City Council - Regular Meeting

At this time, I'd like to call the September 10th, 2026 Des Moines City Council workshop to order. Council Member Steinmetz will lead us in the pledge. Please stand if you are able.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Okay. With that, please let the record show that Councilmember Nutting is absent. He had let us know in advance he had a conflict. Is there a motion to excuse? All right, I got a motion made by Council Member Steinman, seconded by Council Member Vlas. All those in favor, please raise your right hand. That looks like it is 6-0. He is excused. Thank you. And now we'll be turning over the meeting to City Manager Catherine Capri.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. This is a workshop we talked about several months ago. Once the strategic plan was adopted, quite a few of you asked, well, gosh, what's next? How are we going to talk about implementation? And more importantly, how are we going to talk about how we're tracking our performance? and how we're reporting that to you all. So we've got kind of two sections of today's night. Nancy Hetrick, who you all know well, is here. So we're going to talk about implementation of the plan, and then the second half will be about governance and whether or not the council wants to talk about some protocols or guides you all may want to consider. So Nancy.

good evening everybody it's very nice to be back nice to see you all i'm delighted to be here uh just me we don't have julie and so any writing that happens on flipcharts tonight uh comes with my apologies uh but boo i know i know i will let her know that as well um but that's okay i think that you know really this is about you This is about you all anyway, and so yeah as Katherine just mentioned we want to bring it back into the room the strategic plan talk about You know we have a strategic plan now. What how do we implement that? What does that look like and the city manager will be providing? an update and you have copies of the work plan that staff has developed for the first year. So there'll be an opportunity to review that, to talk about it, what it looks like, what it means in the organization and how that supports the plan that you all adopted earlier this summer. So we will talk about that. We also want to spend a little bit of time thinking about and talking about what are the best methods and approaches for communicating progress. What do you want to know? What do you want the community to know in terms of cadence, in terms of methods, level of detail, these sorts of things. So we want to make sure we have some time to talk about that as well because we want to make sure this is a living, breathing document. What's happening in the organization with implementation obviously aligns and delivers on the plan. but making sure that you all are feeling the opportunity to celebrate progress, to ask questions if things get stalled, and to bring that back out into the community. Because we asked a lot of people, what do they care about? And that's what informed the plan, and they are going to be interested in knowing the outcomes. So that's the first chunk of what we will spend our time together in this evening. And then we will pivot a little bit and talk about governance and how together you can help to work together and establish potentially some key norms that helps you just to inform how you work and really deliver on results for the plan and everything else on behalf of the community. So that's our two-parter. So here's our agenda. You saw the agenda in advance and we had some kind of ideas and information to give you food for thought as we were engaging this evening. We will bring it back into the room in the form of the plan for those who might be joining us remotely, but just to get our head back into the plan itself. So quick walk through that itself. Then we will start talking about the implementation. And so we'll hear from Catherine. She'll talk about the document you have in front of you, be open to questions that you might have, talk about reporting, governing, and then what happens next. We can wrap up. So that's our agenda. Hopefully there are no surprises and no questions with that. So first of all again you know congratulations earlier this year you adopted the city's first strategic plan certainly the first strategic plan in a very long time if there was one in the past and now we're going to move things forward and so the plan itself includes several components, several elements, beginning with a vision statement. What is the future direction that you want to pursue for your community, on behalf of your community? So the premier waterfront community on the Puget Sound is what we're aiming for. Lots of things can contribute to that. So we will talk about many of those things this evening. The mission speaks to the purpose of the organization, why it exists, why it serves to deliver on the promise that's outlined in the vision. that comes through a series of values and so the values are those behaviors and expectations that everybody holds for each other also part of your strategic plan because not only do you want to set vision and define what you're looking to do but you also want to think about how is that going to be accomplished and that's what happens within the organization There were six strategic focus areas that were incorporated into the plan. I know this is not something new for all of you, but again, just for the benefit of everybody that might be joining us. The six focus areas, these are the broad buckets of things that you want to focus on. Economic vitality, financial stability, public safety, engaged and thriving community, natural and built environment, and organizational excellence. Now, of course, the definition of these, what success looks like, and the strategies that were incorporated into the plan are where the meat starts to fit the bone and drives then the work plan that you'll see this evening. Okay, so as we get started, And kind of thinking about the plan, I wanted to just do a quick pause, and for all of you on council, just to hear your thoughts on what it will take for the plan to be successful, for it will succeed if. So get us thinking about what's gonna be important, what are the elements and the ingredients to success, and this is where my handwriting will try its best to keep up with Julie, and I'll just jot the ideas up on the flip chart, but the question, this plan will succeed If we...

This would be your turn.

Yeah. If we keep referring what we do back to the point.

if we make measurable progress on our goals?

Yep.

If we have significant buy-in from leadership, city manager, city council, senior staff.

And I'd like to double down on that with community buy-in as well.

We can put a big star on it if you want. That's fine? Okay. The buy-in, obviously very important. When we talk about communicating and measuring progress, that helps to build that trust and the buy-in you're describing. JC, anything you would add?

I don't want to be that guy, but basically anything that doesn't start with numbers is a non-starter. In other words, you can go a couple of years and then say, well, we did this or we didn't do that. But gosh, if only we'd had the money, if only we'd done, you know. And because I'm just, if I were doing this as a business, you would start off with, you know, how much money do you have to work with? And then work back from, you'd talk to your investors and say.

Okay.

here's the funding we need and here's what we're going to be able to accomplish. We do it exactly backwards in local government. It's just a funny thing for me.

So if we have, so the plan will succeed if we can identify appropriate resources to deliver on the plan to tie it back to the dollars?

That'd be good, you know, but I don't know how to, you know, I was at the port commission and you know, it sounds like I'm a fan boy for that, but they always start off with here's how much money we expect. They're just, they do economic forecasting like a boss and then they work back from there. They revise all of their planning based on the money and they're doing this constantly. It's just, it's normal to me. You know, it's like I go there and it's like a warm bath because it's just what I'm used to. Okay. Right.

It's a brain teaser, but so if the plan will be successful if we are clear about the resources we can invest. I mean, it sounds like that linkage, that's an important part of how we define success. And I hear you, that the model is upside down for you, but given where we are,

no I just that's why I didn't have anything because that's what will come out if you ask me okay start with the money okay should I write it up there or should I was that nope nope okay I think that's a big piece of it we have to have the resources available to do what we want and we have to have a reasonable plan to have those resources available

all right oh I'm sorry I just want to put a reminder our first two things in our strategic focus our economic vitality and financial stability we we have prioritized that already and I agree with what JC said but I'm sorry councilmember Harris said but also we have stated that those are a priority for us but we're also speaking about other ways that we can make it successful but I know that we have decided this is top priority for us

And we'll hear more about those in terms of the actions that are going to be underway and pursued in the next year as well. Okay. All right.

Sir?

I think we also have to remember that we're laying the groundwork for the future.

So if we anticipate the future through this plan, this is a five year horizon, but there's so much longer and some of these efforts you're putting in today may take eight years, 10 years longer. And so that longer view. Okay. Anything else? I didn't mean to cut off the ideas. Okay. All right. I appreciate that, I mean, I do think that there is some value in thinking about what is it going to take, what does it look like if we are really delivering the plan, operationalizing that, bringing it forward, and I think that these elements contribute to what that might look like. All right, so just a little more framing, and I'm gonna turn it over to your city manager to talk about what that actually looks like. So what you have before you and what she'll be presenting is year one. And so we know this is a horizon that is longer than that. But when building the budget, when working on initial work plans with departments, this is where we begin. And so it starts to point in the direction of what will be accomplished through the plan. So we'll take a look at that. This is the framework that is being utilized here. So the vision and the mission are delivered through the organization, through values that you can see and appreciate. Then within the directional part of the framework, you have those focus areas we just talked about. We have a whole series of strategies, and I will do a kind of a quick through just as a reminder of what those look like. That's where we started to think about, well, what are we going to be working on, right? What are the things that have to happen in order to be successful beyond just naming economic vitality or financial stability? And then the work plan elements, which is where the baton is passed from council providing strategic direction around where you want to go to your city manager and her team to deliver it through the work plan. And so this is where it becomes a team sport, set policy, deliver on the plan. So these are from your strategic plan. And just as a gentle reminder around the detail, and again, I know that this is familiar, but for those who might be joining us, want to get into the room. And so the strategic focus areas are those big buckets, if you will, those things you have identified as important to pursue. The strategies are listed in detail within each of them. So again, we have economic vitality and financial stability, as was mentioned, kind of at the top tier. Then we have the next two of public safety, broadly defined. We also have an engaged and thriving community, which is really around quality of life and how people experience the community. Then we have the natural and built environment. So when we're talking about infrastructure and we're talking about the natural environment and the investments that you are making in that direction, this is where they reside. And lastly, it's important to also think about the organization itself and making sure that that's a healthy, thriving, delivering quality service organization. order to make it all the all the pieces fit together so that is the plan this next slide just as a reminder you've seen this before when we were talking about strategic planning initially the roles of council the roles of the city staff and the relationship between the two so as the City Council you've established the vision the direction you want to go articulated key strategies and now staff is tasked with making it happen making it real I would add also within an annual budget process or when you're adopting your budget, you are making policy choices around what's the highest need for the coming year that then is being delivered through your staff.

