from open data to selfie close-ups, take your community where it

The

Issue

jan/feb 2014 awcnet.org

From open data to selFie close-ups, take your community where

it wants to go

the AssociAtion of WAshington cities MAgAzine

Environmentalsolutionsthat make aworld ofdifference.We bring our expertise and advanced technologiesto businesses andcommunities tominimize waste,make recyclingeasy, and createrenewable energy.

wm.com1-800-592-9995

and the size of your city may determine how you use IT. Cities use IT for meet-ing state requirements, communicating with their citizens, or just working with other city departments. IT also makes re-porting quicker and more accurate while making it easier to meet deadlines. How much your city embraces IT solutions re-ally depends on the balance between need and total costs.

Every city deals with this quandary, regardless of its size. Seattle has the resources to provide its citizens with information on a variety of topics in a variety of media, as other articles in this issue illustrate. But a smaller city may barely have enough staff to do the basics while looking for better ways to commu-nicate with its citizens.

I know of one small city that uses a dedicated group of volunteers to main-tain its website so that citizens can keep current on city activities. In Dayton, we know that if we keep our city website updated regularly, we will get many more hits. No matter what IT tools we use, we need to ensure that we can sustain the cost of our site for an extended period of time. Other-wise, perhaps we are better off not using this particular medium.

Social media are a tremendous asset if used correctly. Facebook and Twitter provide low-cost communication options as long as you are willing to have information available for the world to read. On the other hand, social media can be a double-edged sword from a public disclosure point of view. Again: a hard balance.

Information technology is here to stay and is only going to get better over time. But as new apps and other options come into play, cities will need to assess the potential of each new tool in terms of need, cost, secu-rity, and sustainability. All cities should embrace IT, but only at the level they believe is best for their community.

from the president

january/february 2014 cityvision magazine 1

hoW Much your city eMbrAces it solutions depends onA bAlAnce.

When it comes to information technol-ogy and cities, it’s all about right-sizing. IT tools can be as small as a cell phone or as large as an entire room full of servers,

Craig George Dayton Mayor

association of Washington cities

President Craig George Mayor, Dayton

Vice President Francis Benjamin

Councilmember, Pullman

Secretary Paul Roberts

Councilmember, Everett

Immediate Past President

Don Gerend Councilmember,

Sammamish

Past President Glenn Johnson

Mayor, Pullman

Chief Executive Officer Mike McCarty

cityvision staff

Editor Michelle Harvey

Advertising Coordinator DeAnn Hartman

Published in conjunction with

sagaCity Media Inc.

Publisher & President Nicole Vogel

SVP, Editorial & Operations Bill Hutfilz

VP, Custom Publishing Jeff Adams

Account Executive Rob scott

Advertising Sales Coordinator

Danielle Williams

Art Director samantha Gardner

Contributing Artists Daniel Berman

Kai-Huei Yau

Copy Editor Margaret seiler

Production Director Claire McNally

aWc board of directors

sally Clark Council President, Seattle

David Condon Mayor, Spokane

Bob Goedde Mayor, Chelan

Bob Gregory WCMA President City Manager, Longview

sean Guard Mayor, Washougal

Jim Haggerton Mayor, Tukwila

Will Hall Councilmember, Shoreline

Pat Johnson Mayor, Buckley

Phillip Lemley Councilmember, Richland

Beth Munns Councilmember, Oak Harbor

Jon Nehring Mayor, Marysville

Doug Plinski Mayor, Odessa

Tom Rasmussen Councilmember, Seattle

Jim Restucci Mayor, Sunnyside

Doug schulze WCMA Past President City Manager, Bainbridge Island

ed stern Councilmember, Poulsbo

Lauren Walker Councilmember, Tacoma

Karen Yates Mayor, Roy

association of Washington cities inc. 1076 Franklin St. SE Olympia, WA 98501 360-753-4137 800-562-8981 Fax: 360-753-0149 awcnet.org

cityvision MAgAzine vol.6 no.1

Environmentalsolutionsthat make aworld ofdifference.We bring our expertise and advanced technologiesto businesses andcommunities tominimize waste,make recyclingeasy, and createrenewable energy.

wm.com1-800-592-9995

Welcome noteCityBeatFrom mobile apps to rolling reader boards to a shooting STAR, cities across the state are using technology to stay open, transparent, and connected. And in our popular noted feature, we pay a call on changes to regulations for wireless facilities deployment.

Connect ForeIt’s no secret that the home state of Microsoft, Amazon, and numerous other high-tech companies and facilities has IT in its DNA. But what are some of the practical ways cities use digital solutions, while navigating budgets and regulations, to foster community and promote development? By Ted Katauskas

CityWiseOur expert perspectives this issue include a myth-busting take on social media and public records, advice on enhancing broadband access, and a city selfi e on Twitter and Facebook.

CityscapeWith technology as the pathway, cities can get there from here faster.

1/2.14

feAture

14 1 21

28

5

PHOTOGRAPH BY DANIEL BERMAN2 cityvision magazine january/february 2014

ContentsArlington Mayor (and

sometime pilot) Barbara Tolbert at the city’s

municipal airport (p. 11)

SummitLawGroup_0114.pdf 1 1/17/14 3:15 PM

BIAS Software, based in Spokane, provides a comprehensive BARS-compliant Software Suite

that is affordable and meets all Washington State financial requirements, including Annual Reports.

BIAS Software — Mark Felchlin302 E Pacific, Spokane, WA 99202

P: 800-733-3276 | FAX: 888-228-0030www.biasaccounting.com | [email protected]

profeSSIonAl ServIceS

reliability & Trust in the public sectorBIAS | An Integrated Accounting System

for Governments

BiasAccounting_Cityvision_0114.indd 1 1/30/14 4:44 PM

Find out if you’re eligible today:

visit InternetEssentials.com

or call 1-855-8-INTERNET

Restrictions apply. Not available in all areas. Limited to XFINITY® Internet Economy Plus service for new residential customers meeting certain eligibility criteria. Advertised price applies to a single outlet. Actual speeds vary and are not guaranteed. After initial participation, if a customer is determined to be no longer eligible for the program but continues to receive Comcast service, regular rates will apply. Subject to Internet Essentials program terms and conditions. Call 1-855-846-8376 for restrictions and complete details, or visit InternetEssentials.com. ©2013 Comcast. All rights reserved.

AT HOME WITH SUCCESS.

AT HOME WITH AFFORDABLEINTERNET.

Find out if you’re eligible today:

InternetEssentials.com

1-855-8-INTERNET

• price increases• activation fees• equipment rental fees

$995

no/month

FREEINTERNET TRAININGAvailable online, in print

and in person

A LOW-COSTCOMPUTER

$14999+Tax

If you have children at home receiving free or reduced price

lunches through the National School Lunch Program, your

family may qualify for Internet Essentials from Comcast. This

program was created to help families get affordable Internet at

home, so more children and more families have the opportunity

to succeed – in school and in life.

Comcast_Cityvision_0114.indd 1 1/31/14 4:17 PM

CLIENT: Pro BonoPRODUCT: Map AdJOB#: P66743SPACE: Full Page: 4/CBLEED: NoneTRIM: 7 in x 10 inSAFETY: NoneGUTTER: NonePUBS: ClientISSUE: NoneTRAFFIC: Donna MendietaART BUYER: NoneAE: Jolene ChenRETOUCH: Steve LakemanPROD: NoneAD: Christina SantoraCW: None

This advertisement was prepared by BBDO New York

FontsFranklinGotITC (Demi, Book), Slugger (Medium), Helvetica Neue (75 Bold)Graphic Name Color Space Eff. Res.DHS_illustration_2.psd (CMYK; 580 ppi), ARROWS.eps, Ready_CMYK.ai, DHS_S_4.eps, AdCouncil Logo_Blue.eps

Filename: P66743_GEN_V7

Proof #: 7Path: Studio:Volumes:Studio:Mechanic...N:P66743_Mechanicals:P66743_GEN_V7 Operators: Maria Barrios / Jason Howell

Ink Names Cyan Magenta Yellow Black

Created: 9/13/06 11:10 AM Saved: 11/8/06 10:37 AMPrinted: 11/8/06 10:37 AMPrint Scale: 100%

If your family was separated during an emergency, would you know how to get back together?

