Title
Discuss Hosting a Telephone Town Hall Meeting (NB)
This item provides a brief description of Telephone Town Hall meetings and requests direction from the City Commission on the logistics of holding a Telephone Town Hall Meeting in Gainesville. **ESTIMATED STAFF DISCUSSION 10 MINUTES**
Explanation
As part of the City of Gainesville FY 15/16 Biennial Budget Calendar, the City Commission approved dates for a series of public meetings to gather feedback from residents on the City’s strategic priorities. The first Town Hall Meeting was held on February 10th at the Senior Recreation Center and approximately 70 residents attended. To reach out to a greater number of residents, the following Town Hall Meeting was scheduled to be conducted over the phone on March 18th, when the City would call out to approximately 30,000 residents. The Telephone Town Hall Meeting scheduled for March 18th was cancelled to give staff an opportunity to share the logistics of the proposed Telephone Town Hall Meeting with the City Commission.
Staff has identified six government entities in Florida that conduct Telephone Town Hall Meetings, including the City of Fort Lauderdale, the City of North Port, Pinellas County, TBARTA, the Sarasota County School Board and the City of Palm Bay. In these Town Hall Meetings, the format is typically as follows:
· A list of residential home phone numbers is obtained and calls are placed at the beginning of the meeting;
· The vendor moderates the call and welcomes participants to the public meeting, inviting them to press zero if they would like to ask a question;
· The Mayor and City Commission give opening remarks;
· The vendor provides screeners, who take the questions and comments from residents on the line throughout the call and enter them into a queue, with a number that indicates the relevancy of the question to the focus of the meeting;
· As calls are selected to go on the air, the moderator introduces the caller and brings them on the lin...
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