City Clerk
Mission statement
The Office of City Clerk is the secretariat of the City Council and facilitates legislative processes. In addition, the office serves as the organizational center for two enterprise programs: elections administration and voter services and records and information management.
Our people
Programs and divisions
Purpose and context
The Records & Information Management (RIM) Division manages enterprise information assets across identified lifecycles to ensure business continuity, legal and regulatory compliance, probity, economy, and proper disposition.
Services provided
The RIM Division provides enterprise leadership and interdepartmental coordination on information governance policies, initiatives, and strategies; fulfills statutory duties assigned to the responsible authority and data compliance official; oversees the City’s archival collections; and provides printing and production services, centralized imaging/scanning, mail/courier/delivery services, and destruction/recycling for all departments.
Race equity impacts
The RIM division works at fulling data requests as soon as possible that have a significant community impact as well as those that effect police and community relations or serve traditionally disenfranchised groups. The City’s response to data requests directly affects public trust.
Purpose and context
The Legislative Support & Administration (LSA) Division facilitates legislative and policy-making processes.
Services provided
The LSA division provides meeting management services for City Council and its standing policy committees, the independent Audit and Executive committees, as well as other assigned decision-making bodies; publishes and preserves the City Charter and Code of Ordinances; issues a variety of legal notices; coordinates appointments to City boards and commissions; delivers a myriad of delegated services; and manages administrative operations of the City Council & Clerk Department.
Race equity impacts
We expect to achieve successful outcomes through effective development, execution, and measurement of the Strategic & Race Equity Action Plan. By focusing on a small number of priorities, we aim to be more successful in our efforts to embed racial equity principles and strategies into services, programs, and operations.
2022 Mayor's Recommended change items
City Clerk - Core Service Rebuilding
Program: Records & Information Management
Fund: General
FTE: 0
Proposal detail and background
Records managment operations
The Mayor recommends adding $50,844 in on-going funds to the Records & Information Management Division to support records managment operations & projects.
Currently, the Clerk’s Office manages two central storage locations for inactive records, one in the City Hall clock tower and the other in Harding warehouse. Between both sites, the R&IM Division maintains approximately 24,500 boxes of records. Both warehouses are currently full. Apart from these centrally managed locations, departments also maintain inactive records storage on-site due to a lack of centralized storage space.
Service now licensing – Data request system
The Mayor Recommends adding $20,000 in on-going funds to the Records & Information Management Division for additional ServiceNow licenses.
This system has been recently extended to include all requests for MPD data. This system requires each City user to be licensed, at a cost of $1650/yr. The Clerk’s office uses licenses for 6 FTEs and reserves one for temporary work where possible. Clerk’s has existing budget of $10,000, covering 6 licenses for Clerk’s full-time staff. However, the City has 20 licenses ($33,500) to allow use by department staff as well as MPD, who receive and process their own requests. This amount is being charged to Clerk’s. Expanding the licensed users is required to leverage the automation potential of the system. Existing licenses are held by Reg. Services, Public Works, HR, and CPED. Even the current distribution requires a limited number of licensed agents to act as intermediaries thus limiting the automation potential. Further, MPD Records staff is now using the system. Eight of their agents are licensed. Even this doesn’t cover everyone so unlicensed staff work largely outside the system and relies on licensed staff to update records.
Description of the change
Records managment operations
This proposal recoups some of the to support ongoing needs within Records & Information Management Division. It proposes to do so with flexibility, so that the small amount could be leveraged to forward one or more of five projects, based on the need at hand.
- Enterprise Wide digitization of historical records to preserve and make accessible the core required records of the City. These are required records, not simply archival material, and are part of ongoing legal and policy discussions. In their current state they are available only to limited City staff and research is burdensome.
- Record Warehouse operations, including expanding deployment of technologies such as barcodes, acid free folders and boxes for permanent records, and other one limited projects and materials required to keep the warehouse operational.
- Professional services contract to support Records Management projects, including warehouse audit and reorganization, creating indexes and finding aids to make important collections (such as the legislative history) more accessible. This could include reorganizing materials to allow more efficient management (e.g., organizing by recall frequency).
- Disaster recovery services (as needed) for the remediation of vital records damaged due to water/fire/other disasters. This service would support physical records housed at the City’s two records storage locations and at other City buildings.
