Planning Commission - Special Meeting

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Oh, that's nice. That's really well done.

OK. All right. We are here. We have a quorum. We are going to go ahead and call to order. with the cooperation of everyone. our special meeting of the Vallejo City Council, which is going to be our goal-setting workshop. I see welcome by the mayor here, so I will welcome everybody, but I'm gonna have the clerk conduct roll call, and then I'm gonna invite just a little bit of framing on what we're doing, and then we'll take public comment. So why don't we go ahead and do the roll call?

Mayor Sorse? Present. Vice Mayor Matulak? Present. Council Members Matias?

Here.

Paul Maris.

Present.

I will note, for the record, Councilmember Beganzer, Gordon, and Letta Jew are currently absent.

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But yours was working. Yeah. Testing, testing. There we go.

It's just that you have to get really close to it. Okay. With that, we are here today for a full day workshop for the city of Vallejo's goal setting. We have Jacob Green and associates here along with our city manager. I actually just want to, before we take public comment regarding council goal setting, provide a little bit of framing on what we can expect from the the workshop today what would be you know what we're looking to get out of it so that our members of the public can can weigh in and tailor their comments with a little bit of framing i don't know if if our consultant would like to introduce himself or the city manager would like to add any remarks just to sort of set the tone before we take public comment okay uh we'll let the facilitator uh

get us going, and then I will come in right after him with a couple of framing remarks.

Well, good morning, everybody. We're going to jump around a little bit just to set the tone for the morning, and then we'll get back to our regular scheduled program. I'm Steve Rimmel. I'm with Jacob Green and Associates. And with me is my colleague, Michelle New, who I'll ask to introduce herself in a moment. Just by way of background, I spent 33 years in local government, virtually all of that in the city of Pasadena. If you're over 50, you know Pasadena because of the Rose Parade and the Rose Bowl game. If you're under 50, you know it because the Big Bang Theory. About four and a half years ago, I transitioned to consulting, and I enjoy going up and down state, working with city councils much like yourselves. I do strategic planning, goal setting, city manager, city attorney, performance evaluations, and the occasional organizational assessment. Let me ask Michelle to introduce herself, and then we'll do a little level setting on what we're doing here this morning.

Thank you, Steve. As Steve mentioned, my name is Michelle New. I, similar to Steve, have a background in local government. I spent 15 years for a city on the Central Coast in human resources management in the city manager's office. And then in the last five years on the consulting side, specifically in local government as well. I oversee the organizational development portfolio at Jacob Green and Associates. strategic planning, council facilitations, executive recruitment, executive coaching, all of those types. And Jacob Green and Associates is specific to local government, so we understand the uniqueness that you have every day. We also have our colleague Suzanne on screen. She's not here today, but goodness, she was very involved in this project, mostly in the background, so we wanted to include her on this.

So for the benefit of everybody who's here and watching, what we're doing here today, this is billed as a city council goal setting workshop. And we certainly will get to goal setting. And hopefully, we're going to identify some objectives to further those goals. But to get there, we're going to have a series of conversations. We're going to start with the general and move to the specific. It's an interesting time. It's a great time for the city of Vallejo. You have transition in executive management. and the city can look forward to progress, but how do we do that in a way that's most efficient and achieves the policy ends of the council? So we're gonna talk about various things about what makes for good governance, roles and responsibilities. We're gonna revisit your mission, vision, and values. And again, as we move from these general broad discussion topics, down to goals and then again, hopefully some objectives. I know oftentimes members of the public attend these meetings and they advocate for specific projects and that's great. That's the public's welcome to do that. But today's not really about specific projects. It's not about the stop sign or the park or the pump track or what have you. It's more broad. And that's why we take you out of city hall. That's why we try to be to the extent we can cameras and projectors, be a little more informal and just have a series of conversations and work together as a team. That's what we're doing today. It's very broad. And then that's what helps sets the tone moving forward. So Madam Mayor, hopefully that was helpful and be a good queue up for public comment now.

Thank you, I appreciate that does that capture it city manager you want to add anything.

yeah i'll add a little bit to it, I mean just sort of reinforcing what what he said, you know why are we here today. You know today is an opportunity to achieve or to work towards greater alignment alignment in terms of the city council, the administration and staff. The goal is not to necessarily create a long list of ideas, but to identify the few priorities that matter the most. What's the most important things that we should be focused on right now? We need to focus on areas where Vallejo can make the greatest measurable progress for residents. We need to build on our strengths, understanding what those strengths are. We need to be honest about the challenges that confront us, as has been said, setting achievable goals and then moving forward together. This is just the beginning is how I would look at this. This is sort of a first step of many more steps to come where we can establish even greater cohesion as an organization and

implement strategy thank you mayor yeah thank you very much so i wanted to just again provide a little bit of framing for what we're doing today before taking public comment and also just reminding as has been said that this is certainly not uh don't i don't want the members of public to feel like they have to get out every single thing about the city of vallejo in in just a few minutes uh because this is going to be part of setting vision that will then allow us to get into more conversations about specific projects in the future So with that, I'm going to go ahead and open up public comment regarding council goal setting. And we've got several speakers. We're going to go ahead and call them up. We have the five minutes per municipal code. So if you want to take up to five minutes, please do. And we'll go ahead and call our first speaker.

uh thank you madam mayor and just for everyone and i want to thank everybody from the general public that has shown up today so thank you for taking time out of your busy schedules on a saturday and for those that may have just arrived if you haven't filled out a card or would like to please do so i'm not sure i get them up over at the round table when you came in but right now we we have three card speaker cards and in this order um paul tice thomas jute and kathleen diehead Paul, come on up. First is Paul Tice.

Good morning.

Good morning. uh my name is paul tice like you heard i live in vallejo and i serve on the executive committee of the sierra club solano group we stand for affordable housing within existing city limits for healthy communities to combat urban sprawl and environmental degradation Lately, we've co-sponsored two cleanups at the White Slough encampment hosted and directed by the Vallejo Homeless Union. The main cause of homelessness is lack of affordable housing. The city needs to move forward as rapidly as possible to address our housing crisis. Yet Vallejo has permitted almost no affordable housing over the last 15 years, while bringing in hundreds and hundreds of units of market rate. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Vallejo has become the most stressed rent city, rent stress city, excuse me, in the entire Bay Area. Every month, citizens are being pushed onto the street by rising rents and lack of affordable housing construction. This is a shocking situation. I appreciate the planning division's intention to prepare an inclusionary zoning ordinance for consideration by the planning commission and the city council before the August recess. However, I'm concerned about the slow pace of adopting even more urgently needed ordinances for rent stabilization and just cause evictions. Other Bay Area communities with similar demographics have had these ordinances for years, and they are making progress on their affordable housing needs. The city has been provided with their ordinances to use as samples. Pro bono legal help is standing by. Here is a one-page description of Just Cause, and rent stabilization, which I will hand out to you in a moment. We have already frittered away almost half of the eight-year term of our legally binding housing element, which requires these ordinances. They are enforceable by the state On the other side of the state's carrot and stick equation, a half million dollars is waiting for each city which meets the state's criteria for a pro-housing city. These ordinances should be passed now without waiting for the downtown specific plan or other long range plans. Please, no more delays, detours, or extended legal review. The people of Vallejo need your help now. Thank you for considering my views. I'm gonna pass this over to you, sir. And if you would send it on down the table.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Next speaker is Thomas Jute.