All right.

Oops, there it is.

I didn't even change it for you guys. I changed it for me.

All right. So I'm going to hand it over to Catherine, the manager, and talk through the plan.

Great. Thank you, Nancy. So before you is a document that I know is fresh to you all. So this is not meant to be something you're going to need to read every line of tonight or this is the only time we talk about it. It literally is just sort of honestly at this point this is an internal working document. We want to hear the conversation tonight that will help draft and inform what type of public accountability measures you want and how you all want to be communicated with. So this is truly an internal staff document. One of the things Nancy just talked about is really the role of the council in setting the vision, priorities, and strategies, and then turning it over to staff. So what you see on here is every page has a different strategic priority, which were set by the council. You'll see the strategies that you all developed on the left side. beginning with initiatives and kind of moving towards the right is really where staff starts saying okay what are we like truly doing to like help make progress on that so I'm not going to go through all of these I'm actually just going to hit on a few highlights and then we can always have an opportunity to like dive into this deeper but as you will tell there are hundreds of items on here so just a couple things before you start like getting too deep into the document These were developed from senior staff. Initiatives are really what would it mean for us to have accomplished the strategy. You'll then see we have who the responsible lead is. We put department heads there. You all should know in many cases there's staff beneath that that are really doing this, but just to keep it at this level, we keep it there. We have some status bars, which I'll go through in a moment. And then really the far right column is talking about what is actually going on right now on this. Again, this is an internal document, so it's written as quick phrases and bullet points. We also view this as a living document. And so one of the things we want to hear from the council tonight is really how do you all want to get updated? How do you want us to update the public? And Nancy's going to have some ideas to show you. But also how do you want us to measure performance? So this is sort of a most elementary document that we want to hear from you all and then we'll take this and expand. Now, I think we would be here until your budget workshop on Saturday if I went through every single action item or every single initiative we have underway. But I do want to highlight some of them. Some of you may have noticed that all of the agenda items beginning in August have on that agenda memo what strategic plan they connect to. So a moment ago, Councilmember Steinmetz said how important it is to be successful if we can refer back to the plan as our touchstone. The fact that we've started putting every pride like every agenda item how it connects to a priority is one small way We've started doing it. It's good for our staff though for them to really think how is this agenda item? I'm working on connecting The budget presentation which you all got emailed late this afternoon and we'll go through in much greater detail Saturday morning We've organized the investments really around you said this is a priority here specific things that are being funded to help do that so There's a lot of ways we're doing that. A few items on here I want to highlight just to give you an example of what we mean when we say this is the work that's actually underway. So if you look at that first section on economic vitality, the strategy was really about developing a data-informed economic development strategy with clear priorities, opportunities, and focus areas. Great. Well, what does that really mean? Things that are yellow mean that staff have identified that we will make marked progress or complete it within the next 18 months-ish. I mean, I sort of asked them, hey, what do you think you're really going to work on between now and the end of 27? So that is not a scientific thing, but it was really what do you think we're going to really be seeing? Because this is a multi-year plan. So under that first strategy, you see a couple of different initiatives. We've got using the grants we currently have regarding economic development. We've got an item about promoting strategic properties that enhance the tax base. We've got something about tools to really spark investment and development in key areas. And then updating our downtown property owner and business database. So those are things we want to achieve. You've got kind of who's the person responsible for it, the current status, and I'll talk more about that on some other pages. And then you've got what's physically happening right now. So in that first one, the business owner survey's complete, round tables are occurring, council's gonna hear an update at the September 24th city council meeting. The next one just last week we all sat here and had I think a really positive session with eco Northwest about the downtown planning scenarios We've submitted an opportunity zone application. So this is just really us tracking like what are those tangible items that we're doing to make progress on these and Again, I don't want to go through all of these. And I know at the moment you're not going to be able to say, oh, I want to ask an in-depth question about this one. If you want to, though, you're welcome to. But we can figure out when is a good time that the council wants to go through this. But I think I wanted you to see that we are doing this work right now. A couple other things on the status. So you'll see we have a couple options. We have in progress, which is just what it sounds like. We have complete, which is just what it sounds like. We also have a status called planning or prep. That may be something like if you look down, I'm still on page one, but if you look down to the second strategy about revitalizing downtown, there's an item here that says update development standards to increase building heights and density that allow downtowns to support thriving businesses. We are classifying that as being in the planning and prep stage because we really need to see the outcome of the Eco Northwest downtown scenario planning, which will be done around the end of the year. That would then inform what development standards change. So that's sort of what we mean by planning or prep. We do have some that are not yet started. Again, this is a multi-year plan and you have a pretty limited staff. So we're up front with you on which ones we have not started yet. There's also some that are what we're calling ongoing. So if you go to, let's see what's a good example of that. Let's go to page two, which is financial stability. You'll see on the current status there are certain things that are just ongoing. An example would be we've got an initiative to make sure we regularly update city fees and charges to keep pace with costs, inflation, and market conditions. That's not something we're really ever complete on. That needs to be just an ongoing practice. The reason why we put it there is so we don't forget it or take it for granted or think, oh yeah, we were meant to be doing that. But that is one that really is just a living thing that we will be working on. You'll also see things later in this document, especially under organizational excellence, that are a lot about our workforce. and what type of employer we are and what our culture is when it comes to customer service, a lot of that is something that's going to be ongoing. That's not an activity that necessarily ever ends. We also have some items that are like nearing completion, not too many because this is a pretty new plan, but there are a few on here that are there. Yeah, so I'll stop kind of rambling at this point. You all can all have a chance to dive into this. We can talk at any time about these. Really almost all of these items will come to you at some point as an agenda item or an update. And I think you will see a lot of this alive in our budget discussion on Saturday. But I think I wanted you to know this is what we've internally got. We want to flush this out and really make it much more meaningful for you all and the public after we hear your conversation tonight.

All right. Questions first? Comments? This is the look under the hood. Yeah, Pierre.

I think this is great. That's the level of detail I'd like to see. It's a lot to digest. It'll take a while, but that's what I'd like to see. And since it's a living document, it'd be nice if we could have read-only access if it's updated. We always have the update progress.

I'm assuming it's sitting out there on some I think what we want to find out from you all tonight is what type of information you want and how often so I think I'm a little like rather than giving you a document that somebody could write in that I don't know what their update is yet Maybe it's something like we give you this on a quarterly basis or something like that But that's going to be the very type of material we talked about tonight

Other comments, reactions?

I like it. I recognize our end is the left side of the page. We're setting the direction, a little interaction with the initiatives, but the details over here on the right hand side of the page I think I agree I don't need weekly updates on those and I'm fine with like a quarterly

recap something like that I think that might make some sense and we'll come back to the frequency and what that means and what that looks like I think really what we wanted to make sure all of council was aware of is how this translates into kind of internal use internal tracking and as I said kind of looking under the hood a little bit in terms of what it means mayor thank you and thank you for the

Massive amount of information. I'm wondering how something becomes an initiative. I know we had initially brainstormed all of these many of them together with staff and staff is also contributed a great deal of these specific initiatives. So I'm wondering what kind of tips something over from a great idea to, oh, it's going to make it on this matrix.

Yeah, that's a great question. So I think something we would like to talk with the council about tonight is how you want to keep this alive. So it is not uncommon that communities, and I think the council has kind of expressed interest in this, they'll maybe do biannual retreats and so maybe it's you know a January retreat is a status update where we spend you know a really lengthy amount of time like really let's get progress updates what are we working on where are we hitting an obstacle does this still reflect what the council wants because that's a great opportunity for us to flush these out and update them And then there's also a model where maybe if you, again, I'm just kind of arbitrarily saying this, but let's say you meet twice a year. Let's say maybe January. What's the progress that's being made? summer which could work well with the election cycle here that way somebody's kind of been on council for a little bit we're really updating what does it make sense to have on here anymore what do you want us to add what are you no longer interested in I would I would prefer we not radically change stuff more than once a year because it's hard for us to make progress you guys already have seen you know you'll give me an idea and it does take us a while to get it really coming before you But that would be one idea that you guys could respond to.

a thumbs up we got it one thumbs up and then second thumbs up okay just yeah considering that you know the first six months is drinking through a fire on council i mean there's just an enormous amount of information coming at you and so every six months would make at least from a time standpoint uh sense to me that that would be the time to update and take a look at it

Well, and if I might just kind of building on the conversation, the items to your question, Mayor, a little bit about the detail, like what the initiatives, like where do those come from, right? We've talked about the strategies. And as you're just saying, you know, the first cut at doing a work plan like this is based on prior council direction, based on work that is underway and trying to build that out. There may be other things that haven't yet been identified, envisioned that year two, year three, come before council and it contributes to the strategy of maintaining and investing in critical infrastructure, right? And so that alignment and bringing that through the staff report as a recommendation that it supports that is where you would be then weighing in and of course when you're setting your budget annually Annually, not biannually. We do biannually. Biannually. I knew, back in my head, I was like, I think maybe it's two years. When you set your biannual budget, you're funding, you're just making those decisions. And so then the work plan is really reinforced and you have some clarity around where are there resources, what can we expect. And so some of that, I hope that answers the question a little bit more too around how things make their way in there.

