FIN 2021-06-14 Item 1A - Discussion - Continued Discussion on Prioritizing Restoration of Service Levels

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INFORMATIONAL MEMO Page 4 offs through the end of this calendar year, and all of the utilities staff talked with are committed to working with customers to develop payment plans moving forward. b. Assistance to businesses i. Increasing grants and support for small businesses ($200,000) 1. Staff recommends setting aside $200 thousand for possible use for small business outreach, technical assistance, loans, and grants. Staff would return with a specific proposal later this year as opportunities to partner with other organizations arise. c. Create Economic Development Plan with a specific lens of mitigating impacts due to COVID-19 ($50,000 to $150,000) i. Basic Plan: This work includes hiring a consultant to conduct research, analysis, writing, graphic design, and producing a document. It would also include standard community outreach such as an online survey, a limited phone survey, and some public meetings. Estimated cost $50,000. ii. Expanded Outreach: This work includes hiring multiple community-based organizations or firms to assist with outreach to various groups based on culture, language, age, etc. It would include tailoring those contracts to work with those groups using relevant outreach methods, which could include surveys, conversations, interviews, focus groups, or others. As appropriate, methods would include interpretation, translation, childcare, and participation incentives toward a goal of meaningful, not transactional, engagement. Estimated cost $50,000. iii. Improved Business Contacts Database: This purpose of this component is to improve our business contacts database which would help with outreach on the Plan as well as ongoing business outreach. This would include a combination of purchasing a software tool and contacting our businesses to update and/or collect their contact information. In the private sector the software tool would be called a customer relationship management system (CRM) and would track a company's interactions with their customers. In addition to purchasing software, staff would hire a firm to fill in the gaps and expand upon our current business license database by contacting businesses directly. Estimated start-up cost $50,000. There would be an ongoing maintenance cost but that has not yet been estimated. d. Impacts due to COVID-19 i. Improve community access to Council meetings by updating Chambers 1. Upgrading Council Chambers to Accommodate In -Person and Virtual Participation in Meetings — cost estimates ranging from $10,000- $208,000._Detailed information on this project is included in a separate info memo presented to the Finance and Governance Committee on June 14, 2021. 2. Provision of Government Services impacted by reduction in revenues a. Capital Investments delayed or deferred. i. Traffic Calming Program (estimated $480,000) 1. Prior to the onset of the COVID-19 health emergency, funding of $400 thousand had been included in the budget each year for traffic calming. At the April 26, 2021, Transportation and Infrastructure Committee meeting, several projects were identified as priority projects. Public Works sees more value in funding several smaller projects throughout 4