- Contract Professional Services to support Data review. Some projects designed to streamline data practices requests can’t be readily completed with existing staff because they are fully engaged in processing requests. Professional services can either extend their ability to review backlogs or support projects directly. For example, contract staff in 2020 worked to digitize MPD Internal Affairs paper records.
Service now licensing – Data request system
This request seeks to extend the budgeted amount for an existing system (ServiceNow) to cover actual costs as use has grown and to allow expanded use in departments. Since 2018, the City has used an inhouse (IT) customized implementation of ServiceNow, the City’s workflow automation and ticketing system, to intake and process requests for public data.
Equity impacts and results
Over the past several years, the work of the office’s in-house technology team has expanded access to timely, accurate, relevant data—an outcome which has equal benefits to all constituencies in the City of Minneapolis. The Clerk’s Office sees “digital democracy” as a means of facilitating a more agile and responsive government, one that meets the people where they are, and opens the potential for new and expanded possibilities for collaborative and participatory governance.
Each of these four areas has unmet needs. This approach would at least allow the Clerk’s Office to take advantage of opportunities to make progress so that over time, the organization, storage technologies, and preservation at the records warehouse and City archives would be improved, data practices projects would be advanced even where staff time. It would magnify existing efforts so that the City could iteratively focus on high-value projects make progress without a large dedicated investment. In terms of measuring metrics, each of these can be included in the Clerk’s annual KPIs.
City Clerk - Captioning and Broadcasting
Program: Legislative Support & Administration (LSA)
Fund: General
FTE: 1
Proposal detail and background
The Mayor recommends adding $20,000 one-time and $325,000 in ongoing funds to the Clerks LSA budget to support in-person live closed-captioning services and hire a Broadcasting and Scheduling support staff to meet the City’ lawsuit settlement agreement.
In 2016, the City Council adopted the Americans with Disabilities (ADA) Action Plan, a comprehensive policy document with strategies to remove physical, communication, and policy barriers. The plan meets ADA Title II legal requirements of identifying deficiencies and solutions for people with disabilities to access and participate in City programs, services, and activities. Incorporating captioning services in the City’s operations meets the ADA’s Title II, § 35.160 requirement for ensuring effective communications in addition to the City’s One Minneapolis goals.
Description of the change
The Office of City Clerk will lead the in-person live captioning services contract and hire a Broadcasting and Scheduling support staff for the broadcasted City committee meetings. The request of $20,000 one-time funding is to set up hardware and systems. The $325,000 ongoing funding request includes a support staff FTE request of $98,000 and $225,000 to procure an in-person live captioning service contract. The department estimates the actual costs of these services, based on similar services and contract procured by Hennepin County.
Equity impacts and results
The communities impacted by the captioning enhancement are people with communication disabilities, people that are deaf and/or hard-of-hearing, the aging community, English Language Learners, and the general public. The current automated captioning process presented significant risk as the system often made contextual errors that made it difficult or impossible to understand the speaker and limiting people to obtain information and participate in council proceedings in real-time. Actively in-person captioning broadcasted meetings is a benefit for everyone, people with perfect and impaired hearing.
If these contracts are funded, the City will continue to provide access and transparency for all Minneapolis residents of live Council and committee meetings, budget meetings, and all other government productions. This support includes connectivity to the in-person live captioning system that provides closed captioning on the web and both government channels 24/7.
City Clerk - Program Assistant for Appointed Boards & Commissions
Program: Legislative Support & Administration (LSA)
Fund: General
FTE: 1
Proposal detail and background
The Mayor recommends adding $98,247 in ongoing funding to the Clerks LSA budget to add a Program Assistant that will focus on managing all aspects of the Appointed Boards & Commissions (ABC) program through the Clerk’s.
Many boards, commissions, and advisory committees take part in the City's decision-making process. Minneapolis has over 50 volunteer-based boards, commissions, and advisory committees, with over 500 members. The City actively seeks applicants with diverse backgrounds and experiences. Appointments are made twice each year, in the Spring and the Fall. Interim appointments are made as needed.
