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HomeMy WebLinkAbout021122-04.1 SERVICE DELIVERY POST COVID 19 INTRODUCTION As part of the 2021 Annual Planning and Goal Setting Workshop, the Town Council considered and discussed the various ways that service delivery has been impacted and influenced by the Coronavirus pandemic. By February 2021, the pandemic had been ongoing for almost one year and the Town had acted decisively and taken numerous steps and actions to reinvent much of how the Town operated. As we approach the two-year mark in the pandemic, this paper checks the progress that the Town has made, considers lessons learned and how some of these changes are expected to be carried forward. BACKGROUND The onset of the Coronavirus pandemic in March 2020 resulted in the need for the Town to make immediate adjustments to both the range of public services provided and methods of service delivery. The range of services was affected by the need to close public buildings and facilities, while reducing staffing to offset fiscal impacts. Immediate adjustments were required with respect to: • Conducting meetings and public hearings • Community outreach and engagement • Permitting and conducting business with the Town • Ensuring the safety of Town employees • Space planning and the physical configuration of employee workspaces The first year of the pandemic was spent making a series of operational adjustments to address each of these areas. Ensuring the safety of visitors to Town facilities and Town employees has been a constant consideration. This has affected space planning and occupancy, and the need to install physical barriers to maintain proper distancing and separation. Other protocols have been implemented and subsequently monitored and adjusted as needed to meet health orders and requirements set forth by the CDC, California Department of Public Health, Contra Costa County Health Officer and Cal/OSHA. 2 DISCUSSION Since the last Council Workshop, the second year of the pandemic has seen a continuation of all of the measures that were put in place. Progress with recovery has been affected and tempered by seasonal variants of the Coronavirus which have caused surges of varying degrees, with the Delta variant impacting the summer season and the Omicron variant continuing to impact the winter of 2021/22. Local commerce re-emerged as health orders permitted restaurants and other businesses to resume indoor service and the Town was able to resume some annual community events in partnership with the event sponsors. While public meetings continued to occur via Zoom and similar remote platforms, the Town took steps to implement hybrid public meetings where participants would have the option of engaging either in person or remotely. Efforts to increase and improve community outreach and engagement have succeeded through the use of different platforms. Town employees returned to the workplace, certain programs, classes and activities were allowed to resume and limited facility rentals began to be accommodated. Service Delivery Service delivery occurs in several ways, including direct, in person interactions at Town facilities, electronically/virtually in lieu of in person, or through field services provided throughout town. Over the past two years, the use of technology and virtual applications have been significantly expanded to provide processes that have in large part replaced services that were previously provided only through direct, in person interactions. Initially implemented to address COVID-driven safety and social distancing protocols, experience has shown that many end users prefer this approach to conducting business and civic engagement. Services will continue to be provided this way where appropriate, affording customers the convenience of being able to engage from their home or workplace and do so outside of what have previously been fixed hours of operation. Several of the Town’s operating departments have adapted their service delivery to increase use of virtual options. Departments whose services largely consist of field activities have been less adaptable. Recreation, Arts and Community Services continues to be the department that continues to be most significantly impacted. This is because most of the enrichment programs and activities offered involve direct, on-site interaction with customers. Despite their best efforts to engage through a creative series of virtual service delivery options, programs such as aquatics, youth camps, field trips for seniors, sports and fitness, etc. rely upon and require physical, on-site engagement. These programs and activities are being phased back in as quickly as conditions will allow. 3 The Town has taken steps and invested in technology hardware, software, training as well as potential expansion (or redeployment) of personnel to facilitate online service delivery. Considerable effort has been made to ensure that the new Town Offices and PD are configured to carry forward service delivery in a manner which places an increased dependence upon the Town’s ability to delivery services virtually. Public Meetings Much of the business conducted by public agencies occurs by virtue of meetings that occur at all organizational levels, up to and including public hearings held by the legislative bodies and the advisory commissions that support them. Under the state’s emergency declaration, public meetings continue to be permitted to occur virtually. Though necessitated by the pandemic, this change has demonstrated benefits. Participation is convenient for meeting attendees who have technological access but are constrained by time, distance, work and/or family or mobility limitations. In many instances, virtual public meetings have achieved greater viewership. Virtual public meetings can also be scheduled earlier in the day when people are less tired and better prepared to participate. A variety of other different meetings occur internally, interagency and with customers and the public. Internally, virtual meetings have eliminated the need for travel among the six different facilities that house Town staff. The convenience and ease with which these meetings can be coordinated and staged is such that use of these platforms is here to stay. The Town is preparing to return to live meetings, featuring a “hybrid” format that combines live and virtual participation. Moving forward, the use of live meetings will be more selective and dependent upon purpose and occasion. Community Outreach and Engagement Effectively engaging and communicating with residents and businesses is one of the Town’s priorities. In recent years, the Town Council discussed augmenting traditional methods of engagement (print, digital, media relations, and person to person contacts) with a broader array of virtual engagement tools. Prior discussions by the Town Council have included: • Considering greater use of online surveys to ask questions and gather community feedback on specific subjects. • Getting out into the community, physically and virtually going to the places where our residents are. • A belief that relevant topic content drives increased meeting attendance. • The need to focus meetings on specific education or engagement topics. • An openness to considering multi-modal ways of engagement. 