Make sure your family has an emergency plan that includes meeting places and ways to

communicate with each other. To learn more about making an emergency plan, go to ready.gov

YOURSON ISHERE

YOUARE

HERE

YOURMOTHER-IN-LAWIS HERE

YOURHUSBANDIS HERE

YOURDOG ISHERE

T: 7 in

T: 10 in

HI RES ARTWORKPrinted On Laser Printer

x1a

FCitybeat


star Power Tacoma blazes a sustainable trail.

first there was Star City, home to Russia’s Cosmonaut Training Center. Now there’s a STAR community: Tacoma, the first city in the nation to complete a new international benchmark test for measuring overall sustainability.

In November 2012, Tacoma signed on as one of 32 early-adopter municipali-ties across the US to employ the STAR (Sustainability Tools for Assessing and Rating) Community Rating System, a litmus test developed by a Washington, DC–based think tank. The new standard hopes to do for sustainable cities what LEED did for green buildings.

“STAR was developed by a nonprofit a couple of years ago to evaluate and quantify livability and sustainability at a local government level,” explains Kristin Lynett, the City of Tacoma’s en-vironmental and sustainability manager. “We liked this framework because when it talks about sustainability, it’s not just the environment—it’s the environment, economy, culture, and equity.

“We also have a fairly new city man-ager who incorporates performance

continued on page 10

INsIDe:noted The new regulations on cell tower upgradesthe question How does your city use social media? calendar Building toward the spring Health Care Summit

6 cityvision magazine january/february 2014

john Whitehead had never made a mobile app before, let alone one that his city saw as a key development tool. But that’s exactly what Spokane Val-ley’s human resources manager was asked to do.

“The start of it was: what could we do through economic development to support the businesses within our city?” Whitehead recalls. In an effort to do just that, the city council took money it had set aside for tourism promotion and decided to create a mobile application as part of the outreach effort. The goals were simple: to attract tourists and ease their stay while informing locals and visitors alike about city events.

With these objectives in mind, White-head set out to research the best way to accomplish his task. Initially, he didn’t even know exactly who would create the app, but sourcing work to an out-side vendor quickly became a nonop-tion, as the cost for that alone would

have maxed out the initial $20,000 budget. So Whitehead teamed up with the city’s database administrator, Phil Hermann, to build it from scratch using the ViziApps online platform.

“We wanted to keep it simple, but wanted the technology to be powerful,” Whitehead says. In addition to saving money (building the app with city staff held total development expense to only $2,400), creating the app in-house means Whitehead can update it as the city pleases. If he’d used a vendor, he would need to consult with them before every change, but this way the app can stay current 100 percent of the time.

Whitehead and his city development team also wanted to make sure the app offered readily integratable data on things tourists need, so the app access-es Google Places, another free resource. App users can simply click a button to find gas stations, ATMs, and restaurants, eliminating the need to search for the

necessities. To make it more fun for us-ers, the app’s appearance and featured events change seasonally and with holidays. Further, the simply named Spokane Valley app, which debuted in summer 2013, is updated weekly, with updates automatically installing on us-ers’ phones.

So far, feedback has been extremely positive. The hardest part has simply been alerting potential users to the app’s existence. But since the launch of a commercial in December and with

more advertising plans in the works, visibility is improving.

“The app is part of a larger effort of our city government to support our businesses and citizens,” Whitehead says. “Its development shows how a few staff members can work together with a minimal budget to produce a great product for our city.”

—Caitlin Feldman

for more information:spokanevalley.org

App of the TerritorySpokane Valley uses a tourism-focused tool to create connections.

TooL KIT

‘We wanted to keep it simple, but wanted the technology to be powerful.’

Mobile MessagingFResH IDeA

Longview rolls retro to keep citizens up to date.


Source: 2013 GovLoop Agency of the Future Report

one stands at the edge of a bridge. Another occupies the traffic circle near the civic center. Yet another is in the park. Sign, sign, everywhere a sign . . . but in this case, they’re not tell-ing citizens what they may or may not do. Instead, Longview’s Public Works Department uses the rolling reader boards to keep the community in-volved in local government projects.

According to Jeff Cameron, Longview’s public works director, his department has been pressed over the years to come up with unique ways to draw the public’s attention to key initiatives like sewer and construction projects. “We hold public forums and run ads in newspapers,” he says, “but it’s always hard to get people to come out and express their views.”

That all changed in 2005, when Cameron noticed the effectiveness of electronic reader boards, or variable message boards, at a construction site, with their huge yellow arrows and short, digestible messages. Public Works had been renting such boards for years for various occasions, but the department finally decided to make purchasing their own the center of a brand-new marketing strategy.

“We mounted the boards on trailers so we can easily move them around the city, notifying the community about ongoing projects and upcoming meetings,” Cameron says. “Now we run city-sponsored messages, and the turnouts we get for events and meet-ings is impressive.”

Over the years the Public Works Department has advertised every-thing from street modifications and police department memos to Longview’s annual Squirrel Fest. “The key is to keep it simple, get right to the point, and place the reader board in a heavily trafficked place,” Cameron explains, noting that the department takes pains to ensure that the loca-tions won’t create unsafe distractions

for drivers.City Manager Bob Gregory loves

having such an innovative (and cheap) way to get the community involved in the decision-making process. “All the credit goes to Public Works,” he says. “I remember about three or four years ago we were having trouble generating interest in a park proposal. We brought in the message boards, placed them in a popular traffic circle, and had a great turnout at our public meeting.”

While Gregory admits that at first he wasn’t so sure about the use of elec-tronic boards, he has since become

amazed at the success. “We just had to reinvent the way visual aids draw people in,” he explains. “Now we move them all around town, and it’s made a huge impact on our community.”

Gregory says he “absolutely” en-dorses this strategy for any city strug-gling with getting the public involved. “I know how disappointing it can be to have no one show up to things, but this messaging system really works,” he adds. “It gets the word out quickly and efficiently.”

—Alexandria Bordas

‘We just had to reinvent the way visual aids draw people in. Now we move the electronic reader boards all around town, and it’s made a huge impact on our community.’

for more information:mylongview.com

38% Utilize the cloud at a basic level

31% Aren’t using the cloud

but want to know more about opportunities

17% Are exploring how to best take advantage

of the cloud

13% Rely on the cloud to meet agency goals

in the cloudA recent survey of 223 local,

state, and federal governments shows that cloud technology

is gaining clout in the public sphere.

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations inter-preting a new law on wireless facilities are pending. The FCC’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Sec. 6409a of the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012 was published Dec. 5, 2013. Comments are due Feb. 3, 2014, and the FCC response is expected a month later on March 5. In May 2013, the Supreme Court upheld parts of the FCC’s 2009 ruling on wireless facilities deployment, including FCC authority to interpret law and establish a shot clock. The changes in interpretation could have implications for local regulation of wireless facilities.

SEC. 6409. WIRELESS FACILITIES DEPLOYMENT (passed as part of the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012)(a) Facility Modifi cations

(1) In general. Notwithstanding section 704 of the Tele-communications Act of 1996 (Public Law 104-104) or any other provision of law, a State or local government may not deny, and shall approve, any eligible facilities re-quest for a modifi cation of an existing wireless tower or base station that does not substantially change the physi-cal dimensions of such tower or base station.(2) Eligible facilities request. For purposes of this sub-section, the term “eligible facilities request” means any request for modifi cation of an existing wireless tower or base station that involves—

(A) collocation of new transmission equipment;(B) removal of transmission equipment; or(C) replacement of transmission equipment.

(3) Applicability of environmental laws. Nothing in para-graph (1) shall be construed to relieve the Commission from the requirements of the National Historic Preserva-tion Act or the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969.

