City Council - workshop

But. No, I think. My friend, my house is usually do that. It's not a good winter. OK, so we made it because of the trees and stuff. Yeah, yeah.

Let's do this thing.

And a quiet falls over the room.

Welcome everyone. Today is Thursday, August 27th. Council Member Garcia will be providing the music for the day. I'm calling this meeting to order and giving notice that at this meeting the City Council may vote to go into executive session. FOR LEGAL INVICE ON ANY ITEM LISTED ON THE FOLLOWING AGENDA. CAN WE HAVE ROLL CALL? MAYOR DAGETT? HERE. VICE MAYOR SWEET?

MAYOR HASLUND?

HERE. SORRY, LOST MY NUMBERS. COUNCIL MEMBER HOUSE?

I'M HERE. COUNCIL MEMBER MATTHEWS? HERE. COUNCIL MEMBER SPENCE?

HERE.

Councilmember Garcia, would you lead us in the pledge of allegiance?

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.

In front of you.

I have it memorized. Wow. City of Flagstaff is to protect and enhance the quality of life for all.

Council Member Aslan, do you have a vote?

I don't have that one memorized yet. I am very fond of it. The Flagstaff City Council humbly acknowledges the ancestral homelands of this area's indigenous nations and original stewards. These lands, still inhabited by native descendants, border mountains sacred to indigenous peoples. We honor them, their legacies, their traditions, and their continued contributions. We celebrate their past, present, and future generations who will forever know this place as home. Thank you.

Great.

I'll turn it over to you, City Manager.

I was going to make the joke that we're going to change the mission statement now that Council Member Spence hasn't done that. We're not going to do that. Well, just welcome to everybody here in the room. Council, we have members of our leadership team here, members of the public. We're really excited to spend this day today with Mike Letcher, who you all know Mike has been facilitating some uh retreats with council myself as a new city manager yesterday we spent almost the entire day with the leadership team our strategic focus areas and spent a lot of time working on project identification. And Mike's going to walk into what the plan is today. But my goal as city manager that you've all hired is to make sure that we have alignment between council and our leadership team on those projects, particularly moving into the budget process. So excited to talk about some of those today. It feels like there's alignment. I think that's exciting and that's healthy for the organization. I think just, I've repeated this a few times, but we are definitely in a time of transition right now, not only with, you know, City Council hiring me in November as City Manager. We have some staff transitions. We have a transition in our budget process. You all know that we pretty quickly, when I came in, dissolved what was the budget team. And the idea behind dissolving that budget team was to get our leadership team more engaged and have that team that is talking about big budget items for the organization. And what I will say from yesterday is that it was a tough day. I think every member of our leadership team was engaged, provided some really great feedback. But I would say kind of one of the takeaways I had from yesterday was that it was clear that our leadership team hasn't always been at the table and involved. So I think it's an exciting time to kind of bring all of us together. Mike's going to kind of walk through what we're doing today, and we obviously have our great team here to answer any questions, some online as well. Sarah Dar is down in Phoenix at the State Housing Conference. With that, I just want to turn it back over, or turn it over to Mike, and I know you're going to introduce yourself. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Good seeing you all again. Yeah, yeah. Well, yesterday was a great day. I can tell you in the 15 years doing this consulting work, I have never had as much engagement on a leadership team in terms of just totally being focused on what needed to be changed in terms of the, and you got the track changes yesterday with the focus areas and the strategies and also the project. So just, I, just want to start by thanking them for their work. It was a lot of work. And Stacey, thank you, because I type about my son's sick. And in fact, I talked to him this morning, so Michael could make it up. I type about 40 words a minute. So Stacey, what a help yesterday making those track changes. It would have been a miserable day to do the typing. So you guys know about me and Michael. We really appreciate being able to work, work with you all. And today there's there's we had an original plan and we'll stick with it. We're still going to go through and focus on some future changes that you want in your vision, your mission, and your core values. We're just going to ask for your thoughts on changes that you might want because, and I'll go through your results on those. It looks like in the vision statement, probably some adjustments that you may want to make. Mission doesn't look, explain some of the core values because there was some, a little bit of, know so you understand what those are the intent of those uh tenth of those are asked for originally we're going to ask for direction on the focus areas and strategies for you to give us amendments but you just got those track changes last night i mean how many of you had a chance with so didn't want to put you under didn't want to put you under pressure today to uh to make those changes And so we're going to, we're going to talk about that in a few minutes, and then we're definitely going to get direction from you on, on the project. So this is what's today. Still look at the, we're still going to look at the vision, mission, and core values for any future wording changes you want in those. going to we're going to introduce the proposed focus areas and strategies and then there's going to be a workshop scheduled for you later to really do a deep dive in there so you're not today like you're under the gun where you have to make those those changes what we are going to nail down is the project you've got about between you and the leadership team there's about 70 projects Most of the projects, a lot of the projects being a few for this year, majority are for, which is really great, are teed up for 28. But some of those projects, you got a lot of projects going on in 28. We may want to move some of those to 29 based on staff's time. So the real focus is going to be nailing down the projects. So why didn't we change? You just, why did we make this change? Well, first of all, you just received it and didn't want to put you in a position where, oh, we've got to now, you know, look through this and really try to make a decision as council. Secondly, focus, our focus areas and your focus areas and strategies, and I did a total pivot on this, and develop from your community priorities. You have seven, currently have seven community priorities. We added one more, so it's eight. which is your fiscal sustainability. But those community priorities, which you've worked under, have been embraced by the community, and they're, quite frankly, are different from the focus areas that our firm usually recommends. So we had to make a pivot. I'm actually happy we made the pivot because after I did a deep dive into your community priorities, they're good. I mean, you did a good job on those. And then we were able to, you have some objectives under those. So we converted those objectives to strategies. So what we've done is operationalize your community priorities. That's really, really good. So you still have the priorities, but now you have a strategic plan that'll be able to implement them. So we probably won't spend 40 changes on that with the work done by the leadership team yesterday. And we just didn't want, You're making those on the spot. Rather, so we're we're going to focus today the finalizing finalizing every single. It's. It's best. It's five focus areas and we have we limit the focus area descriptions to three different. You know, so it's really tight. You guys have more than three to four and it's good. You guys have more than three to four sentences you got. because of your objectives you've got more strategies that normally would have but it's all tied to your community priorities that's good so there is a lot of work yesterday um that the leadership team get but looking at that you know looking at that frame and then say we're going to now have you guys today so folks have projects we didn't want to rush that time so we've got the document and um wanted to make sure that you were so we want to the biggest thing is the projects and the manager could arrive we want to make sure that the work staff does the work if it was aligned with you and the council ultimately at the end of the day every project we've got in there we want you to say that looks like something we can move forward on or and also adding the projects in that you have and some of the projects you have recommended the staff and we'll show you where the staff is going to be working on those. There's some that you've recommended the staff didn't, you know, didn't discuss yesterday because I wanted to make sure that the council was aware of your projects so we could focus on it. Mike, does that thus far make any sense? I see a few nods. Okay. So how can we change? We're going to allow the council to focus more time on looking at the changes that we made to the focus areas. But we're going to allow the council, we're really going to focus today on the projects, as I mentioned. So the idea is to get both the council and leadership team aligned on the projects that you're going to work on. That's especially important because we're right around the corner, guys, from, guess what, fiscal year, is it 28? Whoa, 28. So this is, you know, this is a good thing. So we are going to, This allows everyone, all of us, to row together the strategic plan. And to talk a little bit, I think I've shared this with you at past meetings, is a lot of times councils ask, what does a strategic plan do for us? Okay. We've got day-to-day operations, responsibility of the manager and the leadership team, right? Generally. You've got resident and constituent concerns that you have to address. How many of you? Yeah, that happens, right? You've got your council meetings every, what, two weeks? Oh, every week. So every week. Wow. Okay. You've got the council meetings. So a strategic plan is going to help you improve all of these areas. It's going to help you because the strategic projects will become part of your council. meeting focus. It's definitely going to help as part of projects to make sure you're more responsive and more effectively responsive to your citizens. And then it's all about day-to-day operations. And your charter, I know, says the council can't get involved in day-to-day operations, but guess what? With a strategic plan, you know exactly what the staff is focusing on to improve day-to-day operations. And that's a cool, really cool thing because the two areas that usually Here and here, three and one is where I call it the black hole. And why it's black hole is if you don't have a strategic plan, what's your council? What drives your council agenda? What priorities drive that agenda and the development of that agenda and the projects and the initiatives you're working on?

What's that?

Every day. Whatever comes up, you know, yeah, it's whatever comes up. It doesn't mean that those things aren't going to come up, that, you know, either citizens raise or there's a community of people who are wanting to focus on. But you've got a plan. You've got, I'll say during, you may have 15 or 20 major initiatives that you're working on, that those are, that's going to drive your agenda. You know that that's your bread and butter. It doesn't mean that you're not still going to deal with the routine stuff. But you're moved, you stepped up your game. That's really cool. The day-to-day operations is like, that's my job as a city manager. But with the strategic plan, you now have projects that are going to be directed for the staff operationally to work, because that makes sense. And now you'll know, OK, this is important. So you it's not that you're going to interfere, but you're going to. It comes for that for this work. And that is a really, really great thing, because otherwise you end up in a black hole. It's like when a problem comes up, then we're going to try to address if, you know, a new issue comes up. Oh, that's going to become a major. That's going to be the direction we're going to go in. And you're all over the place. It's yeah. So your level, you counsel. This is, trust me, this is really true. You determine the level that staff focuses on. If you're only interested in all, you know, there are some councils that are down here just in day-to-day, nothing, you know, they look at these two levels. They never get, these are the three levels they focus on. They never get here. They never get the four. And if you get the four, everything can change. And that's what you're going to do. So strategic planning, dimming, plan which you're is you're going to focus on today you're going to do which is we're going to focus on the do part because how many of you you know as a counselor how many of you have had you've done there have been strategic plans in the organizations or where you were yeah were they effective well most of the way i'll tell you why because let me tell you they only focus on this which isn't bad and the strategy and the uh objectives and and then they go oh from the strategies and objectives, you can decide and do your work. Well, wait, you just left us with these esoteric ideas, but where do we get the work done? So the plan that you have is not just your strategies. Guess what? You've got projects. Really part that Deming focuses on is the do. And that's what we're going to focus on today. If you don't have a strategic plan, there's a guy, Peterson Gay, how many of you have whiteboards, council members have? Do you have a list of priorities you're going to do during the day? I also have a whiteboard. You have a whiteboard? I'm old school, but I'm going to get one. I saw somebody with one of those and I'm going to, they're kind of expensive, but I'm going to buy one. Okay, good, good, please. The thing is, most of us have like, we check off, we have all the stuff we do during the day, right? It's routine. And I have a whiteboard. I have all this stuff I want to do. And I got, so one side's, Mike, you got to do this. This is priority one. This is priority two. You guys are always priority one. And then I've got another side that's all my really like deep thinking stuff that I need to work on to kind of, you know, to help my clients and teaching and stuff like that. What do you think I spend most of my time on? Is it the strategic or is it this routine stuff? It's the routine. It chews up my time. I've got stuff that's been on the strategic side for months. And that's what happens if you don't have a plan. And this is just the bottom line. If you don't have a strategic plan that provides direction that you agree to, provides direction to staff, then you're stuck in the routine. You're not moving the needle head. The great thing about a plan is you're still going to do routine stuff as a city, but you know the big stuff is getting done. You know they're going to punch through. You've got 15 projects here. You're going to punch through. You're going to get it done. You're going to make a difference. Give me an example of Sedona. You guys are all familiar with Sedona. We put in a strategic plan in 96 and one of the big issues in there was we didn't control the the uptown uh area 89a was under a dot and one of the initiatives that the council said is we want eight that to be turned back to the city so we could put in the necessary well all those pedestrian improvements that you see now that was done over 20 years ago uh that that but they started that at And I left. I went to Tucson before. So every year they had a plan. That effort was done because of a plan well over time. And look at the difference it's made for the community if it had just stayed. It was a mess before. So paradox and routine. Get away from the day-to-day. Focus more on the strategic. And why do you want to focus on the strategic? Because that's managing You can shape your future. Does that make sense? You can do things now. Think about this. This is a great thing. You're elected to serve the citizens in this community. But not only the service today, You have an opportunity with a strategic plan to look over and say, these are some things we can do in the future. These are small things that can make a huge difference in people's lives, not only in terms of the economic well-being of the community, but the social well-being and everything can change by just being able to take the time. By the way, once I get done with this, we'll take a break. This is just teasing up, and then we get into the actual work on other things. But I want to give you a little basis, and then you're going to have a chance to ask some questions on this. So, why is a strategic plan important? You do a budget every year, right? What's the biggest expense in the budget for you, council? Employees. Hey, council member, absolutely right. Now, where is their time being spent? They're doing a lot of work. I put a little chart in the book that shows, you know, a department head. There's a lot. It's like a full court press. You're managing an apartment. You're nothing. You sometimes have to respond to council members. You're dealing with an irate citizen over here. My son's the city manager, and we talked yesterday, and I said, hey, son, how'd your day go? He says, well, I had a There was a guy that comes in. He's a Russian immigrant, could speak a little bit. And it was a really serious issue. That was not something that he, you see where I'm going? The department head was dealing with it and he had to like get out of what he was doing and go over there. It is a full court press. So then the question becomes, how do we carve out, how do we carve out a little bit of this, a little bit of this time of these folks to get the strategic stuff done? that's where the strategic plan comes in but you know that's where we have to control we have to determine what are the most important projects to get done what are the things because you've got a limited amount of bandwidth even though you know that and this is i can tell you it's every city we work with because we're not private sector public sector but if you're if you're private sector you know exactly in terms of the productivity and measurement your employees and their bandwidth is and what they're doing and all that stuff it's monitored and everything else but we are straight out here the one thing the private sector doesn't have like my brother was a corporate attorney they don't have citizen they don't have stakeholders uh customers coming in and screaming at them day to day you know they're insulated their boards don't have public hearings, right? They just get it done. So they have a pretty good life. We have, we're in a complex, an incredibly complex environment. So we need to focus on, and today looking at those, when we think about, there's a lot of stuff that we want to do. And you saw a lot of strikethroughs in that report. Those are things that we might want to work on that staff may want to work on later. There are some things that are, what are the most important things that we want to get done? that get us the results, that actually get results, get results. Improving the organization gets results, improving the community. Does that make sense? Kind of, yeah, sort of. Okay. You guys still with me? I'm getting through this. We also wanted the plan integrated, integrated in your operation. So every year you do the budget, the plan, you'll also decide these are the projects we'll do. So you approve your budget for 28. You'll also approve, this is a great thing, you'll approve the staff's work plan. Here's the projects we're going to do. And then that'll be monitored. That'll be held between the city manager and all of the staff. All of your leadership team will be accountable for getting that done. Okay. Then you'll have, you'll know when they come to your agenda item. Stacy will put, this is a strategic project based on this focus here and all that. it'll be everything's updated every year in your budget the great thing is is if you have a project something really comes up important during the year and i'll talk about that in just a few minutes later is that there's an operating policy you can maybe have 15 projects you say this one moves out to another year we're going to insert this one because this is a priority So even though when you do 27, when you do your 27 budget, you may see, hmm, maybe we want to move this project out to 28 and add another project in for 27. Does that make sense? So it's agile for you and for staff. The bottom line is to remember there's only a limited amount of time to get stuff done. And again, what is the most important things? Go ahead and do this real quick. Everything's tied to your guys' key priorities. Trust me. We did a real good pivot on this. And I want to thank the city manager because I was like, oh, I've got my, you know, this is how I've, trust me, folks, for 15 years, we've done it with every client around the country. We've got five maximum, maybe six focus areas. No, Mike, we want these priorities. I looked at the priorities. I was like, whoa, this is going to be a lot of fun. But it's a great thing, because these are aligned already to your community. You've already paid for the territory, as the military says. You've already, already done it. So why reinvent it? And thanks to Joanne, I want to thank you, because I was looking at your surveys going, why is it that I'm not getting, I'm looking at, oh, we don't necessarily like these focus areas. I was thinking, hmm, I'm slow, but I catch on quick enough. Okay. You cannot, you can determine the outcomes that you want in this organization support, but you have to speak with one voice, one voice. Carter, this Carver governance talks about your seven wonderful individuals. So how do you speak with one voice to give the outcomes to the community, to the organization and to get things done? And once you do that through a strategic plan, the means of how that gets done is that But you've really determined, when you approve these projects, whatever we end up at the end of the day, that is gonna be the outcomes you want the organization to achieve. The means of getting it done is gonna be left up to Joanne, but it'll be brought back. They'll bring back the proposals to the council for approval. All of your city plans that you have in the future, every plan that you develop separate from the strategic plan, I will be will be. Well, you can. You can. You can included the items in order to be implemented. So what is the plan about? It's about. Being deliberate about the future. I I. I love the future. Yeah, I agree. Every organization I worked in from the time I was a kid being trained had issues. When I went to Vermont, they had issues. When I went to Sedona, they had issues. When I went to Tucson, I found heaven. They had a lot of issues. But in any case, the fact is that without having the, not only dealing with what you have to deal with today, but if We and the folks I worked with hadn't focused on the future. All of those places, it would have been a disaster because it's not just about what you've got to do today. The citizen that's in front of you saying, I've got this issue and everything else, that that's important. You've got to focus because those are the people that either elected us or those are, in our case, the people we serve because we serve you. But it's really good. to change everything in the future, to make everything better. So that citizen complaint doesn't come in. Citizen complaint doesn't come in because you've already resolved it. You've figured out a way to work through it. So it's deliberate. It's not routine. None of this strategic plan is routine items that you can do in your day-to-day operations that get done. It's really about managing the future.