Thank you for giving me a few moments. My name is Thomas Jute. I'm the current board chair for the Greater Vallejo Recreation District. I heard that we're not talking about specific projects. What I put in front of you looks an awful lot like a specific project. What it actually is is to support what our city manager said in alignment of goals and alignment of values and alignment of resources and organizations. I took a specific project, an area that I am uncomfortable shopping in, which is Springs Road. And not because it doesn't allow us great shopping. They're my favorite cleaners down there. My favorite... hero sandwich places down there, but I find that it's unattractive, it's unwelcoming. And if we're to talk about economic development and understanding that from a perspective, one of the challenges that we have in government is how to invest our funds to support economic development. What I have found in my experience is that there are funds available through different resources for infrastructure improvement. So I tried to look at a way where using public funds, we could support existing business and help existing business grow and thrive and use that to attract new business. Springs Road seemed like a perfect example of how to do that. The alignment of goals and alignment of resources. When I started to take a look at this project, I began to realize that there are a number of elements that are involved in our 2040 general plan. Economic development, stormwater management, the increase of parks, I'm sorry, workforce development and even the planting of new trees and carbon sequestration. So as I started to work with these ideas, I came up with the idea of a linear park on Long Springs Road with the primary emphasis to improve the economic growth in that area. Elements of this plan can be then placed throughout the City of Vallejo using different pots of money and relying on different agencies, much like GVRD, the City of Vallejo, the County of Solano, Department of Transportation, Caltrans. One of the strengths of this is that there are these different monies available. Stormwater management, there's money from Prop 40 for parks, Prop 68. There are funds for workforce development and there are funds for economic development in addition to our Measure P funds for infrastructure redevelopment. I just wanted to share this not only as a standalone idea, but that there are, we have organizations, each of us has a small pot of money, each of us has access to a certain amount of information that if brought together, we were able to support economic development in our community. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Next speaker is Kathleen Diehepp, followed by Liat Meitenheimer, and then Clarence Martin.

good morning um and it's great to be actually able to see your faces one of the reasons i really wanted to come today was to watch how you worked as a team because i think as a sometimes these are also called team building but i think that sometimes team building is just too amorphous really getting behind the same goals and visions and priorities is what team building is and there's an intersection of three teams at the table in this room there's the city council as a team with your city manager and city attorney and then there's the city executive team which the city manager and city attorney overlap on and then there's the community who honestly most of us bet with our life savings and moved here right and have really invested and we're part of the team on the vision for the future And I wanted to almost very different than what GVRD president just raised. I'm not talking about any one project. I'm talking about how do you all come together as a team? And I want to ask you one question. In your tenure here, what is the one or maybe three things that must get done? because you only have so much bandwidth you only have so much time of staff you only have so much time in executive session and to look at what really needs to get done now and what could get done later what are the root cause things i mean in my over a decade here i was impressed at the city manager not just the police chief speaking out about crime and what's going on i mean the root cause thing of safety of businesses disinvesting we're losing it's not like we haven't attracted we're losing investments we have stores closing But we still have all of us on the team of Vallejo who chose to be here, who were invested here and spend our tax money every year, every day here. So what really are the priorities to must get done? What are the things that will make root cause changes? The changes you're trying to do in the police department, some of these other issues. Also, and I've said this at budget, Do, before you just layer more on your team, your executive team and staff team, let's finish things. Or if you're not, pause it. Say that's on hold until whatever. I think that tell us the truth as Team Vallejo. Tell us if you can't afford something now or if you just don't have bandwidth for something now. You know, some things, what I've noticed in watching the council is something will come up And it was maybe rushed. I just advise your new city manager to be careful. Things are always a little more complicated than you would think here. There's a lot of layers. I mean, the layers behind your Maryland deals are huge. So what would happen, something comes to council, the community fills the room, and staff gets sent back to do more, and it's a year or more before more comes back. So try to focus on what can get done and what's the priority. I am a little disappointed in that when I came, I wanted to actually be able to watch how you guys interact, what the energy is, who's nodding, who's in agreement. In this setup, I would be better home watching on video. You know, I'm only seeing the back of your heads. This team or the backlighting, I can't see your face. I don't know if there's any way to adjust that. I know that, you know, I don't want to jump in on logistics, but we want to move forward. We only have the resources we have. Many, many of us moved here in part because Vallejo was the affordable choice for us. This is a team and a community that can hear. We only have so much staff. We only have so many resources. These are the three things we're getting done now. and then move on. So that's my perspective. And I want you to view yourself as a team and how you prioritize. And I like that we're talking about things. I like that council is pushing back and not just rubber staffing what staff comes forward. And that all takes time. So thank you for your service. And I hope that kind of team building perspective brings something to the table for everybody here. Thanks. Thank you.

Next speaker is Liat Meisenheimer.

Good morning. Liat Meisenheimer, 40 plus year resident of the city of Vallejo. And I've been to many of these goal setting sessions. and very little of the goals that were ever introduced have been followed through, which is a disappointment for somebody who's lived here for 40 years and tried to keep hope alive for our city. So we have the opportunity now to start really focusing on what it is that we expect our city to look like, what we want it to be, what it looks like from the outside. And as the other speakers have said, there are issues that are in the city that need to be addressed. And some of us have been working on these issues for many, many years, trying to get the city to raise these things up in their priorities. Back in 2017, we finished the city's brand new general plan update, and people were excited. It's a good general plan update. It covered a lot of the issues that the community talked about that needed to be covered because there was a robust outreach to the community on all of those meetings. We were able to participate. We were able to interact with the people that were making the decision. And so it came out to be a very good plan that was generally accepted very well within the city. In that general plan update, we also had three elements that had not been covered. 2022, the city started the work to try to address the three elements, which was the housing element, safety element, and environmental justice element. After that initial meeting to cover what was going to be done, there was very little outreach that's been done. There's been little to none for many of those, for the EJ issue and for the safety issue, which still have to be done. These are mandated issues. They're not feel-good issues. They're not when we get time to do them issues. These are mandated by the state of California, and we've ignored them. All three of those cover the quality of life, the safety, economic development, and the general well-being of the citizens of Vallejo. And we haven't been able to address those. And then when we do get them, they're rushed and they're put out into the community, again, with no community input. We are the people that live through the experiences here in Vallejo. Safety is a primary concern, but housing is safety. Environmental justice is safety. The safety element is safety for our community. It's also to better the quality of life for the people that live here and have tried to work with the city to make Vallejo a better place. So we have a chance again to get these elements that we have the housing, but we have two of the pieces that were agreed to that were supposed to be completed last year. We're still waiting to do that, but we're asking again to please ensure there is public outreach for this work. The EJ element specifically states that you have to reach out to the impacted, the neighborhoods that are impacted the worst. There's been no outreach to those communities. So I hope that in your goal setting that these three last elements are put in the priority for things to get done because that gives us a guide on where our city is going and encourages the residents that city of Vallejo cares about the people who live here because they're looking out for their quality of life. So thank you.