(b) Federal Easements and Rights-of-way(1) Grant. If an executive agency, a State, a politi-cal subdivision or agency of a State, or a person, fi rm, or organization applies for the grant of an easement or right-of-way to, in, over, or on a building or other property owned by the Federal Government for the right to install, construct, and maintain wireless service antenna structures and equipment and backhaul transmission equip-ment, the executive agency having control of the building or other property may grant to the applicant, on behalf of the Federal Government, an easement or right-of-way to perform such installation, construction, and maintenance.(2) Application. The Administrator of General Services shall develop a common form for applications for easements and rights-of-way under paragraph (1) for all executive agencies that shall be used by applicants with respect to the buildings or other property of each such agency. ...

for more information: awcnet.org

Citybeat noted


Wireles facilities deployment

A bill (HB 1183) passed last year

amending Washington’s SEPA by exempting certain collocation , equipment removal

and replacement, and sub-60-foot tower construction in certain zones.

cal dimensions of such tower or base station.For purposes of this sub-

section, the term “eligible facilities request” means any

regulationregulation

Expedites environmental review

process related to newer technology and

structure types

(passed as part of

Notwithstanding section 704 of the Tele-communications Act of 1996 (Public Law 104-104) or any

local governmentlocal government may not deny, and shall approve, any eligible facilities re-

existing wireless tower or

National Environmental Policy Act of 1969National Environmental Policy Act of 1969.

cal subdivision or agency of a State, or a person, fi rm,

When did your

jurisdiction last

review or update its

telecommunications

regulations and

permit processes?

Expedites Expedites

Preempts aspects

of local authority

and discretion on

conditional processes

and denials of eligible

facility requests. Does

not preclude local

review of proposal .

This law also

streamlines permitting

on federal buildings

and property.

or

may not deny, and shall approve, any eligible facilities re-

or

the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012)(a) Facility Modifi cations

other provision of law, a State or not deny, and shall approve, any eligible facilities re-quest for a modifi cation of an base station that does not substantially cal dimensions of such tower or base station.(2) Eligible facilities request. section, the term “eligible facilities request” means any request for modifi cation of an existing wireless tower or

(3) Applicability of environmental laws.

Does your jurisdiction’s

permit process identify

and provide a faster

review track for

collocation?

What is meant by “substantially change”? Should the standard for substantial change be different for towers than for buildings or utility poles?

request for modifi cation of an existing wireless tower or base station that involves—request for modifi cation of an existing wireless tower or base station that involves—

A 2009 FCC declaratory ruling established a 150-day shot clock and that collocations of wireless facilities must be decided within 90 days of application fi ling. State and local rules with longer clock (or no clock) are preempted by FCC shot clock.

january/february 2014 cityvision magazine 9for more information:awcnet.org

the question How does your city use social media?

aWc training

february19 retro safety academy

Wenatchee

20 rmsa defensive/distracted driving Port Orchard

march13 rmsa use of force

Castle Rock

19 retro safety academy Wenatchee

27 rmsa elected offi cials roles & responsibilities La Center

michael grayumMayor, Dupont

We have a Facebook page, website, and community calendar for news and events, and I use Facebook and Twitter to help convey what’s happening with the city from my perspective as the mayor. It’s a great resource for keeping people informed, celebrating volun-teers, promoting local businesses, and emphasizing community priorities.

virginia olsenCity Clerk, Community Relations Director, Mountlake Terrace

Social media provide timely commu-nity updates during fl uid or emergent situations such as a garbage collection strike, police/fi re/traffi c incidents, and weather events. We plan to integrate videos via YouTube this year to com-plement our photos and videos like the recent 12th Man fl ag photo atop the city’s water tower.

doug PlinsKiMayor, Odessa

Odessa’s website is our yellow pages: a welcome for visitors and locals, a brief town history, and an FAQ pit stop. Facebook is our “right now” commu-nity interaction: reuniting a lost dog with his family, giving progress reports on a street project, featuring employ-ees doing jobs most residents take for granted. We’ve got 910 residents and 607 Facebook likes.

HeALTH CARe suMMITmarch 25 TukwilaAs additional pieces of the Aff ordable Care Act take eff ect, it’s more important than ever to fully understand the law and its implications for your workforce. This com-prehensive, daylong session will provide the latest on the legal, collective bargaining, and operational aspects of the impending changes, along with strategic guidance to help managers, HR and fi nance directors, and other key staff make the crucial work-force and plan design decisions that lie ahead. From the impacts of the employer mandate and the full-time employee defi ni-tion to strategies to avoid the looming Cadillac tax in 2018, make sure you are armed with the latest information to help you make the best decisions possible.

AWC ReTRo sAFeTY ACADeMYfebruary 19 WenatcheeLower the cost of on-the-job injuries by bringing injured employees back to work in a productive capacity. Make sure you are meeting state requirements with your hazardous-materials communication pro-gram. Learn about hearing conservation: how to evaluate noise exposure and create a positive plan of action. Free for members of AWC’s Retro Program, low cost for others.

RMsA use oF FoRCemarch 13 Castle RockOn a daily basis, police offi cers conduct operations that expose their agency to unique liability. In 2014, RMSA will off er new classes on reducing law enforcement liabil-ity. The Use of Force training focuses on the escalation- of-force continuum and recent related court cases.

training highlights

Citybeat

for more information:starcommunities.org

STAR Power continued from page 5

measurement review into Tacoma’s commitment to quality service delivery,” she adds. “STAR measures not just actions, but also outcomes.”

And measure it does. STAR requires cities to provide statistics for 518 sustainability benchmarks in seven dif-ferent categories—built environment; climate & energy; economy & jobs; education, arts & community; equity & empowerment; health & safety; natural systems—with up to seven performance measurements in each. For example, in the “climate & energy” category, cities must supply data that demonstrate climate adaptation (the ability to respond to phenomena like coastal flood-ing), greenhouse gas mitigation, green energy supply, resource efficiency of local manufacturing businesses, energy efficiency of public and private office buildings, resource efficiency of public infrastructure, and waste minimization.

To collect the information, Lynett enlisted the help of local graduate students, who interviewed stakeholders and built a massive spreadsheet that was shared with 45 employees and administrators from a dozen partner or-ganizations ranging from the local high school and parks districts to the county Weed Control Board. Once the spreadsheet was complete, they uploaded the data onto STAR’s website and hit send. In all, the process took 10 months to complete, expedited in order to get an official rating returned in time for the National League of Cit-ies 2013 Congress in Seattle. The city’s achievement—a four-star rating—was announced at the NLC convention on November 16.

“We are thrilled to be the first STAR-certified com-munity in the nation,” Tacoma’s mayor, Marilyn Strick-land, told the audience. “The STAR Community Rating System has been a powerful and valuable tool for our city to assess the progress of our sustainability efforts. It will also help us identify gaps and hold us accountable for improving the quality of life for our residents.”

For Tacoma’s city manager, the payoff will come once the 31 other STAR pilot cities, including Seattle—along with 20 others that have just begun the process—submit their results.

“Being rated now means we can compare ourselves to other cities.,” T. C. Broadnax says. “When there’s some-thing new like this, the first words you often hear from elected officials are ‘Who else is doing it?’ and ‘How well are they doing it?’ I pride myself in being the best, but if another city is better than ours in a certain area, I want to know how they did it so we don’t have to re-create the wheel.” —Ted Katauskas


2013 lri conference exhibitors

The Solution For Your Infrastructure Needs.

ENGINEERS | PLANNERS | SURVEYORS

Kirkland | Wenatchee | Lake Oswegopaceengrs.com

Pace_Cityvision_0114.indd 1 1/20/14 11:13 AM

Rich legacy. Bright future.

© 2

014

Paci

fi c P

ower

Helping communities grow and prosper has made our business thrive. Pacific Power is proud to have served customers and communities for over 100 years.

you earned your pilot’s license 12 years ago, at age 43. midlife crisis?I’m not sure what prompted it. I went for my first airplane ride when I was 7 one Sunday after church. What I remember from that airplane ride is alternating between being absolutely terrified and absolutely exhilarated. Every time the plane banked I was terrified I was going to fall out!

so nearly four decades later, you became an aviator.It was something I had wanted to do for a while, and I found myself in the right situation. I took a job at the Arlington Fly-In. It’s a big campout, the third-larg-est aviation event of its kind, and attracts upward of 50,000 people. That’s triple the population of Arlington. People sleep under the wings of their planes.

when you took over as executive director, the event was barely a third the size it is today. how did you grow it?Through a lot of smart marketing and outreach.