And just And if you'll go back a slide. The exclude. Clearly, we need the budget to align with what our goals are. And I bring this up because, you know, one of the things I complain a lot about is the speed of government. Right. And Sarah's online. She'll remember this conversation. But we passed the housing bond. I was like, oh, yay, what are you doing now? You know, three months into it, and they're like, oh, no, we've got to wait until next year to get approval for another FTE, and then we have to do it. You know, and it was like a two-year process just to start implementing it. And now we're doing a great job implementing it. But, you know, can you just reassure my mind why I get why it's excluded, but it also is necessary that we combine the two.

Sure.

I thought you had my book. Yeah, it is helpful. Great question and a very good question. Yes, your strategic plan items will have, some of them will have budgetary impact, and that's why it's tied to the budget. This is your day-to-day, like funding the fire department. Nothing gets you cheap. They're still going to fund you. The funding fire department, police department, you're going to, every year, you're going to provide funding for those. That's routine, but the strategic plan items, and that's why I, That's why a lot of, that's a great question, Council Member. A lot of organizations fail. They don't tie the strategic plan. So you're going to look, and when Joanne and the staff present and these projects come to you, you know, they'll be, they're going to come during the budget. When they present them, they'll say, okay, this is just time. This is just, this project doesn't have a cost, but it's time. But then there's going to be, this is going to cost. And then you can decide, do we, is this important enough for us to, allocate resources to or not. And if not, then, well, we don't do it. So does that make sense? So it's definitely late. Yeah. Otherwise, if you don't have the money, that's the biggest problem. I'm sorry. We have gone in to a tremendous amount of money. I mean, a lot of money for strategic plans that are aspirational, that have these global objectives, and they Where it becomes problematic for them is when those things, they try to start implementing them and there are tons of money.

Who can't do that?

Well, of course you can't do it because it wasn't tied into your budget. And then you have these citizens that look at that document and go, oh, wow. Well, you said you were, you know, you were going to push X, Y, and Z. Well, no, because you didn't have the money. So we make sure it's in. Does that help? What, ma'am?

I just wanted to use the email.

Yeah, tell me how. So we're going to have a collective vision, all of us, seven voices, you speaking one voice from the council strategic plan. Here's our priorities for the city. Ones that have come from the leadership team, ones that have come from you, and here's the direction we're going to go in. This is what we're going to do. And every single year, guys, during the budget, There's, we approve them, we improve, we add more, they move out in a year, the next year, we improve them, and it's just a cycle. It's really, really good. So I have this thing where I tell you that it's like, we get so many complaints. Every year, I've presented for the last eight years at ICMA with our national organization. And I do talk to city managers about working with their governing boards. And, you know, it's just, you guys are a great council. I'm not saying that because you're paying me, but there is a, even without folks that are, we don't do a good job at city managers of providing structure for our council. We don't. And I'm talking not just the budget, that's simple. you know, strategic planning, like we tell them, that's a form that allows the council to function. If you don't, you remember when I show you that chart where you have, otherwise you have chaos because every week or two weeks, they're going to come up with something and you're going to come up with something and they're going, and then they're whining about why are they doing that? Well, why are they doing that? Because you haven't got, you have not provided a shared priorities. You're doing what you want to do, what we're trained to do as city managers, but your council has not bought into that. And a lot of times you end up wasting a lot of staff time because when it comes to council, guess what? Oh, they didn't approve it. Well, were they engaged in the beginning? You know, it's just, it's a simple thing, but a little form, a little time to take about how to work with your council more effectively makes a huge difference. And that's the reason I love doing this work because you guys, if we work together, us and you, We can do incredible things, incredible things. And that's why strategic planning is so important. So I'm pausing and then we're going to talk a little bit. Yes, talk, you and I'll listen. So what are the benefits of a strategic plan for you? I've kind of given you a thousand foot view. What's the benefit for you as a council?

It helps remind me what our focus.

Excellent. For me, and I know that I'm the numbers geek, but this is like a dream come true because I know some people love the priority based budgeting process, but to me that was just a lot of smoke and mirrors without a goalpost, you know, and it just didn't give me a feeling of direction and a measurement. And so I think doing this, and this was a big discussion when we were choosing Joanne, was this was the most consequential thing she could implement. And so I'm so excited that we are doing this because we can not only say it's a goal and we can not only say that it's a priority, but we actually have a plan because getting back to that speed of government, it's like, yes, we want to do that. But oh yeah, it's five years out so we can reevaluate that. And that's where maybe the budget comes back in. It's like, you know, do we need to reallocate funds or something? But this actually, as you said, I, you know, living in that space in the corporate world for so long, I mean, this will get us really where we want to go instead of just lip service. So I'm excited about it.

Alignment, money, ooh, yeah. I love money. Sucks not that, excuse me. It's, I like, well, yeah, it's nice having money. when you're sitting in.

That's being a good steward at that point.

Yeah, being a good steward.

The community wants and they can see what our strategic plan is and see that we are applying that money that they're paying in taxes and fees and stuff, actually going to the things that matter.

And that's a great thing, Council Member, is you'll be able to show the community, here's what we're working on. It's not esoteric. Not that there was anything wrong with your objectives and the community priorities, but now you've operationalized those objectives. These are the projects we're working on. Others? Yeah, very good. Thank you. I appreciate, yeah, alignment. Yes, yes, Councilor.

You know, where we sit, we've got these resources, the Ponderosa Pine Forest, the mountain, the natural transportation corridor, pioneered by the Beale Wagon Road. And with all of these resources, we're a community and we've exploited resources as a start, you know, the lead marine industry. But coming to today, I think if we have a strategic plan, we can make use of of what God has given us in this location. And the immediate thing that comes to mind is Macmillan Mesa, where I can't remember how many years ago it was, but it was a public referendum. How much of Macmillan Mesa should be kept as open space versus development? Compromise was reached in part because citizens didn't come up with a big pot of money to keep it all open space. But there is still a lot of good open space up on that mesa. And I think having a strategic plan helps us to guide development, lack of development.

Absolutely.

Absolutely. I'll take it one step further than what I said earlier. Try to explain what I meant by that. And for me, what it means is it gives us a chance to grapple with the same context and that the community is kind of grappling with in their everyday wondering of what's going on and why things are happening. And this gives that same community a place where they could reach back and look at what Council was talking about to highlight those issues and challenges. And then here, our perspective and how we're going to tackle that gives them a timeline and gives them a start and end date. These things can be beneficial. I'm excited to work through the program, though, to see where some of the arguments and discussions that are happening in the community can fit into this realistically. We have overlooked some of those discussion points.

Yeah, so Council Member House says it makes sure we have an actual road map. Things are measurable, trackable, and transparent. I love strategic planning because it gives a shared vision and shared direction to things like ours while keeping us proactive instead of reactive.

Yes, sir. Yeah, can I just back up? for a minute, if I may. So I understand strategic planning. I understand the benefits and I think it's wonderful that we're here and we're articulating this and we're being very deliberate about it as a whole team. I'm having a hard time thinking back and conceptualizing our organization as writerless for this. So we've kind of been doing this work, right? I'd like to get a feeling like on a scale of one out of 10, how much of a deficit this was before. And, you know, just maybe have it articulated a little bit better why this was so glaringly missing that we're taking a day to have a retreat about it. And again, actually going through this process is very beneficial. And it allows everyone to be on the same page. But I just don't look back and remember the city of Flagstaff just doing only day-to-day things. And not really, you know, this is a compliment and a testament to the city. I think you guys are fairly well-attuned to what council wants. You have been the entire eight years I've been on council. you know, there are moments when things happen or, you know, a division gets distracted, but how essential, how essentially missing was this up until now?

Yeah, that is a great question. I went back to this, Council Member, you're right, you know, I love this city, by the way, and because i'm getting paid to be here again i i really do um this is most time i've spent in flag and each time i'm up here i enjoy more you were you got things done but you weren't deliberate about it you you i mean you and the councils before you did some i'm looking at it's clear to me there was some really good thought here the issue is you were not your budget Every what this allows you to do is unless you've done this, when you approve the budget, you're going to prove here's the 15 to 20 key priority things that we're going to work on. I don't know what the number will be every year. And they're both tied together. Now, if you've done that, that's deliberate as opposed to, oh, let's just come up with an epiphany, you know, and and by luck getting things done because you've had competent councils. But let me say I'm a new council member coming in. What's our game plan? What do we do? I've got, I've run for office, right? I've campaigned hard. And this is what, sounds good. This is what Mike wants. Yeah, but then I come to the city and then I start, that's what I'm going to push as a council. And I, not that, hey, guys, I've worked with you guys like my whole life or as an adult. And now I consult with you. And I can tell you, it's really hard for council members to, kind of check one another. I'm going to tell you, I can't tell you the number of times where it's like, you know, no, I'm not going to do that. You know, you can do it as a consultant, but I'm not going to check that person or, you know, they'll have the manager. So this allows you to be very deliberate as a group about what you're doing. As a new council member, I've got the game plan and I've just got to, like the council member or CSA here, I've got some things I want to see added in. We'll see if they can get the rest of you agree. Those are the things we'll do. But it's awesome. It's just about being deliberate.

You guys have done a great job. I'd like to hear from Joanne on this. OK, I'll stop. Just relate it back to the priority based budgeting, because I feel like we have developed key community priorities by name, by label, and those have been available. And it's it's a it's been a living document, so to speak. And I just I'm not seeing what we're doing here as missing from the past. So just help me understand the gap.

Sure. So, Council Member, I think from my perspective, what happens is you all bring things forward as projects. And right now, we don't have a way of... including those in our work plan for the division. So I think it's an opportunity for us to get those council priorities included in our projects. On the other side, it's an opportunity, I think, for staff to really understand what direction is and what specific projects. Because, you know, I think we are in a different position where I think our resources are going to be more constrained. And I think we need to be looking at prioritizing what we're working on. I think we kind of continue to say that core services are our priorities, but that doesn't always get translated. So there are things kind of constantly that are brought up to staff about working on them outside of those core priorities. So identifying what those are and giving us a clear direction, I think will be incredibly helpful. And then working on those together. And I would say, yes, I mean, we've been using PBB and the community priorities, and I think continuing to use those community priorities, I think we can do a better job now of prioritizing what we're working on and having leadership and council aligned. Does that help? Mm-hmm. I don't think we were rudderless, and I guess I want to be really clear about that. I think it's just a different way of doing it, and one that has that kind of shared governance model that, I shouldn't use that word governance, that comes from my NAU days, but that working together, giving us some clear direction, I think will be really helpful. Does that help?

It does.

Thank you. I was wanting to ask the question that was relevant to this. I appreciate your perspective. So the question for me is is. How often are we going to be taking place? Is this going to be taking place as a council every two years, every four years? And my comment would be. I think it would be more beneficial understanding regardless of the timeline that we're going to choose to jump back into this. to do it with new council members as well?

Yeah, so council member, I mean, it's a great question, and I think it's just a bit of an awkward year just with an election. But my goal would be to do that prior to starting our budget process to kind of look at that project list. I mean, the goal is to have a three-year project list, and then if we need to revisit some of those, and likely doing those probably December of each year.

As the process goes, it'll become refined. We'll become more used to it, streamlined. Instead of multi-days, it might be more condensed. Thank you.

One thing that I like about this is I'm big on communication and making sure that the community understands what we're working on and actually sees what we're working on. And parts of that have been said before so that the public sees how money is being used. And so I'm looking for a way to kind of keep this in our discussions all year long. without necessarily big retreats, but just coming back to it and coming back to where we are on the projects and where we are on our priorities. And Mike, what you said about new council members, I think that that's spot on, right? Because every election season, we see new council members coming in and... AND IT'S CLEAR THAT WE HAVEN'T DONE AN ADEQUATE JOB COMMUNICATING TO THE PUBLIC WHAT WE'RE ALREADY DOING, BECAUSE YOU HEAR CANDIDATES SAY, WE SHOULD BE DOING THIS. AND IT'S LIKE, WELL, WE ARE DOING THAT, BUT WE OBVIOUSLY HAVEN'T COMMUNICATED IT WELL ENOUGH. SO THE COMMUNICATION PART IS THE PART I'M MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO. COUNCILMEMBER MATTHEWS AND THEN COUNCILMEMBER HOUSE.