4 At last year’s workshop, the Town Council discussed the various ways that the pandemic had necessitated advancing plans to use technology to communicate and engage with residents who have demonstrated a growing interest in connecting with the Town virtually. Since the onset of the pandemic, visitors to the Town website grew from 226,980 in 2019 to 398,661 in 2021, a 76% increase in traffic. The number of visitors to the Town’s “Meetings, Agendas & Minutes” webpage – a specific civic engagement metric, grew from 9,472 to 11,040 annual visitors, a 16.5% increase. Significant numbers of community members are viewing recordings of Town meetings and webinars after their on-air date. The “Town Talks with the Mayor” program has been viewed nearly 1,400 times since its inception and Town Council meetings have been viewed over 1,100 times since May 2020. The Police Chief’s 10-8 program, live-streamed through YouTube until the end of November 2021, has combined views of nearly 6,000. These number do not reflect the number of attendees at the meetings, webinars or Facebook Live events. Considering the information that points toward the community’s preference for a wider range of options for engagement, the Town has deployed new approaches in connection with specific initiatives. Examples of these over the past year have included gathering community feedback related to: • Age-Friendly Roadmap, which utilized 6 in-person intercept events and an online survey which yielded approximately 300 participants and responses. • 2023-31 Housing Element Update, which involved delivering 17 virtual “Housing 101 Workshop” presentations, publishing over 60 informational articles and press releases on all Town platforms and local media, as well as engaging residents through interactive surveys and answering questions on the engagement platform (DanvilleTownTalks.org/Housing Element). To date, the Danville Town Talks platform reports that over 1,400 people have visited and/or interacted with the webpage in the 8 months since its inception. Currently, 94 community members actively follow the page. Additional engagement is expected when the “Opportunity Sites Identification Tool” (i.e., housing pin map) and “Housing Plan Simulation Tool” are released in March and June, respectively. The effectiveness of this broad outreach effort is reflected in the commentary regarding development projects on online platforms such as NextDoor. Of the 797 comments related to the Faz property’s proposed redevelopment, approximately 20% of the comments attribute the residential growth to the Association of Bay Area Government (ABAG), the Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) process, or specifically to Governor Newsom. More than 5 one individual posted links to the ABAG website or a recording of one of the Town’s Housing 101 workshops. Specifically, one commentor noted: “You have to watch the video I posted. It explains that the town of Danville had no choice in the matter. It’s kind of {sic} the CCC Mask mandate.” • 2022 Downtown Master Plan Update, which has just launched with a “Reimagine our Downtown” survey. In the 2-1/2 weeks since its release, the survey has received nearly 1,000 responses. To date, the Danville Town Talks platform reports that approximately 4,400 people have visited and/or interacted with the webpage in the 3 weeks since its launch. Currently, 53 community members actively follow the page. Additional engagement is expected through community intercept events, stakeholder interviews, commission workshop, and the plan adoption process. • Virtual Citizens Academies and “Coffee with the Cops” listening sessions conducted by the Police Department. Potential additional steps for enhancing virtual engagement options could include: o Greater use of citizen surveys through available social media platforms. o Increased availability of e-permitting and ability to conduct business with the Town remotely. o Increased staffing support for developing CIP project information on the Danville Town Talks website. Town Staff The Town operates and delivers service through a relatively small workforce (fewer than 100 regular employees) that are deployed in combination with various contract services. Roughly one-third of the staff are field personnel (Police, Maintenance, Inspection) and employees are located at six different sites. As of July 1, 2021, all employees have returned to work onsite. The pandemic has necessitated changes in order to meet new federal and state safety standards directed at ensuring employee safety. Flexibility with some work schedules continues to be necessary to accommodate employees with pre-existing medical conditions or other special needs; and employees are required to isolate or quarantine at home if they contact or are exposed to COVID. Depending upon the circumstance, employees may work remotely for periods of time. This varies by department and function. Unless ill, employees are accessible by phone and e-mail. The pandemic has also changed employee norms and expectations with respect to their job sites. Factors such as proximity, physical separation, providing for adequate separation between employees and public at areas of public interface all come into 6 play. This has required evaluating, and in some cases adjusting space planning to ensure that adequate spacing is provided between employees, especially in shared workspaces. For the 2020/21 fiscal year, steps were taken to reduce the number of employees working on site at any given time in order to increase spacing, reduce proximity and ensure safety. As health orders have continued to shift, facilities have re-opened and public access has been reinstated with adherence to strict guidelines. SUMMARY The Coronavirus has prompted adjustments to some methods of service delivery to the community. Based upon the experience gained and lessons learned, many of these adjustments are expected to carry over into future post pandemic models for service delivery. Town Council feedback and input is sought preparatory to development of the draft 2022/23 Operating Budget.