Citybeat Profile

Q & A

PHOTOGRAPHS BY DANIEL BERMAN

Arlington Mayor Barbara Tolbert at the site of her city’s barnstorming fly-in


Fly GirlBefore she became Arling-ton’s mayor, Barbara Tolbert grew a little local gathering for private pilots into one of the biggest fly-ins in North America. Here, she talks about how terrifying and exhilarating another of her avocations can be: running a municipal social media campaign.

some say you’re taking the same approach with local government.In my first month as mayor, I was poring over the city budget and saw that our communications budget was zero. We had just finished a demographic study of the city, and what I found amazing was that the average age was 36.5 years old, yet we had an eight-page newsletter that we mailed out twice a year. We weren’t communicating in an effective way.

so what’d you do?I decided that we needed an electronic newsletter that would be e-mailed on a weekly basis. Since I didn’t have a budget, I asked everybody on my staff to write for it, but I told them that it had to be from a citizen’s perspective. It was all about removing bureaucracy from the language and telling our community who we are.

the electronic newsletter, which now has almost 2,400 subscribers, even scooped the local paper.Our downtown has a challenge with cheap heroin from Mexico, which is causing a homelessness issue on our streets with users panhandling to sup-port their habits. Rather than waiting for the local paper to focus on the homeless-ness issue and its causes, we took proac-tive measures to deal with the problem. We devised a program to put up signs around town asking people to keep their change and, if they wanted to be compas-sionate, to give to a local charity.

arlington also used social media to build public support for a transpor-tation benefit district.In August, our citizens voted by 66 per-cent to increase sales tax by 0.2 percent to create a fund to preserve our ailing roads. We used our Facebook page to tell the story about why this was important: that half of our roads were failing and

Q & A

Citybeat


would never qualify for state or federal funding to fix them.

arlington’s facebook page turned two this January. any gaffes?We’ve only had one misstep, when one of our employees posted about the county sheriff setting up a speed trap behind a sign. The citizens were happy to know where the speed trap was, but the sheriff wasn’t happy that the citizens knew.

fourteen employees are on the city’s facebook team, but only two were initially allowed to post. why?If you’re putting information out there on social media, people will say things and make negative comments. As a city, you need to be able to respond with information in an even tone and not be defensive. To see if employees were ready for that two-way engagement, we set up a page that was offline, and we had some

Our citizens are looking for open government. Social media allow us to get information out to them before it’s in the newspaper.

employees pretend to be angry citizens and others practice answering. I deter-mined that most of them weren’t ready, but now we’re up to 10 posters.

you also have your own facebook page as arlington’s mayor.It’s something I needed to do, to show my employees that I’m also putting my-self out there and not just asking them to do this.

what’s one thing you’ve learned about social media, from a city’s perspective?Our taxpayers, our residents, our citizens are all looking for open government, for transparency and trust and under-standing. Social media allow us to get information out to them before it’s in the newspaper. It builds that bridge of trust. And it helps give your city a personality, which is not a bad thing to have.

reaching out

17,926Total Arlington residents


By the NumbersCityvision charts how Arlington’s high-fl ying digital communication keeps the city grounded.

POPULATION DATA FROM THE 2010 US CENSUS, UNLESS OTHERWISE INDICATED

ethnic makeup

Population

street Wise social savvy

18,270Total Arlington residents

2010

2013

SOURCE: CITY OF ARLINGTON


flying high

9.5% Hispanic or

Latino (of any race)

1.2% Black/African

American

1.4% Native

American

80.1% White

3.6% Asian/Pacifi c

Islander

4.2%Multiracial


Work rate


2,340 weekly e-newsletter

subscribers

34% open rate

1.8jobs per household


1,517 Facebook friends

13,760 views of restaurant

opening (132 shares, 58 comments)

57,000 views of drug bust

(467 shares, 1,315 likes)

10 city employees post on city’s

Facebook

7 blocks of

main street reconstructed

100%of businesses maintained

1,000+ aircraft at annual experimental fl y-in

55,000 visitors over 3 days

feature storyjanuary/february 2014

Washington cities foster development and citizen engagement by staying ahead of

the information-technology curve.

by ted KatausKas


n october, a global think tank based in New York City ranked Walla Walla among the top 21 communities when it comes to leveraging

broadband technology to promote regional economic development—not top 21 in the state or even the country, but top 21 in the world. Not bad for an isolated rural enclave of 31,731, one of only four cities and coun-ties in the US that made the list.

“There were 360 communities around the world that applied,” says David Woolson, president and CEO of the Walla Walla Valley Chamber of Commerce. “In the top 21 with us are Toronto and Rio—not Reno, Rio. It’s pretty rarefied air. . . . The fundamental point to this is that because of broadband, being in the middle of nowhere ain’t what it used to be.”

at the foothills of the Blue Mountains, the city then focused its economy on agriculture—wheat, apples, and onions. More recently, Walla Walla has undergone a transformation as those more traditional commodities have been supplement-ed by the exponential proliferation of vineyards and wineries—145 by one recent count—and bis-tros and restaurants, evolving almost overnight into a destination for culinary tourists.

“Successful places take the things they have a legacy in and find a new legacy for them,” Bell explains. In Walla Walla, “They’re rethinking their agricultural legacy and realizing that a rising tide of consumers is interested in knowing where their food comes from. They can do high-end food and wine while still doing what they’ve always done well: shipping wheat to China.”

Still, located 40 miles from the nearest Interstate highway and served by a regional airport with just two daily flights from Seattle, Walla Walla was hamstrung in its efforts to augment and diversify its economic portfolio. That is, until a huge opportunity knocked in October, when Olympia-based nonprofit Northwest Open Access Network (NoaNet) completed a $140 million, 1,000-mile expansion of a statewide rural fiber optic network, funded by the 2010 Broadband Technology Opportunities Program. NoaNet brought broadband Internet access, with a tenfold increase in bandwidth, into the Walla Walla Valley.

Anticipating the network’s arrival, in June the state Depart-

16 cityvision magazine january/february 2014 photogrAph by kAi-huei yAu

damien sinnott, left, and david Woolson of the Walla Walla chamber of commerce in the Walla Walla public library’s crewspace studio

Robert Bell, cofounder of the Intelligent Community Forum, a nonprofit studying the impact of broadband technology on local and regional economies around the globe, puts it this way: “They are thinking in a way that downtown New York thinks but are do-ing it in Walla Walla. They have broadband, but they’re looking at making it faster and having more connections and redundancy so they’re never out of business. They may be geographically remote, but they don’t have to be the least bit remote in the online world.”

The frontier ambition runs deep here: since its establishment as a military and trading outpost in the mid-19th century, Walla Walla has repeatedly reinvented itself. As the most populous community in Washington territory, a strategic center of trade and commerce near the confluence of the Walla Walla and Co-lumbia Rivers, Walla Walla once seemed destined to be the state’s capital, but after the transcontinental railroad bypassed the city it was eclipsed by Seattle and Olympia. As the seat of Walla Walla County, surrounded by the fields and orchards of the Palouse and

my taKe is that the digital revolution that’s driven by broadband isn’t coming; it’s already here.

—DAVID WooLsoN

how do you defi ne “open data”?Almost any data collected by government that can be put into a spreadsheet (called a “data set”) is open data: 911 calls, business licenses, building permits, traffi c counts. But lots of data is not easily put into a data set: memos, maps, whitepapers, e-mail mes-sages to and from public offi cials. . . . A fair amount of data that’s subject to public disclosure is not easily re-duced to open data.What’s driving the open data movement?Many cities are inundated by or have diffi culty with public disclosure requests. If a citizen or a newspaper makes a request, govern-ment has fi ve days to respond. But if the data is already up on an open data site, you don’t have to respond at all because it’s already available to the public. The practice reduces the cost of responding to public data requests. That was our impetus for putting things like 911 calls up on data.seattle.gov: the police

department was respond-ing to so many requests, many of them negative, that we said, “Let’s put it all out there so we won’t have to tie up employees.”What’s the most popular feature using data from data.seattle.gov?The My Neighborhood Map feature on seattle.gov, which displays data in a geographical format where you can see 911 calls, build-ing permits, local parks, libraries, even things like public art. For years, the block watches would try to get crime information from the Seattle police, who were forced to create these paper maps that would be weeks and months old. Now this information is hours old—at the most, days old—which makes it a lot more usable.how can smaller communi-ties that are resource-poor do something like data.seattle.gov?The cost of a license from Socrata [a Seattle-based open-data management company; socrata.com] is

Bill Schrier’s crowning achievement as Seattle’s chief technology o� cer was launching that city’s cutting-edge open data portal, data.seattle.gov. Now a senior adviser for the state’s chief technology o� cer, Schrier talks about what open data can do for your city.