Okay.

All right. Any other comments on the... The look under the hood work plan? Yeah.

I like that idea of twice a year retreat where we're going outside or something and we kind of spend a few hours going through that.

I'd like to clarify it is not a sleepover.

But you can bring your pajamas.

And if we could get access to that document, say once a quarter, even we don't even have to go through it, but just so I can read through it and see what's changed.

Wait, so I wanna make sure I heard that. So quarterly updates and then twice a year coming in to actually have some conversation around it as a body, where are we, how are we doing? Is that the suggestion? Okay, and I'm seeing some nods on that.

I think what I'd also add, oh, I'm sorry. No problem. just because you're you haven't gotten the pleasure of doing this yet but at the end of the year the council reviews me and so there's an extensive document I have submitted last year and I think will be even more extensive this year that really is like progress like You told me you wanted me to work on these things. Here's what we're doing. So I think that's also another good touch point for us to also dialogue on what's meeting your expectations, what's not. I mean, hopefully I'm hearing that feedback throughout the year, but there is like a very dedicated opportunity for that as part of my review. yeah I guess I don't know much about that yet but so it's separate from this whole effort it would be well I mean even though it is also yeah it's connected I mean part of my employment contract with you all is that you do an annual review at the end of the year which the mayor kind of coordinates And the bulk of what you'll be reviewing me on will be whatever goals were identified the year before. So the council before you did establish some goals for me that I will like directly report on. But then you all also have the chance to say sort of, what do you want to measure me on next year? I mean, you probably wouldn't say all 100 items on here. I mean, we focus it. But it's a great way to dialogue. Yeah, let's not do that. But yeah, it's a great way to like dialogue about it.

if I may add I wanted to tag this on to something that councilmember Steinmetz said earlier you're absolutely right we're on the left-hand side this is our purview but when it comes to like accountability and what progress is being made there are times like the end of the year performance review that we can say what's the demonstrative like work that's been done So there are built-in checkpoints like that. But yes, it's very important for us to stay over on that left side as well.

Gene, did you have something?

Or I'm sorry, Council Member Oksaker?

Yes, I was just gonna say that I do like the quarterly reports, but they're meeting twice, primarily because I think there are some high expectations now that this is our first strategic plan, and the public wants to know what the heck we're doing. Because it does take time to ramp up. And so it lets them know that we're being deliberative in getting this task accomplished.

excellent okay uh so quarterly written updates those would be public right those can those come before you time opportunity for review and questions and updates make that public so that there's progress being reported opportunities twice a year for council to come together and to hear progress the initiatives and what is moving forward where things are getting stuck having those conversations what's most important where their opportunities maybe that has have come through to make sure that progress is head in the direction that all are aiming for and then using the city managers performance evaluation as part of the opportunity for that conversation please so not to be that guy but I

There are no measurables to this. And I couldn't follow along, but I noticed that there was this thing on one of the slides that said, keep the city financially on track and sustainable and so forth. And I think that many of the residents would question whether this entire thing the public would read it as steady as she goes, that this is, you know, things are being sensibly managed and things are as good as they get, you know. But without targets, you get to the end of the year, you get to anything and you say, well, you know, we did our best and gosh, you know, that's swell. And I'll do my little airport thing now and tell you that the only reason we never got anywhere with the airport is because it's on page five. There's no sense of urgency to it. In other words, what I kind of hoped during the last two, three financial crises we've had here is that finally people would get desperate enough to actually start going after some money. And not look at how many hours, God, I'm schlepping to this thing or whatever, but just like, man, we need that dough, okay? Or we need this thing. But if every plan that we do is, you know, looks like we're doing our best and so forth, you know, that's, fine but i'm just i'll just close by saying that people will say that public safety is their number one with a bullet always um and i'm like uh okay but i i don't know what that means because there's no if everything is just you know i have a good feeling this year i have a good feeling this year you know and i'm like okay That's fine.

But I don't know what that means. That's actually not what we're suggesting. So a big part of this conversation is actually to develop performance measurement and metrics. So we need to hear from you all what those expectations are. But the intent is for us to be tying measurable things to this document and for us to track progress. implementing that for this many initiatives overnight is a significant lift. So we want to have the conversation with council first of what are your expectations on metrics? What is most important that you want to see? And we fully anticipate bringing that back. So the intent was never council member Harris for this to simply be like, we're trying hard. That's not what this is meant to be.

No. What I'm saying is that if people really felt the urgency in the economic thing, that would be the first discussion and then the zoning thing and you would go wait what revenue does this bring in and so forth people just at that last meeting they're like they just want to do what they want to do and so that's it all right can you clarify what people at what meeting do you mean our last meet what went last week the combo city council planning commission meeting.

If I might just jump in a little bit because I think that Part of what you're starting to get to, and I think is echoed here, is in tracking progress, you're starting from a framework of where do we want to accomplish, what do we want to focus on, what are we going to do? But the missing piece that you're describing, I think, is the impact, right? And maybe that's financial. Maybe that's Tracking the resources that you have available, the additional dollars you've been able to bring in. Maybe that's one of the measures related to economic vitality, right? That you've been able to increase revenue streams based on new business opening or whatever it might be. Financial stability. I mean, there are certainly good metrics for being able to define that as well.

yeah I just want to say I just got handed this document the minute I walked in here so I've been looking at it for maybe 40 minutes but there are quite a bit of measurable outcomes in the action items and so we just really haven't gotten to that level of detail yet and we'll have a chance to prioritize some of them but I think that if we wanted to and I'm not sure how the rest of this goes today dig deep into some of those things there are definitions of like what we're doing in public safety and what those actionable items are and how we measure those and they come down to a did you do it or did you not do it it's like a yes or no at the end here we can definitely weigh in about how to prioritize these or whether there are things that are missing or perhaps we should move them further down the list or maybe they don't belong here at all but I think that level of detail is captured, if we just had a chance to take a look at it though.

Well, and I think that for this evening's purposes too, part of the interest here is to understand the type of metrics, the type of information. Perhaps not the evaluating the specifics of what that is, but just to get agreement about the desire, the comfort for establishing KPIs, key performance indicators that indicate will change over time, maybe slowly, but it gives you something that you're aiming for that can be quantified over time. As you said, some of this is a long horizon, right? And so identifying and thinking through, well, how do we measure our success? We're doing all these things with some purpose intended behind them, But how do we know if the impact is actually being realized and so that's not something that that will likely move in a six-month period or even a year-long period they are Slow-moving in terms of key performance indicators, but they help you to tell the story of what you're aiming for so But I'm here and I'm hearing interest certainly and having KPIs be a part of this nods all the way around which is really helpful. And there are different ways to look at those. Some organizations will identify a top tier number of you know, a handful of measures by your strategic priority area. So if you're talking about economic vitality, what are the big things that keep us focused, right? That we're drilling in toward and we're working toward and kind of focus in that way. Others might go more operationally oriented where they're looking at the impact of ongoing work of the organization and how do you measure that at a, slightly lower you know more granular level but as this is your first you know probably starting off with when we say public safety how do we know you know what do people care about and there are perceptions of safety there's you know crime rates there are all sorts of things you can utilize to start to frame the story around here's what we're doing here's what that looks like as a result yeah i think it's really important to have kpis numbers that are not biased and they're just out there real numbers um but before we invent everything it'd be good to know what other cities have done and how they get their numbers and it's probably easy way to get some of these numbers that's right there i mean there are a lot of really um you know good sort of standard metrics that a lot of organizations might use some information is reported externally and so you can you know gather those other things are managed internally you know part of A good KPI system is making sure that whatever the sources of your information, it's well-defined, it's easily achievable in terms of gathering the data, not the outcome, so that it can be consistent and it can be reliable over time. So there are certainly some good best practices to lean in on relative to that. Okay, but part of it is, and I think this is part of the conversation too, it's no longer just counting the what. It's not just the widgets of what's accomplished, it's the harder stuff.

How well are we delivering on whatever the results are?

And again, targets, that's something you have to work toward. If you don't have a baseline, you want to gather the information and you're going to have to work toward some of these things because this is new here in your city. Okay so agreement that KPIs would be good so in terms of you know working at the strategic priority area is that appropriate at this point in time do you think at least to kind of whet the appetite and get started or?

I'm sorry I think I wish we had some example cities to show them because The level of metrics can run the gamut from being pretty high level and candidly manageable with our small staff to you will go to some cities where there are multiple staff people whose entire job is performance management. We are obviously not equipped to do that. So I think I would love to hear more about what's most important for you to be able to track because we don't have enough resources to truly put a KPI to every single item on here.

