Mass Adoption of AI is Happening Is Shorewood Ready?

Upon hearing resident Barry Brown’s speech during the city council meeting of June 8th, 2026 we requested Mr. Brown to provide his documentation to SCA for a follow-up story.
Here’s what you need to know, in his words:

Mass adoption of AI is happening. Generative AI will reach its peak in the US by 2028. Cities like Chanhassen, Plymouth, Brooklyn Park are already embracing AI and the League of MN Cities has published its 2nd set of AI guidelines as of April 26th, 2026.

I strongly urge City Council members to form an AI task force to help in formalizing an AI policy to include ethical guidelines, fairness, privacy & accountability. The task force should also prioritize future AI needs throughout the city with a focus on productivity, cost savings, risk abatement and staffing. Here are some ways the city should be thinking about using AI?

Generally

• Maintaining institutional knowledge. Turnover in top level positions has been a problem for this city. Shorewood has 3 people in director level positions that will likely not be here a year from now. Then what?
  • Editor’s note: to put an exclamation on this point, at the June 22nd city council meeting HR Director Sandy Thone says she is likely to retire in 1-2 years and all her institutional knowledge over the last 10 years will go with her.

Engineering

• Bolton & Menk uses AutoCAD Civil 3D. Road and water drainage designs using AI language-assisted-models can dynamically pull together street mapping, GIS data and historical information while conforming to “Shorewood’s Construction Standards Guide” and can proactively catch errors before contracts are awarded and ground breaking occurs.
• Requests for Bids which contain hundreds of detailed specifications can be accurately generated in minutes vs hours of billable time.

Finance Department

• Automatically capture, code and process vendor invoices
• Reduce days of audit preparation down to minutes
• Create financial simulation models that more accurately predict future revenue v. expense – eliminating the need for some consulting contracts

Planning Department

• Automatically re-write city Zoning Codes to coincide with changes to the city’s Comprehensive Plans eliminating consulting fees
• Re-write confusing language and redundancies in Zoning Codes

City Clerk/HR

• Simply producing “meeting minutes” from council and commission meetings can reduce outside costs by 75%
• Data requests that take hours for staff to gather could be done in minutes

None of this can be done without human oversight and approval. Will AI save time? Absolutely. Will AI save money? Properly implemented, yes. Will residents notice a difference? – Maybe, maybe not. But before something detrimental happens, I urge City Council members to start making decisions to formalize an AI policy and prioritize future AI needs for the city. Thank you.

Editor’s Note: Mr. Brown is a valuable contributor consistently providing detailed and thought-provoking information for City Council members and SCA readers. Over the past several years he has provided in-debt analysis of budgets, taxes and bonding debt all in an attempt to ensure residents are well informed. His grasp of city finances and inner workings is like nothing we’ve ever seen from a volunteer in Shorewood. Let’s give him the support he deserves by participating.