Thank you.

Next and final speaker with a card is Clarence Martin.

Good evening. Thank you for allowing me to speak. What I want to speak about today is from a business owner's aspect, one who was attacked and burned down at the very beginning of the pandemic. Eight days into opening up my business, I was set on fire. i've been surviving without any loans ppp none of that just on the sweat of my back i do do private property tolls here in the city one of the places i do do is that parking lot over there on sonoma boulevard where the 99 cent store where it's all boarded up when they had all those burnt cars during the pandemic and they were hanging out there i'm the guy that went in there and took all those out of there Couch Street, I'm the guy that went in there and took all those cars out of there. But I couldn't handle the mobile homes because I don't have no place for them. I'm also the guy that cleaned up the Springs Road corridor, that major parking lot. I'm the guy to keep those people out of there. and try to make that place thrive. So being the business that I am, I'm all over this city every single day riding around. I don't be in my truck, but I be in my car, and I watch. And I'm going to tell you what I've seen with my own eyes. Vallejo has a very unique problem. Everybody has discovered how nice of a city we are. And they understand, and they have a vision of seeing where this city is going to grow. And the bad part is some of the bad actors also are able to see that. So they don't want us to thrive so that they can thrive. I've actually witnessed with my own eyes driving down Sonoma Boulevard, stop at the light. I got a brand new Mercedes in front of me. All of a sudden I look, tires start come flying out of the window. And I asked myself, why would somebody in a brand new Mercedes come into our city and start throwing tires out of the back seat? What would be the purpose of that? That's to keep us held down. Now, if I seen it with my own eyes, I imagine what's going on that we don't see. And I think that one of the things we ought to do as a city and you guys ought to do as a council is as a person is caught coming into our city from another city and dumping trash in our city, those fines should be tripled. quadrupled to deter them from doing that because if they're coming in here doing it they feel it's okay and you know i believe it's a attack on us to keep us down for us not to thrive you know i think we should look at that i also am here to offer my services in a more expandable way because i'm ready to grow um i fill my yard up with absolutely no advertising every single month but i'm ready to grow i'm ready to offer my services more to the city um so that i can help uh keep those abandoned cars away and i get a lot of calls from other businesses where there would be a car in the parking lot okay i can get that car i can help them but there'll be one outside and that deters people from coming to that place when they see that car's been sitting there for a month six months they don't want to go in there because here's the thing if you got a mobile home sitting outside your business on the street you don't know who's in that mobile home you don't know what they're in there doing and the kind of narcotics that these people are on keeps them up so they're able to watch and see what's going on around these businesses which in turn gives them an upper hand on doing crime because they understand what's going on they're on to the timetables of how these businesses are being run and you know our city has a very bright future but it's difficult for businesses to keep the hope when certain things happen and nothing happens. I'm not saying nothing happened, it takes a while for it to happen. And the homeless, everybody who spoke before me, I agree with them. The area like that white snow down there, that area, nobody even wants to come over there because those people are over there and there's other people that come from other cities and go into them encampments and hide out in there until nighttime and come out and do their dirt. So, you know, I think we need to try to get a path of hope to those homeless people so that they feel more inclined to do the right thing instead of continuing to do the thing from the mentality that they have gotten from being this pandemic that we all went through. It knocked everybody off our walls. All right, thank you.

Thank you very much.

Those are all the speaker cards that we have. Is there anyone else from the general public wishing to speak? If you would like to speak, please submit a speaking card. Seeing none, I think we can move forward.

Oh, let's go ahead and call anybody that's online. Cristal Gallegos, go ahead.

Thank you. Yes, I was wondering if you were going to skip us. Good morning. As you set your goals for the coming year, I need to bring us back to the lived conditions tenants here in Bel Air are facing right now, in real time, in their apartments, in their homes, in their neighborhoods. And you've heard it all before, certainly from me, as I've called in repeatedly, and perhaps you're saying, here she goes again. Over the past years, and residents have shown up consistently with the same message, people are being hit with rent spikes to the tune of 100% even, as we saw a few weeks ago when an elderly gentleman came in person and shared with you all, all of us, that his rent was doubled. Paul from the Sierra Club just earlier spoke to the cost burden, displacement pressure, the unsafe housing, eviction threats and harassment, tenants are facing every day, not as isolated incidents, but because they're shaping daily reality for thousands of the residents here in Vallejo, not isolated at all. And I also want to lift up what Leah just shared. As a 40-year Vallejo resident who's been through more goal-setting sessions than most people in this room, certainly, she reminded us that years ago during the general plan process, the housing safety and EJ elements were raised as critical gaps. and still haven't really been meaningfully addressed, if we're perfectly honest. And then again in 2022, when the community brought these issues forward, there's still been very little outreach and almost very little movement, with the exception of the housing element. And as Liat said, these aren't feel-good topics. They're mandated. And when long-standing residents keep raising the same structural issues and the city keeps deferring them, we see that it's really not disagreement. It's root cause governance problem. And tenants are feeling the consequences every day. And to the point that a resident earlier asked, very critical question, how do you all get along? And how does that affect us as residents? This question goes straight to the root causes that were lifted by multiple folks before me. Tenants are feeling the impact when departments aren't aligned, when priorities shift depending on who's in the room, and when internal coordination determines whether people get help or get ignored. So alignment isn't just like staff relationships and what's going on internally. We have to talk about where residents are experiencing stability and clarity and follow through in our city because that's not happening. And again, to the root cause change, that means building systems where tenants don't have to navigate through silo departments, personality to friends, shifting interpretations of policy. And these things are, I name them because I see them. I get calls about this every day. We're talking about creating like a shared accountability system that's producing consistent outcomes for all of us who rely on you. And going back to the housing element, the housing element delays have deepened the instability tenants have already been carrying. And we know every month without protections is another month where families are absorbing the consequences of these policy gaps. And right now... the rent protections are sitting inside this multi-year long-range planning process instead of moving on a timeline that reflects the urgency that tenants are living through and if i sound dramatic it's because my it's proportionate to the reality tenants are living tenants are being pushed far beyond what people in crisis can absorb we really need to consider that so when we talk about goals of alignment let's say it out loud alignment must include tenants alignment must include renter protections Alignment must include a transparent process and a timeline that people can follow and engage with, right? Alignment has to include the communities carrying the weight of this housing crisis every day. As you're setting your goals today, I'm just asking for one clear commitment. Just one. Make renter protections a standalone priority goal with a clear public timeline. and accountability, a timeline that our folks can engage with and understand very clearly. Let's move them on an accelerated track. Let's establish a transparent process, again, that tenants can be involved in. And let's center the people who are living the consequences of the inaction. And just bringing us back, goal setting is where you decide what matters. You have the experts here, not just in the room, but in our city. You have the tenants who bear the pain of no protection, policy experts, community experts. Tap in. We're all here. Tenants need to see themselves reflected in your priorities very directly, very clearly, and more than anything, urgently. Thank you.