Not a fan of the thank you the KPI thing and as was just said it's just I Need another spreadsheet to look at like I need to you know fish needs a bicycle and and by the time you established metrics All I was driving at was a sense of urgency and and just as a overall just like not necessarily you know hiring six more police officers or whatever the thing is but just having something concrete that says we did something we had something not see just saying redeveloping the downtown is you know at some or let's do something about the airport let's do something about at some point it has to be a little more concrete and if you say well we're getting there it's like you know it could be a little maybe a little further along because people if you don't make it more concrete people will continue to read into it whatever they want to read into it and But just metrics are, I don't know.

Council Member Stamets, I think I saw your hand first.

Yeah, I actually think key performance indicators are actually exactly what are called for here. But they also have to be realistic over time. Because, I mean, we can say, look, we want to get drawings to the average number of cops per thousand in the state. We just want to get to average. And that's a very definable number that we talked about. That's been part of the discussion before. But over what time period can we get that done? And is it even realistic that we can hire enough officers to get there? Because there are a lot of other departments that are trying to hire officers. going outside of law enforcement. We want to have something that's a realistic amount of sales tax out of the downtown core. That would be a good key performance indicator that the economics are moving forward. And are we measuring that annually, are we measuring, these are the discussions we have to have in order to fully develop the key economic indicators, but those are exactly the kind of numbers that we need in order to say, okay, we set this goal, we've achieved that goal, or we came up short. Does that make some sense? And I think that's kind of what we're looking at in key performance indicators that would go out of measure.

Well, and I think what you're pointing to, and then I want to kind of bring it back to the two parts of the reporting, and I know that you had a comment as well. What your examples just provided are when you define those KPIs or whatever you land on, it says this is what we're aiming for and this is where we're going to be laser focused, right? So if you're talking about looking at the economic rate of return downtown, that tells the community, this is what we're prioritizing, this is what we're focusing on. So it's part of the story that's important. And if you have a couple few per strategic focus area, that gives you not an overburden, but it gives you something to balance just the narrative around progress, which is the other part of the coin, which is really important because I think the urgency and the what are we doing question resides in the spreadsheet, right? And so if you're having quarterly updates, articulates an update on the progress being made that's saying hey we said we were going to you know focus on this project or this whatever whatever the examples might be here's where we are with that and so it actually does create some urgency because it's putting it into a plan it's got some funding behind it there's expectations that come with that so I think it's the KPIs which kind of signal are we moving in the direction that we want to at the strategic priority level and What are we actually delivering in terms of progress and outcomes?

I mean, I think it's both of them. I just wanted to, as the freshman here, I wanted to remind everyone that this is the first. This is a first. We're not going to... explain everything in one shot today right now tonight and i will say again at another council meeting not everything is quantifiable by a spreadsheet but i think we're at the surface right now right now we're discussing what ends we'd like to go deeper in there are ways to get there it's not going to happen tonight right now but the questions we're asking right now is where do we want to have more data how can we come up with those statistics and we actually since this is the first we have nothing to compare it to so if we can move just a few steps forward we're not looking for that end number yet we're starting at the beginning and there's baby steps at the beginning so I just wanted to recognize that as the baby stepper

Yeah, asking the questions of what are we going to measure?

That's the first question. So regarding the KPI thing, one word question I have is why? In other words, you say with the downtown, if you think about how many bazillion dollars of sales it would take to move that number 100,000 bucks or to shift it to provide the same value as the business part now with the square footage thing I'm trying to think of what type of businesses that would and you know in other words the most efficient businesses that would generate that kind of revenue card rooms I mean just and so I'm just being just if you if you set a metric like six more police officers or four three hundred thousand dollars more at the downtown area I just ask why why that particular metric no I'm not I'm not I'm just saying why What is the value? And that's just a longer thing. I think it's faster just to ask people what is their, what do they want from the downtown? And then you go, oh, wow, that only generates X amount of dollars. Then it moves your vision towards the other things that might be more efficient. So that's.

I mean, I think that there's a combination of things at play here, right? And so what the metrics are, TBD, right? And maybe that's not the right metric if you can't see sufficient change over time. But maybe there's, you know, looking at business vacancy, vacancy rate downtown. Maybe that's something, I don't know. You will have to work through what these are and what makes sense to answer the question of why. Because it is an important question. If you don't have any utility for using the information, if it doesn't help tell your story or demonstrate progress, then it's probably not the right measure. And that's okay. but there probably is something else that can be a bit of a barometer if you're moving in the right direction.

So is today the time to kind of brainstorm about these measurable goals for each focus area? Because I can think of a lot coming to my mind right now, but I don't know if that's the place to do it or if we're going to have another off-site at some point.

We hadn't planned for that level of detail for this evening.

Not that we need to do it today because we need to digest it, but we all have ideas coming up as we're thinking about it.

Right. I mean, I would look to you a little bit, Katherine, in terms of a part two.

Yeah, I mean, I think, jot them down so you don't forget. Right.

Would you mind going to the next slide real quick? Yeah.

Sure, of course.

I think it's like...

that one let's get this yeah I mean hearing this organic conversation is super helpful for me to sort of like okay there's a big appetite for that but I think if we could leave tonight with me knowing this and then maybe with maybe what we end with is you say hey in you know the beginning of the new year we want to get together and we want to have a first a workshop where we're like seeing some initial metrics to respond to Like, you know, that's good feedback rather than specifics is what I'm thinking. But we can, let's tackle these and then kind of, does that make sense? I feel like I'm being kind of vague. Yeah, okay.

But I think that the feedback here is helpful in order to say, okay, how do we move in that direction of thinking around metrics and using that information. So in your advanced packet, we provided some of these kind of questions, as well as some examples that hopefully you took a look at, just in terms of some of those things to think about in terms of how other communities are using their strategic plan to tell a story and how they're receiving updates. It's food for thought because it needs to be specific to your circumstances. But part of it, we've started to answer the question around the frequency of updates and what works. So what we have heard is that quarterly written updates, understanding what progress coming from the work plan, formed by the work plan, would be helpful and important to do. So that's part of the frequency with the updating. And then also the twice a year convening council on the progress of the plan. And you can use your workshops for specific topics to tackle or to talk about KPIs. hear progress I mean those can evolve over time as you sort of find yourself in a rhythm of using the plan and operationalizing the plan and so that's an appropriate cadence for gathering are there other things that I mean you heard earlier in the comments that you know agenda items that are coming before you now the staff report is showing that alignment that's happening every meeting that you have yeah

One other, and again, if you all want to see, it's on your memo page two, if you want to see the kind of some specific ideas to respond to. But in June, Rebecca and I did a pretty lengthy city manager report update all about economic fatality, if you all recall that. And we went through sort of like, hey, here are the eight to 10 initiatives we're currently working on. so that's sort of an example of if you all wanted to see more in-depth staff reports on you know maybe it's a couple times a year we want to see a whole item all about this one goal so I just want to flag that presentation you guys got at the beginning of the summer is like that's an example of going more in depth on just one priority

So if you want, we could take a quick look just to kind of get ourselves grounded in case it is helpful as food for thought. And so, you know, one of the questions that always comes into these kind of conversations is, you know, what level of detail? Obviously, you can see the city, the staff, is working from a lot of detail because that's what it takes to deliver on these things. That's not always what is needed or even necessarily appropriate for council. But there is a need to understand what are the things that are in play in order to move things forward. And so looking at that relationship between focus targeted updates through the city manager report or other avenues or for city updates. So level of detail is one consideration. the frequency of updates. And so we've just provided here some examples of how other organizations do it. We've talked a little bit already this evening about what might work here. So lots of organizations use the planning for kind of preceding the budget process. for an opportunity to think about where are we in the plan, what's underway, what are the highest needs, highest priorities for the coming year, and so that's a touch point. If you're doing them twice a year already, maybe that is your kind of proxy for doing that. So that's one thing. The annual retreats, the work sessions, quarterly updates, And then bi-monthly updates, those are, have been used as almost like study sessions. Some organizations have a kind of a ritual of doing annual or monthly study sessions in addition to, or even every two months, in addition to regular council meetings. Because those are the spaces where you can go deeper into, you know, what are we doing at Economic Vitality? What are the initiatives underway? What are the, bringing in speakers? I mean, you can do those sorts of things.

that really underscore the elements of your plan so those are some of the tools I think what we've kind of just discussed off the cuff real quick there was the quarterly and then to retreat study sessions because we also I'm going to keep saying this again this is new we don't know I don't know what I'm going to want to know more of when I know no I don't know yet But I think if we pick this and choose this, and then if something comes up, maybe there's something we can throw in there. But as of right now, this is all fresh meat, and we're just waiting to see what comes up at the top.

What questions come through.

Exactly. But I think a starting point, which is what we're being asked to provide tonight, is quarterly reports and then twice a year. And then we can see how it goes from there, I think, is a good place to start.