OPeN SeaSONQ&A WITH BILL sCHRIeR


continued on page 19

ment of Commerce awarded Walla Walla’s chamber a $64,000 grant to partner with the Intelligent Community Forum and develop a broadband-based local economic development strategy. In addition to promoting culinary agriculture, developing the cre-ative economy, and facilitating a Hispanic business roundtable, the chamber made one project—dubbed “Digital W2”—central to its plan: creating a digital arts incubator, in partnership with the city, the library, and the local high school, with the goal of luring creative professionals from the gaming industry and Hollywood animation and digital eff ects studios to the city.

Far-fetched? A month earlier, with a $136,000 grant from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, the city-run public library had transformed a conference room into “CrewSpace,” a production and editing studio for digital audio and video. Complementing a successful media arts program at the local high school, the library program even included funding for a part-time instructor.

“People look at this digital media initiative and say, ‘Yeah, right, in Walla Walla? Are you kidding me?’” says Woolson, a Walla Walla native who spent 30 years as a Hollywood- and Portland-based television executive before taking the chamber job three years ago. “But the CrewSpace lab at the library is the brainchild of Jef-frey Townsend, a Walla Walla–based production designer whose Hollywood credits include Sleepless in Seattle and The Tracey Ullman Show. It’s phenomenal—it’s one of a kind. So is our high school media arts program. Folks who have gone off and had big careers are coming back to Walla Walla. Because of broadband, the ability to have an interesting digital media company and do business globally in a place like Walla Walla is very real.

“My take is that the digital revolution that’s driven by broad-band isn’t coming; it’s already here,” he adds. “I don’t think this is a ‘nice-to-have’; I think it’s a ‘gotta-have.’ But collaboration between government agencies around this is critical.”

To that end, the city, local community college, and other part-ners established an Innovation Partnership Zone with a grant from the state commerce department, and the city strung aerial fi ber-optic cable to give local businesses broadband access. The city will also be incorporating anticipated private-sector installa-tion of fi ber-optic conduit into future road maintenance projects.

“Our charter says that we’re supposed to provide water, sewer, garbage, parks, and so forth, but broadband is now a required and integral part of our infrastructure,” says Mayor Jerry Cummins. “It’s a chance for government to step up and say, ‘We recognize that there’s a need to support business to make this a better community. We need this type of infrastructure, and by golly, we’re partnering with the private sector and another agency to provide it.’”

o midWife the emergence of another type of public infrastructure—open data—the City of Seattle has been partnering with citizen hackers. Together, they’re developing smart-phone apps and other digital tools designed to

make online government data more accessible, and more useful, to the public.

number. With the app, anyone with a smartphone can scan the barcode of the broken lamp, automatically generating a report.

Seattle’s outreach to the software development community be-gan in 2008. Inspired by an online catalog of 507 municipal data sets pioneered by District of Columbia chief technology officer Vivek Kundra (which Kundra estimated had spawned $2.3 mil-lion worth of apps), the city hired a local start-up called Socrata to help build and host data.seattle.gov, a web portal where raw municipal data could be uploaded to a digital “cloud” and made available to the public. Since going live in early 2009, the site has amassed a trove of data, including 98 data sets (the most popular, with more than 31,000 page views, is the fire department’s log of 911 dispatches), 33 charts (from crime statistics to hourly bicycle crossings on the Fremont Bridge), and 318 maps (including one that plots the location of every bike rack in the city, and another that charts the city’s public art collection).

“Adding the mayor’s proposed budget as a data set in data.seattle.gov in 2013 was a great leap forward for transparency,” adds Seattle’s chief technology officer, Erin Devoto, who helped drive the city’s partnership with Code for Seattle.


Consider Hack for Seattle, a city-sponsored code-writing workshop this past June, at which more than 80 Puget Sound soft-ware developers gathered in a Se-attle City Hall conference room and spent an entire day brain-storming apps to crunch specific sets of municipal data, including one that helps motorists locate available parking spots downtown and another that tracks the out-come of feral cat adoptions. A year earlier, in June 2012, the city part-nered with King County and the state’s broadband office to sponsor the Evergreen Apps Challenge, a three-month-long code-writing contest that awarded $75,000 in seed money to developers who designed the most-promising smartphone apps tailored to state and city data. Winners included the Living Voter’s Guide, a public vetting of ballot measures built by City Club Seattle and fact-checked by librarians from the Seattle Pub-lic Library, and WhichBus, an app that tracks the arrival times of county buses.

For code writers like Seth Vincent, the motivation for par-ticipating in these events is the chance to make local government more transparent, not neces-sarily to create a blockbuster app that yields a trove of 99-cent downloads on iTunes. (That sometimes happens regardless: WhichBus ceased operation earlier this year, but only after an-other app developed by a University of Washington student, OneBusAway, eclipsed it on iTunes.) As a cofounder of Code for Seattle, a volunteer collective with 450 members that meets twice a month to brainstorm apps based on municipal data, Vincent sees all sorts of potential waiting to be tapped.

“If people can work on a team and form a company around this, that’s great,” he says. “But the real goal for Code for Seattle is finding innovative ways to share information that people need to know to make good decisions. It’s pretty much journalism, but on a more granular level: the idea that people can get involved in a substantial way with sharing information about the city, or even affecting how the city is run. That’s incredibly exciting.”

Currently, Code for Seattle is developing an app to streamline the way citizens report broken streetlights, which now requires citizens to walk out to the lamp, write down the barcode number, log onto the city’s website, file a report, and manually enter the

the data portal has helped save time in public records requests, Which is one of our open data drivers.

photogrAph by dAniel berMAn

sabra schneider administers seattle’s

open data portal, data.seattle.gov.

—sABRA sCHNeIDeR


not that expensive, any-where from several hundred dollars to a couple thou-sand dollars a month.What’s the return on that investment?Managing data can be labor-intensive and take up a lot of staff time. You send Socrata the data, and they manage it for you. In Seattle, we were able to automate it. Take the fire department as an example. When they get a 911 call from dispatch, all of the information about the call is entered directly into a computer that dispatches the fire units. That same computer has a direct link to Socrata, so the call will show up within minutes. If you saw a fire engine roar-ing by your house and went to data.seattle.gov, you would see where that truck was headed.government transparency aside, what’s another ben-efit of open data?Economic development. For example, I have an app on my iPhone called Seattle Emergency Management that was written by a third-party developer and uses data.seattle.gov to display information from fire calls. But it also has a little adver-tisement on it, and the developer makes money from it. The point is, by making data open we are encouraging third parties to write profit-generating apps and make the data usable for citizens.

What’s your ultimate goal for open data when it comes to cities?I would like to get to a point where many services delivered by cities are fol-lowing the FedEx model: if you ship a package, you can track the package from when it was loaded onto the truck and follow it to each way station until it arrives at its destination.how does that translate?Say a citizen sees an ugly piece of graffiti. She takes a picture of it with a smart-phone app that sends it to the city with a comment that says, “This needs to be removed!” The city takes that photo and goes through a process to figure out how to get the graf-fiti removed, which can actually be a surprisingly complicated process. With the app, the citizen is able to track the progress of the complaint as it goes through every stage of the city process until it’s resolved. Then the city can use the tracking information to figure out how to make the process go faster.What’s your advice for a city that wants to start working with open data?Look at the most frequent public disclosure request you get, and attack that first.

The most impressive portal on the site is the police depart-ment’s neighborhood crime map. Before the advent of data.seattle.gov, every precinct would produce paper maps plotting the location of reported crimes, but they were obsolete the mo-ment they were published; in addition, every precinct would scan police reports onto CDs, which would be available to citizens who came into the precinct and filed a request for the information. Now, most 911 calls are automatically uploaded, via Socrata, to data.seattle.gov; the information is also presented in a seattle.gov web application that maps crime. Icons on the map categorize the incidents (a dollar bill for a property crime, a spray can for graffiti) and are clickable, yielding statistics about the crime and a link to a PDF of the police report. To access the police reports, all a user has to do is register (once, in just a few seconds, for free), log onto the website, and click on the map. The process saves the department time both in archiving information and in respond-ing to public records requests—which, ideals about transparency aside, is one of the boons of Seattle’s open data portal.

