City Council - Regular Meeting

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

I don't want to be that guy, but basically anything that doesn't start with numbers is a non-starter. In other words, you can go a couple of years and then say, well, we did this or we didn't do that. But gosh, if only we'd had the money, if only we'd done, you know. And because I'm just, if I were doing this as a business, you would start off with, you know, how much money do you have to work with? And then work back from, you'd talk to your investors and say. here's the funding we need and here's what we're going to be able to accomplish. We do it exactly backwards in local government. It's just a funny thing for me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

There are no measurables to this. And I couldn't follow along, but I noticed that there was this thing on one of the slides that said, keep the city financially on track and sustainable and so forth. And I think that many of the residents would question whether this entire thing the public would read it as steady as she goes, that this is, you know, things are being sensibly managed and things are as good as they get, you know. But without targets, you get to the end of the year, you get to anything and you say, well, you know, we did our best and gosh, you know, that's swell. And I'll do my l

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

Not a fan of the thank you the KPI thing and as was just said it's just I Need another spreadsheet to look at like I need to you know fish needs a bicycle and and by the time you established metrics All I was driving at was a sense of urgency and and just as a overall just like not necessarily you know hiring six more police officers or whatever the thing is but just having something concrete that says we did something we had something not see just saying redeveloping the downtown is you know at some or let's do something about the airport let's do something about at some point it has to be a

Yeah, I actually think key performance indicators are actually exactly what are called for here. But they also have to be realistic over time. Because, I mean, we can say, look, we want to get drawings to the average number of cops per thousand in the state. We just want to get to average. And that's a very definable number that we talked about. That's been part of the discussion before. But over what time period can we get that done? And is it even realistic that we can hire enough officers to get there? Because there are a lot of other departments that are trying to hire officers. going outs

That's the first question. So regarding the KPI thing, one word question I have is why? In other words, you say with the downtown, if you think about how many bazillion dollars of sales it would take to move that number 100,000 bucks or to shift it to provide the same value as the business part now with the square footage thing I'm trying to think of what type of businesses that would and you know in other words the most efficient businesses that would generate that kind of revenue card rooms I mean just and so I'm just being just if you if you set a metric like six more police officers or fou

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

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

Just kind of picking up on keeping the entire community informed and making sure we're doing that. I don't know if we have this data, but for the city manager reports, do we know the location of the people that have subscribed? And is there a way to just look at that in a matrix and say, wow, here's an area that just isn't doing that. maybe it's the cab, maybe it's something else, go out and try to promote. And it would allow for some targeting within the neighborhood. I think that's probably a really good idea. And then we need to make sure we have broad-based communication formed. And we can

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

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

talk about like parks and rec and so on and staffing okay and that's kind of and that's traditionally how we'll do budgeting in terms of staff and that sort of thing what parents and people you know care about is okay what are the programs and so You can talk in terms of, like, if we add this body, we get this thing. But it's not necessarily a one-to-one correspondence. And so what I'm suggesting is that, you know, and I'm not trying to make people's faces drop, but, you know, in terms of success, you'd want to think, like, customers served, or programs, um, or the demog, the demographics, how

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

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

You bet. Speaking as that Catholic guy in the room contrition I am struck by the poor Seattle you know it's scandal ridden since forever. And they have done a job that is, there is not a presentation that happens where somebody doesn't say, how could I have done better? A commissioner will ask, and it may be completely performative, but a commissioner will ask a question and express confusion. And it will invariably be almost, maybe it's the old British obeisance thing, but it's just, you know, I'm sorry, and how could I have helped you? And just speaking as that customer service guy, I just s

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

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

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

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

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

you know in watching i i am that guy who have watched thousands of these things and i'm always shocked by other councils that say they just hold something over for a couple of weeks simply to indulge someone who is uncomfortable i've never seen that happen here when you have the votes there's a value in the relationships it was like I knew it would piss off Ed. And so I knew it wasn't urgent. There is this sense, since I've been at, you know, many of us have met, there's always some deadline. If we don't vote today, you know, the ordinance won't hit the state, the bomb will go off or something

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

Nimbleness, excuse me. You know, as we're having our discussion, but I think that, I think that having it's it's one thing to say commit to the final decision but we should be trying to promote cohesion and it's in the if you're you know if we're hitting We need to get away from, okay, we're gonna stick our way through, we're gonna stick everybody with the council with I've got four votes, that sort of thing. I think it should be a priority to say, okay, how can we come together and do this? It should be obvious if we're discussing at the dais where we're going or anything. should be obvious t

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

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