Thank you. All right. All right. Skylar Spear, go ahead. All right, we should be able to hear you now. Go ahead.

Hello, good morning. My name is Skylar Spear. I'm a staff attorney with Public Advocates, which is a nonprofit law firm and advocacy organization that challenges systemic causes of poverty and racial discrimination, specifically by strengthening community voices and public policy and achieving tangible victories, advancing housing equity, among other issues. I've been working in close collaboration with residents of Vallejo to advance housing equity in the city for about three years now, which admittedly is nothing on Leon's 40, but through close collaboration with people like Leon, Cristal, local legal services organizations, Paul, and many other residents in the city, I'd like to believe I've started to become fairly familiar with the needs of the city's low-income residents and residents of color. In the housing element, close to two years ago now, the city made a commitment to draft and present rent protections to city council for adoption by September of 2025. We're nearing on a year late for that self-set deadline. And for some context, the housing element is a comprehensive plan to make sure everybody in the city has a safe and stable housing. A delay in implementing any of the programs in the housing element creates and contributes to increased housing instability in the city, which everybody so far has commented is an issue that everybody in the city is facing. My understanding is that a lot of focus has shifted to getting a pro housing designation and passing the inclusionary ordinance. And both of those are great goals. And I'm going to note that those are long-term fixes to problems that have urgent needs now. Renters are facing housing affordability crisis now and need stability and relief now. I also want to point out that getting a pro housing designation requires that a city has a housing element that is in compliance. And right now the delay in following through on the rent protections goals means the city is not in compliance with its housing element and does not qualify for a pro housing designation. For all of those reasons, and especially actually seconding everything that Paul and Leah and Christal has said, I really respectfully urge you to make renter protections and getting the ordinances drafted and passed a priority goal for the City Council with a clear timeline to which the City can be held accountable. Thank you.

All right, thank you. Do we have any speakers, more speakers online? all right that wraps our speakers thank you manny all right with that i am going to move us on to the officially to the goal setting workshop and i appreciate our facilitators from jacob green and associates introducing themselves and providing some framing before the public comment period i'm now going to turn it entirely over to them to facilitate our workshop this morning and day

Thank you, Mayor. And if it's OK, I'm going to move around a little, if that's all right. Again, this is meant to be informal to the extent you can be informal in this type of a setting. Just try to be relaxed. It's about 10 o'clock now. We started at about 9. If anyone needs a little break, just wave your hand. We'll take a little break. Restrooms on either side. We have lunch for you around 12 o'clock. Our hope is to get you done before 4. people always are happy to get maybe a half hour back in their life because we know you're all very busy and so with no further ado I wanted to turn to the manager just to see if there's anything additional he wanted to add before we jump into it no I would just add you know we have the entire executive leadership team here uh in the event that there are any questions uh and so I just wanted to acknowledge them and to thank them for being here appreciate everybody coming out this morning So today is the culmination of a process that actually began back in February of 2026. We did a kickoff meeting with the then city manager and staff. We did interviews. I'm happy to say I interviewed each member of the city council. It was a wonderful experience. We also did a number of interviews with the executive team, myself and my colleague, Michelle. We did a community survey. Today's focus is going to include some feedback from what we heard in that survey. But this is mostly discussion at the council level and with executive management. But we wanted to inform that with what we heard in the survey. Today is our workshop. And then when we're all done, we will pull it all together in a nice document that explains what we did here today. So here's our agenda for the day. Again, we didn't send materials out in advance. This isn't the type of thing you're going to be asked to make critical land use decisions on by the end of the day. It's a conversation. And the conversation begins about what makes for successful governance. Everybody in this room, the people who called in, they all want the same thing. We all want Vallejo to be a successful city. But it's easier said than done. It's complex. And the things that local government have to deal with today are insurmountable almost. Issues of homelessness, typically that's a county issue to deal with social services, but the cities have to deal with it. Economic development, crime, these are all tremendous issues facing all of you, and you have limited resources and bandwidth to take care of that. And we heard that from one of the public speakers, and they're absolutely right. A lot of what we're going to talk about today is how do you work together as a council, as a team, with the executive management team, with the executive leadership team? Because if you're not in alignment, it's a recipe for dysfunction. And dysfunction equals failure. So it's hard enough as it is. So everyone needs to kind of get on the same page and row in the same direction. You don't have to agree on everything. That's the beauty of our democracy. But generally, moving towards the goal that we're all trying to achieve is what keeps the city together. So it's kind of a brief outline for the day. Again, we'll move from the general to the specific. Ultimately, we'll get to goals. And hopefully, we'll also nail down some objectives so we have something tangible to rock out of this meeting with. Gonna kick it over to Michelle who's gonna do a little icebreaker. You might be asked to do any trust falls today, but this is just a way of getting everyone kind of thinking and in the right mode. Michelle.

Thank you, Steve. Okay, so no trust falls. You can stay in your seats, I promise. So this is just to get the day started, get folks comfortable, but also go from the day to day to visioning and where you want your legacy to be. So we're gonna take a minute, I'll read the question individually, just be thinking, do an individual reflection, and then we'll do a share out. And this is just for council members. So years from now down the road, when you're no longer on council, You're no longer involved in the day to day, you're no longer involved in the issues, the challenges that are facing you here today. What do you want folks to really remember you for? What do you want your lasting impact to be? So think about that, jot it down if that's helpful. And then I'll give you a minute and then we'll do the group report out. If you don't need a minute, that's fine too. All right, who wants to go first? What would you like your lasting legacy to be? Madam Mayor?

I would like for Vallejoans to be able to trust their government and trust that it's operating with integrity and trust that there's accountability if things go well or things don't go well, that there'll be accountability.

Thank you. Thanks, Mayor.

Thank you. And thank you for this question. So. So with the understanding that I am just one single council member and the successes of the city are not based on one individual, it's based on a group. And so it ends up being a group decision. So for me, the easiest way to relate to what success looks like is what people can see, feel, touch. type of situation. So for example, if they see their streets bustling with activity with shops where there aren't currently shops now, those are the type of things that from a legacy standpoint, those will point to things that we've successfully done in the past. And seeing neighbors talking to neighbors, being out in the street, being public and being out in the city, spending their money at the restaurants, at the shops and things of that nature. So it's more or less seeing a bustling city from the outside and for when people pass through our city, that would be the sign that there's a lot of stuff happening here and a lot of good stuff. So that would be my wish for the legacy that outsiders and Vallejoans would be able to see.

Thank you. And thank you for that perspective on you're just one. You're each one member of a team that have this lasting legacy together to a perspective too.