“We have anecdotal evidence that the data portal has helped save time in public records requests, which is one of our open data drivers,” says Sabra Schneider, Seattle’s director of elec-tronic communications, who administers the site. “In an effort to increase transparency and make it easier for residents to find what they need, we continually add to and update the data sets.”

For its part, Socrata has translated the lessons learned working with Seattle to operate data portals on behalf of some two dozen cities (New York, Chicago), counties, states, and international governments (Kenya, the Region of Lombardia). What’s more, current House Bill 2202 would require all state agencies to place public data sets on a similar open data portal (tentatively “data.wa.gov”) and would encourage but not require cities to do the same. Meanwhile, Bill Schrier, a senior policy adviser for the state’s chief information officer (see “Open Season,” p. 17), is lobbying for the creation of a separate state-sponsored (and state-financed) open data portal for all Washington cities (data.cities.wa.gov), onto which every municipality could upload data (including business licenses and building permits) for public access. One roadblock, aside from securing funding, would be finding a way to standardize municipal data, since forms and data collection methods vary from city to city.

“What would make it usable is for cities to figure out a way to do it together,” Schrier says. “If we could have a data.cities.wa.gov, then have the state host it and pay for the licenses, all cities would have to do is upload data—as opposed to each city making, and paying for, its own separate site.”

Until that happens, developers like Vincent encourage cities to do whatever they can to make municipal data available to the public.

“Start small: there’s gotta be some small data set. A list of parks is a good example,” he says. “Even if it’s just an Excel spreadsheet posted on a website, it’s an incredible start that doesn’t require too much added maintenance. It’s what gets the ball rolling.” And gets code writers like Vincent developing.

till, softWare developers don’t have a monopoly on the kind of code that can help cities enhance their technology infrastructure. Simple updates to municipal codes, achievable by even the most analog council, can pave the way

for bandwidth-driven economic development. Case in point: cell tower upgrades.

Before the City of Woodinville drafted Ordinance No. 571 (scheduled for adoption on February 4), cellular providers wish-ing to upgrade transmission equipment on existing towers had to go through the same permitting and review process as the city required for new cell tower construction: a series of reviews, pub-lic comment periods, and public hearings typically lasting three to four months and costing $6,000. After AT&T went through the process a dozen times to upgrade all of its Woodinville facilities with faster 4G LTE technology for the latest generation of cell phones, Ken Lyons, who helps represent the company in the Pacific Northwest, met with Woodinville’s development ser-vices director, Dave Kuhl, and senior planner Erin Martindale to discuss ideas on how to streamline the process. The resulting ordinance, which brings the city into compliance with a 2013 federal law (mandating the approval of cell tower modifications that don’t significantly alter existing structures), reduces the tower modification permitting process to no more than a month and limits fees to $1,100.

For Martindale, the benefits of Woodinville’s code change are wide-ranging. “Our code as it was written was onerous on our staff: it required a land use permit that required public notices and hearings, and we weren’t getting any public comments,” she says. “It seemed like a waste of time, from the staff, from the applicant, and from the citizen’s standpoint. One of the drivers was, ‘Let’s simplify this so we can focus on stuff that does matter to people.’”

“Many cities are finding that their codes need to be updated,” adds Lyons, who estimates that he worked with some 70 juris-dictions in Washington on wireless facility upgrades in 2013. “Customer expectations and wireless technology have changed dramatically over the past 15 years. More people are dependent on their wireless phones, fewer people have land lines, and de-mand for data has increased exponentially. Cities are having to rethink the role of wireless in their overall utility infrastructure.”

To that end, Bob Bass, AT&T’s Washington president of external affairs, participated in an AWC webinar in December. Attended by representatives from 82 cities, the session addressed the ex-ponential growth of wireless technology since the introduction of the iPhone in 2007 (a 30,000 percent surge in cellular data traffic in just six years) and explained how this data flood has increased demands for upgraded equipment and wider coverage. The webinar also stressed the importance of cellular communications in public safety (70 percent of all calls to 911 are now cellular) and how cellular drives local economic development. Bottom line: cellular coverage and wireless data bandwidth are just as important as water or sewer services in the minds of local resi-dents and business owners, who increasingly are choosing where they live and work based on levels of connectivity.

“When deciding where we’re going to upgrade or build a new facility, we want our customers to have the best service possible,” stresses Bass. “We look at coverage gaps and work with local com-munities to ensure provision of essential public services, such as police and fire, and to ensure that customers get the coverage they need. Local governments play a critical role in bringing the latest technology to their communities.”

In other words, whether you’re Seattle, Walla Walla, or Woodin-ville, the flow of information through the air or fiber-optic conduit isn’t just a utility. It’s your community’s economic lifeline.


citizens are expanding the ways they interact with their local governments. tech savvy is on the rise, and people expect local government to keep pace with the services and media they use in their daily lives. so for a city undertaking proactive planning, how will citizens be using technology in 2020? here are four trends worth watching, in terms of data reflecting how adults used digital tools in 2013.

reach out and ping someone 39%

use social media for political or civic activities,

which increases their overall online engagement

70% have high-speed

broadband at home, which makes information available

at any time

55% have mobile access

via smartphones, which makes data even more constantly accessible

79% use videos, photos,

and social media when looking for information

source: pew internet reports 2013/govloop december 2013


legal |

22 SOCIAL STRATEGIES FOR POLICE 23 STRIKING UP THE BROADBAND 24 DON’T FEAR THE RECORDS: OPEN GOVERNMENT IN A SOCIAL AGE

CityWiSe

Myth 1: There is no way to control social media use by

public offi cials and staff .

Citywise

UsinG the “soCiaL” eLement of social media to improve public safety can help police build new relationships in the schools and in the community at large. In Tumwater, social media have proven to be a win-win for police and citizens.

Facebook, for example, has been a successful tool in solving and prosecuting crime. Police enlist the community to identify unknown suspects from surveillance videos and photos. One of the city’s fi rst posts, in fact, came from a surveillance camera that captured photos of graffi ti taggers in action; they had caused several thousand dollars in damage in two cities. Within hours of posting on social media, detectives received calls from citizens that positively identifi ed the suspects. The crimes were success-fully prosecuted, and citizens remain enthusiastically involved in cracking cases.

Social media have even improved Tumwater’s ability to prevent crime. For one thing, the transparent nature of social media allows crime victims to see that police actively investigate their cases. For another, it sends a message that the commu-

nity does not take a passive approach to public safety.

In addition, school safety can be improved through social media by teaching where kids tend to hang out: online. Kids post to Twitter continu-ously—anything and everything they think, see, and hear. But unfi ltered posts

can lead to confl icts and are often the root of bullying and harassment.Tumwater’s school resource offi cer uses social media to gauge the climate of local

schools and to infl uence it, in part by intercepting and helping redirect potentially harmful exchanges before incidents escalate. The offi cer also models and reinforces a favorable school culture by using social media to recognize and reward positive actions. The offi cer’s activity has been so fresh and frequent that his social media channel has achieved celebrity status: students place a high value on being mentioned by name in the offi cer’s tweets. And the schools adopted a cybersafety curriculum, developed and taught by the school resource offi cer, to help kids learn personal safety skills in the c hanging world of technology.

Clearly, social media have tremendous potential to help police break down barriers and build new relationships inside local schools and out on the streets. Citizens fi nd these modes of com-munication more accessible, less formal, and easier to use to say “thank you” than most traditional lines of contact. For offi cers often seen only in the enforcement role of public safety, such kind words in tweets and posts reinforce the vital nature of the work they do on behalf of Tumwater’s citizens every day.they do on behalf of Tumwater’s citizens every day.they do on behalf of Tumwater’s citizens every day

LiVinGsoCiaL

heidi behrends cerniWey, City of Tumwater

social media can helP Police connect With and build community.

Heidi Behrends Cerniwey is Tumwater’s communica-tions and mar-keting special-ist, responsible for coordinating city communi-cations.

22 cityvision magazine january/february 2014for more information: ci.tumwater.wa.us

CITY 101

Students want to be named in the offi cer’s tweets.