And just to add to that, being in the midst of candidate forum season, you know, the ongoing theme is what are you going to do? And without a document, you know, a strategic plan to say, you know, well, every year, you know, we review the strategic plan. And because it gets blurred, the lines get blurred, especially with candidates that aren't on council yet to understand the manager, council, you know, relationship and how we run this government. And so a lot of people think, oh, you're going to go in and you're going to go over to, you know, streets and tell them they're going to, you know, fix the potholes, whatever it is, right? Sorry. But, you know, they think they have more direct power, but it also serves as, you know, I'm guessing part of our review process with you. We're not going to micromanage you, We've given you a task. This will be part of it to implement these things that we've prioritized and we put timelines on. And then instead of, you know, hovering over you this month and what you do about this, Joanne, what I'm used to is more of a review process or like that would be part of the presentation to say, you know, this was our strategic plan. This was our action items for this year, you know, and then you're going to talk about where did you implement them What were the obstacles? Why did you push it out and stuff? Because again, going back to that separation of management versus policy makers and stuff, and it just is really evident right now going, you know, having these forums and having the same theme questions and asking, what are you going to do about this? Or when are you going to fix this? And how come this hasn't been done yet? It's like, well, I'm not the city manager, you know, and we can implement policy, but this strategic plan gives us a tool to say, you know, we have a strategic plan, you know, that's public, and this is what we've been focusing on. And then if a council wants to change that strategic plan and those priorities, then that's where it's right.

And just before Councilmember House also provides me a tool to also have accountability with my leadership team.

Councilmember House. Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, I think just, and I put some of this in the chat, but wanted to just voice it as well. I think going back to Council Member Aslan's question on why we're doing this, I heard it said that there was a bit of a lack of deliberation. And I would say, I think we've been very deliberate in addressing the what and sometimes the why I think where the strategic plan comes in very helpful is that it helps us to be very deliberate with the how. How we're carrying out the plans and the vision that we have for the community and getting on the same page with that so that we're able to move forward on that same page and with an understanding of these are the processes that we go through to achieve these things rather than just trying to figure it out on the fly. I think going back to my original comment about this helping us to be proactive versus reactive, that's really where I see this coming in because so often when we're faced with a community challenge or a community need, we're having to react to it. and try and solve a problem just in that moment. And a strategic plan, in my mind, helps us to look down the line at what's coming for our community and really be strategic in addressing that how before things come up.

Just being taped. Oh, that's good. Actually, I...

Yeah, I might. I've had the opportunity for 25 years now to work with both private and solid entities and boards. And I can say, Mike, you mentioned when you're working with a private board, it's just you get things done. You don't have to go through a process. You don't have all these public hearings. I mentioned yesterday Flagstaff is one of the better organizations I've ever been with who has tried to track it. But I see a strategic plan and I see the benefit in that as it does allow the council to work with the public more quickly manager to work with leadership team more quickly to try and move things along faster more similarly to what you would see in the private it never will be that fast it's not supposed to be transparency doesn't allow that but that's that's the way it's That's the way it's supposed to function in the government. And I appreciate the fact that we get to work with the public on that. This just makes it more streamlined. I think it's what I've seen in my experience over those 25 years, that this will help a lot in my opinion.

Yes, sir. So just trying to conceptualize a couple examples where it's going to go. And this is just sort of a popcorn thing. It's not really, don't read too much into it. But, you know, we've had a couple between the city and all the organization in this new city. For example, lack of policy around surveillance to a purchase. It wasn't thought out from a policy perspective yet. Maybe this is the sort of thing that we'll head that off at the past and the future. significant tension around the electrification of our fleet. Maybe this provides the city manager more cover to push forward with that objective. And there are going to be other examples. I'm just wondering if I'm on the right track. Or I'm getting too close to radical already.

I'm looking at Shannon and Mary. I don't think we had. Do we have either of those in our, but I feel like they were in council.

Task force.

And I think some specific example.

No, but I mean, it's a good, it's a good question. Yeah. I'm using it as an example to say, I think when we talked about things at staff, we're looking forward to next budget year and maybe didn't necessarily capture the things that we're working on right now. So that's something all three of us talked about going back and looking at it by fiscal year to make sure that we're identifying those types of things that we're doing right now. And so I think as an example, that would be included from a broader perspective, but not necessarily about, you know, a surveillance policy. Does that help the answer?

So we focused, I mean, you'll see primarily on, I think we had some FY27, but a lot of them were you know, three years, one, two, three years out. So what you'll see is a lot of things that we're working on right now that we expect to be bringing back in November, for example, we're probably not on that list of captured, but maybe they should be, we should be.

But I think what I hear from your example is that what I think this process will do and where I've seen these types of processes be really successful It's an opportunity for Council to express your interests. What are the things that you want to figure out how to tackle, but maybe you're not? You don't have the exact idea in mind, but you know that this is the broader interest and then staff brings forward projects to help accomplish that interest. And then you say that doesn't really meet that interest. I think we actually want to do this instead. So I think through this iterative process you'll see more things just like that. But to the two specific examples you provided to Joanna and Shannon's point, those are not necessarily built in here because they're already underway. And so the ones that you'll see identified are ones that are more down the road, future focus. And the goal is for us to see and test with council, are these meeting your interests? Are these the things that you want us to focus on?

Yeah, I think I get it. That might be another example.

Yes. I just asked. So in my mind and what you're saying, whether it's a surveillance mechanism or whatever, that's a potential solution to an overall vision. Enhancing, in the strategic plan, it would be more about enhancing public safety and stuff, not drilling down to we're going to do X, Y, and Z because that's more in the

Solutions potential solutions that we may need not even know exist today.

So how could we bake it into the strategic strategic plan so those? Those things that are important for us to have public discussion on when they come up before they come up. Maybe have it in a work session, but not in the strategic plan because strategic plan is more of a big picture thing that we're going to improve or enhance public safety or whatever. And then we don't even know what other solutions that may or may not fit in our community will come up. And so I wouldn't see a surveillance mechanism baked into a strategic plan if that is correct.

Yeah, and I think one thing I will say is that there are always going to be things that are occurring outside of the strategic nature of what we all need. So, I mean, you know, some of those examples, I think, could come up, not even related to what we're doing in strategic plan, but you know, we obviously will pivot and work on those items. But I think what we're trying to just do is kind of capture the core of what Council wants us to work on.

Wow. Great, great discussion. So we only have about, I mean, a few more slides, 12 minutes, and then we'll have a break. 15 minute break. So let me get through the, I just want to give some context to the structure, the components that you'll be talking about today. One is obviously, you know, your vision's aspirational, I think. Your mission is, how do we get it done? Your mission operationalizes and directs your staff to get that core values. And this was some confusion comments in your surveys, the core values are all internal focus. It's based upon, they're all internal focus within the organization. It tells the employees that standard of behavior that allows, that builds them to accomplish both the mission, which is their focus and your vision ultimately, but it's all internally focused within within the organization. What are the values? When I hire an employee, what are the things I'm looking for in that? That's what your core values tell you. What am I looking for in the leadership? What am I looking for in the middle management? What am I looking for in the first line management? Your focus areas are always, we're always going to get this done. Your goals, those are, we are going to, this is where we are going. How we're going to, how you're going to get it done is the strategies. Your strategies that are in this, the document that you have looked at, is how you're getting . And this is really important because earlier, a lot of plans just stop here at the aspirational level. Your plan will actually move to the project level. I can't tell you how much I appreciate the dialogue that all of the council today And your guys are spot on. Every single one of you are spot on about what a strategic plan will do. And I appreciate also the staff's response to your questions and my ramblings to try to get you there. So we are going to focus on getting stuff done. And that's what's the most important thing with projects. So let's look at your survey results. I mean, the great thing is, and thanks, had a majority of you submit the survey you guys want a strategic plan that was good you you want a part of your annual budget process that's really good uh yes you want other adopted plans implemented through it that's really good um you want completion dates thank you uh as opposed to this will happen at some point in the future uh you the vision you guys were a little bit and One of the things when we get to this after break, it was the first sentence seems okay. I know there was even you and the staff had heartburn with that second sentence. Mission generally okay, maybe a little bit of tweaks and we'll get to that. Core values, again, there were some comments about core values, wait, they're too inward focused or they should be more outward focused. Well, they are expected to be inward focused. If I have a core value, And I tell my students this, and the reason I said, is there a recording on this? Because I'm teaching a class at university and a component of it's strategic planning. So I want them to kind of hear this, not me, hear you. The questions you were asking, I want my students to hear, because I think it's important because someday they're going to be in these seats and I want them to know what to expect. So I think we're OK on the generally on the core values, but we'll see. We get there. It's almost like the weather. There are five focus areas. I know this is where I should have woke up. Guys, I'm a counsel. Sorry, I didn't mean to call you guys. And I did. You had some problems with focus areas and told you where to call me. And I was like, this is what I've done for years. And I'm not a rigid guy, but I and then I was like, oh, this is why it Well, in any case, I woke up. So we're going to go through a strategic plan. In the last part of your workbook, you're going to have a great strategic plan when we're done. But you now are, I've also given you an operating policy that you and the council eventually approves this strategic plan. You need to adopt this operating policy because that tells you how And it needs some adjustments because there are some things that yesterday we talked about. It'll tell you how the plan operates. So when a new council member comes in, here's our operating policy. And it's great because it tells you every year during the budget, you update the plan. If there's a project added, you have to talk about staff's capacity to get that done. And there's a lot of other stuff in there. So really, really cool. Kind of like directions on riding the bicycle. You know, it's a good thing. So I'm not going to talk in detail about that today, but I put it in there ultimately for you to adopt when you adopt a plan to counsel along with staff. So we're going to start. You got a break? I got done in record time. Any questions on that? Before we take about a 15-minute break, please, let's make sure it's 10.30 p.m. I'm actually giving you a couple minutes extra. You got two minutes extra. So if you can come back at 1030 so we can get started in on these, you know, the next, the real work here. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for your time. Questions. Thank you.

I go see yes.

We're back offline.

Yeah. Yeah. Want to share the worksheet now?

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, got it. Misunderstood.

Well, and it's nice that you that you recognize.

Dutch brothers. Much better and I have a deal right?

I said that mine is so long. We got it yesterday.

I think we've got, oh, so let's get started. So, Council, we're going to start out by just your vision, the mission, and core values. I'm going to ask you for some key words, just things that in the future you would want to change in this. So, it's not like we're going to change it today, but from the From the meeting with the leadership team, they wanted to do the second sentence meets amending. First sentence needs a little improvement, more aspirational, and eliminate the city of. And so on your side, just other items that, you know, again, you'll, at a future retreat with the council, you'll refine these. But, you know, they're pretty solid that you've worked with them, you've had them. How many years have you had them? For a long time. So it's not like this is just like fine tuning. It's like, hmm, yeah, fine tuning. So what are some things that you would want to add? You would see that in terms of changes in the vision statement that hasn't already been mentioned by the staff here on the right hand side.

Just Stacy and I were just talking over here and What, we think 15 years ago these were adopted? Give or take, yeah.

15 years, you said?

So is there any, any, or are you okay with, does this look like the staff?

Seconds, first sentence.

Fosters and supports. Was there a reason why they wanted to eliminate? Second section.

I think the thought was that we wanted to simplify the vision statement. And so we felt like we could.

Take off the city of. I agree with that.

We also talked a little bit. And again, I think, you know, the plan is would be in council is is good with kind of what the leadership team has recommended. We would like to bring something back for your consideration, but also just making, you know, a vision should be more aspirational. You know, that a little bit aspirational.

Would it make sense to do on the second sentence instead of making it a set? say Flagstaff is a safe, diverse, just, vibrant, and innovative community with unique character and quality of life for all, fostering economic, environmental, educational, and cultural opportunities.

That's all. Well, I've been reading through your sets. It got a little.

Author asked Linda.

Thank you.

It's better be real. So, yeah, I took a lot of time with this and I tried to be blunt and honest. I actually, I'm not sure I've ever seen that vision statement before. I don't know where it exists. I like the mission statement, which I really do like because it's short and sweet and to the point. I find this I think it's so broad it could apply to any community. I don't think there's anything in there that says Flagstaff. And I'd like it to have something more that articulates what makes Flagstaff unique. So I'm just looking through my notes here that I turned into you guys. I think it should incorporate a stronger commitment to balancing resident, social, economic, and ecological well-being, while acknowledging that resources are finite and that we must live within our means. And I'm going to say this a lot today, I think it should contain a long-term or generational mindset.

What does that mean?

That we're not just thinking about today and tomorrow, but we're planning ahead. Just as a fundamental, you know, key component For me, that's a core value, and I'd like to see it repeated.

The thing that caught me was the quality of life for all. Yeah, we don't want that. I don't know that everyone in Flagstaff enjoys a really positive quality of life. Because of various factors and I'm wondering if instead of of that blanket. Statement if we could show some aspiration or helping people to achieve.

High quality life. I wish I had an opportunity.

See something coming. I agree with the mayor on that point, OK?

Said, although a vision statement is not a today factual, it's our vision to become right. It's something we continue to strive for. So then I struggle a little bit with taking that out because it's like we don't want to say right now we were ridded with challenges and. You know, we have a vision of what we should be, could be, and we strive for it every day. So I want to make sure we don't take away that.

This is a good.

So the great thing with this is we've taken notes here. The staff will come back and they can re-fashion a vision statement based on these that you'll consider. Let's, we can go now to the.

Can I just make a comment? I would say that was very,

consistent with things that we heard yesterday.

The mission statement is, this is the organization. And yesterday they said, you know, our current mission statement is to protect and enhance quality of life for all. Very simplistic and direct. Protect quality of life statement was from what is quality of life subjective second sentence from vision statement and what they talked about was maybe having a second sentence from the vision statement moved down here sorry this is great this is kind of like a game show is having that second sentence moved out here to the mission which does make some sense to give it a little bit more direction um And then adding exceptional public service. That was it. So here's the current mission statement. What does the council see and additional things you'd like to consider?

Yes. So again, as I just said, I've always liked this mission statement because it's short and to the point. It's pretty snappy and it's accessible. But since we're getting under the hood and tinkering at the risk of broadening the statement a little bit, or maybe some of this can go up above with the business statement or even with core values. And I'd like to see incorporating our intent to plan for the future. And it could also use a broader understanding of stewardship and justice or fairness.

Next one's core values.

That's the heart of the organization. You guys like that? Okay. Well, I guess it's the heart. Core values are all internal. This is what we every employee to understand to commit to when we are making decisions internally in the organization we want to make sure this is internal guys council excuse me and mayor council we want to make sure it's consistent with our core values everything we do is driven by our core values hiring everything so it's internal it's an internal focus it's really important I was telling the group yesterday, I remember our core values, fairness, integrity, respect. I added this one. Pardon me, as I remember when I added it, they were like, oh, what's wrong with you, Mike? Caring and honesty. Those were that. We called it FERJ for short. So yesterday they were talking about that, Delete excellence and transparency. It's covered by accountability and integrity. Add quality. Add something for stewardship and resilience. I heard stewardship, so now it's work. Result-driven collaboration, creative and innovative, and then honesty, respect, and trustworthy, ethical. Those things need to be kind of considered as part of it.

I was just curious about why it happens, but inclusivity or equity is part of core values up to now. I also agree with excellence being deleted only because I don't understand what that means in the context of core values.

And the I like that that staff included collaboration. I like that word better than teamwork. And Council Member House. said increased focus on service include responsive, responsible and inclusive local government.

