed. >> Questions or comments from committee? Alder Pela? >> Yes. So how what is the cost that we have incurred approximately if we can and will we be able to recoup all of it? >> Yep. The the legal cost associated with this project is around $14,000. The developer is ready to pay that. Is that the only cost that we have incurred that due to initiating this contract? >> That is all of the legal fees associated with the development agreement. >> What are the other costs that you are that we have that you have not mentioned that are not legal? >> There was a cost of acquiring the land and demolition associated with that. Um once again um the city is exploring what other um developers can do to take that on. The city the city would have occurred those or the city would have taken on those costs regardless of the developer. >> Yeah. Thank you. >> Well, they're close. >> Thank you. I apologize. You may have just answered this, but um will the city be have it any kind of independent inspection of the property to make sure it's site ready? And if so, has that cost been built into this amount that they're repaying? >> Yep. The city has not turned over the land yet. So, the land is still in our possession. The the land is sight sight ready. >> Great. Thank you. >> Alder Pella, >> what are the obligations specifically that they were not able to abide by? the timeline associated with the project and they were not able to show secure or they they were not able to provide their their financing to us in terms of securing that financing. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Any other discussion from committee? >> If not, I'll just add that this is never really the direction that we want a project to go. Once we have that development agreement in place, we would obviously love to see it go through, but it does reflect the care and effort that goes into the way that we craft the agreements to make sure that the city is protected. So, I'm glad that we have this option if we've reached this point. And it's even better to hear that there's other developers already interested in the project. So, if there's no further discussion, then we would be looking for a motion to approve. >> I make a motion to approve. >> Second. All right, we have a motion by Elder Perlla, second by Alder Decker. Seeing no further discussion, all in favor? >> I. >> All oppose. Chair votes I. The eyes have it and the motion passes. That one is approved as well. The uh next tenative meeting date for this committee will be on August 24th of this year. And with that, we exhausted our agenda and are looking for a motion to adjurnn. >> I make a motion to adjurnn. Second. >> We have a motion by Elder PLA, second by Alder Bzer. All in favor of adjournment. I >> I >> All oppose. Chair votes I. The eyes have it. The motion passes. We are adjourned. Thank you. [music] >> [music]