Good morning. What I would like my lasting legacy to be would sort of mirror my journey. native New Yorker, been here for over a decade. And I would love after my service concludes that any family, any young family that would like to come to Vallejo, set roots in Vallejo, see their kids grow in Vallejo and see their kids have their own family in Vallejo, be able to do that on a solid foundation of, you know, safety and economic opportunity. So that's what I'm working on.

Thank you. Hi.

I'm hoping to say that I brought jobs, kept folks in their homes, and kept people safe.

Simple but important.

Good morning. So what I'd like to leave is that Vallejo has become safer, stronger, and a place filled with opportunity. Every time I come into two intersections of our city, it says that we are a city of opportunity. And I believe that we are a city of opportunity. And to make that happen, we have to have safety, which we have spent the past year on. We have to have economic development that brings jobs. We have to have affordable housing. That means that our housing element has to get done and be completed. And we have to lead by stewardship, authentic dialogue so that we could build public trust that would allow our government to move forward. We're here not to serve systems, but we're here to serve community and to do things with community and not to community.

Thank you. So many parallels, so much alignment there. And also, we'll see in a bit, so much alignment with what we heard through our interviews with each of you, with staff, and also the community survey. We'll talk throughout the day about prioritizing, because you can't do everything, right? But these are all aspects that are really critical to so many different voices, and we'll continue to hear that throughout the day.

