There is no change to the fiscal impact of this program at this time.  An amendment will be necessary to centralize the budget and will be on the regular meeting agenda for Council approval on February 10, 2025.
 

This item has not previously been before the Goodyear City Council.

The Digital Communications Department’s action item in the city’s Strategic Plan is to evaluate and implement a coordinated citywide public communications plan in fiscal year 2025 (FY2025).

Staff met with the city’s executive team in early 2024 to present options for moving forward with a Unified Communications Plan. Those options were:

• Continue operating as-is, with no changes.
• Adopt a blended approach, with staff citywide staying in their current departments and abiding by a scope of work set by Digital Communications.
• One Team, streamlining marketing and communications staff who report to the Digital Communications Department.

Digital Communications was directed to gather data on the types and quantities of digital communications core functions being performed by relevant staff in multiple departments to help guide decision making. Those departments include Economic Development, Parks and Recreation, including Goodyear Ballpark, and Goodyear Fire and Police.

Digital Communications, along with Human Resources, has completed an in-depth analysis of several city departments that have marketing and communications staff to understand their roles and responsibilities, determine the percentage of time they spend working on marketing and communications tasks, as well as expenditures on equipment and resources.

The analysis showed that communications and marketing staff within city departments function very independently, follow varying strategies and approaches and report to a variety of supervisors in different areas of expertise. The analysis also showed inefficiencies with multiple staff from varying departments doing the same tasks and purchasing similar equipment and subscriptions from multiple budgets.

This has, at times, resulted in inconsistent messaging, varying levels of product delivery and varying levels of customer service to key stakeholders including the news media, the business community, our residents and city staff.

This plan aims to accomplish the following goals to ensure that all staff are working together to produce quality work that reflects the city’s overall communications strategy across all departments and not just within Digital Communications:

• Better marketing the city to a wider audience for business and tourism attraction.
• Consistent, accurate and timely media relations.
• Responsive and consistent social media customer service.
• Strategic content development to engage and grow the city’s audience.
• Consistent branding.
• Achieving efficiencies with staff, costs and resources.
• Data tracking and reporting to guide decision making with allocation of resources.
• Employee Development -- Marketing and Communications staff will have more opportunities for growth.

As the city continues to grow rapidly, the needs mentioned in the above bullet points continue to grow within several departments which was not the case even five years ago. As the city grows, and as the way residents prefer to receive information changes with technology, it’s imperative that the city adapt to these changes to ensure engagement with residents.

Other departments in the city with a unified approach are Finance, Legal, Information Technology and Human Resources. In the Valley, most mid-to-large sized cities have a centralized communications structure.

NEXT STEPS:

•  Use an existing staff vacancy to recruit one full-time position to support new departmental structure.  
• Transfer two positions from Parks and Recreation and two positions from Economic Development.  

This information will serve as background for discussion with the Goodyear City Council at the public work session meeting on Feb. 3, 2025.