And that was related to the vision or the vision, the mission. Oh OK, so I I haven't documented OK. Yeah, I'll just I'll just keep going here.

Awesome. Um, well, I don't like these at all. It feels like it describes how a corporate organization functions internally. You know, all these things, teamwork, accountability, integrity, transparency, they're great, but they don't really describe what Flagstaff stands for. It's not...

This is internal, right?

You know, I believe that our decisions need to be guided by values and principles, not just motivational buzzwords. I think all of that feel-good stuff will speak for itself. So some examples that I included, which I've already heard around the room, stewardship, fairness, inclusivity, fiscal responsibility.

I'm holding the democratic ideals constitution in generational thinking.

and committed to staff and employee education and continuing learning and improvement.

Just a couple of points. And Councilmember, I want to make sure that you know that we do have the survey results.

Well, I don't know that everyone in the room does.

But I would say, you know, we utilize these core values internally with our employees, like we use them through our evaluation process, for example. So kind of, I think, thinking of these in terms, I mean, I think that that's why we have the core values. Those were adopted later, correct? Those were, I don't know what year. So I just wanted to just make that point, not to your point, but just kind of overall.

I agree.

The ones I mentioned are a little bit more outward facing. Yeah.

Council Member Garcia, then Council Member Matthews.

So I wanted to speak to that point. City Manager, is there a place where we have more of what Austin's asking for of that outward facing more community value set that is part of this document?

That is a great question. Yes, we do. And the number of these are covered in your which used to be your community priorities, but are now your focus areas. A lot of this language is in there now. I don't see the democratic ideas, but employee education, learning and improvement, stewardship, all of that is either somewhere in the document in your focus areas or your strategies. So it's embedded in the doc. And those are important because those drive your projects.

And to me, it's important that we distinguish that in a way that if a community member opens this up and says values of Flagstaff, they look at it and go, how am I supposed to have teamwork as a community? But so it's more clearly defined for us.

Yes. And maybe it should be because these things are definitely in your community. Those community priorities already had them. Yes. They're already there. It's just now written as part of the document, the draft document you have. The great thing is these core values are, maybe we should name them internal core values, not core, you know, it's internal, which drive, and you absolutely need them as an organization. Because I don't know why this is so important, especially with these, the generation that we have now. that are coming in. They want to know what does your organization stand for. When I'm hired to work here, they want to know what is the core values of that work. They know the strategic plan is your community values and everything else. I want to know why should I come to work in this organization? That's what these need to tell us. Why do I want to come to work here?

Thank you. Having that initially clear guidance, I think, is also equally important. Thank you.

Matthew. Thank you. So, um, yeah, I thank you for clarifying that this is internal and not, this is what fact stuff is. This is, we are a corporation. We are a municipality company and that's how I'm looking at this as a organization with employees. What are the values that we want to expect of our, how everybody's treated and stuff. So I don't agree with all of the things said, but I do like, um, results-driven. Michelle and I were talking at the break, and we talked about the difference between the private sector and the public sector. And the private sector, you know, has the results-driven. They have timelines to get some stuff done. In the private sector or the public sector, not so much. You have your 9-to-5 job, and there's no motivation, a lot of times, at least historically, to be performance-based, right? You're just like, you're going to Work 9 to 5, whether you take on a new project or you don't. So I like performance or results driven. I think that's important and I think that's been a bottleneck in some of our processes and getting stuff streamlined is because there's no motivation behind it. I know none of the staff today do this, but I've known over time that sometimes they look at City Council. They're like someday you'll be gone. So if I just drag this out long enough, you know somebody else coming with a no idea. I think performance, results-driven performance is important. And I think that collaboration, I agree with that. I think that that's really critical that we work together as a team. So teamwork, collaboration can be the same. And respect, honesty, trustworthy, ethical. I think that, you know, that is expecting the way people behave, you know, on their job. It's respecting others and being trustworthy and being honest is important. So those are the ones that I would highlight.

And then on the screen you can see council member houses. I'm going to read them off, Stacy.

Yeah.

Service, responsibility, belonging, stewardship.

Others.

Innovation.

Others.

Adaptability.

I really like that and the well-being, especially however it's worded, that because if I was looking to come to work at the city, knowing that it's a place that wants its employees to be well and take care of themselves would be a big selling point for me. Mr. Amber Garcia.

Thank you. And I'm not, Council Member Matthews, I'm not doing this to push back against you. It's just to enrich the conversation with what you brought up, which I think is an important topic to discuss. And that's the difference between process driven and results driven. because results may vary. And if you focus, if we focus our employees on strictly results, they might take a tact that doesn't actually provide a good process for everything else that they're doing. I mean, we have variants, all kinds of outside factors coming into this. Now, to support Council Member Matthews, I think results are important, but I question, and I want staff to be able to kind of decipher from this comment, the difference between the results and the process driven for our staff and to see which one is most relevant to put in a document like this. So that way we play on the same playing field and have the same keel moving forward, or the even keel moving forward on each project.

Thank you.

Mike, I think what I would like to do is take this back to the leadership team, just come back and

to work on. Absolutely.

Internal court. We felt like we. That's some good input yesterday, and this has been very helpful as well.

This is. It's great counsel. I want to make sure all the comments are there that you provide this because the leadership team now has some guidance in terms of putting together a draft that you not only in your core values, but I assume the vision and the mission, but you also have this to do a check on, and then 85, maybe 80% of the way there, and then you'll fine tune it to 20% and we'll hit pay-through. Okay, so I appreciate it, Councilmember.

Is there room for a list for external core values?

Your external core values, Councilmember, are going to be your focus areas and your strategies. And if they're not, then you need to add them. because that's out we're facing. I mean, when you go to when you go to the community and we get one, that's why, you know, we're we want to make sure that we pause and are very you have honored the time that those are going to take. It's not something that we give the manager credit for this. Like, you know, try to compress that into the day. So once you get those, Once you have those focus areas, that's what is outward to your community. That tells your community, this is what we're going to do always, and this is how we're going to do it. Does that make sense? I mean, and if it's not clear, you need to make them clear. And that's why it's something that I don't think you, it's going to take probably a day to get through those. And do honor to them because you guys are smart and you're engaged and you want it done right. And we didn't want to rush it. OK, I hope I answered. Sometimes I ramble counseling. It sounds like we're getting to it. Yeah, you're OK. OK, I mean I I I you know.

I'm just more concerned about our outward facing values and what black stuff stands for. This does feel more corporate to me and employee. Right, it's fine. It is what it is. I would double down on

That's good. Okay, so what we're going to do now, and I just want to kind of do a little pre-reqs on this, is that, like I said, most communities I work with have five. You guys have eight focus areas. And that's good because seven of them are from your community priorities. What I did is I grouped and we'll get into those projects under those. There's two of your focus areas or community. They're now your focus areas, safe and healthy community and inclusive and engaged community and livable community. I have those as kind of one set of focus areas and strategies and I have projects together under each one of those since they're very similar. The same thing with your environmental stewardship and sustainable and innovative infrastructure. Very similar, so there's like one set of projects. What we're going to do is to start out, we're going to first review, and we're definitely going to come back. We're first going to review, and we really want your input, and I know there may be some additions and some changes on what the department heads came up with yesterday to see on each one of these areas, and then we're going to go back to what you recommended as the council on projects and do that. I just want to make under each one of the community priorities now called focus areas. So just wanted to make sure you're aware of that. And the staff is here. So let's, as we go up, we'll go to the projects now. And you already have the track changes for that. So the first These are council and we'll come back to those. We're going to go to the leadership team.

So before you go to this, Mike, I just want to make a couple of comments about staff's comments throughout this document. It was heartwarming, heartwarming to me. There was a lot of creativity, collaboration. So it was a really great discussion yesterday that I think have made this even better moving forward. So when you go through it, I just, you know, just think about it in those terms. Staff spent a lot of time yesterday talking about, you know, what we wanted this to look like and what we wanted our organization to reflect.

And this is your high performance organization area. So it deals with obviously high performance organizations. The first thing that staff looked at, and I'll go through each and then we'll pause. By the way, we will take a lunch break at 12, is an ERP rollout. And this is a, as you all can imagine, is a huge, huge project. It's going to be done in stages, but ultimately everything will be completed by FY30. And I won't go into details since we have the IT team tea director here if you have questions, but it's going to look at all your business processes and propose improvements. So this is a really, really good thing, a really good thing, because we had a session at the university where we had an expert in AI come in. And one of the epiphanies for folks in the room was, look, if you implement AI in a bad process, guess what you're going to get? You're going to continue to get bad results. So the thing is, is that, you know, focus on the problem process. So I'll stop there. Any questions on this?

On this one, and then I'll shut up, but this is one of the biggest things an organization could go through. It's a complete revision of the financial system we're using, our HR payroll, incredibly staff So it's a big project and one that's definitely necessary.

Is this the means by which we're able to have our budget interface with the community?

wants to make a comment, but that's the goal is having it all integrated. You might as well stay up for the next few.

Stand up, sit down.

Morning, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council. I'm CJ Perry, your Chief Information Officer. So yeah, the ERP kind of actually covers quite a range of modules. So as the City Manager mentioned, we've got our financial systems, payroll systems, human resources systems, utility billing systems, and our budget systems. So we're evaluating all of those kind of under the umbrella of ERP. might be a couple different software packages that we end up going with but this is kind of more that umbrella project that covers the whole suite software applications that we're looking at does it all get implemented at the same time or do parts get implemented along the way so we're going through the strategy session to effectively Lay out what that looks like, so I don't have an answer for you today. In about six months, I'll have a lot more clarity as to you know what that actually roadmap would look like, so it just it varies. This is a big system, so there's usually some sort of phase rollout, but exactly what those phases are and exactly you know what. I have motivation and.

What I've seen from the teams when we hear people out and having been through, although maybe several have, the overall goal, technology is really important, but the overall goal is to see how we can streamline processes, generate efficiencies, those types of things. So you see the technology, we'll see the addition of that second sense, which I think is one of the most important pieces of this, which is reviewing those processes in that aisle. where we can streamline and make improvements as well.

Did you run over all those subsystems again? I was taking notes, but I missed a couple. Payroll.

So yeah, finance, payroll, HR, budget, utility billing. Those are kind of the five we've sort of identified you know, broadly. Again, that could be one system. It could be multiple systems. We're kind of going through that process right now. Actually, we just completed. So we actually have a new procurement module. Huge shout out to Rick and Patrick and the team. We went with OpenGov. We're doing some business process reviews on that and trying to streamline some of that process. But that actually went live a couple months ago.

So you might just, I'm just going to stay up here. The next one is computer-aided dispatch records management system.

Yeah, and I'll give a quick highlight on that. There was a comment, you know, of renewing the hexagon last council meeting. So that's our current CAD and RMS system. So CAD stands for computer-aided dispatch and records management system for RMS. an older system, a legacy system. We're looking at upgrading. This is not new capabilities. This is not, you know, I know there's a lot of talk on some of the new things that the police department is doing. This is just replacing that software. Should be seeing a contract going to council. I think it's in two weeks. I don't have the working calendar in front of me. It's in the next couple of weeks. We're just finalizing the details on the VersaTerm contract. We went through an extensive process with collaboration with all of our partner agencies, the sheriff's office, NAUPD, the fire department, all the fire districts, all of that. We went through a really extensive process, demoed a lot of different software, looked at what other agencies were doing. First term was the one that came out on top and that we'll be going through soon. So we'll be starting implementation on that here very, very quickly.

Thank you. So

Or is that planning development services software?

So this is similarly our currently like our permitting process and a lot of functionalities in our current ERP attached to it. This likely will be a different piece of software. There's one or two ERPs that do have this in, but the majority of them do not. So we're kind of going through this as kind of a separate but parallel process with the ERP. So again, looking at business process improvement, as Mary mentioned, we're focusing on streamlining on process, making it easier. There's going to also be a lot more public input on that. So we're getting some of the contractors and some of the people that actually use the software from the external perspective as input on like, hey, what would you like to see what's what's difficult about our current systems so that we can put that into the requirements gathering process and make sure that the product that we select really works well for the community as well as for staff internal. It's a really comprehensive process. We're going on all of these. Any one of these would be like a huge accomplishment for an IT department. We're doing three of them at once. So see more gray hairs or maybe just lack of hair from next couple of years, you know why.

You're going to wonder, and we're going to get to that in just a few minutes. Water Business Systems Innovation Lab were replaced by, if you go to page, I think it's page seven, and we'll get to that by another, we're going to take an overall look at every single process in the city over a period of time. every year certain functions it's like and i'll talk about that the one that we had was a performance dashboard it's great that we're going to develop a dashboard organizational goals key performance indicators metrics and most importantly once you guys sorry once the honorable mayor council strategic plan You want to track progress, right? And that'll be really important for accountability with your constituents. And we want to get that done by 29. Questions on that?

And how the public interviews with it?

We don't right now. I think some of it is also the name to that.

because it also could be .

We assigned it to the financial planning team, which is the new budget team. It's basically the city manager's office and budget representatives and our management services director. That's the financial planning team. So we'll be talking about it and working on what that could look like.

Okay. This Climate Housing Task Force It's a collaboration of folks that we're going to be working on. And it's already happening. Staff is already doing it. And so even though it came out of recommendation of staff, it's like we're already doing it, the folks that are actually involved in it. And so if the council has any questions on this, we have folks here that can address that.

And just so, maybe you, I'm sorry I'm talking so much, but Mike, I think you explained this, but these projects, came from members of the leadership team. So when we talked yesterday, we kind of vetted some of these and actually, I think, educated each other as well on some things that were happening.

And that, thanks for clarification on that.

Just a clarifying question. Is the Climate Housing Task Force, would this question fall into this? Like I know that climate for sure. I'm not so much sure about housing when there's climate when there's a purchase like of a vehicle and stuff. I believe that they have input in when we are upgrading our fleet and I remember our last meeting before break we had two very large four by four blue cab vehicles for the new maintenance for the point right away and I was going to ask a question and I thought somebody else would and I just kind of waited to see the discussion but is that where that would go where there would be it would have been nice that we talked about why we went to a full gas vehicles for those two but at least have it footnoted in the agenda why we didn't do hybrid or something is that the input there or is that in a different area like what they would have

That process is actually part of the Fleet Management Committee. Okay. And I think in those instances, we included the form attached to that agenda item to identify that we do look at electric vehicles first, and we look at a hybrid, and then we look at an ICE or a combustion engine last. I pulled those forms and I just saw the work order, so I must have missed that. It's at the very bottom where they start to identify the specs of the vehicle, sustainability, fleet as part of public works, as well as the division are all in conversation.

So sustainability and fleet have a robust conversation about what's needed.

Yeah, they're not only part of that fleet management committee, but also part of that specification conversation. Is there anything that you would want to add?