so thank you so much for indulging me and i'll turn it back to steve i want to thank the council for that those are great thoughts and there's a lot of commonalities of what we heard so and we heard building alignment ideally you know it takes all these different strands that are out there the community again fabulous community participation in this city The community has its representatives on the council. You establish the vision, the goals. You adopt the budget for the city. You engage a professional city manager to execute on your vision. He works with a fabulous executive team. and then of course you have the rest of the city staff all hopefully pointing the same way all understanding what that north star is and that comes from setting clear goals and establishing a vision for the city what each of you just articulated a moment ago wonderful vision there Why is it important? Well, it's one, how you get things done, right? If it's just a matter of task after task after task, or you hear people say, I'm always fighting fires, that's all reactive. You never get anything really seriously accomplished. You can't achieve these big ends if you're just constantly jumping from one item to another. You've got to really focus on alignment and achieving your goals. It also, success breeds success. If people are confident that the city government is capable, accountable, functional, you get investment, people know this is a place you wanna be, good governance breeds investment in your community. It's also critical for recruitment and retention. We're gonna talk a little bit about that later. You have a serious challenge with the number of vacancies that you currently have. When the city manager is seeking to bring on a department head, what do those candidates do? They watch your council meeting. And they say, well, is the council functional or is it dysfunctional? Are they nice to the staff? Are they mean to the staff? Are they courteous with one another? It really matters. So it's a big deal. And ultimately you wanna leave that legacy of lasting change. Certainly you didn't run for council for the big bucks and all the free time that you get, right? It's a very demanding, the public doesn't realize how demanding it is to serve on a city council. And you're all to be complimented for doing that. One, running in an election, which can be difficult enough, and then serving takes a tremendous amount of time. You're giving a lot of yourself and you want to leave that legacy. So now we're going to talk a little bit about governance and what good governance looks like. The Institute for Local Government put together a really nice report. on they call it uh excellence but i would say it's really what every government ought to follow it's not it should be effective just effective counsel so what makes a council work well having a unity of purpose again you don't have to agree on everything but understand why you're here what this is all about understanding roles and responsibilities this is a big issue in a lot of cities People get elected to the council when they run. They say, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that. The moment they get on the council, they realize, I can't get anything done without three or four more votes, depending on the size of the council. It requires working together. And council people, and we'll talk about this later, it's a policy-setting board. It's like being on the board of a corporation. You're not supposed to be in the weeds directing staff. So to get things done, you have to work through the manager. And he's got hundreds of employees, so he has to work through his team. It all has to work together. And when people don't understand their role, it's a recipe for disaster. When council people go around the manager, it's never a good thing. So it's important that people understand their roles. Having a positive governance structure. We can agree to disagree, but we're gonna be civil. We'll talk about that in a moment. And having norms and protocols and policies. You have a really good ethics and code of conduct policy. and it's i mean not every city has that a lot of them don't have adopted norms it is a very good policy that you have so effective councils have a sense of team you're all there you're trying to manage the city for the good of the city understanding those roles and responsibilities you honor a relationship with the staff The staff proposes and the council disposes. The staff are professionals who have dedicated their career to local government. They're all good doobies, the people that go into local government. They want to do right for their communities. Running effective meetings is important. People don't think well after 10 o'clock at night. People don't think well after six hours of sitting there in the dais or listening to two hours of public comment. It's important to run an effective meeting, and that's a big challenge that's placed on the mayor. holding yourself accountable and continuingly to improve yourself taking advantage of educational opportunities going to seminars networking with other elected officials taking advantage of all the great resources the league of california cities has it's a good way to stay on top of things so let's talk about effective council meetings Council meetings can be tough because you've got a lot of business to take care of. You've got a lot of people there. Sometimes there's hours of public comment. So the best thing that you can do as a council member is read your packet in advance. If you've got questions on items, you talk to the manager before the meeting. It's not about gotcha, it's about trying to get the right information so the council can make best decision. So understanding the material, if there's questions you ask the manager, the manager will either provide the answer or they'll supplement the material, but it's all about making sure that the council has what it needs to make the best decision. Be efficient in comments. Some folks, you put a microphone in front of them and they'll just keep going. Luckily, Michelle and I are not those people. You'll be here till seven o'clock at night otherwise. Again, the no surprise rule. Don't play gotcha. Don't play gotcha with your colleagues. Don't play gotcha with the staff. Again, it's really what's the information that's necessary to make the decision. Show respect. These are simple rules, right? We're all taught this in kindergarten. Be respectful to your neighbor. But sometimes people forget these things. Have a clear procedure for recognizing who to speak. It's become so problematic in some agencies we work with. I work with an agency that only has five members and no one from the public attends. Yet they all have to have a little light that they push to talk because they kind of fight over it. Having clear rules about how to recognize people to speak. And once you've made your point, you've made your point. You don't keep litigating something, especially after the vote is done. Staying focused, it's easy to go down rabbit holes, and it's following established procedures. You have good procedures in place. You could expand on them if you wanted to, but you have a pretty good set of procedures. So some of the things that make for good governance or poor governance is, again, respecting the council manager form of government. Council manager form of government. There's 488 cities in California. Virtually all of them are council manager. The big cities tend to have a strong mayor, but they hire like a CAO to do the work. It's a great form because you have a professional manager who's nonpartisan. He doesn't have a dog in a fight. He just wants to execute the policy directives of the council. So your staff are apolitical, and the council sets policy. Respecting that, working through the manager, not doing end runs around the manager is important. Once the vote is done, once it's disposed of, it's done. There are procedures to reconsider matters following Robert's rules, but generally speaking, once the council's voted, it's over. council sometimes has to do unpopular things and it's hard and again that's why you guys get the big bucks right but you got to do it you're doing it for the good of the city being respectful with one another when you disagree trying to get involved in productive ways asking them to come to meetings to be involved what you see in a lot of cities is the people who harp on them what do they do they stick them all in a commission okay we're gonna put you on the commission over here Be trustworthy, do what you say, be transparent. The things that don't work well, of course, are personal attacks. I've been in a council meeting where the police literally drag a council member out. That is not very effective. Dominating the discussion. Sometimes I think there should be a time clock for some folks, how much they're talking, how much air time they're gobbling up. Using the media to attack each other. Of course, this isn't good. Embarrassing each other, playing gotcha, of course. Stacking the audience. Nothing your colleagues love more is when you bring in a whole bunch of advocates to support a position and they have to sit through all of that. That's cruel and unusual punishment, frankly. And again, you may have policy disagreements with your colleagues, you may see things differently, but they're not your enemy. Everyone's trying to achieve, and I'm not saying any of this applies to this, this is all general, but we're all really trying to do what's best for the city. And you need to empathize. I think really the word that's not on here is having some empathy for everyone that we all work with. So roles and responsibilities. And this part of it is more like the lecture part of our workshop where Steve's lecturing to you, sorry. But it bears stating because people lose track of this. And again, this is how we reset, level set, and then we can move forward in terms of talking about vision and goals. The mayor presides over the meeting. That's a tough job because the mayor not only has to be in the meeting talking about what the council is talking about, but the mayor also has to think about, well, I have all these items I have to get through, and how am I going to manage this, and how many public speakers? So we need to respect the work and the role of the mayor. It is a tough gig. The council sets the policy. The hardest thing is for council people to understand that they're a policy-setting board, not a taskmaster. And we're gonna talk about that a little bit later, where that line gets blurred. The manager directs the staff, the city attorney provides you excellent legal advice. the mayor again presiding officer is the ceremonial i like to think of it like in england you have the king or the queen they're the head of the country right the head of state the prime minister is the head of government so that's always how i've always thought about it the mayor kind of like the head of state they're the ceremonial representative of the city for ceremonial activities you send the mayor If it's more of a functional thing, you send the manager. But official representative designates others to attend. Usually that falls to the vice mayor. If the mayor can't attend, speaks on behalf of the city, signs proclamations, kisses babies, and does all of that. Assist with onboarding council members. Again, lots of times people don't realize, oh, it's part of my responsibility as a council member to help onboard new members, but it is. I mean, four of the council are in your first term, correct? And you think, did you get any onboarding? Did anyone ever tell you how it all works? Or surprise, now you're a council member, figure it out, right? So having a good onboarding process is very important to set the tone. The council sets the policy. It respects the manager's role as your CEO, it appoints the manager, appoints the city attorney, it represents through policies, procedures, it adopts, works through the manager, you don't interfere with the manager, you provide policy direction, you give him guidance, you give him your thoughts on matters, and it's at his peril whether he listens or not. But you give him your best thoughts, and he has to juggle all different opinions. You get a lot of interaction from the community, a lot of complaints. You refer those to the staff to let the staff handle them. You hand them off. In a lot of cities, they have 311 type systems that have been very helpful where people can report something, a pothole graffiti, and it gets taken care of. That takes the burden off a lot of the council people. So the role of the council is really at that 40,000 foot policy level. The manager provides leadership for the staff. He manages the staff on a day-to-day basis. He implements the council's policy. That's what he's here to do. I mean, that's key. That's number one. He provides professional recommendations to the council. Council doesn't always have to accept. They don't have to accept them at all. The council provides the direction, but the staff has to do the good staff work to provide the analysis of what's being considered. Ideally, that includes pros, cons, and alternatives. He offers his best advice and he establishes working relationships with the council. Make sure all the council gets the same information. Big peril for a city manager is not sharing equally amongst the council. If you tell one, you tell them all. Oftentimes, if I would get a question from a council member, I would send a response to them all. Council member so and so had a question, here's the information. When you start playing favorites or part giving selective, it's potential peril for a manager. And again, assisting council people when they come on board. The city attorney is there to provide you legal advice, approve contracts as to form, resolutions, ordinances, making sure things comply with state law, of course, helps the council understand its obligations under ethics training and other state required trainings, is there to assist with conflict of interest. The attorney's office is vital. The city attorney is very vital. what happens in sometimes dysfunctional organizations as city staff gets in the bad habit of constantly calling the city attorney's office asking them for something more than legal advice because the attorneys frankly are smart people and so sometimes the peril is to get outside of their box it's important everyone understand again their role and their responsibility and the city staff are trained professionals who've dedicated themselves to public service And they get a bad rap for that from a lot of people. But frankly, there's a lot of the city staff could have gone into the private sector. They could pursue that. But no, they feel a strong connection to public service. And so that's why they've dedicated their careers to it. And that should be respected when they're presenting. Now, the thing is, though, they don't see what you see from where you sit. again remembering that everyone has their own perspective so they the staff are more analytical they're working on their particular issue but you're engaged with the public and you have you're in a different spot right so give grace to the city staff who are doing their best work but ultimately you're the policy makers and you have a different vantage point from them. So it's not that they're trying to hide something, it's just that this is their analysis of it, but you also have your finger on what's going on in the community and so it's important to realize that. they deliver the city essential services which everyone relies on right lots of times people only think of the city when something doesn't happen when something goes bad when the trash isn't picked up the water doesn't come out of the faucet you know these kind of things but generally i know that you probably know most of the public speakers that you heard from today because there's a segment of the community that always wants to engage with the city council but there's a bigger segment of the community that really doesn't right those are just the citizens that go about their day to day and they don't think about the city because they don't need to because you all keep the city running. So just taking a moment and thinking about how things have operated in Vallejo recently, Can you think of any ways, not to put you on the spot, but if anyone wants to offer, are there any ways that you think you might work more effectively with the city staff? Again, great opportunity, highly professional interim city manager on the team now working to fill vacancies, department heads. So it's a really great opportunity to reset. Any thoughts on how it's been working? Any thoughts on how it might work better as we move forward? Or is it so optimal now it can't get any better?

Vice Mayor. Thank you. And thank you for that question. And I'm speaking to this based on the three years and being probably the most one of the most senior on this council. And I think one of the biggest challenges, the thing I appreciate the most from your presentation was the identifying of roles and responsibilities, because I think that's where a lot of the challenges in the past have been is to our us as a council, maybe we didn't understand that clearly or it wasn't communicated with us. And I think that's where I can point to what's been effective recently more than anything else is the level of communication. And the way that I see it, it's pollinating throughout the entire council as opposed to just individuals or maybe I'm hearing something after the fact that maybe someone else found out. So I think I see that communication and effective communication much better recently. And so I would like to look at that as part of the effectiveness or the change of effectiveness that I've seen over my three years that I've been here so far.