Mind the Medium

in order to use social media eff ectively, cities should take advantage of the strengths of each medium. facebook, for example, facilitates guided dis-cussion, while twitter presents a curated image of the tweeter.

seLFIe CoNTRoLPosting photos is a must, es-pecially on Twitter. Tumwater’s school resource offi cer, Chuck Liska, regularly posts self-portraits, or “selfi es,” taken around school—at assemblies, at fundraising and volunteer events, even on the line serv-ing lunch. The photos give students a regular chance to observe the personal side of law enforcement. Follow him at @DetectiveCLiska.

CITIZeNs’ ARResTsMany of the 1,600-plus Tumwa-ter Police Facebook followers have provided valuable infor-mation to help crack cases. Detective Jen Kolb manages the page (restricted to users 18 and over), which encourages users to “like” Tumwater Police. Popular post topics include:• Help us identify suspects• Crime alerts (vehicle prowls and burglaries)• Lost & found (stolen property)• Safety tips (preparedness, winter driving, texting and driving, road closures, etc.)• Event info (parade routes, fi reworks laws, etc.)• Recognize positive “neigh-borly” actions

information teChnoLoGy options and opportunities information teChnoLoGy options and opportunities information teChnoLoGyfor cities of all sizes are increasing every day. While the cus-tomers you serve can adopt the latest thing with a relatively small investment, the challenge for a city is ensuring that you can deliver services in our on-demand, anytime, anywhere, on-any-device environment. For many cities, success comes from collaboration with private providers, but reaching that goal may take some research—and you may need to fi nd extra funding. Fortunately, cities can get help from several federal and state programs that off er grants and/or grant-and-loan combinations.

One source for infrastructure construction and equipment purchases is the US Department of Agriculture. Not only does it provide a program specifi cally for building broadband infra-structure, but the USDA also has programs that include money for the necessary equipment to connect to a network for uses such as health care, distance-learning delivery, and rural busi-ness development.

Washington State funds can be helpful, too. The Community and Economic Revitalization Board, through the Department of Commerce, has awarded grant and low-interest-loan pack-ages to municipalities for broadband infrastructure tied to at-tracting and keeping jobs in a community.

Support for a city’s role in public safety may also be on the horizon. The state’s Offi ce of the Chief Information Offi cer has been awarded federal funding to assist in creating a national

interoperable public-safety network. The state program, called One Net, is still in an information-gathering stage, but it prom-ises progress toward a statewide solution that will enhance the resources available locally.

As technology becomes ever more integral to service delivery, however, the best long-term answer for cities may be to think creatively about every new project. For instance, when a water or sewer project comes up, consider contacting local provid-ers about using your newly opened trench to install fi ber-optic broadband lines. You can incorporate broadband infrastruc-ture into your next update to your city’s comprehensive plan, and think about city assets such as existing cell towers, water towers, or buildings as ways to cut the costs of installation for broadband providers. Review your city’s permitting processes to see whether they help or hinder the prospect of bringing more technology to your region, and consider creating a local tech-nology planning team like those currently funded by the Washington State Broadband Offi ce. These teams not only gather impor-tant information about community needs and assets, but they often develop a well-thought-out plan for meeting those needs.

Wherever you are on the information-technology spectrum, change is coming. Cities that are ahead of that change curve will thrive and prosper.

Citywise

fUndinGthe fUtUre

friedA rAy, Washington State Broadband Offi ce

grants and Process changes can bring it systems uP to sPeed.

Frieda Ray is a communications and outreach coordinator who’s worked for over 20 years as a journalist and with nonprofi ts.

january/february 2014 cityvision magazine 23for more information: broadband.wa.gov

CITY 101

Linking uphere are some tips for working with a private broadband provider to enhance your city’s information-technology capacity:

Contact all of the providers in your municipal-ity. It’s an issue of fairness, and sometimes a solution comes from unexpected sources.

Ask where they currently pro-

vide service and where they cur-rently could pro-vide service if the opportunity were to arise.

Ask providers about their chal-lenges in pro-viding service. Sometimes the

answers are actu-ally easy to fi nd.

Be prepared to make your case. How many po-tential subscrib-ers are in the area you serve, and what they will do with the service?

Think long-term.

Your city’s library may be on a small connection now, but with the right tools it could provide distance learning with high-defi ni-tion videoconfer-encing.

Citywise

24 cityvision magazine january/february 2014for more information:pacifi calawgroup.com

MAttheW J. segAl, Pacifi ca Law Group

LeGAL AFFAIRsfor the reCordsfacing facts can helP cities manage social media.

when we thinK about it, the term “public records” still conjures an image of rows of fi le cabinets fi lled to overfl owing with manila folders. But today, the term may just as well include the people you friend or link online, your comment on a website, or your four-word tweet during a public meeting.

Like it or not, social media use by public officials and staff, when it relates to the conduct of government, may create public records subject to both retention and production require-ments. In Washington, a “public record” includes “any writing containing information relating to the conduct of government or the performance of any governmental or proprietary function prepared, owned, used, or retained by any state or local agency regardless of physical form or characteristics.” RCW 42.56.010(3). The Secretary of State’s office, which oversees records reten-tion requirements for Washington public entities, says this includes social media. The opinions of the Washington Supreme Court suggest the same. Those who know the already wide scope of the Public Records Act—and its potential to generate lengthy and expensive litigation—may cringe at the prospect of retaining, reviewing, and producing social media and other electronic content.

Social media are socially redeeming, however, and they’re not going away. So if you’ve been intending to tackle these issues for the fi rst time or

want to revisit them because your plan-ning department is now hooked on Snap-chat, let’s take a moment to debunk some myths about electronic public records.

myth 1: there is no way to control social media use by public offi cials and staff .This is a daunting task, but it can be done. The best approach involves collaboration between legal and technical staff to create a workable, documented policy on the use of social media. Evaluate those types of social media that actually enhance the business of your municipality, and iden-tify those types of social media that are better limited to personal use on personal time (e.g., sending short video clips back and forth). Solicit input from those most likely to use social media platforms. Then establish appropriate limitations on use, including such considerations as whether comments should be enabled and what types of content should never be posted. Also, make sure the diff erence between offi cial public use and campaign use is crystal clear.

myth 2: anytime you receive a public records request, you should assume it encom-passes all forms of electronic records.A requester has the right to seek public records that include social media or other electronic content but may not want those types of records—and may not even realize they are encompassed within a broadly

Get in the Game

you aren’t obligated to use so-cial media for public business. some entities, especially small-er ones with fewer resources, still follow this approach, con-vincing themselves that “the only way to win is not to play.”

but let’s face facts: hoping that elected offi cials won’t use social media is like hoping your teenager won’t send text messages. conducting public business without this tool isn’t realistic, and using social media eff ectively can tremendously enhance the quality of govern-ment. Just look at the evidence, and start playing ball.

A modern city hall couldn’t even function without e-mail and websites.

Facebook sends volumes of public service information out to citizens with particular interests.

Blogging allows staff and of-fi cials to engage constituents directly and, under the right circumstances, to hear back from them.

Twitter circulates emergency response information in real time.