No, I think it's a really interesting point that you pick up on, and I think we're trying to improve our methods and the staff summaries to make sure you understand that there is process. And I think as you articulated, Shannon, that fleet management committee and that evaluation is ongoing. And I think there's different, the only thing I would add is I think there are different objectives that are being met after that discussion. So this concept that all vehicles will be X is very, very difficult when you have an operation of the city that have so many different operational needs. So we've really shifted that conversation to be more of identifying the true operational need, not the smoke and mirrors operational need, the true, realistic, everyday operational need and matching that as best as possible. with manufacturer specifications and availability, outcomes of what the work to be performed could be. So oftentimes I think it's a very specific example that it is one engine type, but I think the analysis that the Fleet Management Committee and all those stakeholders share in the discussion of is much more broad because it takes into account so many different things other than just fleet.

I was just surprised because it is one of our objectives, our priorities, and it could have been that I dismissed it, that I didn't see at least comments about it in the summary, why the supervisor truck was a 400, and then why was it, you know, why did we need that? I'm sure there's a really good reason, but I didn't get the answer from that. And then why wasn't it hybrid? And so when the community sees that and they're reading like, wait, I thought you had a carbon neutrality, plan goal. And so, and I agree, we've had to pivot and buy our cruisers for our police department, all gas. Those are really legitimate reasons. I just didn't see the reason why there and I was kind of surprised because I don't know what is needed in the vehicles and just wanted some explanation of why that wasn't addressed in a summary.

Thank you. Very good feedback. I think it reminds us on why we're doing that staff summary process so that you have all the information you feel comfortable with and the community has full transparency. That's our goal. So very good suggestion and we'll continue to refine that summary process.

Thank you, Council Member Spence. Could we hear what CCE stands for?

Communication and Civic Engagement.

Communications.

Communication and Civic Engagement. That's the division.

Thank you. we'll spell that out yeah we'll spell that out the final plan but in fact that's the next project to develop a comprehensive communication strategy for um public warnings and to have that done by 28. music to my ears okay but the next one is again we're going to get the organizational review you'll see in just a minute succession planning um you're going to be quite that's something like hr is currently working on so a 20 succession plan for most of your house identifying your critical positions that you definitely want to make sure that um place any questions on that council Now, this is wonderful. Every single year, and this will be the city manager, will identify specific processes within the city that, and obviously that'll be, as I assume, as part of the strategic planning process and bring to the council, these are the processes, maybe four or five processes to look at. All of that will be engaging employees that are the ones that are most knowledgeable about that process an improvement. What that'll do, along with the work that you'll be doing with your software, your ERP, but also as Director in AI, you'll be able to, that'll be a major improvement. I can tell you unequivocally, most cities never, never, never look at their policies. So this is a big step forward.

Any questions on that one?

So I see the responsibility area included city manager, but are we going to engage community input? Because that's probably the number one theme I hear is bottleneck in the processes from the people that actually have to utilize that service or that department and stuff. And so glad to hear.

Yeah. And council member, I think it will be both. I mean, yes, we hear a lot from the community. We also hear some of our own. processes as well and we haven't again quite kind of figured out what what this looks like and I don't want to frighten anybody by talking about AI but I think it's an opportunity to look at just make it you know more efficient and effective external customers the last one for the staff and then we're going to go back to all of the councils

Yes, it is. This came up, the streamlined boards and commissions and review and improve infrastructure. It sounds like we're working. So we wanted to help you with staff and opportunity to talk with you about that.

Sure. So we're currently, my office is currently working with a couple of members of the leadership to review all of our board commissions, look at their your responsibilities, you're looking at areas in which we may improve some efficiencies within our boards and commissions. So we are working through that right now. We're hoping to move that to council with some recommendations early next year and get some direction from you all. It's an exciting endeavor for sure.

to your report. This is from your surveys. There was a this this workforce housing assistance. Workforce housing and I want you to kind of there say. Staff, if you look on page 17, I think 24 or excuse me, let's start at first page 13. 17 and 24. There's all references to housing focus on projects to improve housing, housing affordability, those type of efforts. So what I would suggest is when we get to those pages, if those don't address what the objective was here, we need to come back and revisit this. But there are at least three initiatives that staff came up with yesterday that are, you know, we're going to do X, Y, and Z to do that. And I'd suggest let's, when we get to those this morning or after lunch, you can say, well, yeah, but there's still something missing, we'll come back. Is that okay with the council? Yes. Now childcare support was, yes, let's pause on that one there. Expand initiatives. improve accessibility to affordable, high quality child care for residents and employees. That was one of your and again, these were not from the just maybe one council member, but I wanted to make sure everybody you know that I got every idea up here, but child cares. Actually looked up last night and there are cities that are, but it's expensive. Like I didn't know Pima County actually has where I live.

know they they sub they provide a subsidy that's well so mike oh go ahead counselor one thing excuse me one thing that pops into my mind my mind is are we in this uh category are we trying to model a program for city employees that might be replicated by gore or NAU or the hospital for childcare support. I see it's both for residents and employees. Employees means city employees, I guess, for residents. Back to the workforce housing, we've identified that as a priority That we want to see. Action on workforce housing. And as we've identified that priority, we see that any that we see that the FUSD has. Come up with a program for workforce housing. Property they own mountain line is coming up with workforce housing so. There's progress being made in all sectors, but in terms of city action item, a city project, are we thinking of child care support as being a model program that serves employees but would also be a model for other agencies in the city?

This is one of your items.

Yeah, this is the council. Yeah, it's really, this came from the council, one of the comments on the council survey, and it's, and Council Member, you did exactly, you know, it's like, so with every city, we've got a wheelhouse of things that we do that are expectations from our community, the basic services, but there's also, in the case of Flagstaff, you've got some really enhanced services as as protections to and well-being of your your citizens the question becomes is this something that's in our wheelhouse i mean it's very very expensive it's being addressed by a lot of other folks um and what you know what you know how i think one of the council members that said how do we do this so if you can't answer why why would we do it and how we're going to do it then we But it came up and just just might go a point.

And Heidi, I'm not trying to put you on the spot, but I know. You're involved in this. She could she could hear OK.

Yes. Partnering with United Way. Yes, child care.

Even updated.

But actually, what we started to do was we actually put money toward having someone work through the United Way. I don't know if we call them a United Way employee. I'll get that information for you and put it in the chat. But we actually have been funding somebody to get started on this and to look into how we can do better child care services. But by no means were we thinking that that would reside in this division. Just kidding. No, I'm just saying that we don't feel like we should be the ones. You're happy to partner with people and to all rolling. So this Archuleta, the United Way president had hooked us up with somebody. I think the person's name is Becca. Yes, and I don't know if she's full time or 32 hours, but at any rate there's. And they are going to be coming back to you. around January to discuss where they're at with all of those things. I think that it's an initiative that we could dabble in, but I don't know that it's an initiative that the city should be actually leading.

Potentially it could be a continued partner to expand initiatives if we want to keep it up.

So that's because I can't speak for all employees, but Expertise lies elsewhere outside of the city and it's. We do a lot of work that is partnering with local agencies and nonprofits, and we provide funding to certain entities as our partnership in achieving that goal. And that's kind of how I see this. I mean, it's definitely. This is a quality of life issue and an economic issue, but I see it as more of we are helping those with expertise to expand initiatives.

So just to add to that too, childcare is a really critical need in every community and ours, and it affects the workforce. If they can't go to work, I like saying that we can look at partnering and help support because we just can't take on every problem. Our budget already is falling short on some areas. City manager has talked about we have to look at retraction on some stuff, but championing United Way and some other programs or things just to help them expand their programs. I think that's the way to go. I don't think we should have a direct involvement in anything. And also, this goes back to our conversation we had a couple months ago about, and the mayor made me remember it, of all the organizations we do support, you know, maybe annually reevaluating those. Some of them are contracts, but until they, before they come up for renewal, is that, you know, with so many needs in our community, I want to make sure that we're looking at those regularly so we can say, yes, those are not that they're less important, but we've got bigger critical issues than that. And then workforce housing, as Spence mentioned, there are some good projects out there. I know I've had conversations with the city management team and housing and planning and zoning about just kind of changing some codes. And I hear there's some hiccups and just some of the things that could make it easier to incentivize developers to bring those in. So I think, I don't know if it fits there or in another place. And I know LASCAP might work on some of it, but I understand that the incentive program for affordable housing has a component for 150% AMI for home ownership, but our zoning is only 100%. But if we change that, it's, with other things that get complicated. But I think we can work on that and find a solution. And that would be a really great, easy fix in my mind, because I'm not a zoning person. So I just change the number on there. But also, you know, I've heard some other developers that say, this is not my wheelhouse. And so I think maybe opening up more opportunity for them to invest in a pot you know, for workforce development that another product we can take on might be something to look at. And I don't believe we have that capability right now. But if a developer said, look, I only know how to build this type of product. I, you know, I don't know how, you know, I'm not going after tax credits and other things that are affordable or for workforce. But if he contributed to a pod or that was an option for them, I think that

might be utilized and help us fund some private partner public partnerships i'll be brief about the uh council uh the child support side of things but i'm thinking of the word externality when it comes to that and i might be a little bit off base with that but as uh i want the con the conversation to continue if that's part of the action item that we're going to have. But I think in general, it's just if we could contextualize it under affordability, it's just to me another thing that adds up to affordability in a conversation. It just happens to be one that is highlighted and accentuated these days because of the rising cost of everything, including that. So whether we keep it in this document or we move it out, I still want to have a focus on it.

That was a great point. We're going to get to the workforce and affordable housing when we move into the other focus areas. On this one, what we're thinking about, just thought would be, because we're already doing it, is partner to support initiatives, correct? We're partnering. We already have that. It sounds like we already have that. That improves. So it's something we're already doing. The division, I will be...

I just want to make sure that the reason why we were supporting it as a position, it's not a position that we're overseeing, is that that's the partnership. But we will never be able to do an incentive like we do with businesses to say, oh, as a resident, you can apply for this and get money for your child care. We just would never have the funding or the capacity for that. But we do have the capacity to be a partner. to a solution that maybe United Way or others would come up with.

Is this accurate?

I think partnering is good. We cannot be the main people that solve this, but we could be participating. And the way we feel the best to participate was to help with that position.

We're going to have this as ongoing.

Of course.

It's ongoing. Okay. Employee wellness. This came up. I don't know if we have a wellness program. It's not a wellness program. So is there a particular component that, you know, we already have wellness and maybe, so is this something?

Yeah, and I personally feel very good about our wellness program that we have through NAPEPT. Brian, I don't know if you have anything to add on this one.

Yeah, we. Can I speak from here? You're really loud.

Sure, so.

Excuse me, Ryan Saxby, your HR Risk Management Director. I mean, this is an ongoing initiative that we do partner with NAEPPT. We have a benefits analyst in my office that regularly promotes, advertises, emails out wellness events. We've kind of put our wellness program under the larger banner of our Flagstaff Summit Learning Program, which is a map. We call it Trail Aid. So our safety and our wellness events are programmed under Our trail aid program. We regularly have conversations with EAC as well. Employee Advisory Committee on ways to promote Wellness. I think where we lack maybe is the outreach component in the advertising, so that's really where we're putting our efforts there. The wellness programs exist. They're pretty robust, just the response and the attendance isn't necessarily where we'd like to be, so. I see as putting a lot of investment in advertising it better. And that's starting with sort of the campaign around marketing our wellness programs.

This has already been done. So it's, we're going to, is it okay just marking through? Yeah.

On the forecasting, on the forecasting.

Just a minute. Just a minute.

Yeah, I'm going to advocate for that not being marked through as already done. We are doing a lot of things with wellness, but this is an expansive conversation that I want to keep advocating for. We adopted the resolution to work towards being a recovery-ready community, and this is a huge part of that. The initiatives that we're part of expand beyond just physical wellness or well-being. It's also inclusive of mental health and well-being, trauma-informed workplace culture and practices, and supporting the overall and inclusive health of our team members. And I don't think that we are fully there yet. So I'm going to advocate for that not being crossed through. but looking at ways that we can expand that to truly be fully focused on the wellness of our organization.

We have that in our program now, the mental health. Sure.

I mean, I can speak to, we have our, of course, our employee assistance programs available to all of our employees. I don't want to put the Chiefs on the spot. That's a citywide contract, so you're right. Post traumatic and mental health issues. Chiefs, anything you want to add on that?

You don't have to. I mean, I think it's paramount and it's impressive. I thank everybody and especially when I don't think we'll talk, but at the end of the day, at the end of the day, I mean, watching what we went through with Ranger and so many of these other things. And Mark's been through a lot with his membership, having upping the game with redemption, having a brick and mortar facility with over a thousand touch points now, having him come in and do crisis work almost in real time. It's been instrumental in our wellness. And I think we're starting to reap the benefits of that. in what we're seeing in our morale and our retention and our recruitment. So it's huge on a whole host of levels. You've heard me talk multiple times about how important it is for a firefighter and a police officer to be well when they're out doing their jobs and their community members. It's awesome.

They're in particular situations with the terrorists, I believe. We've called on them, unfortunately. couple of occasions to assist our employees outside of public safety uh you know unfortunately that's not that's the wrong word it's a fortunate thing that we they were available as an unfortunate situation that led to it um council member house i mean absolutely agree that this is an ongoing area that we can continue to create partnerships and work through uh ways that we can employ you know improve the work-life balance and and find resources for mental health and post-traumatic issues. But I am proud about what we have done. The City of Flagstaff, I mean, having redemption and some of these just, it's available, you can go. That's not in every city in the state.

And to the trauma-informed work, I mean, the ongoing, so staff has I believe all staff has been through that workshop of trauma-informed. Am I correct?

Yes, we've done quite a few things related to trauma-informed. Come together and discuss things that they do to be more trauma-informed to support each other, as well as that extension to how we engage with our community.

And we've had the training with the Coconino Coalition for Children and Youth. So do you see that ongoing, continuing to help employees with how to handle trauma in their own lives and trauma at the workplace, especially those frontline staff members who deal with the public in various states of agitation.

Yeah, recognizing when others might be experiencing trauma and how best to deescalate and engage. Yes, there's a refresher that we're currently in the process of finalizing with Virginia and the small working team that's been heading this project up. And so that would be then added to the HR training. Brian's team has been developing a site where folks can go in and access reports of coalition. They can see events that we have and then it also links to the refresher training and then even previous training, right? If they weren't here when we did some of those initial things, they can still access those materials to learn.

Because I agree with Council Member House at This is a critical component and invaluable to providing for our employees. But on this chart. Are we looking for initiatives because if we're doing a lot of the work or did we keep it on there so that it's top of mind or I got kind of sidetracked on. we release something on and if we take it off and when we add it. So if we're doing the work and we've done a whole list of things, does it stay on just to stay on or because we're engaging all of these things, it can come off now?

Well, it's obvious that you have an excellent wellness program, and I don't want to speak for the council member. What I'm picking up, which I don't necessarily see in here, is the mental health. Is that correct?

That's the redemption.

It's more mental as opposed to physical?

Yes, that's part of it. And I think my argument for keeping it here is if we're crossing things off because they are complete, that's one thing. If we're crossing things off that are ongoing, I think that signifies a deprioritization in my mind. And this is one thing that I, I mean, I'm speaking through a very sore throat right now because I'm so passionate about this needing to stay on. This is something that I don't think we can symbolically or really deprioritize if it's ongoing efforts and we're still growing and learning in new things. I mean, the expansion that we did over the past years or so, a couple of years or so in the behavioral health work with our police and fire is emblematic, I think, of how important this is to our overall community. Arizona is, as a whole, a behavioral health desert. And Flagstaff, in particular, is a community where we have struggles when it comes to overall wellness programs for our physical health, struggles in overall programming for behavioral health, and connecting that to the vitality of our community when it comes to overall wellness. And as we say in our current mission statement, protecting and enhancing that quality of life, this is a core component of quality of life. And so I'm gonna fight tooth and nail to keep it there as a priority.

