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City to switch mass-notification system to Everbridge; staff confirm hires, parade and festival plans
Summary
Council heard that the city will replace its current mass-notification vendor with Everbridge (no price increase), announced a new building-inspector hire (Eric Perkin Meyer), and reviewed parade/festival logistics and a planned East Ridge power outage notification.
City staff told council they will move the city's mass-notification service from the current platform to Everbridge and reviewed near-term operational items including personnel, a planned power outage and community events.
Staff said the county rep researched alternatives after repeated delivery and responsiveness problems with the city's current mass-notification vendor and concluded Everbridge offers features not available on the existing platform. The staff member said the proposed three-year Everbridge contract would not increase the city's cost and that municipalities would retain existing sign-ups which would migrate to Everbridge. "There's no increase in price," the staff member said, and the county obtained approvals from participating municipalities to move forward.
Staff noted a pending planned power outage in the East Ridge neighborhood (estimated 1–2 hours to swap lines) and said that while Everbridge rollout will follow the county kickoff meeting, the city will use Facebook posts, press releases to the Republic Times and a home-page website notice to alert residents about the outage until Everbridge is operational.
Personnel and community updates included the hiring of a new building inspector, Eric Perkin Meyer, who staff said has over 30 years of experience and will start on the 15th. The council also received updates on policing equipment (new duty handguns and LPR cameras with projected ETAs) and on festival and parade logistics (38 parade entries to date; float volunteer days scheduled).
Staff emphasized the importance of communicating outage and event information to residents and suggested additional postcard or door-knock notification for households with vulnerable residents if needed; staff said inventory of medically vulnerable addresses is not maintained by the city.
