Public Safety Committee reviews move from Code Red to CivicPlus ahead of August renewal

Terry Goodwin, chair of the Public Safety Committee, opened the May 12 meeting by announcing the only substantive agenda item was a review of the city's Code Red emergency-notification system and invited staff to explain options.

Jesse Ekenrath, the city's chief of operations, said the city is currently subscribed to Code Red for weather and other public-safety alerts but that Code Red experienced a data breach and its migration to a new platform has produced inconsistent delivery. "Code Red has it had a a data breach a little while ago, so they switched onto a new platform, and the new platform just hasn't been consistent for us," Ekenrath said, adding that the last couple of weather alerts "didn't go out to everyone on the platform."

Ekenrath told the committee staff have evaluated CivicPlus, the vendor that hosts the city's website, as an alternative messaging platform. He said CivicPlus would integrate the opt-in flow into the city website so residents could select emergency notifications there and that the platform's integration with the website and with an anticipated city app should make sign-ups and alerts more seamless.

Shifting to a city-managed CivicPlus deployment would change how contact data is governed. "Right now, Code Red is managed through the county, and then we're kinda like a subrecipient of the Code Red," Ekenrath said. He said a city-hosted system would give the city exclusive management of its notification program but would mean the city would not automatically have county-managed contact lists unless the county agreed to share them.

A city staff member who discussed signup data said the total contact pool is "over 20,000," but that when staff send a text message the list of residents reachable by text is about "13,000." The staff member noted a large portion of older records are phone-call-only signups from when the system relied primarily on calls, and said moving to a platform with stronger text support would better match current resident preferences.

Ekenrath said the city's contract with Code Red runs until August and that staff are checking CivicPlus pricing; the goal is to complete any transition before the subscription renewal. He said the fire department currently pays for Code Red and that, if the city adopts CivicPlus, the expense would likely move to central or administrative services where the website is budgeted.

Committee members sought clarification about the scope of alerts. Staff noted that many broad alerts such as weather warnings are auto-generated by the National Weather Service or by higher jurisdictions and that Amber and Silver Alerts can be countywide or statewide. Staff also said they found no record of countywide messages sent in the past two years when they checked with the county.

Members and staff discussed next steps: finalize pricing comparisons, export and reconcile contact data, run an overlap period during migration, and carry out a communications push so residents recognize messages coming from a new number and re-confirm their opt-in. The committee signaled support for staff to continue pricing and data work ahead of an anticipated migration before the August renewal.