So that's all, of course, public information. Is there any other needs or interests or things that you would think would be important in terms of keeping it alive with the public, in terms of the community focus? How do you tell that story?

So KPI-wise, you had 37 people at the budget town hall, correct? thinking in terms of Old Testament a goal might be to obtain five people from each of the nine neighborhoods pick a number but just X number of people from each area of the city rather than just because you could have a hundred and fifty people at a meeting and 91 of them would be within this three block area. But can you get, and it doesn't have to be five, it could be three, it could be one, but pick a number and say that's the goal. We are going to get a useful comment from a couple of people in every area of the city.

So some form of engagement that makes sure to have distributed representation and voices at the... That may be really hard, by the way.

I'm not discounting. I'm just saying that, you know, if you want to have goals and people are always going on about community engagement, have a metric.

It sounds like something that CAB could tackle since they're like most of the way there in terms of the representation.

Right. And there are lots of ways to do updates, as you're probably going to mention. So there are social media updates. There are newsletter updates. There are, you know, events at, you know, gatherings, whether they're, you know, community events where you're doing that. There are lots of channels, potentially, for providing updates and keeping it active and alive in the community. Mayor, did you have a comment?

Oh no I think that the last bullet point is is really one of the most important because I think we get a ton of access to data in comparison to the general public. Maybe maybe they get a high level of access that they don't always. internalize it in the way that we're expected to but I do think that you have to make it meaningful and in a way that like why should they care why should general public care and that's how your messaging it comes in to play so I'd love to know more about some ideas of folks that have about how to keep the the the city informed I hate to say this But I think dashboards are a great way of doing that, something that is online, something that is you can go ahead and look up. I think about stealing director friend's green light, yellow light, red light. It's very simple to digest and people kind of know what it means at a glance. But love to hear some more ideas about how to inform the public.

Just kind of picking up on keeping the entire community informed and making sure we're doing that. I don't know if we have this data, but for the city manager reports, do we know the location of the people that have subscribed? And is there a way to just look at that in a matrix and say, wow, here's an area that just isn't doing that. maybe it's the cab, maybe it's something else, go out and try to promote. And it would allow for some targeting within the neighborhood. I think that's probably a really good idea. And then we need to make sure we have broad-based communication formed. And we can always say, it's out there. You know and we need to make sure that it's not just limited because like the mayor said We get a lot of information with a high level of detail. We don't necessarily process it the same way nor Do I think we should be putting it out broadly to the public in that sense because we signed up for this They didn't necessarily but they want to be informed And so in the broad-based communications, we need to kind of simplify a little bit and use those kinds of things, but really make sure we do have that broad-based communication.

I agree. I also, for the public, I don't like to say this, but sometimes we need to dumb it down. Some of the stuff that I read, I don't even read. Understand, but if we can keep it simple to the facts like the mayor was speaking about why do they want to know this? I also want to say this is a Two-edged sword here Respectfully, the Community needs to have to want to see the information we have many platforms being done, we have many ways we're putting information out there, we are lifting it and so. The Community also has to do their share and look for the information as well, so we will put it out as many places as we can, we can do as much research as possible, but. you have to go to that website or you have to go to that platform or you have to ask where to find it, and we're happy to tell you. So it's a two-way street there.

Please. People can want what they want. They can morph it into, but... This is marketing, and I don't care how many postcards I send out, it's how many returns I get. And my ask was, can you create a message so compelling that at least a few people from each area of town are willing to schlep That's the mission in marketing, is to get people to return the postcard. I've just heard that since I've lived here. We put out information, we put out information, but that's not the mission in sales. The mission in sales is people willing to return the postcard and engage. It's a tough gig. It's brutal. But that's just what I think.

There are two parts, obviously. Oh, I'm sorry. Did you have a comment? No. There?

I'm sorry. I just wanted to make sure that I turned left and looked at Deputy Mayor Oxger in case he had something.

Okay. But there are certainly two parts to this, right? There's having information, making it available as a dashboard, as an update, as a regular transmittal. Those are important because you can, you know, it's available and you can push toward it. And then there's the question of, okay, well, the why. How and when are people going to be interested to engage? And that's probably not going to be on the whole of the plan, right? I'm interested in know infrastructure I'm interested in events I'm interested in safety so people have their interests and that's fine so thinking about how do you reach people across the city in a way that is productive keeps them connected I mean really it's about connection as much as anything and as you're making progress on these things you know arguably celebrating the milestones celebrating the progress and a way to do that right and you can you can do those sorts of things if it's a ribbon-cutting or if it's something else and inviting people to come and be a part of those activities you know that's that's a way that you can connect it back you know we said in our plan we wanted to accomplish this and now we are able to celebrate this milestone yay right so inviting people to participate in those sorts of things and maybe through the boards and commissions you may be other other avenues can be a little bit of that proxy and the champions back to the community as well you can be creative with the ways to engage so other ideas on how to keep the community informed because I think your your points are important in that people have busy lives they're not just going to be like oh hey I was wondering what the progress is going to be on the city strategic plan right probably not however I When we did a town hall, people turned out. They were interested and they were connected and engaged and if nothing else you can take from this is that people want to be connected to something and so how do you do that? Maybe there's an opportunity to do something similar, celebrate a major milestone, celebrate something and invite residents to come and be a part of that. Okay, other thoughts? all right i mean baby steps um i mean i think that setting up some of these practices and then using your six-month check-in to say how's it working right are we getting what we need as council members do we feel like the community is adequately informed on the progress we're making um you know the answers to those questions are yes great keep going um and if you need to do something else or different or tweak that's great too i mean Part of this is allowing yourself the openness to evolve and to learn along the way. So that's a big part of all of this. Okay.

Okay, so I think what I'm hearing is, or at least for step one, which I appreciate you kind of like reminding us of that, because we've actually made tremendous progress in the last year. And I know we still have a long way to go, but let's not lose sight of all the work you guys have already done that's further than had been done before. So since we're in September, I think what if I were to propose to you all that as part of my annual review, I'll give you all my status updates on the goals the council set at the end of 2025. I'll also endeavor to try and have some version of this that you all can see and respond to. And then probably in the first part of 2027, let's plan. I'm going to work with the mayor, so I'm throwing this out. We plan a retreat, and we can really start diving into what does measurement look like? And we could also bring you some more specific ideas on... What does public communication look like? What is a dashboard that's manageable? What is I'm gonna need a lot more resources to do that like maybe we give you kind of almost like some multiple-choice stuff to respond to It will take us a few months to get that together Councilmember Simon Remind me when your annual review we do is that in January or is that in December? It's November December So tomorrow.

That's that seems very ambitious.

Thank you. I think it does. So maybe.

Well would. Would it make more sense to do the annual review and measurable discussion in January.

Well I think that. My personal opinion and again I don't have I'm not speaking for everybody so please chime in is that I think it's much more reasonable to talk about the goals that were set for you last year that you've been working towards and perhaps things like this could be future incorporated into future roles because I don't I don't want to look at this and say I'm evaluating you on this that I've just seen on September 10th and the next month I'm going to ask you how you did on them. From an HR standpoint, that just seems like not reasonable. Okay.

No, I think that's appropriate. I mean, you're gonna be, it's a look back on how things have been going, but I think the point is how the goals get framed for the next year. I think what I'm hearing Catherine say is like, that's also a lift, like to figure out how do I quantify and define these as goals for this next year. And so, recognizing that that's part of what would be necessary to, get in place in order to have that conversation and that's such an important part about an evaluation is to have these conversations right around you know what is it what is achievable what are we going to focus on you know how are we going to measure that progress i also um feel like these are organizational goals not just the city manager's personal goals In light of that, a goal could be progress on the strategic plan. What does that look like? Maybe that's getting a dashboard in place. Maybe that is operationalizing key elements of how you use a strategic plan.

Or lining up the resources so that the work gets done.

That's right. That's a whole other path down.

Does that sound more reasonable? Thank you. Council Member Simons.

like i i've never done this but i do think that i agree with the mayor i don't want to have the two in front of me we're talking about one thing then we're talking about something else right so maybe it is a little bit of conflict of interest but maybe it's more of just a check-in a check-in not not quantifiable data but more of a check-in how things are going

Well and I heard you say integrating it into future goals like that's maybe the easiest way to integrate it into that performance eval is to say OK now we know what will be top of the list or or here are some options for top of the list for twenty twenty seven.

Yes I agree with what's been said but We have not put any goals that you're going to be measured on, and so having something that we've kind of worked with you and we know that you work with us on some of these things, like what's here, it may be good to somehow bring to, I don't know if that's the right place to do it for your annual performance review, but we're not, you know, those goals were not set by us, and whatever the measurement is may not mean, I don't know what they are, you know.

We can inform you about what they are that might be a start a good starting point And I apologize we could have said those to you earlier I think what I would say on that is Unfortunately every council inherits some level of stuff that was done before them I Think they always do.

