Board of Aldermen 03-16-2020 Page 13
President Wilshire
Thank you. Alderwoman Kelly and then Alderman Dowd.
Alderwoman Kelly
Thank you, you were very thorough and | appreciated that. | have a couple of questions; | know you
said, rightly so, that communication and sharing communication is going to be very key; we are at the
front lines talking to people daily. They have questions, so question one — | heard you say emergency
management will triage. Is that where we should start if someone reaches out to us with a question or
a need?
Director Kates
Yes so what we want to do is we will want to send any requests from you know the public any requests
about questions related to the incident to our Joint Information Center. The Joint Information Center is
really that operation where there’s the Mayor’s Office, the PIO, Public Information Officer from Public
Health, the other Public Affairs/Relations folks from all the other City Departments. That way they can
identify who has the best answer for that specific question. And that for right now, send it to
Emergency Management but we do have an e-mail address that doesn’t come to mind because we
just set it up today that we will use to have the public that has a question about some sort of issue in
the community, reach out to the PIO’s from those organizations. Media as well, and all those would go
through that funnel, and we will have all that information up on the City Web Site once the e-mail
address is finalized and ready for the public.
Alderwoman Kelly
Thank you, my second question was how information will be shared with the Board of Aldermen. Will
it just be put up on the web site? Will we get memos when things change because | know it is
changing pretty quickly but also making sure we have the right information?
Director Kates
Sure, so one of the things that we can do and this is another function of that Joint Information Center,
is any of our key updates, we can send that easily to the distribution list for the Board of Aldermen, so
that way you are clued in to what is going on. We can easily do that and make sure that that happens.
The other thing that | would mention is that it is important to stay tuned regarding social media posts,
so make sure that you are following Public Health, Emergency Management, but also our State and
Federal Counterparts, because again, |’ll be honest with you, that’s how we are finding out a lot of
things. You know? People are asking about the whole bar closing thing and I’m like, well, I’m looking
on the Governor's Web Site and the Executive Order is not up there, yet it was on Twitter. So
definitely, really make sure that you are following social media for these official accounts to ensure that
you know what is taking place here during this response. It is evolving quickly and so they are trying to
use tools like social media to get the information out as quickly as possible.
President Wilshire
We do appreciate being involved in updates. Thank you.