Over the past 10+ years, personnel resources have been reduced; however, the work of this unit has increased significantly. The City Clerk office maintains a comprehensive list of all ABCs and appointed positions that are available to the Mayor, Council Members, and the public. Before opening recruitment as part of the biannual recruitment process, the City Clerk prepares and distributes a report listing all known and anticipated vacancies for a specific period (spring or fall), which gets distributed to the Mayor and Council Members and made available to the public. The City Clerk also keeps the official records related to the appointment process, including the official membership rosters for all ABCs, applications, eligibility lists, and nomination packets, and other related documentation and records.
Description of the change
Currently, the Clerk’s Office has two Program Assistants supporting Council and Clerk office. This request is to add a third Program Assistant to focus on managing all aspects of the Appointed Boards & Commissions program in the Clerk's office. One of the duties of this position will be to improve the process and work with elected officials to bring ABC reform. Confirmation of each appointment should be communicated by official action. The City Clerk will notify each appointee of their appointment in writing, which shall provide details on the mandatory orientation program (date, time, and location) as well as information about the specific ABC to which the appointment has been made. A copy of this notice shall be provided to the City department supporting the specific ABC. The City Clerk will also notify, in writing, all applicants who are not appointed to an ABC. The City Clerk shall provide copies of the following to the staff supporting each ABC:
- Every vacancy report;
- Each preliminary appointment memorandum (yellow) and final appointment memorandum (blue) for nominations affecting that specific board/commission;
- A copy of each confirmation letter for appointments confirmed by the City Council;
- A copy of the ABC’s official membership roster each time it is updated; and
- A copy of any notice or other communication which is made to the specific ABC or which is made generally to all ABCs.
The City Clerk’s Office will also develop a training program for department staff assigned to support ABCs to explain the expected roles and responsibilities of staff liaisons, including the interaction between the City Clerk’s Office and supporting departments.
This position will establish a full-time position in the Clerk’s Office to provide administrative management and support for a variety of department-led programs, including but not limited to:
- All ABC meeting management functions integrated into LIMS (Phase 2)
- Standardized meeting forms/templates: agendas, minutes, reports, etc.
- Standardized processes for recruitment, evaluation/review, and selection/recommendation.
- ABC recognition protocols and recommendations.
Equity impacts and results
1. Increase community outreach and engagement to include, in addition to interviewing and making recommendations on potential candidates, actively recruiting individuals with specific skill sets, experiences, diverse backgrounds, or perspectives that will enhance the function of the particular ABC.
2. Develop general selection criteria to be used in the screening/vetting process; consider additional criteria to be used for particular ABCs (targeting specific experiences, expertise, skills, etc.). General criteria should include:
- The overall community representation on the ABC;
- An applicant's background, experience, and expertise in particular areas relevant to a specific ABC;
- The potential of an applicant to better reflect the diversity of geography, race/ethnicity, age, gender, education, family status, housing (owner, renter, etc.), years as a member of the community, etc.; and
- The potential of an applicant to engage affiliated community institutions and organizations through membership in an ABC.
3. Actively solicit applicant nominations from community boards, civic groups, community groups and neighborhood associations, and request that notices and application opportunities be shared with community-based organizations, veterans groups, religious institutions, labor unions, the business community, and other area interest groups.
4. Actively solicit applicants from professions and backgrounds deemed helpful to ABCs, including attorneys, urban planners, small business owners, union members, engineers, architects, students, and teachers. In particular, outreach to colleges and universities could engage students who, because of their academic studies, would make excellent candidates for an ABC.
5. All vacancies should be posted for a minimum period to allow interested individuals to apply and be considered; however, this requirement should be capable of being modified when necessary to meet the needs of appointing authorities or the specific ABC. At a minimum, all ABC vacancies will be advertised in the following ways:
- Posting to the City of Minneapolis website(s);
- Posting to bulletin boards at City Hall (Council and Clerk);
- Posting to community bulletin boards (NCR); and
- Distributing press releases and public announcements to local/area media outlets and through posts to various social media tools.
6. Conduct a series of public information sessions to inform community-based organizations and neighborhood associations about the role of ABCs and opportunities for participation.
7. Collect and open application data to measure the success of outreach and recruitment efforts so that future recruitment strategies can be refined and evaluated.
8. Implement a standard application form for all ABCs, which includes a written portion with questions requiring applicants to explain their motivations/reasons for joining or remaining on an ABC. The application form should be digitized for easier access; must be capable of being completed and submitted online. Eliminate automatic reappointments by requiring written current members interested in continuing their service to reapply using the same standard application form.