Yeah, I mean this happens. They inherit everything so I think Maybe what I absolutely get, there's a big appetite, which is wonderful because we invested time and money in this, to take this seriously and have this become ingrained in our organization and how we do work. And 2027 is probably going to be the year we really develop what that looks like. It is going to be a little bit of trial and error. We have not done this before organizationally. This council hasn't done this before. I'll be happy to share with you what the goals are in my prior review. That's kind of a separate conversation than something I want to do publicly, but I think maybe that really becomes part of, like, let's talk about what we're working on together in 27.

Yeah, and what I'm getting at is you work with us on this, and I think you make really good progress, and I think that should be reflected.

Oh, okay. Oh, in that case, I'd be happy to add it.

Okay. No, but I think it's two directions. It's to look back and look forward. And so you can all look forward to the conversation around the performance evaluation in closed session. Okay. But it is certainly a vehicle for talking about what's important and how you hold the city manager accountable to moving things forward, knowing that she's working through her staff to get these things done. Okay, any other clarifying questions do you have, Catherine, or you're good?

No, and you and I can have some online support.

Yeah, I think I'm good with the initial steps. Okay, and we'll document all this too, so we'll bring it back in. And again, iterative, learning, building the muscles, right? In a year from now, think of how strong you all will be in all this sort of thing. It'll be so great. okay well so any other comments related to implementation generally communication implementation these sorts of things because we're going to pivot a little bit to talk about governance and to talk about you know operating together and what that looks like and what helps what will be helpful to you all in terms of dorms so last call for yes so like at the Saturday thing you know

talk about like parks and rec and so on and staffing okay and that's kind of and that's traditionally how we'll do budgeting in terms of staff and that sort of thing what parents and people you know care about is okay what are the programs and so You can talk in terms of, like, if we add this body, we get this thing. But it's not necessarily a one-to-one correspondence. And so what I'm suggesting is that, you know, and I'm not trying to make people's faces drop, but, you know, in terms of success, you'd want to think, like, customers served, or programs, um, or the demog, the demographics, how many parents are, um, did we or would like to have received some kind of program but were unable to because we didn't have that body in place. When we look at the budgets, we only look at what we look at. We don't look at the absence of or the services that did not get delivered and so on. strategically that would be something I want to see over time is what are the services we'd like to be able to deliver it's the magic wand thing and I think that's it thank you okay all right moving on to then to governance and

So, ahead of this evening, we brought back an article that you may recall from earlier days. You have to scroll way back, so if you don't remember it then that's fine too. But we handed out an article that is published by the Institute for Local Government, an organization out of California that does a lot of training, white papers, good good content relative to elected bodies to governance to work of local governments and so I like this article a lot because it kind of frames in a very nice simple way what it takes right what it means what it takes to be an exceptional body and working toward that and so using that sort of as our launching pad this evening I want to take a little bit of framing but really want to zero in on one of the important best practices that defined in here and is used by many governing bodies and that's to establish some shared norms expectations commitments to each other and how you work together and show up so that's the governing together so you've seen this slide before as well this is just a reminder that no one goes it alone right that You govern together, understanding different perspectives, finding compromise, working collaboratively to figure out a solution to a policy question. You will not always agree on everything, and that's perfectly fine, but at the end of the day, the majority rules, right? And so figuring out how to do that effectively, work together, is what's going to move things forward and also just get better outcomes for your residents. So you govern as a body, not individually. You know this, but it's always a nice reminder because you hear individually from your own constituents. all right so doing this work requires two things we've been talking about the strategic plan this evening that is the what that's establishing your vision establishing goals priorities all of the things you want to accomplish on behalf of your community that's important it's really important part of the work that you are all here to serve the other part of what the community needs in order to get results is the how how you show up and it does it makes a big difference not just for being effective in getting things done which is what you all want to do and why you're here but also you know how people in the community prospective businesses others do you view the community and you really are people are watching the assessments of that Same goes for employees, and how you are showing up together really has an effect on the city's ability to attract, retain, and really thrive as an organization. So with those things in mind, this just kind of outlines you know in a graphic image you know what why good governance matters you know why how you get results so you know recruitment retention I just mentioned and the getting results having clarity around where you want to go you've done this now and so that's helpful absent that you're missing something economic development your first strategic priority area really does hinge on the ability to work together and to be a place that people want to come and be a part of and not a toxic environment. Having regional influence. We've talked about the airport. We've talked about attracting and being a hub of some sort. Well, that comes from leadership and that comes from leadership together. And so all of these things are just to say that it matters and you know that it is certainly a much more pleasant experience. uh when when you can get along again that does getting along doesn't mean you have to agree on everything it just means you do it respectfully okay so um turning to to the article that we handed out ahead of time there are kind of a few pieces that sort of stand out that are are worth noting for exceptional councils and what that looks for so having a sense of team partnership and that is a team among elected officials but a partnership also with your city manager understanding the roles the relationship and and how that baton relationship occurs you know it's really easy to say council makes policy and city manager and staff implements and that's kind of a black-and-white dichotomy it's much blurrier than that right you know it does leave a little bit certainly staff will make recommendations to council based on their professional experience and knowledge that's weighing into policy you all have specific interests that may translate into the work that's being done in the organization. Curiosity about how things are done. So it's much more of a squiggly line. But how you do that then becomes all the more important. You can't just say it's black and white. And so we want to pay attention to that. So that sense of team, really important. Understanding the roles. recognizing that there is some fluidity among that, but understanding that you're setting policy as the elected body with the expectation that staff will deliver and implement on behalf of that. And so that's the shorthand version, but being clear on that and understood and really adhered to is important for being successful and getting the most done. One of the things I like to think about is when a council, and I'm not suggesting here, when a council is overly tilted into operations, working deep into the weeds, what is being left off the table? By using your time toward that effect You're not then able to then do the policy level work to engage with the community. All those other hats that you have to wear, providing strategic direction, being a constituent representative, being stewards, all of these things that are so important in terms of the roles you wear. If you're thinking about the pencils or whatever, then you're missing the opportunity to spend time there because you all are busy as well. All right, so next, honoring the relationship with staff and with each other. And these are our basic kindergarten principles, showing up to be respectful, assuming good intent, these sorts of things. Honoring the humanness of individuals and the different experiences that you all bring is really important and you can observe it quite clearly on exceptionally operating councils. running effective meetings. There are some organizations, God love them, that go well into the wee hours of the morning. And it's because they have a different culture. They're not managing them in a way that allows for the business transactions that need to happen. Council meetings are business meetings, right? There's space for public comment. You want to encourage that you'd love to have participation But also you need to get things accomplished So running effective meetings honors the time of those who are around the table also honors those in the community who want to come and participate and Be a part of the process Holding yourselves accountable. It's not your city manager's job to hold you all accountable. You hold each other accountable. You are all collectively her boss. And so finding ways to be able to do that in a way that is reasonable and agreeable is important to do. And then lastly, one of the things I think is particularly important, and this is sort of the principle of kind of the open mindset, if you will, is focusing on continuous improvement. How do we continue to evolve? We've said four, five, six times tonight, we're just getting started. This is new to us, we're learning, we're building the muscles. That's giving yourself the ability to do that and to iterate over time. It's not a one and done, it's not a check the box, it's continuously learning from what's working and not working. Six elements that put together really can translate into a really high performing, great experience for an elected body, but importantly for the community that you're serving too. So that's my up on the soapbox speech that I will come down off of now. The article talks about a lot of ways to do that. A lot of best practices that you can consider and utilize. One of which, importantly, is really defining and being clear about what are your operating norms? How do you show up and work together? particularly important to do this type of conversation when things are generally going all right you know you don't want to wait until there's something you know massive that blows things up it makes it a toxic environment you have nothing done to use and focus on so having this conversation around your shared expectations of working together showing up together can be a nice lever, particularly over time as you have new members joining, new freshmen coming onto council. There's a set of expectations that are already articulated. You can sort of build that culture and try to reinforce that. Everybody's gonna show up the way they want to, they're allowed to. I'm gonna get a brick pretty soon, I think. Slow down my roll here. Anyway, some examples we provided in the handout that we distributed ahead of time. These are examples up on the screen. that are not uncommon. We do this with a lot of organizations, and we sort of take a collection of good examples that we have come. So the first one there, assuming good intent. Again, you may not agree in a policy manner with everybody. That's fine. That's your experience. That's your perspective. But assume good intent. Everybody has come to be on the council because they care about this community. They want to do good things. And so that's such an important starting point. See clarity and listen to the intent to be understood. When you're setting policy and you're working towards a solution, you really need to understand what's driving and motivating the perspective of someone who may have a different offering. And if you can do that and you can work through those pieces, you're going to get to better policy. You're going to get to better results because you are balancing different perspectives. I won't read all of these because that's a lot of words on the screen, but you get the idea. Share your reasoning, commit to a final decision. This is an important one for a lot of bodies where there's a discomfort with the decision, I don't really like it, and so you want to keep litigating it. Once the policy has been established by a majority, then the council together pulls up. You're governing as a body, you're governing as a team here. focusing on the issue, not the person, avoiding surprises among each other with the city manager, city manager with council, both directions for sure. bringing your authentic self, having each other's backs, promoting civility. So those are just some examples to bring into the room. So I want to hear from you all. What would be helpful? Do you like the idea? First of all, let's start there. Do you like the idea of establishing a set of norms to start from? What's your reactions on that?

