Parking spots at Goat Hill Garage will be extremely limited in April. A resurfacing project will temporarily block off part of the 8th floor and the entire 9th floor. Approximately 80 parking stalls will be unavailable for the duration of the project. The work is scheduled to begin during the first week of April, and will take about four weeks, depending on weather.

Goat Hill Garage users are strongly encouraged to use other transportation options such as carpools, vanpools, or public transportation. Please visit King County Employee Transportation Program for additional options. Instead of hosting in-person meetings downtown, please consider using Skype for Business (formerly Lync). FMD will send an advisory when the start date of the project is confirmed. Thank you in advance for your patience and understanding.

Just recently a bus rider noticed her route driver had a positive, courteous attitude and thought to share her praise for him with KC Employees.

“I was riding on route 4 from downtown towards the Central District. The driver had the BEST attitude and GREAT customer service. There was a panicky rider who though he missed her stop and he handled it with such grace. She even ended up having a nice, relaxed conversation with him all the way until she got off. He greeted everyone and said good-bye to everyone. If you can track this person down, please send my thanks!!”

Rest assured, we passed on her thanks to the employee and praised his great job to his manager.

Recently, KCIT Leadership team members successfully used Skype for Business to conduct the first round of interviews for the Deputy Chief Information Officer position. Highly qualified resumes came in from across the U.S.

Alex Jacobson, KCIT Human Resources Associate used Skype for Business to conduct interviews.

“We scored the resumes but Chief Information Officer Bill Kehoe said the ability to communicate was really important and we didn’t exactly have budget to fly in folks from around the country,” said Alex Jacobson, KCIT Human Resources Associate. Enter Skype for Business.

Each candidate had a 30 minute Skype interview with a presentation. “It took a lot of coordination on our end and troubleshooting on the candidate’s end, but we worked out the bugs and made the entire process more personal,” said Jacobson “It really leveled the playing field, giving us access to the best candidates in the fairest possible way.”

Alex said it also saves money. “When you have this high level panel interview, you have to be mindful of panelists’ time and schedule. That is an expense in itself. We conducted all the interviews quickly and efficiently. Everyone was pleased with the process – especially the candidates. And it yielded some real surprises, that’s all I can say!”

Now that Alex is the expert in Skype for Business panel interviews, don’t hesitate to call him for help setting up Skype for Business for your next round of interviews.

The King County Assessor will begin testing the viability of web advertising on the Department’s website this week. This Pilot Project for web advertising was approved during the 2015/2016 budget process and is aimed at testing the revenue generating potential of web ads on the Assessor’s website.

Web ad security is a priority for this pilot, and a strong security protocol has been put in place to ensure that the ads are not vehicles for malware or viruses. In addition, the content of the ads will be focused on consumer services and must adhere to pre-approved content guidelines.

The web ads are being provided by a vendor that specializes in advertising on government web sites, and has successfully provided web advertising for a number of government agencies around the country, including the Washington State Department of Transportation, the Cook County Assessor, and the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority.

An important element of this pilot is to gather public feedback and to make sure the advertising does not interfere with the viewing or navigation of the Assessor’s website. If you have any questions or comments, we encourage you to send them to: web.ads@kingcounty.gov.

Crossposted from Public Health Insider

Since 2003, not a single child in King County has died from a helmet-preventable bicycle injury.

What helped lead to this victory? King County’s Child Death Review – a collaborative effort to identify opportunities and interventions that prevent children from dying.

As the ‘doctor’ for the community, we are responsible for looking at broad trends and understanding the systems, policies and practices in our community that can prevent disease and death.  Our local hospitals look at deaths in their systems, and we look at deaths in our communities to see if more can be done to prevent future deaths.

Child Death Review (CDR) recounts the details of unexpected and unintentional deaths that occur in King County. Several times a year, three-hour CDR meetings are scheduled based on need, two months in advance. Each CDR covers six to eight cases and focuses on a specific manner of death (traffic-related death, suicide, overdose, etc.) and results in recommendations for prevention. CDR started as a statewide funded effort in 1998, but it was cut from the budget in 2003. Given the importance of this work, we have prioritized CDR and funded it locally.

Read more at the Public Health Insider website.

Did you know that there were free and low cost exercise classes in the Chinook building, mostly at lunch time? What a great way to earn Gold Status for the Healthy Incentives program! Some of the classes could use a boost of attendees to energize the instructors and other participants. Consider these options:

Cardio Dancing with Shirley Zhang: Mondays and Wednesdays 11:30 a.m. to noon, free.

• 

  Shirley Zhang in motion with class participants.

  No experience needed. Partially led by videos. Cool Chinese music. All are welcome, could use a boost of participants. Whether you were a dance major or have two left feet, just come and give it a try if you like. You can start in the back of the room. If it seems hard (this advice is for all classes!), remember that others may have done this dozens of times and also felt awkward their first time or two!

Read More