Yeah, council member, this is Joanne, just to add in, I mean, we're not, We'll keep it on here and we're not deprioritizing anything by striking things out. I think what I will say is if we have everything on here that's ongoing that we're working on now, the strategic plan would be 500 pages. But I mean, I think we all understand the mental health component and we've added it back in here and included it as ongoing. So. I appreciate your comments today. They're thoughtful.

And I agree 100% with the manager. I think this council member is a great one to add because it has a huge upside to the benefit in terms of employees' well-being and their health. It's great. But not everything has that benefit because we may have things that you see where I'm going. This one, mental health is a critical component. And that's a lot of things that employers ignore And if you have those issues, if an employee has their issues, their productivity goes. So there's a huge benefit to adding to keeping this. We can't keep everything that we're doing because there's not that benefit. So I think the manager is exactly right. So that one stays in. It's going to be ongoing with our forecasting. We had a discussion on this yesterday. We're already doing financial forecasting. finance department is doing it was one of the recommendations projects recommended by internally, even by staff or by the leadership team. But we want to drill, you know, and it's, we're about a little over 15 minutes away from lunch. Want to definitely get through this list. Want to drill and make sure there's something that, you know, we're saying financial forecasting is okay. That's what I heard yesterday. Yes.

I would advocate for leaving this on. I think it's a, I know we talked about it yesterday, but I think having that.

Okay. So you want to enhance who's responsible for that?

I would say the financial planning team.

Financial planning team, okay.

And we are doing this. The ways that I know that we're doing this, and I bet we're doing it in ways that I'm not even aware of, is like bonding for projects, we've talked about many times big projects that are coming down the pike and about when we're going to have to consider going to the voters and what comes to mind is wastewater treatment. But there are other big projects that we have been planning for for a long time. But I think you can never not have this top of mind because it is so critical.

And I know you use the word strategic forecasting, but wouldn't strategic planning, what we're doing now, be part of that too? And we're just starting this, right? But isn't strategic planning, doing a strategic plan, be part of the forecasting? Would it go somewhere else?

This is strictly, I understand, a lot of cities will forecast out five years, 10 years, and it's really, really important because if you as a council are making a decision now, what's the long-term financial implications? So this is aligned directly with your budget, the decisions that you make, but some of it could include strategic plan items.

Yes. Why I was tying it together in my mind was because they have to align, right? Yes, ma'am. Our strategic plan to get there so we can forecast has to say, you know, our strategic plan is to implement this or have this by FY28 or 29. They just kind of went together. But I could be.

No, I don't think you're wrong. Because, like, let's say the ERP. I tell you one thing. esteemed IT director brings that there's going to be a cost associated with all of that. So that's going to have to be put into your, your financial forecast, but it's driven by what I said earlier about the strategic plan. Some items are just, some items are going to involve you, you, the staff, just work times. Some of them are going to involve financial.

Yeah.

Can I suggest potentially retitling the category is a, long-term planning and financial forecasting other than forecasting improvements. Improvements could be part of it, but I think the overall goal is really going to be long-term mindset and financial forecasting. I think that works.

Maybe what we really need is the outward facing communication about that we already do this and and helping the public to see the ways that we do this?

I think that will be part of it, Mayor, because I don't want to . It's on the website.

That's one of the first questions I ask is, trust me, a lot of some public organizations don't. They just make a decision and, well, we'll see how it goes when I'm off the council.

Would we want to treat this one similar to the wellness where it's really more of an ongoing? Or do we want to date associated with it?

I think ongoing.

You want this ongoing? Okay. Okay. That's important. So the next one is the cultural improvement. Strengthen organizational culture by promoting collaboration, accountability, innovation, and employee

That's culture. I'll give you my speech on culture, but I'll save you.

Can I just get some questions?

Yeah.

Hold on.

We're trying to understand.

Isn't this elsewhere throughout

It is embedded throughout. I mean, there's, you know, there's the projects and stuff to address. I think that we'll get to, but this was just, it was on there as a potential, but it doesn't look like there's.

I think what, oh, sorry, go ahead, Councilman.

Just one thing that could be added would be whistleblower protection. Oh. Encourage people to come forward without fear of retribution. Suggesting there's a need for whistleblowers in our organization, but if something comes up, I would hope that we would protect somebody that. Says hey, there's a problem.

A lot so yeah, there's there are legal protections for that already. Legal protections that are in place and yeah,

What was that?

All employee picnic.

They pulled back, right? Cultural improvements earlier I stated inclusion, but I think that it might be more important that have established here as well.

I think maybe one thing that I would like to suggest is. When we take back the discussion on the internal core values of the leadership team, I think I feel good about our culture, but I mean, I always believe that you could strengthen a culture. I think the entire leadership team would agree with that as well. If we bring this back with the discussion on the internal core values, take it out of the strategic plan, Project? It's a constant project where we're continually working on this.

I mean, for me, to get back to being serious, I don't know what I don't know on this topic. I mean, where is culture right now on a scale of one to ten?

Did you get a different answer from everybody?

We do regular employee surveys, and we present those to council during the So that's something that we can bring back then. But yeah, I mean, I think. I mean, our responses are always good. On a scale of 1 to 10, I'm not sure. So. Is it? So a lot of these words were used in the

core values for the internal employees. Like this is what we want our organization to provide. So that's the only thing I'm thinking about when I look at this culture improvement. We've already put it into the institutions.

So does it need to be here also? It's more of a technical question about the strategic plan document itself.

Like a lot of those, accountability, collaboration, innovation, employee engagement, inclusion, equity, those were, maybe not inclusion and equity, but those were in the core values of the company that we need to add in here.

Okay.

Okay.

So it sounds like we're going to discuss that as part of core values. So the next one, because moving ahead, because we've got a lot of ground to cover the rest of the day on these projects. The public, were you okay? Okay, public involvement in code enforcement. We have a number, or just let me go back to my notes here.

Let's see, when we get to, thank you.

First of all, we're going to have a whole public involvement and engagement outreach we've already talked about, but there's also a as part of the public communication plan. But then when we get into the latter after lunch, there's a component that deals with looking at the overall community, not just the code enforcement, but every aspect of it that I think will cover cover this. This project. But I'll pause there and ask the Council what were your thoughts on this?

Public involvement in the current.

Improving code enforcement needs to be in the plan somewhere, and that includes education with the. We've made some improvements. I think we've been understaffed for a long time and management is working on that. I don't know. I guess I'm unclear about whether this is the place for it to be or if there's another place that's more appropriate for it. But to me, code enforcement is one area where the city really... And Mike, go ahead and jump in.

There was on page 11 of your... There was a long discussion on this yesterday. We wanted to, as opposed to throwing the... You know, a narrow net on this is a wide net. It's a thing called neighborhood quality initiatives. That's important programs, and this is how it reads. It's actually yeah, that's one of the council item is a implement programs and enhance neighborhood appearance, liveability, safety and community pride. And that's one of your that's when we get the page. When we get to the focus area. What's it called straight? livable communities, which is on page 9. So we're going to talk about that.

Strategies specific to address.

OK, yeah. Place it, but I definitely want an exclamation point on this side to ask me.

So we're going to highlight that, but it's again. Yeah, but it is a it's definitely yeah, it is. Can we get the page? 11 will get that. OK, we. We have we have lunch guys. Council members honorable Mayor Council we have lunch. What I want to do is this is really critically important is because we've got a lot to cover. We have a lot of projects to get through and. We want to get you out of here. Yesterday we got in around 3.30. We want to get you out of here before midnight. Please grab lunch and we're going to start up right at 12.30. Right at 12.30 we're going to start. We had an issue with the delivery.

They didn't bring everything. We maybe go for another. Oh, we're going for another 1520 minutes. Yeah, let's go here. So. We can move and get at least start on. So I think we. Let's move to.

This is under, so there's two other, two focus areas, the safety, safe and healthy community. There's also livable community. Those are on pages seven through nine. Projects, we're going to start, we're going to come back to your projects. We're going to start on page 12 with the leadership team project. Okay, so one of the things, and we're going to come back to yours. Leadership team was, one is, Evaluate opportunities to strengthen housing authority to address housing affordability and availability. And this goes back, again, to a major priority of your community priorities. Also, I know the council's values in terms of affordable housing. And that's going to be housing and the city manager. And the idea is to combine 28. Do you need any additional information on that? Staff's here to address it.

Sarah Dar is online, but this is the discussion that we're currently having right now to look at the creation of a nonprofit to support our RAD redevelopment and other potential housing projects that we're looking at as well.

So the description is evaluate opportunities. Does it take to FY28? I mean, you just stated what you guys are considering.

I would hope not.

I just, the speed of government, I'll never get over it, but hopefully it'll be. Is there any way we can get out to FY27? I mean, this has been a priority for the city for decades. We have a housing crisis. As you know, I'm not telling you anything Sarah but just this is the thing that gets me and the community is evaluating talking about what is what opportunities we have and it's going to take us two years to figure that out just seems excessive like can we put more urgency in there mayor vice mayor council member Matthews um yes

We can, in my head, that was when we were finishing a piece of it, not the evaluation piece. So I would be happy to put FY27 on that. I put a FY28 because that was the date in my head we would be finishing a piece of it, not just the evaluation. So happy to move that up.

Just so that we're clear months from now when we're reviewing this to say evaluate and complete.

If we can say evaluate and complete, I would like to leave it at 28 because there are a lot of different pieces that will have to fall into place in order to complete, and I don't see having that done in 27. If we can, we will, but if we leave it at evaluation, then 27 is great. The 27 is July.

Next year. Yes, end of June of this at 27.

End of June of 27, some of the pieces may be budget dependent that we won't have answers to until that point in time. So the evaluation piece, yes, absolutely being completed with the other pieces. There could be some budget dependent decisions to be made there, which makes me hesitant to say we could be done by the end of June.

Thank you.

So these next three are already under, as I understand them, are already being done by the city. The partnerships, substance, obviously substance abuse partnerships and the wildfire protection programs. And so, again, all of these were generated from the leadership team and they were just, are we in? kind of as part of their surveys. But then we drilled down into it yesterday. They're already being done. And so the question becomes, if they're being done, it's actually become a routine part of what you do. And do they be in the strategic plan? No. That was the discussion from yesterday. But I wanted to be sure that if you had any questions on these, there are folks here to address them. Next one is flood, flood mitigation. Yes, we're going to continue to plan, implement infrastructure projects. Yes, and that's going to, it's going to be our service and it's ongoing. That's a big deal.

So would that also be considered something that is just baked into what we do and it doesn't need to be in the strategic plan?

We had a we had a good conversation about this yesterday because we were talking about specific flood control mitigation projects like the Rio de flag for example.

I we have the same conversation is we're just doing this ongoing. So do we really need to have it? But I think the concern was is how significant Rio is and how close we are to really pushing that through that. We might not want to take this off just yet because we don't want our community to think that that commitment to that significant project that we've been working on for over 20 years is going away. So I think that was the crux as to a little bit longer while we have this major Rio project out there that we had done a lot with SPRUCE, you know, 180 and we continue and we will continue to have flood projects on goal.

And we might, As a team, we're going to go back and look at some of these projects. We may come back and that's a city in there.

That part development bond. That's just a bit just to evaluate and look, determine if you need to pursue it. That evaluation again, it doesn't say you're going to do it. It's that evaluation will be done by fiscal year 28.

parks. That was a big theme. I think there are council and leadership priorities.

And the next one is just the same. It's your airport is going to be doing a master plan, but that is to support and enhance improvements at the airport. And that will be done in 28.

And on this one as well, just also making sure that A part of this is looking at the financial sustainability of the airport as well as part of that planning process. And so again, we might tweak that language a little bit.

The park impact fees are going to we get the fiscal sustainability. We have a whole impact fee study, so that'll be that's on the last towards the last page of this document that you have. The next one is really, really important. program review, and that's to look at regularly evaluate priority CIP program projects.

And just on this one, the discussion is that we need a kind of a better way to look at our CIP projects and evaluate, you know, whether they shouldn't move forward, not move forward, and putting a process in place for that.

And this came up in, I think it may have been, I hope I'm not misspeaking, it's Council Member Matthews, I know some others, if you mentioned this, is explore expanding current programs to include development opportunities for employee housing. So when you're talking to a developer, and this may be changed to more workforce housing, but I know work He said, just let's get along. You know, those were how how were workforce housing next to me. I, you know, I remember when I was in college, I could fit everything I owned into my 64 Ford station wagon. So give me a break. We're all there one time. But in case this, I think, addresses what some, you know, some of you have brought up, but that's where We're going to focus on making sure when we talk to developers that, let's see if you can add some housing in for us. The next one is just, we're going to have to do a park. This is implement a park recreation open space, old master plan. You guys have an incredibly beautiful environment up here and recreation opportunities. And the idea is to have this plan done by 28. That will actually help inform if you're going to have to go, and obviously, you know, engagement, citizen engagement, education, but then we'll kind of set the table full on issue or... And the plan already exists, right?

It was fairly recently done. It was done in 2012.

Rebecca had to step away, but I'm actually in the process of doing it right now. OK, accepting public feedback. Alright.

I was just going to say we're actively in the master development in process. We've hired a consultant. They're reaching out to the public. They'll have a master plan within a year, so it hasn't been done yet, but it's actively going.

Next two and then we are lunch here. OK, we're almost. Can we? We've got three projects here and we'll I think that ends the list for now. When we come back, we'll start with, I think, to make sure. Yes, it does. So this is the end of the leadership team that will come back.

We'll focus on your projects at 1240. Is that right? Yes.

Renewable energy and battery storage. Waste prevention and community volunteerism are three projects from the sustainability department, all to be done by 2018.

Question for that.

On the waste prevention, we had conversations just ongoing about things that are not cost effective. So would it be helpful to put in there something about weighing, because we could do a lot of things for waste prevention that costs the city a whole bunch of money and is not really usually legal. Do we put that in there about weighing the cost or evaluating the financial impact or just leave it like that? Because we talk about recycling and maybe changing the recycle pickup and. Yeah, thank you. Scott may have a comment.

Thank you. Good afternoon. Thank you for this question. The waste prevention element here is specifically on outreach and education and informing our community members as well as well as our visitors on proper recycling and waste reduction opportunities. So we really just want to increase the resources in the community and to our visitors. So things like, and we've noted in here, for example, collaborate across divisions and event organizers. So really trying to minimize waste during special events and things like that. From the operational standpoint, I'll hand that off to Scott.