Matthew J. Segal is a found-ing partner of Pacifi ca Law Group, focusing on litigation, counseling, and dispute reso-lution for public and private clients.

written request. Take the time to review a request and then call, write to, or e-mail the requester to confi rm what he or she is looking for. Include a discussion of how long it will reasonably take to conduct a broader search, and off er to work with requesters to prioritize what type of records they are most interested in.

myth 3: if you provide one requester records in electronic form, you have to do so for every requester.You cannot distinguish between requesters under the Public Records Act. This does not mean, however, that requesters cannot distinguish between themselves. The fact that one requester may want to receive copies of archived Facebook posts with accompanying meta-data does not mean that other requesters will not be happy with a PDF, a printout, or even just a link to a website. Again, talk to the requester and document your communications when you provide the records in the agreed-upon format.

myth 4: if i use social media in the course of my public employment, i don’t need to retain content not stored on my server.This seems fair and logical, but it’s contrary to retention requirements for public records. In other words, if you use it, don’t lose it (until the applicable reten-tion period has expired). Build a retention plan into your social media policy.

myth 5: in response to any request for electronic records, you must provide metadata.If a requester wants metadata and asks for it clearly and specifically, the requester is entitled to it under the Washington Supreme Court’s decision in O’Neill v. City of Shoreline. Absent such a request, metadata need not be provided. Keep in mind, however, that even though you do not need to produce metadata unless asked for it, you do you need to retain metadata through the end of the applicable retention period set by

the state archivist (determined largely by the content of the record rather than by its form).

myth 6: printing out a copy is as good as saving the original.This used to be true. In fact, state regula-tions purported to authorize this practice as suffi cient compliance with statutory retention requirements. The Washington Supreme Court defi nitively rejected this concept in O’Neill, holding that deleting the original electronic version of an e-mail subject to a pending public records request could violate the Public Records Act. The same rule could be applied to social media.

myth 7: if it’s on my home computer or personal device, it’s not a public record.The courts began to reject this concept more than 10 years ago, yet the idea persists. If you are using a personal computer or personal


continued

CityWiSe

LeGAL AFFAIRs

Platform Tennisthings change fast in our digital world: just ask those agencies that drafted a Myspace policy 10 years ago. the best approach to using and regulating social media in the public sector is to treat them as a broad concept rather than a collection of specifi c programs or technologies. Who knows which of these current mainstays will be in or out 10 years from now? Vine

Twitter

Text messaging

Pinterest

Wikis

Blogs

LinkedIn

E-mail

Facebook

Websites Instagram

Instant messaging


Citywise

device to conduct public business, you are potentially creating content that is subject to retention requirements and production (or at least identifi ca-tion) in response to a public records request—no matter who owns the device or account or pays the bills for their use. The best course of action is to segregate public and private content, ideally by separating computers or devices or at least by segregating

within the device itself. For example, on a home computer, place all e-mails and fi les relating to work in separate folders. Then, if a demand is made to produce these records, you can testify that you have carefully separated public and private, which may help you avoid a court order for a third-party examination of your hard drive or device.

myth 8: the drafters of the public disclosure act intended it to capture all forms of social media.Did the proponents of the Initiative 276, way back in 1972, imagine a time when countless volumes of data would be stored entirely on computers? Did they envision cities hiring expensive consultants to retrieve metadata from gigabytes of archived fi les? Probably not. But it’s always helpful to consider the “fi rst principles” of public disclo-sure when deciding how to handle diffi cult production or retention ques-tions related to social media. Educate your staff and offi cials about retention and disclosure. Make sure your public records offi cer or team knows how to work with requesters to get them what they want effi ciently. Err on the side of disclosure and transparency, and ask questions early: it’s better than fi nding out the answers too late.

If you are using a personal computer or personal device to conduct public business, you are potentially creating content subject to a records request.

United in StrategyAon brings together industry expertise

with deep employee benefit and risk management resources to create

innovative solutions for employers. We design benefit offerings and identify

risks to protect your people and yourorganization, while helping you remain

cost effective and competitive.

Risk. Reinsurance. Human Resources.

For more information:Mike Rask

[email protected]

AT&Tsalutes

The Association of Washington Cities

© 2014 AT&T Intellectual Property. All rights reserved.

Clear, strategic on-line and written communications to help cities achieve their goalsFor more information please contact Lisa Clausen at 206.714.0693, or visit www.clausencommunications.net

Clausen_Cityvision_0114.indd 1 1/28/14 3:56 PMAdvertise in the next issue of

Call now to reserve your space in the next issue For advertisng information contact: Jeff Adams, VP Custom Publishing

p 206.454.3007 | f 206.447.3388 | [email protected]

cityvision magazine is the one-stop resource guide for all Washington’s 281 cities and towns! More than 4,200 copies are distributed bimonthly to all mayors, council members, city

managers, and other local government and community partners involved in projects and policies throughout the state. Advertising in cityvision is the ideal way for you to communicate with the

people who control spending on virtually all municipal projects.

SalesPromo_1.8.indd 1 1/29/14 9:02 AM

PROFESSIONAL SERVICES

GTH-GA is a full-service lobbying firm with over two decades of experience representing local governments. Our consultants have successfully passed legislation and secured funding for local projects at both the state and federal levels.

Gordon Thomas Honeywellwww.gth-gov.com253-620-6500

Katy Isaksen & AssociatesP 206-706-8893 • F 206-706-7702

PO Box 30008 • Seattle, WA [email protected]

A&IK

Utility Financial Planning • Rate & Fee Studies • CIP Funding

Serving Cities Since 1995


CitysCape

Amid a myriad of choices, cities should use the information-technology tools that can get them where they want to go.

remember the famiLy road trip? Gas up the car, grab a map, and go, following the signs until you reach your destination. Today’s technology has launched that simple journey into hyperdrive: Wi-Fi, smartphones, GPS, Facebook, Instagram, e-mailing, texting, tweeting. . . . There’s enough interactive information to guarantee that any driver will get there on time—or run off the road.

Cities face a similar trip on the information superhighway, except that the destination is unknown, with paths branching off in myriad directions. Broadband and cellular are paving the way for economic growth; e-government cuts costs and delivers services 24/7; mobile devices are powerful platforms for engaging citizens. Cities that tap their data can take services into new, proactive directions. They can target what

their citizens need and develop creative solutions to challeng-ing policy decisions. At the same time, citizens can use shared city data to make better decisions of their own.

Information technology is a diff erent breed of infrastruc-ture. It’s not like maintaining roads or water treatment systems; it requires a strategy that continues to evolve as you use IT to solve problems and fi nd solutions. Smart leaders will bring technology into the room whenever the big issues are being tackled.

Many cities are still concentrating on the technology itself. They aren’t ready to commit to a virtual road map. But when they do, when the pieces fall into place, the innovation and creativity that technology breeds will steer them in the right direction.

CHaRtiNG a COURSe

JOB NUMBER: PCH0-SMKY-p4176 7X4.875

Colors: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black

Fonts: None

Images: p4176_cinder_hires.psd (3311 ppi; CMYK), FireAdaptedOrg_Bar.ai, p4176_Logo_LockUp.ai, A_single_HeadLine3_color.ai

Date: 5-29-2012 10:59 AM

File Name: P4176_r0_7X4.875_Magazine.indd

Media: Magazine

Bleed: None

Trim: 7” x 4.875”

Safety: 6.5” x 4.375”

Gutter: None

Folds: None

None

Scale: None

Output%: 100%

Color Sp: None

Notes: MAGAZINE 7”X4.875”

TM: None

PA: J. Ramos

Ret: None

QC: None

PR: None

PP: Jill Howard

Brand: None

AD: Patrick Moore

CW: None

GCD: None

AE: Jackie Martin

AB: None

Vend: None

Client: None

S:6.5”S:4

.37

5”

T:7”T:4

.87

5”

B:7”B

:4.8

75

”

think&DRINK

HOSTED CONVERSATIONS in PUBS & TASTING ROOMS on PROVOCATIVE TOPICS and NEW IDEAS.

Every other month in Seattle. No cover charge.

Visit www.humanities.org for event times, locations and topics.

Humanities Washington sparks conversation and critical thinking using story as a catalyst, nurturing thoughtful and engaged communities across our state.

Lower employer premiums

Reduce employee’s expenses

We can help

Personnel costs, especially health care premiums are taking up a larger and larger portion of city budgets. Let the Trust help you control your health care costs.

• Learn how our High Deductible Health Plans (HDHP) can work at your city

• Got LEOFFIs on Medicare? See how much our Medicare Advantage plan can reduce your costs

• Find out how you can earn a 2% premium discount

As a financially constrained city, we have to keep our premium costs down. The Trust helped us come up with solutions to our cost dilemmas.

We’ve been concerned about good employees leaving and recruiting challenges because family premium costs are too high. Our HDHP option is wonderful. Employees who choose this plan save premium costs and use the plan more wisely.

Another winning solution has been the Trust’s new Medicare Advantage plan. It has the potential to save us $50K/year in premiums. That kind of savings to the city can be the difference between keeping a job or laying someone off.

Candice RydalchPersonnel Director, City of Centralia1-800-562-8981

awcnet.org/healthbenefits

ShapeShapeYour

Solutions

about good employees leaving and recruiting

from open data to selfie close-ups, take your community where it

Documents