2020/09/16 Council Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

September 16, 2020 and diversity at the City and create a culture of anti-racism. This includes a staff training program, and training for our police officers on implicit bias and the history of race in policing. And, she'll be part of efforts to identify and address inequities and bias in City systems, policies and procedures. Our city teams have also been incredibly responsive in adapting to changes required in response to COVID. Our safety team,working together with our facilities department, had to jump into action and immerse themselves in learning about the latest in workplace safety as it relates to COVID, which remains an ever-evolving body of work. They play a vital role in developing policies and protocols to ensure we offer a safe workplace, and are protecting the health of our City teams, as well as our customers and residents. This work will certainly continue as we adapt to the current health crisis and ensure safety into the future. Once the state's Stay Home, Stay Healthy orders went into effect, our IT team had to scale up our technical infrastructure to quickly support hundreds of new telecommuters and ensure continuity of technical support operations. They helped some of our teams transform in-person services to virtual operations and will continue to keep us connected and performing necessary services virtually as needed in 2021. We also had to adapt and find a way to make our meetings, city council meetings and hearings digital so that our community can still engage and meet safely. Our legal department and municipal court have done great work as well, maintaining continuity of operations during this pandemic. Next year,we will build on these successes and move toward a Paperlite court. Our court will also expand our electronic home monitoring program to prevent lengthy jail detention while defendants await trial. Through this coming year, we will continue to move forward with the merger of our parks and facilities departments, which began earlier this year. This merger has proven to be very successful, creating operational and staffing efficiencies.