Well, that's a very excellent question. I actually think we will capture your sentiment and your questions in our solid waste rates study. Okay. that is underway beginning now but it is about a year's long process it'll take a while but i think that's where we're going to capture that analysis of service delivery expectations and cost thank you scott and i had a brief conversation today that we don't have that in our projects we need to add the solid waste i i would assume yeah and so obviously i did not list it as it's an action item we're working on it it's ongoing UNTIL IT'S COMPLETED THERE'S A NUMBER OF RATE STUDIES IN THE ORGANIZATION THAT PROBABLY AREN'T SPECIFICALLY CALLED OUT BUT MAYBE WE DO NEED MORE OF A IN BUSINESS PRACTICES CATEGORIES YOU KNOW RATE STUDY EVALUATIONS I THINK THAT MIGHT BE A LOT IT'S MORE GLOBAL CONSIDERED MORE THAN JUST SOLID WASTE REVENUE GOOD QUESTIONS AND WE JUST CHANGED RESOURCES TO OUTRAGE

there.

Other other questions?

Just here? Just here.

1240, we come back.

Please.

We just lost five minutes.

Five minutes? 40. We have to say thank you.

Yep, we are ready.

We're on 10. We're going to go back to your projects. And again, I want to kind of hold this one yet stronger code enforcement, but in a few projects down, you have also something about code enforcement. I think that's more global. What's the next project? Mike? Bike and pedestrian. If you go to this, it says expand and improve bicycle infrastructure for safe and active community. That is on page. Your focus area strategy is a major multimodal. You know, as a strategy that says that's something you'll do every single, you know, it's a major focus. When a specific project comes up, then that's when it actually goes from here's how we're going to do it to this is actually what's going to be done. So not sure exactly, you know, here if that's, if there was a specific project in mind or if that's enough to be covered in your focus areas.

Can we, I think yesterday, You know, we have a little bit of back and forth afterwards, and Paul Mood, I'm calling out your name to talk about the Safe Streets Master Plan and then incorporating this into that. Paul, do you see as an opportunity to have the Safe Streets Master Plan as a project and then incorporating the bike and ped?

Yeah, Paul Mood, City Engineer. yeah we're currently working i mean every project that we do that's road or like ted related we try to implement you know active transportation master plan and then we're currently working on the safe streets master plan which is looking at all of our different documents including the active transportation master plan but yeah we could we could definitely have the safe streets master plan as a project Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we're currently working on a safe streets master plan. You'll see some media outreach here pretty soon.

So Paul, can you talk a little bit about the active transportation plan?

I mean, it's already in place. Active transportation master plan is already in place and it really talks about just different areas we can focus on to help with bike and ped improvements. Like all of our projects, if you notice the Lone Tree project, the piece that we're doing on Lone Tree south of Butler that has the really wide bike and ped, it's going to have a protected intersection. So we're working on the streets, which is going to get the bikes off the streets. So we're going to bike and ped pass. We're doing it all for the project, the John Wesley Powell improvement project includes a foots trail.

Yeah, so every, you know, we're trying to do the the protected areas where we can.

Everything we do, we try to incorporate the active transportation master plan.

I think Mary has a suggestion on language.

I wonder if we could add Shades Street Master Plan, Shades Street Master Plan. I'm sorry, I just confined one sentence. History master plan is a project and include language that says that will address. Improved bicycle pedestrian. It both gets at the interest, but also gives a concrete thing for staff to work on and complete that.

Yeah, we're we're we're always looking for those opportunities. Councils recently approved the idea with Ada.

6.

That of course is ongoing.

Is this the place this needs to be or? Beyond this language where this appears later.

I actually don't know that we have later.

Yeah, it wasn't.

We felt like we missed yesterday.

Yeah, it wasn't what we were doing yesterday.

okay great um the next one is this is where i i uh language there's you know a couple of places where the council said coma and one here this is it's a little bit broader but covers um

appearance but the livability and the safety i'm not mistaken on page i think there is the one that staff supports today some of the proactive strategies no no no page numbers are also different

And one of these red lines. This one, if you search the word proactive, you should be able to grab it there.

Oh, there I guess we didn't grab it in the project.

Maybe we need to revise some of the project language to address Other. And one of the things we're discussing on break is maybe taking this one offline. You could explore specific strategies because it's helpful if you just.

Still trying to find out what that.

I think they actually social projects that were already implementing like the. In the median. Work is going to be. We're going to see a big difference when we take that on in a big way. Code enforcement. Those are two of the things that we hear the most from the community about is just that we need more code enforcement.

Medians like takes care of the medians. And a long term strategy for. When it. In neighborhoods if.

Defining who takes care of that median. So when a developer develops a community that has a median. Who's responsible? For that, does the city take that on or the developer? then we need to keep track of that so that we know who to call when it's not being done.

I think what we would like to do is kind of pull this together with the code items that we've seen and come back and bring back probably a couple of projects on this.

Who would do this?

CMO. Services.

I would want to talk with the team before I would. I think because I hear a couple different components. I think I heard from the mayor some clear standards for developers and understanding where the maintenance obligations lie thereafter. But then I also think I heard the potential of exploring the code itself for opportunities for some ways to proactively address issues as they come up. I think there's probably also a resource component to that that we need to understand. Just from a salary perspective, what our options are, which is why I think it's good to have that conversation and bring back some options.

And are there different approaches we can take to design our current code?

We're going to wait on the fiscal year for that one.

I think what I heard them say, though, is that we're going to bring back some specific projects, and so that would roll out with Council as we finalize this document.

Right. Yeah.

Okay.

But knowing what those specific projects are and what years they fall in, I feel like it's a little premature.

Council. Okay. So this fire preparedness education Council just approved a major that Stacey's going to undertake. Assume that it will include this.

No. Should this be a small component, I think, of this, but FIRE's got a pretty good campaign.

This was a matter for council.

Is there, do we need, where do we go with this?

I guess is there a feeling that we should be doing more when it comes to fully education?

I think there's always the opportunity to do more or to hone in on what's really effective. But it is baked in again to what FIRE does and to our overall community engagement. So I don't know that it needs to appear again because I'm sure that it appears later in, if we're talking about fire preparedness.

Taylor, I'm thinking this is something that we will be heavily focusing on this year. So I wonder if we leave this as a this year strategic priority.

We are in the midst of of the community wildfire protection planning process, and that is going to provide tools for us to not just education, but what we can do to help parking owners become more safe, resilient at their homes. And we are actively, you know, working on identifying potential state and federal revenues to assist the private home because it's very expensive in the building to carry out these home hardening acts. And then in parallel to that, we want to see soon a new body of codes that are coming forward and there are some pretty creative and innovative ways that we would like to see the community regulate additional development that by its neighborhood design will make the rest of the community safe as well. So we have a lot of projects in the wind right now. We're engaging in a great deal of effort and I see a Prop 204 kind of measures in there that give us more resources to carry out this panel. Where it lives, I'm not sure the correct answer of where it lives in the strategic plan, but I will tell you that it is going to be departmentally a part of our planning process and in line with this plan.

So it looks like we,

present that in 20 seconds. Next one is water resource management. This is mentioned actually by you twice. There's another on page 20. Also talks about water resources.

So I wanna hear a little bit more about this. Where does Flagstaff, where do you?

No, that's what I thought, no. Yeah, Lee Williams, Water Sources Director.

I looked at this yesterday and I think if we were to make a change, I would like to add protect and manage water resources and continue to develop our water portfolio. or continue to enlarge our water portfolio to ensure reliable, sustainable water?

I think I might be confusing myself as to whether things need to be spelled out here or are they included later in the projects?

later projects, but I don't believe there's anything. Yes, so. So these are going to be strategic. Yes, I'm sorry, the project.

Oh, these are your the Council raised.

Honorable Mayor, the council raised these and what now, you know, like we said before, this is a collective effort. We did not have staff work on these yesterday. We wanted to make sure you were here so they could work on them and you could hear what they had to say.

Okay.

Thank you.

You're welcome, Mayor.

What department?

Water services.

I'm going, yeah, definitely. Water's huge.

Okay. Libraries.

This is one of your enhanced library facilities. We do have a facilities improvement project that we're going to get into, or maintenance and upgrades and all that. But this looked like you wanted to enhance LIBRARIES AND THERE WHAT WHAT WE.

SURE WHAT. BEFORE YOU.

COMMENT ON THIS SPECIFICALLY I THINK IT WOULD BE ONE OF THE ITEMS THAT I THOUGHT ABOUT LAST NIGHT IS THAT WE DON'T HAVE THESE FLAG STAFF LIBRARY ON THE ON THE ON THE PROJECT LIST SO THAT THE TEMPORARY SPACE. I'M WONDERING IF WE CAN JUST KIND OF INCORPORATE

Makes sense.

I didn't save my name and my title for the recording. We apologize last time. Heidi Hansen, Econaut Vitality Director. As you know, we are, you just approved on Tuesday us relocating our East Flagstaff Library that needs to be relocated because of the CCC $100 million bond. We'll be doing that, and then we are currently working with a contractor for cosmetic changes only to the place that we are moving. And then we think we'll probably be in that location about three to four years, hopefully just three, and then while we're making discussions on the new library for 4th Street. And then we just did some major things with the main library, which you all agreed two years ago to do a Windows project, which is now completed. Thanks to Adam Miali and our library team for seeing that through. I'm not sure if there's anything else I can help you with on this, but we are continuing to do a lot of things for serving libraries here. Yes. Since we're in a

strategic plan frame of mind, I think we need to ask ourselves, looking a decade down the line, are we satisfied with our main library and our east side library, knowing that the east side library is going to be doubled in floor space compared to the existing east side library? the new construction. Approximately twice as much area to to work within. So strategically, are we happy and I personally am happy with two locations, but we need to be asking ourselves. Strategically long term. To the right number. I just bring it up the question Mayor Councilman

We're still in negotiation with CCC on the size of that library at East Flag, and Doreen Keene would probably know more about that than me. She's been working with Dr. Heiser. But there are other solutions to libraries, and there's things called pop-up libraries. And so even if we don't want to have another library, which you realize would mean another library to maintain and operate and staff with full-time and temporary staff, can be very costly and we already do rely on the general fund quite a bit for serving these libraries. But there are other solutions doing some pop-up libraries, things like that, that could actually be rotated throughout the community. That would be something that could possibly be maintained through with very little staff, but also opening up the library resources to areas of town that really don't come to the main or the East 5 location. So I've spoken to several library directors over the years about those types of options that I think we'd probably want to look into first before going to a third location.

And council member, I think this will allow us to look at items like that.

Yeah. Did we specify it?

Yeah, I mean, put that in there and I'll add that to Michael's Joanne and we'll continue to update you on how those would work in a community, maybe even create a plan that the rotation of that normally is really fun. And I've seen it. I worked with Linda Tilson, our previous library director. She worked on those and set the plan to the sea to me. And I'll work with Jennifer, our new library director, on something like that and see what we the possibilities could be. But I think that would be a lot more feasible financially for us to look at something like that.

Thank you.

Yes. Council Member Garcia, did you.

Yeah, I did, and I'm trying to stay is zoomed out as possible and not getting into the weeds here, so I don't know if this is appropriate, but when I look at the libraries, I'm looking at things that libraries tend to work on. That's, you know. abilities, the programs, the services now within those programs and services. Are we baking in staff? Training for for. See what I write down here. Yeah, I mean, for like trauma, response and mental health, because as we all know, the libraries here are are used for educational purposes, books, computers and all those type of things. But they're also a second home to the unhoused in a lot of situations. So I don't know if we need to put anything here that signifies that so we can keep on track with it. And if not, then I'm happy with keeping it inside of the services and the support.

See, we just had that training on August 10th. We closed all the libraries for a Monday. And we had all of the employees, as well as even our county affiliates, come to Flagstaff. And we did active shooter training. We did, I forget exactly what they called it, mental wellness training. And it was a full day. And so they all received all of that. They went through breakouts. We actually even did a press release. You might have seen it. where we let people know that you might hear would be gunshots outside of the main library, but they weren't real gunshots. So yes, we are committed to doing that at least once a year with staff.

Thank you. What year? Oh, where did you put it in?

29. So the next one is public gathering spaces. We're going to improve classes. community interaction. You also have this rose plant, and I'm not sure if this is incorporated. I just want to hear from the council on your thoughts on that.

Mayor, I wonder if we should include here our brief considerations up to this point. If we include a arts and culture district in this category. We've talked about it. We don't know exactly where to go. The Orpheum has been part of that discussion. The Indigenous Culture Center's part of that discussion. At the Mountain Rose Theater, Flagstaff Shakespeare Theater come before us with their master plan. In today's newspaper, there's an article about teacher at Fala who wants to buy the Fala property and have it be an arts center for our community. She's not asking for city money on it, but these types of facilities might fit under this category.

So if they are, if they're done by other entities,

Oh, but that's just an example of what could be considered. So you're saying an overall category about arts and culture district or?

And maybe this needs to be put in the same category that we put child care. It's there are other agencies in our community, nonprofits. Well, how to do child care. There are other people that know how to do arts and entertainment. So we don't have to get involved. Just support those organizations in our community that are doing the public engagement and public gathering spaces.

Council member, can I ask a question? So when you say support, do you mean financially support? Do you mean staff being a part of those discussions?

Or is it more explore partnership?

Yes, the Orpheum is a good casing point. We all know the historic significance and importance of the Orpheum Theater in our community. Should the city I don't have an answer for your question. I mean, it could be, yes, we put money into it or no, we step back and just support the other organizations in our community that are forward. You know, the Mountain Rose Theater, Dawn Tucker came before us with her plan for a theater complex. Wonderful idea. She wasn't specifically asking for City Month, and she's now fundraising to make it happen. I don't have the answer to this. I'm just wondering if we should include it under public gathering spaces, this kind of amenity in our community.

I don't know. I don't want to leave it open because I don't think we know that council.

We don't know if it will be or that will go and I would hate for us to say no, absolutely we're not going to help financially. So I like kind of it big where it's exploring opportunities for partnerships and support or partnerships, but something to allow it to be a little more open.

And I'm using the ORFAM as an example, but who knows what will come out. It's probably our office, city manager's office.

I'm going.

I will tell you that these do take a lot of time of staff. Just going to put that out there. Who knows?

I do support what David is saying only because like we, how are we going to become a hub of arts and culture if we don't have it? Thank you James.

Yeah, this this one we've already taken care of, so we can strike it that child curious.

I would just like to address that other comments. Yeah, because that what's in here seems a little different to me. I'm sorry, Center Manager, to interrupt, but it seems like a different... So we do have a lack of event space for the events we have now. Hullabaloo, cornucopia, you know, we kind of shoehorn them into the fields that we have, but those were built to be athletic fields, not event spaces. So our event producers are able to make them work, but at high cost to them, they have to bring in restrooms, electricity, fencing in a lot of cases can be very expensive. So in our master plan that we are doing, that has already come up as a topic of conversation for the E part of PROS. We know that we're lacking event space. I don't know if you want to combine them or keep or make the arts and culture district a little separate. I did want you to know that we are addressing. At least the idea of the lack of event space in our.

Pros on here to them. Thank you. Force health.

you know, support, force restoration, fuel reduction, et cetera. And on, this is definitely one of your, under one of your strategies on page 18, but the question became, is there a specific object that you're looking at to implement here? If I'm on page 18, it says when we under under the focus here, environmental stewardship, it says safeguard. Blackstaff's natural resources now by advancing science based policies and practices that restore a healthy and sustainable environment, which is essentially making sure that those practices related or science based result oriented. So it's definitely a focus for once you through these strategies at a future meeting is that everyone in this room is going to focus on, but we just wanted to know if there was something in particular that you wanted us, you wanted staff to do.

