Item 25 - Approve Consultant Agreement with Avenu Insights

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Approve Consultant Agreement with Avenu Insights January 19, 2021 Page 4 provisions directly affecting (and promoting) local UUT revenue; e.g. AB 1717 (Telecommunications: Prepaid Mobile Telephony Services: State Surcharge and Fees: Local Charges Collection) and SB 1441 (Local Prepaid Mobile Telephony Services Collection Act). 8. Monitor statewide and nationwide trends in developing compliance issues and technological developments in various utility industries in order to legally and legislatively apprise the City of potential new markets, trends, and product developments that may be subject to the City's UUT in order to expand the City's tax base and bring new industries into compliance to increase overall UUT revenues. 9. Conduct regular monthly client City conferences hosting 65 California Avenu client cities and multiple personnel from each City to present technical compliance issues including existing, ongoing, and potentially upcoming UUT issues in order to maintain and share knowledge surrounding such issues in an open forum which facilitates coordination and unification amongst all clientele. This involves compliance, legal, and legislative issues relating to UUTs that impact both regional and statewide clientele and allows for both the conveyance of Avenu's observations and position statements on such issues and an open forum for discussion amongst City finance and legal personnel to interject their positions and stimulate discussions regarding best processes to resolve potentially negative issues or advance positive issues. The monthly client conferences provide client guidance to Avenu on pathways to resolve City -specific issues on their behalf, regional issues that can involve coalitions of Cities, and statewide issues to provide uniformity in the collection and enforcement of ever -evolving issues regarding local California UUT compliance. Individual City follow-up on issues discussed is a regular occurrence as well that provides Avenu with guidance on how certain Cities may want to respond individually or jointly to issues discussed. 10. Contingency Option — Provision of an electronic reporting research database application and utility users' tax administration services for City's UUT (client/server or web -based portal application) and lockbox services. The application will provide tax administration services including processing of monthly UUT reporting and remittance data, plus actual receipt and processing of UUT payments. The application will allow authorized City staff to search, query, filter/sort, and export UUT reporting and payment data (in common data formats; e.g. Access, Excel, etc.) for staff presentations and analysis based on service provider and utility type. 11. Specialty UUT Audits — Provision of comprehensive audits of principal electric, gas, and telecommunications utility providers together with large-scale utility service aggregators utilizing existing franchised infrastructures or wireless protocols to provide new and existing telecommunication services, natural gas,