Is this like a code of conduct question or these are just generals I.

Operating commitments to each other like how you're going to work together so not it's right. Little different than that.

Yeah it's definitely not as formal as a code of conduct. It's it's norms how you show up to the work. Yeah. And things that we can collectively agree to.

Yeah, I mean, one thing that does in the little box down at the bottom is what are the norms, what norms are important to this city council? And I think there are several here that sort of jump out to me. I think assuming good intent. I do think this council does a pretty good job of assuming that everybody on the council is operating with good intent. And so I think that is one that is at least the way we have developed that's one. Let's see. I think we also, you know, right next to it, I think we do a good job of focusing on the issue and avoiding personal attacks. I don't think we do that very much at all. So those are two that sort of I think have developed

on yeah on particularly this council those are operating norms that have just sort of risen by themselves let's see there's the feeling the same like those are sort of you know in place already and and how you're experiencing work on the council assuming good intent and focusing on the issue not the person

I think it's something we definitely strive for. And a good reminder is that the second one you mentioned is focusing on the issue and not the person is required by the way we conduct our business and Robert's rules. But yeah so those definitely are in the top there for me. And again this doesn't have to be limited to this slide as well. Some of these were developed or you may be familiar with them from other organizations like she said that they've certainly done organizational development with others and use some of these norms but some of these may be very similar to what you've seen on your regional work on SCA yeah these are just examples exactly right and the other one that really leaped off the screen to me is something we already do pretty well as we're promoting civility in our interactions

And when there have been, it's pretty rare that we get incivility by audience members, but it has happened. And we simply haven't accepted it. I think that's good. That's a positive thing from this council.

Are there other things that aren't here that are important to you in terms of how you engage with one another. This is intended as food for thought. Certainly if there are the things that are important to you.

You bet. Speaking as that Catholic guy in the room contrition I am struck by the poor Seattle you know it's scandal ridden since forever. And they have done a job that is, there is not a presentation that happens where somebody doesn't say, how could I have done better? A commissioner will ask, and it may be completely performative, but a commissioner will ask a question and express confusion. And it will invariably be almost, maybe it's the old British obeisance thing, but it's just, you know, I'm sorry, and how could I have helped you? And just speaking as that customer service guy, I just strongly encouraged our clients, and I always respond to just that genuine sense of Customer service. I want to help you do better at your thing. And it's, it may sound like, you know, more work or whatever, but organizationally there's, you know, you can just see the cultural thing of people assume the, you know, defensiveness and, you know, If only we had known kind of a deal, we would have happily done this or that. And that's not what the customers, that's not what people want to hear. They want to hear how could we have done better. And that's just a cultural thing that takes years to do. And I do not underestimate the challenges, especially, I'm sure it's overwhelming for staff and for people who are in it.

So there are certainly the values and the importance for the organization to be focusing on how to lean into service, customer service and being there. For this body, what does that mean? What does that look like? I heard kind of coming to your role with a spirit of humility and cohesion, working together to problem solve. Does that reflect a little bit of what you're Describing for this body, I mean.

Just, you know, humility is, I mean, just, you know, in the old Catholic thing, pride is the root of evil, not money. And just assuming, like, I could be wrong. I walk into every conversation with, like, I could be completely wrong about this kind of a thing. And it's really hard to do. But, you know, I'm not trying to tell anyone what to do, but that's just...

hear that over and over again from residents that they feel they feel that that's sometimes lacking so so maybe there's a norm around openness you know coming to meetings and being open being curious asking questions tell me more I mean these are the ways you can sort of operationalize those things is you know maybe there's something that's a different idea than you ever thought of and rather than shutting it down

rather than saying well that's a dumb idea or even thinking that to ask the question no you can't fake it it's like in other words there is the face of customer service and then there's the and then there is the genuine i want to help you agree to the thing and it's it's just yeah i think they detected a mile away

I'm sorry, I'm just looking for a way to translate this into a norm that we use when working together, which I think is what Nancy was going towards as well. So I don't necessarily see you all as my customers. You're my peers. And so while it's important to have great relations in terms of like we work together well, I'm not sure it's a customer service type relationship. One of the things that struck me in your example, Council Member Harris, was about continuous improvement. Like, okay, so that's how that went in the past. What can we do in the future? Or how can it be better the next time? So being open to new ideas was part of that, but also like, okay, that thing happened, and what can we do better?

And I mean, I think that's a beautiful way to describe a norm, that you're always kind of seeking that. What can we learn? Being curious, being open, all of those sorts of things.

brings a different energy and you do need to come authentically to that but I think naming it first allows you to say this is important for us and what does that mean and you can observe it then right yeah on that list I like to you avoid surprises I think we're doing a pretty good job at it but I like when I come in this room to know what we're going to discuss what decision I'm expected to make that day what motions are going to be introduced We usually get the agenda a week ahead and that's good, for me at least, to be able to digest information and talk to people about this. But I like to know and be prepared when I walk in the room and not have surprises.

When actually it's a surprise this is a good one tucked into your comment there too I also heard sometimes there'll be a norm where a shared expectation that you'll do your homework right that you come prepared. That's not an example here but that's one that has been named in a lot of organizations where it's like you know read your packet come prepared ask your questions ahead of time. So I would love to add that. I would like to second that. OK. Well, and with that, coming prepared can also mean that you have asked your questions of the city manager in advance. That allows time for more thorough response or response just generally, and there's no surprises both directions. And so it feeds in both ways, and so that can be an added benefit that I'm sure that the staff would appreciate as well. Okay. Other things, anything else? So we have, go ahead.

Yeah, one of the things I don't think we do very well, and it's a broader, it's not a fine line, but is commit to the final decision. We need to do a better job of, you had a chance to explain your vote, but you don't undermine the council's final decision. And I think we just need to do better at that.

And sometimes that's hard. If you are on the losing side of a particular vote, than to be able to go out into the community and say, the council has decided this. I didn't think this. This is not undermining the decision of the body, but actually saying that this is the decision of the body, so we are headed in this direction and being OK with that. Just as when you're on the winning side of a vote, you don't want to be that person that is not congenial to those who maybe didn't get everything that they would want to. Gene?

Well, I think part of that is, too, is that there's nothing worse than a 4-3 decision. And so I think that it's important that, yes, expecting people to commit to the decision, but there also needs to be a commitment to trying to come to a collaborative outcome. They can't just be force of you know. I have four votes. It's like OK what do I have to do to get us to a position where we can move forward.

Comments. Yeah.

I agree with you Deputy Mayor. The hard thing is to know if we are close to 4 3 we don't know in advance and we won't know until the. The boys actually taken so how do we make sure there's enough discussion to bring you know kind of changing major fight with the day of or postpone that to the next meeting, so we can think about it i'm not sure how to deal with that but it's. it's the only opportunity we have to discuss some of the decision as a team and how do we come to an agreement, instead of you know it's something I struggle with right here.

I think there's a huge tension between the state's open public meetings law and our ability to get to a bigger majority because we're not supposed to be talking to one another too much. It happens. But there's this tension between that. That makes it difficult sometimes to get there. And sort of the other side of that coin is even when you do try to reach out, sometimes people are just lined up for three. And we've got to accept that those are decisions of the council and move forward.

so that will be the case sometimes and I mean I think that this is a truly example of a comma and situation where if you're coming in open and curious and really wanting to understand all of the perspectives maybe there is a way to be able to make an amendment to you know something that was on the table that is a slight tweak that doesn't change you know what people are moving toward but it helps to bring in some other perspective And so is it ever perfect? Not necessarily, but I think it's the mindset of coming in with an openness to try to think about how can we work to establish policy that meets the intent, the drivers of what's moving things along.

i i want to raise the point um thank you councilmember simmons but i think that there are there are many things on this list that i think we do well and there are many that we could do better for sure one of the reasons why i wanted to bring forward these as examples was to take a look at our best practices our effectiveness as a council how we relate to one another how we communicate and i'm wondering how we could set this up as if this was something that we could latch on to if there are five of these that we think are truly important that we want to adopt as our council norms like you said it's not a code of conduct it's not binding I'm not going to say I don't think you know today is the day that you exhibited XYZ but it's a general expectation of how we relate to one another and some of them are required like in a council meeting if you attack somebody's personally you will get corrected because that's not allowed but we should also come in and remind ourselves that we need to focus on the issue we need to focus on the issue so how i would like to work with this is is to kind of go Are there ones that we are interested in adopting? We don't have to make that decision right now. This is topic food for thought, like you said earlier. But I would like to begin to take a look at how we can more effectively work together and having some shared norms may be one tool.

you know in watching i i am that guy who have watched thousands of these things and i'm always shocked by other councils that say they just hold something over for a couple of weeks simply to indulge someone who is uncomfortable i've never seen that happen here when you have the votes there's a value in the relationships it was like I knew it would piss off Ed. And so I knew it wasn't urgent. There is this sense, since I've been at, you know, many of us have met, there's always some deadline. If we don't vote today, you know, the ordinance won't hit the state, the bomb will go off or something. There's always some urgency. And whenever I see other governments where they just go, no, you know, Ed really was upset. And so we just put it off for a couple of weeks. We just indulge the guy, essentially. They don't put it that way. Or it's like, well, why did you do that? And it's like, well, because Ed wanted this other thing here. And you'll just see this. open horse trading, for lack of a better word, that might be offensive to some. But there's just this sense of compromise and what I call the good of the marriage. And since I've been watching, like here, councils come and go, but every council, every government I watch, they have a culture that persists. And the culture here is just You got the votes. I've watched many votes where people are obviously uncomfortable, not just me. But it's like, I guess that's what we're doing. Putting that into, but everybody knows what I'm talking about. It's just, how do you put that into a bullet point? I have no idea. But that give and take is something that I wish were different.