I have a mask under here.

That's sort of a low simmering goal, but it's definitely something that keeps coming up. Ultimately, I think we want it as part of our energy portfolio. Oh, let me add something about keeping tabs with.

That's developing.

Sounds good.

What would be? How do you describe that? Or just?

I think it all falls into fuel reduction,

And I, there are discussions happening on biomass to keep us on our priority list.

NEU is a huge partner in that conversation. Water services.

I'm telling that. I can't understand this. Actually, Scott has been involved in this discussion. Yeah, before we move on to the next one, I wanted to go back to the high performing governance and a comment

you may also remember as one about the privacy task force so i think we have a suggestion to add that as a project in there i'm wondering about adding a product specific to um that's an umbrella surveillance policy would following that

It's broader to address some of the principles and then kind of how we've pressed against those principles, but I think that we could potentially add that interest into something we're planning to bring back in this current fiscal year in FY20. We'll add that to the list as well.

Am I scrolling?

Hey, I remember that with weight.

That's great.

We already put in those language for data.

They wanted it under performing governance.

Got it. OK, we're going to move to real class and resilient economy and then it starts the projects for that. But the leadership team and then we're going to come back to the Council starts on 16 page 16. First one is housing authority. Before you take care of that. Development review process. Staff talked about that yesterday. I want to nail this down by eight. Yeah.

I just want to offer some context here. The discussion we had yesterday was we're actively reviewing and are going to be spending some time this fall looking at the development process, both on Planning Development Service Society and. What we talked about is that realistically, if there are changes proposed, some of those might not finish rolling out until clear. So I just want to be clear that. We listed that as a conservative date, but that that conversation is actually occurring this fall.

And I would imagine that the last cap. As that's been. A priority for some time. There's a lot of staff focus on that. It gets presented. We prioritize which codes need to be updated or amended and. I would imagine that that discussions about this also have come up when you're talking about tab, correct?

So is that there's the safe streets master plan numbers that are underway then? Overhaul the presentation seek to address repeatable costs, meeting standards, developing typologies. So we want to make sure that as we're exploring both of those processes, we don't do something here that then process up something else there to look at all those pieces as well as you'll see later on looking at understanding things like an opportunity to review our impact fees and what that process looks like. this was kind of a marrying of all of those efforts.

Oh, yeah.

Vice Mayor and then Council Member Matthews. Is there a way instead of it saying, having it say FY28, but in there saying this has started, like we are doing this now so that public facing.

I want to be continuing to streamline. Is that? And I like continue. Sorry. Yeah, it's a nice.

Again, is this under? This is an economic. Let's go back here. Access to this.

Yeah, I emailed it to you yesterday at about 5.

This is under your robust and resilient economy. It's on page 14 of the document. It starts with what you're going to discuss later, the focus areas. And this is obviously, we're going to go back to your project, but this was one of the projects that came up with staff. It starts on page 16 of the document.

15, yeah.

I think Alex has something additional to offer.

Hi.

Alexandra Pucciarelli. I'm here filling the place, barely, of Michelle McNulty, our director. You will be seeing stuff pretty quickly coming to council even this fall. Tiffany has some code amendments dealing with our rezoning process and trying to streamline that, and that'll go hand in hand WITH MY TEAM WORKING ON UPDATING APPLICATIONS SO THAT THOSE HAPPEN TOGETHER.

YES, VICE MAYOR MATTHEWS.

SO I APPRECIATE VICE MAYOR HAVING US AT 27 TO 28, BUT WHERE'S MY CONCERN IN JUST BEING IN THAT MANAGEMENT SPACE FOR MOST OF MY CAREER? HUMAN NATURE. tends to push to the deadline, right? And this is a conversation that, it's not a new conversation. This has been a problem identified for years. So I appreciate that some's coming to us now. And I appreciate that we've got nine, 10 months to the end of this fiscal year end. But I just wanted to say it out loud that, It should not take another two years. To be fully implemented. This is a crisis in our our housing issue. I hear weekly from developers and builders and everybody else about the bottleneck and some of our processes during it since I've been on Council so. I I understand you know we gotta get right and in government work. We want more steps. But I, and I get it, and I guess I'll accept it like this, 27, 28, but I predict human nature, it'll be, because that's just how we flow. I mean, it's a human nature, right? I would like, if it was a private business, it would be 27, and that would push the urgency to keep that top of mind. And it's not going to be top of mind. And this is top of mind in our community.

And I think that Tiffany has kind of a working calendar that she's been working as part of the last cap and working with sustainability and housing to bring these code amendments pretty consistently in the next months. Only handle so many code amendments at time, but it's. They're coming, and I think they'll be coming pretty quickly to you. And then, like I said, and then it's me running along, making sure that I have all those updated processes and procedures in place so that when the code becomes active, we can immediately be utilizing those.

And just one last question, because mine was more of a statement. I get it. Does this also include in development review traffic?

When I mentioned Safe Streets Master Plan, there's a pretty robust public outreach component and stakeholder component that we'd like to gather all of what you're describing and make sure that we can build some standards typologies based around that feedback and what we're seeing through the development process that we need to work on.

I look forward to updates.

Trust me, I understand the urgency, but I have a question. So with this process, my assumptions are, because we have this same problem, but we had, the code hadn't been updated forever and the council was all over us, get it done. So our solution was, there's components of the code that are most important to development and the development community. So the question becomes, we put a focus, this was asking, as the folks that lived with this, looked at it and said, what we did is we had them look at it and go, oh, these are the 15 things we need done right now. And that's what we did. And you guys are doing that, I see.

Yes, I was part of that last project was looking at prioritizing all our priorities based upon what you're hearing from.

So so if that helps council member what they're doing, and it sounds like you're going to be implementing this over time. It's going to be done by 28, but if you're doing that, that's smart. The most important things will be brought to you first, correct?

Coming to you. They're coming.

Those are the ones that they want to hear because we have the same problem. Didn't have, you know, didn't have the staff to get it done. But once we did that, it was incredible. The result from the development community. In fact, we were at a building event and one of the developers, it just got a project completed. praised our department. I almost fell on my seat. So yeah, yeah, I know I was shocked as this guy was.

Can I just make a comment? I just want to make a comment that it is not all. Some of the things that we get from developers we have to send back for a reason, so I just I I wanted.

Here you hear from five or seven developers the same thing, There's some legitimacy to what they're saying.

I just would also offer in addition to the things that Council will see, I just want Council to know that administratively staff is also looking at in-state process and things that we can still plan for applicants. Today I have to give kudos to the team. The conversations that I've been in thus far clearly indicated that staff has a laser focus on this issue and are looking at ways that both through code and through process we can make

Looks like we changed this to 2728. Are we okay? Next one is regional housing partnerships. Again, this is the focus. It just reads as it is. And we're going to work with those. That's going to be ongoing. Make sure you're okay with that. We have a rail crossing improvement. and that's gonna be 2829. Any questions on that one? Staff's here to address it. Okay. They eliminated the freight mobility, these again were from the leadership team, reduced tourism dependency. Yeah, it's your tourist community. In fact, I'm gonna be up here members of tourists, spending money, incentive program for business. Thinking about that, but these were eliminated. Any question on those eliminations?

Yes. Just curious if that second one is a zero-sum game.

Diversifying local economy. I believe divesting tourism. I hope that's not the goal.

No, it's not. No, it's not the goal. We took this one off because part of it is just, you know, we're going to be looking at revenue diversification anyway.

Bain Mall up there for my tourism mission.

Next one is redevelopment.

Thank you, Mayor. On freight mobility projects, are we going to come back to Rail Spur?

I think Rail Spur is one of the projects that are in here. I think it's later in infrastructure.

If we're coming back to it, that's fine. I want to include it here.

Yeah, it is. It's on page 21 and under sustainable and innovative infrastructure. We'll talk about Railsburg. Okay.

So, yeah. It's your project.

So, development infill. Okay. Council okay with this one? It's going to be ongoing.

It's a no brainer that we all want to see redevelopment and infill. We've got urban growth boundaries that have been defined on the maps, and if we're going to grow as a community within our urban growth boundary, we have to do infill so. Not sure how to implement this on the ground, but it's an ongoing I would say it's an ongoing imperative that we have a strategic plan that supports infield development and redevelopment. Obviously, we're going to keep it ongoing.

I like it the way it is. Yes. Is there a place to put some sort of vision around

uh acquiring county islands city limits exploring annexation opportunities i'll hear us talk about that a lot and oftentimes because they are not meeting our standards and so then we would be bringing something into our system that we would have to invest a lot of money into I don't know that that's been a priority just because we struggle to have money to take care of what's already in existence within the city boundaries.

Status quo seems to be working fine for all parties involved, but ultimately I think if we have a vision as a city down the road, we kind of want to incorporate all those little bubbles.

I mean, I mean, I feel like we've got, um, Potential annexation of a fire station. I mean, there are other annexation items that I think we can look at.

What makes signature collecting easier?

And also, alongside our previous affordable housing strategy, we talked about partnerships and Mountain Lion and FUSD were mentioned and We don't have to put this in there, but I count Coconino County as also a potential partner for helping to provide workforce housing.

The next two are obviously projects that were recommended by Leisha. Because we're all from. And the last one, except. This one. Yeah.

Trying.

This one, I think, was moved to, we'll see it later, under financial sustainability. We put it under there because that's what cost of service is. So that's where it's at. Now I want to go back to the councils. We had a number of projects or initiatives you wanted us to take a look at. One was, there was a statement regarding prosperity over growth philosophy. And this was more of an emphasis on policies that emphasize economic prosperity, quality of life, more of a policy direction for the council, but I wasn't, I know we have some, there's going to be some discussion on the next two here, maybe even three, but let's start with this one.

What would be an example of a policy that could be amended or where would a policy land within the city infrastructure or would it be more of a resolution?

I don't know what the policy would look like, but I think that's a really great question. I guess I use things in more simple terms. So hopefully by bringing up the point, I could have greater minds in the room think of a policy. But we often talk about if we're not growing, I think if we could kind of change that narrative through a policy that helps us understand that we can be sustainable without adding more costs or more and more and more and more.

doing things more sustainably that would help me at least when it comes to this topic i'm not opposed i just want to echo that um thank you councilmember garcia i think that's exactly where i was coming from in discussing this uh uh economic growth is a determinant of itself that rubs me and a lot of folks in the community the wrong way um i think a better way to frame it and really this is just about the how we word it, I think it creates a different way of thinking about what the actual objective is. So going with economic well-being or community well-being are a couple of terms I suggested. I think prosperity is being treated as the same thing as that, but I think those two terms might be a bit more descriptive.

Economic well-being. and community wealth building. The focus is where I think we want it instead of just growth for growth's sake.

Okay. Give us an example.

Well, one example is partially the conversation around the hospital move. That being a trigger for growth. where I would have rather seen the conversation focus around what kind of health outcomes our community needs in the region. So, not to open a can of worms there, but I think that hints at sort of the philosophical difference between the word growth and the word economic well-being.

So one of the things that just mentioned the manager, did you ever note over here, council member, mayor and council, that this would become under economic, that robust economic, this becomes strategy focus so that when you are looking at economic development issues, you can refer back to this as something, there may be an opportunity in the future to say, wait, we agreed to this as one of our strategies we should make sure that we dig a little bit deeper into this as opposed to being a project it becomes because it does yeah if you want to go in that direction and we stick it in under strategy and it becomes a strategy that it goes back to four focuses for a little really um sort of an umbrella town community building building okay thank you i was like this doesn't look right vice mayor

So, I know Sunnyside is working on their community vision plan, or whatever the title is. And I know we've talked about, I think the DBA has recently did want a vision for downtown, so it's smart growth. It makes me think of this topic right here that we're being MAKING SURE IT'S THE COMMUNITY WELL-BEING. I DON'T KNOW ABOUT WELL-FULFILLING, BUT WOULD THAT GO IN? I MEAN, WE'VE GOT SOUTH SIDE ALREADY HAS THEIR NEIGHBORHOOD PLAN. AND IF THE DOWNTOWN HAS THEIR PLAN AND WHEN SUNNY SIDE HAS THEIR PLAN, WOULDN'T THAT BE THE POLICIES? I MEAN, THEY'RE NOT OUR POLICIES, BUT WE... clearly to hear or consider their development plans that they set for their own neighborhoods, right?

Or my tool.

But I also think we have the regional plan as well, right?

I personally and I think customer Garcia has a comment. I think this comment. Yeah, I think this probably warrants a bigger conversation when we do the strategic focus And how that and if it turns into an actual project.

My comment was really just to kind of contextualize the idea of growth, and I'm not speaking specifically to the Sunnyside neighborhood plan, but since you brought that up, in some ways that plan is there to curtail growth.

So that's my point that the community that it impacts has a say and whatever we're doing, we're mindful of their priorities for their neighborhood, which then is economic. But their neighborhood plan has outlined, correct? Thank you.

I do think that maybe this will require more conversation, and I agree with the philosophy and the sentiment expressed here. I've never... I think that all of our economic development, our plans and our workforce development plan follow this line of thinking. I've never heard anyone within the city say, if we're not growing, we're dying. I've heard people in the community say it, which we can't control. But I think our philosophy is, as I've understood it for some time, is that economic vitality is very much aware of this and very much aware of the community's priorities. And so that feeds into all economic development that's done. But maybe there needs to be something stated elsewhere outside of economic vitality plans that reinforce that we want community-based economic development rather than, you know, we're not looking to bring Intel in here to build a big plant.

And we have the the strategies, we have the sectors. Heidi, I think we're good. I think we can move on.

This will be embedded in the future and with you and the management leadership team and as a strategy mayor. And it's something that you will definitely, I think it'll be good because it'll give an update to the community. It's something the council's looking at. So every project you look at, every policy review, of those things to be this will be used as a metric for it and that's i think the appropriate place for it so i think we've got this covered now this is this was an interesting one i uh is that it came out as a human needs in metric and established a well-being metrics to measure but it was human need um and i want to have a little discussion on that yes council

One thing that I see when I first read over this was that it gives a kind of a quotient or an outcome to the quality of life, which I appreciate. So wherever the philosophy that this idea came from, I think having those measurements and having an understanding or a metric that we can devise our plans off of help a lot.

So I'm just supporting it.

You make sure what am I thinking of? Don't we have an index that comes to Council at the next report? Well, that's like that. Our housing prices are this much above that average and this was a different. It has to do with gender inclusion, gender identity.

That's for real.

It's it's it's a nationwide based survey.

Yeah, this was if the council doesn't seem like anyone is jumping on board.

Even know how we would really do that and if we had the resources to do that and if we need to do that. Struggle a little over. Might be more of a county.

It seems like it's I see the sign. OK, this one we're going to OK middle housing. Let's go to middle housing initiatives. Is this going to be a standalone or? The other things that are being done, but we want to ask the case. This was one of your projects that one of you mentioned was middle.

Which I think it's covered in the places.