Yeah, that's great. You know, in a vacuum, nature abhors a vacuum. And so does city councils, right in a vacuum of leadership, people will step in and try to do, you know, what they think is right. And so I'm glad to hear and I'm not surprised knowing, you know, knowing city manager black, that the level of communication has improved, and it's probably become much more widely distributed. And so that's great. Any other thoughts?

So just to know transparency, I think we as a council were headed in the trajectory that we need to as a city, as a council, just as you said, you know, city manager black and he is highly qualified and has the. type of leadership that's needed to help move the city forward and I think from my perspective that's what we've needed and that's what we've been waiting for and that's what's going to make the difference in how the city is able to move forward over the next um time period

Yeah, I think that your comment is appreciated greatly. Again, I had the opportunity to interview each member of the council and prior management, and I'll just be very candid here because we're just alone, right? It's just us. From my assessment, there was a trust deficit in the city. And in a low trust environment, it's not conducive to success. I think that you're headed in the right direction. I think the level of trust I expect has already risen and will continue to rise. Not to get too into it, but kind of the Maslow hierarchy of human needs. If people aren't trusting and they're distrustful, it's not going to lead to positive results. As there's more evidence of trust, that's going to lead to more positive results. But you can't put it all on the city manager. The city manager's got very broad shoulders, but it's not all just about manager. There has to be trust and respectful environment amongst the council members, and I'm not saying there isn't, but it's just necessary. There needs to be trust and respect that extends to the staff, and everyone needs to try to be much more positive in order to make progress. So that's great comments. Any other comments? Council Member.

I think one way that the council and the staff, and particularly the city manager's office, can work more efficiently and effectively together is to have a more highly organized knowledge management system. What I have found in the three-plus years of doing this job is that it tends to be a reactive job. We get a constituent or constituents asking about certain things, so we in turn ask for a follow-up on something. A lot of these things have been churning for a while. And really, from an executive leadership position, it's as simple as a spreadsheet, a tracker, or something like that, that's updated very continuously, which is the latest and greatest. What takes up a lot of my bandwidth, and I'm venturing to guess it takes a lot of the bandwidth of my colleagues, is just like, hey, what's going on with that? kind of question, right? And so, and I know from their perspective in the city manager's office, it takes a lot of bandwidth on their end to just like talk to the director or talk to the person who's more intimate with that and get a report on that. When really I just want a very simple answer on what's going on. Not necessarily needs to be tended to now, but I just want to know that I know what's going on and then there are actually eyes on it and there are things being done to make things move forward. So I think just in general, just a more highly organized knowledge management.

Right. Let me feed back to what I think I heard. a more efficient way of being able to share information, basically. I mean, sometimes you ask a simple question, staff writes a 10 page report. You didn't need that. You just needed the simple answer. What's the status on X, right? And so finding that white equilibrium and making sure that the communication channels are open and we know what's necessary. You want to take care of that request with the lowest possible amount of energy necessary, right?

yeah i'm personally struggling with this question because um you know we we got a lot of work done last year um it's probably one of the most in my opinion one of the most successful uh years that a vallejo city council has had um at least in the time i've lived here And at the same time, it was probably one of the hardest years in my life, just because of all of the dysfunction on the team. And I don't really know how to I don't really know how to solve that. I think City Manager Black has done an outstanding job in proving that in a short period of time, sharing information, really trying to engage us in discussions, which I think has played out in council meetings real time. But I think the work of like really creating alignment as a group, um respecting you know whenever you don't get your way on something and still having the need to move forward i mean there's been some decisions i haven't been happy with personally but i still show up the following tuesday and i engage folks um because that's what the city has asked me to do right um that is something that I think we as a group need to work on collectively to reach that optimal level because I think about all the things we did do even though there was turbulence and then I wonder like just imagine how much we could be doing if we're all on the same page and not just as a council but also with community so that's something I've been giving some thought to that I don't even as an executive, because I know how I run my shop where I work, but I don't know how to necessarily do that in this environment. And I'm trusting our new city manager and the city attorney's office to help in that endeavor. But I do think we have to do the work as a council too.

Well, I appreciate your comments because it's easy to lose sight of all that the council and the city has accomplished in spite of all the challenges that you face, right? And it shows just how resilient and how focused ultimately you all are that despite this, you still got a lot done. People take a lot of this for granted, but a lot still gets done and a lot gets done under the surface you know, where people don't really see it, but even at the council level, you're making progress, you're moving forward. You could be doing a lot more, and you could be doing it better, and you could be achieving your policy ends. And that's what this type of a day is all about. But I think it's great that you mentioned that, because it's easy to lose sight of that. It's a tendency that people have to focus more on the negative than on all the good works that have done. I think all of you got a copy of the annual report that the staff brought this morning. And I was flipping through that this morning, and I was amazed and very surprised at all the wonderful things that got done during the year. I don't want to say surprised. I was gladdened to see all the wonderful things that the community still gets done, that the city is still moving forward. So that's great. Meredith, do you have any comments?

Yeah. I think I would agree that a lot got done and it was also, it took a lot. It took a lot out of us. It was more difficult to get things done than it should have been. But I think the thing for me is I When I did the interview, we had different management and I don't wanna litigate what was wrong before. I think I'm taking a forward look, but the issue that as I've seen it from my vantage point as the chair, kind of watching everyone get frustrated at our, sometimes at the inefficiencies is if we have staff that only take direction from majority of the council, which is how it should be, and we have a council that is constrained by the Brown Act, and more than three of us cannot talk about any official item outside of a meeting, if we don't have the space and the format to get something agendized at a meeting, we are not going to be successful and we're not gonna be aligned and we're not gonna have a chance to talk through what we do and don't wanna do. And that as the chair has been probably the thing that has bothered me the most is that we don't have a mechanism or we haven't, now we're working on it. We have not had a mechanism To daylight the conversations that need to have happen, and so everybody individually goes in their own space and gets frustrated about an issue and we don't have the ability. To put something forward, where the Council, we can actually figure out do for people feel this way or not, and I saw that and still see that as my responsibility as the Chair. to assist with that moving forward. And I feel like we are now moving in that direction. And I'm very much looking forward to that because there have been moments where this council has been incredibly aligned and has gotten things done. The one that, strikes me that i that i think back to is the police oversight commission um you know when we voted 7-0 to push back on revisions to the ordinance um and got that set up i mean there there have been times where we've all been in lockstep and there have been times where we haven't been in lockstep that i think were self-inflicted that i think could have been avoided through better collaboration and better work collaboratively with the City Manager's office communication out of the City Manager's office. I can't communicate with the whole council to try and move stuff forward and that if we have an issue that it goes on an agenda so we can talk about it together and deal with it. So that would be my, you know, source of optimism, I guess, for the for the board is that I'm optimistic about, you know, working with city manager black to make sure that the important conversations happen, and they happen in a timely manner. And we can quickly figure out where a majority of us feels and move on rather than just having it go into the abyss.

Yeah, that's a very important comment and a great one. It won't surprise you to know that in a lot of cities that Michelle and I work, where there's, say, a split, majority-minority split on the council, in some of those cities, they're just like, too bad. If you don't have the votes, you're never going to get to see the light of day. The fact that your willingness to say, look, this council wants to be able to provide some daylight, some opportunity to have conversations, I think that alone is a big deal.