I have an idea. What we'll do is we'll read our packets, we'll do our homework, and then we will commit to the final decision. As you were saying, Nancy, this is business here. We're trying to conduct business. So if we want to play a bunch of games, then we're all wasting our time here at these council meetings. So we're going to do our homework, do our due diligence, expect that of each of us, and then we can come sit down and have adult conversations. And that's how we'll get it done.

And I think you can do that and still have an openness to hear the perspectives of your colleagues right and it's not an either or you can be productive run effective meetings and do all that. And still seek to understand well, you know what doesn't land it not to kick it down and never get to business, I mean, I think that there is a balance there. But I think in the spirit of trying to understand right and understand.

you know, the values, the perspectives, whatever might also be in play.

And, you know, the votes may not change, they may change. You have to kind of lean into that. But I think to Mayor, to your comment, you know, we have, seven that are jotted up here now. That may be too many. That may be okay. It's up to you guys entirely. But what is helpful is to come to some agreement and they can be reframed. These are just the idea bubbles right here at this moment. They can be defined if that's helpful. But then to use your check-ins, your twice a year check-ins and evaluate. How am I doing?

How am I doing on these things?

How are we doing? Right? And then you can have some conversations. Well, gosh, we have a hard time with that keeping an open mind or the openness thing. Boy, we don't do that very well. Okay, well, does something have to change? Do we care about that? What does that look like? What is our behavior that's influencing that? We do a great job of assuming good intent. That's great. Okay, so you can do that sort of self-reflection we mentioned in those top slides. attributes of effective counsels, exceptional counsels, is holding each other accountable, this is a tool, right? Just a tool. You're not gonna get sent to the principal's office, but it's an awareness. So can I run through what we have here, and then we'll see if we're feeling okay about those. So I will talk loudly, Bonnie, so you can hear from the mic. So the norms. Assume good intent is where we started. Focusing on the issue, not the person. That's part of your agenda item, right? Promoting civility. So these were some of the ideas from here. That's among you all. It's also people that come into the chambers, right? So helping to facilitate that. Being open and curious, and I think this was an important one, part of the conversation around that interest and curiosity and humility in terms of what you're doing. No surprises. We want to have the information ahead of time, time to review it, to be prepared, which is our next one. Then you will come prepared, having read your packets and with the information already provided to the manager when you have that in advance.

And then committing to the final decision.

You know, you do all these things, you get to a vote, you make a decision, and then you move forward. So, Gene.

Well, getting back to the question that you had as far as, I think there needs to be a bit of nimble, nimble.

Nimbleness?

Nimbleness, excuse me. You know, as we're having our discussion, but I think that, I think that having it's it's one thing to say commit to the final decision but we should be trying to promote cohesion and it's in the if you're you know if we're hitting We need to get away from, okay, we're gonna stick our way through, we're gonna stick everybody with the council with I've got four votes, that sort of thing. I think it should be a priority to say, okay, how can we come together and do this? It should be obvious if we're discussing at the dais where we're going or anything. should be obvious that you know we've well you can start counting votes right when it when you're going at it but yeah it's gonna make committing to the final decision a lot easier if there's an attempt to try and build cohesion on an issue so that's just my

Are we comfortable adding that, to seek cohesion? I mean, that's like a pursuit, right? Because it may not be universal, but the spirit is, you know, tell me where you are. And sometimes it's just being able to express that in a way that is received, right? Are you guys okay with that, adding that on there? Okay. Can you guys all see that? Robin, you can't see that. I would take it off, but then the whole thing would fall down.

Here, I can do this, though.

Yeah. To reply to what Deputy Mayor said, I feel like sometimes we have option one, option two, option three, which seem really set in stone, but maybe we can amend some of these options to get the most buy-in instead of being really set in what particular that option is. And then instead of four, three, you may be at five or six on board by not being so rigid on what we're looking to accomplish.

And this might be one of those areas where it takes some practice, right? And that's OK. That's OK. It's laying out the rules of engagement and doing your best to abide by them. OK. Does anybody have any heartburn among any of these?

And again, test them out, right?

And we'll write them up, so we'll do a summary report. We'll document these in here. Mayor, do you have a plan?

I just hope I know we went over these super quickly but I do hope that this is something that we can bring up again maybe even taking one in our next retreat and going over just one of these attributes and it'll be something that we may be able to come back to and if others have something that they felt like is a very good tool for them that they would like to bring in as a collective reading material you're welcome to do that too I'd happy to take a look at it But since Nancy presented this to us back in our retreat in January, I was like, oh my gosh, this is very concrete, small, easy to grasp, and this is it. So I just really liked it, and that's why I asked for it to be brought back.

I love the idea of maybe taking an element of it and bringing it into your future retreats and really diving in. What does this mean? How do we do? Is it working for us? Are we proficient, right? okay all right so one last call we're okay with the draft set this will come back to you this is not final form but this is something that reflects the conversation here this evening okay all right all right well so that's the agenda so in terms of next steps We will, me and all my people right behind me, will put together a summary report that documents the outcomes of the conversation. We'll work with Catherine to make sure that we're all aligned on expectations around the communication pieces and those elements. to bring that back so you have that then to mark the this workshop this time together uh including those those norms and and we can include some you know best practices for how they've been used by other council members other councils if that's helpful so that's our commitment to doing that next any other closing ideas or comments

I think just so I'm clear on the norms, is that something you would like, like, put on a council agenda, or do you want to talk about that draft more at, like, a retreat?

I guess I'm also, are we going to talk about this more on Saturday then?

No, Saturday is going to be all budget. All budget. You were.

Lucky, lucky.

But with Saturday, are we going to talk about the financial piece from there, how it relates to the budget, or is that going to be still separate?

So Saturday is really going to be going through what you're going to see in the budget and how this aligns at a very high level with the strategic plan, but more importantly, how it aligns with the goals you guys set at the August 6th study session. So I think what I'm hearing is like definitely appetite for a retreat in early 27. Got it. But I think on these norms, I just want to make sure, do you all expect to like see this land on an agenda or do you want to wait till the next retreat?

Go for it. I don't really see this as an agenda item. I think it's something to keep in mind. I like the mayor's idea that we can talk about one piece at a time as they come up. It's more of the... reminder to us maybe maybe a little placard covered in plastic it's yeah

Bonnie's listening. She's got to see something coming her way.

That's exactly a good example that will provide some ideas. But sometimes council members will put them right at their seats and have them laminated so that they're available. Others put them on the wall. You can do different ways to get them in the room. But you want to adopt them first, or at least agree to them first.

I've got that little common Robert's Rules card that we got laminated. Daddy's

right there on my usually it's underneath my notepad what if we thank you yes what if we agreed or consented to having these be a draft and we'll spend some time on it in January at our retreat but if folks want to have them on a piece of paper before January we certainly can with the understanding that we're going to talk about them again We can reorder them, we can put them in fancy colors, it's not permanent. I was using a label maker today and it had a sports button and when you press print, it put little soccer balls on both sides of the thing that you printed. So we could do something like that. A sailboat, there you go, a sailboat. Sailboat, sailboat, yeah. But again, this is an idea. We're debuting it here. We certainly can talk about it again at our next retreat. I know that we'll be talking more about communication in preparation for whatever our work plan's gonna be in 2027. How does that sound? All right. Thank you so much for being here today. It's always nice to have you back even if you don't have live drawings to go back behind you. That was so amazing that I fantasized about having someone follow me around and draw pictures behind me for like the next three weeks. I was like wouldn't that be awesome. I just had my own scribe and artist to follow me around. but I really appreciate your willingness to come in and help us walk through some of these issues your facilitation and bringing us back to the roots of our strategic plan which will now take to the action steps very very soon so I appreciate it thank you and good luck on your move absolutely fingers crossed everything makes it in all the boxes um we're at the end of our meeting agenda and our next meeting together will be our budget retreat which is saturday is there a motion to adjourn and a second and i heard a second all those in favor please raise your right hand say aye all right we are adjourned thank you

laughter laughter laughter