There are ways to do it.

I'm sure City Manager Black has discussed those. And sometimes you can have a workshop that doesn't put the council on the spot to have to make a decision. You just have a discussion. Or, and we'll talk later about how subcommittees may be helpful to a council, allowing conversations to occur in a Brown Act open meeting, but they're not definitive because they won't lead to an actual action. Allowing some sort of some steam out of the balloon and letting them get out there so it can percolate a little bit is a very healthy thing. And what you just said is so much you faced every meeting with the work, but you don't often talk about the work. And so what you are just doing right now is how do you manage the work? How do we talk about the work? And again, that's what a day like this is meant to be about.

And I would add, I mean, it's not always divided votes. Sometimes there's things that we might be 7-0 on, but it can never get brought forward. And so we just never get it done. And that's incredibly frustrating to our community as well.

Right. There's ways to make that happen. I'm confident. So now what we're going to do is we're going to take a little segue, but I want to check in. It's 25 minutes of 11. Do we need a little like a five minute break or do you want to? All right, so why don't we take just a five-minute comfort break, if you will, and come back, and then we're going to take a little off-ramp and talk about the community survey. Madam Mayor, if we can bring you back to the dais. I'm gonna turn it over to Michelle to walk through the results of the community survey that was administered in the springtime. This is always a part that gets a lot of interest in what we hear from the community. Now, just to tee it up, it wasn't a scientific survey with a margin of error, but it was nevertheless a survey that was made available to the public and public responded. So you're gonna hear the results from those who self-selected and responded to the survey. So with no further ado, Michelle.

Thank you. OK, so as Steve mentioned, this survey was conducted, I think it was the first three weeks in June. So it was out for three weeks. And it was sent over a variety of different channels. It was in your digital newsletter. There were several social media posts. And then I believe it was on the website as well. So a lot of opportunities for folks to provide some feedback here. And as Steve mentioned, folks self-select, right? There's going to be individuals who are very engaged and are providing responses and then others who they just don't take the time to provide these responses. So keep that in mind. Okay, so we had 211 Community remember respondents will do demographics in a couple of slides, so you can see what the makeup of that was. And then we had the variety of different topics that we went into and we asked some broad questions and then got more into the specifics and we'll go through each of these different topic areas. First couple of slides are respondent demographics. So you can see here, vast majority of folks were over the age of 60 who were responding, which is pretty typical for community survey results. Typically the older population is responding. And the majority, 56% have been living or working in Vallejo for over 20 years. Connection to Vallejo, so in the blue, the 64%, those are folks that are residents. Majority of respondents were residents here. 18% work in Vallejo, 12%. Do I need to move? Okay, thank you. 12% are business owners and then a small grouping, 6% other. So one of our first themes, one of our first topic areas is quality of life and community identity. So again, one of those broader areas that we're touching first, we asked the community feels welcoming and inclusive to me. You can see here the overwhelming response, 40% agree. So that's really great news. Above that is strongly agree. So a good chunk of folks agree or strongly agree with that statement. Similarly, my overall quality of life in Vallejo is good. So about 10% strongly agree a little over 30% agree. What do you value most about living in Vallejo? So again, some of the strengths, some of the positives about being here in Vallejo. Weather, location, diverse and inclusive community. Those are the top three we have here. In green here is housing affordability and access to nature is here in blue.

And, of course, we can take the council for the weather. Yes, just to mention housing affordability is a challenge.

We heard from some of the public speakers about housing affordability, but as you all know, on a relative basis.

in the bay area vallejo still tends to be more affordable than a lot of uh you know comparable communities so it makes vallejo a very uh i uh a place where people want to live because they can still recognize they can afford a house and of course your location you can live in vallejo and you can travel a lot of different places to work. We don't have the analysis here, but no doubt if you were to study the number of people who go out every day from the city, it's probably a relatively high percentage of your population. So very interesting statistics.

And we'll see some more aspects of this in the following slides as well. So improvements. So areas where the city of Vallejo can have a little bit of impact, right? And this is going to be one of those areas that you are going to want to look at as we're talking about priorities down the road. The major themes, the major areas that we heard over and over are those in bold. So safety, roads, cleanliness, homelessness, public safety. And we heard that in public comment as well. So there's some alignment there. Economic development's up there in the top two. So jumping into public safety. So two questions here that we had, traffic, bicycle and pedestrian safety are significant concerns for me. A lot of folks strongly agree and agree with that. So that's definitely something that the community views as a priority for some area for improvement. I feel safe in my neighborhood was the next question. A lot of agree and neutral there. So this is where we dive in a little bit deeper. What are your top public safety concerns? We've talked a couple of times, we're here for a priority setting session because you can't do everything, right? So if you're looking at where you wanna focus your attention, according to the population that responded, this is where they'd like attention focused. Crime is number one, level of police staffing is number two and traffic safety number three. So jumping into infrastructure and infrastructure is something that people see every day, they use every day. So this is typically something that's top of mind. It kind of resonates with a lot of the comments that we heard from the icebreaker as well. So first question is about traffic flow and congestion. Traffic flow and congestion in my part of Vallejo is acceptable. Majority of those are agree and neutral. Expanding pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure is important. Strongly agree, agree and neutral, kind of broke those up. And then the last one, I am satisfied with the condition of city streets and sidewalks. Over 60% say they strongly disagree there. So something that is a concern for the respondents of the survey. Again, keep in mind we had 211 respondents, so this is not mirroring the entire population of Vallejo. Housing and homelessness. We've talked a lot about that. We heard that in public comment as well. The city's efforts to address homelessness have been effective. About 50% say strongly disagree here in blue. And then I'm not concerned about housing affordability in Vallejo. It's pretty well broken up. About 25% disagree, but you can see it's split pretty decently between the responses. This one again is pretty split. There isn't a clear winner here. What types of housing should the city prioritize? And the options were permanent supportive housing, senior housing, which was 25%, workforce housing, market rate housing, and other. So again, it sounds like people either are kind of voting for their specific interest or they all feel that there really needs to be a balanced approach to housing. All right, city services and government, so the core services that you're providing as an agency. The city's programs for seniors meet community needs. The majority here, almost 50%, were neutral on this. City programs for youth meet community needs. Similarly, about 40% were neutral. The overall quality of services provided by the city of Vallejo meets community needs. About 40% said disagree there.

So what this tells me, a lot of the respondents really aren't aware of what senior programming is available. The same for the community as it relates to youth. And then the last one probably shouldn't be surprising when we realize everyone always wants more services. No one ever asks for less service. So there's always a demand, insatiable demand for a service level that frankly a city really can't fulfill, but people always want more.

And we have a slide coming up that identifies where they can prioritize what that more is, what they're really looking for in more. right here. So what are your top priorities for the city of Vallejo? I think of all of these slides that we've shared for the community survey, this is likely the most important because it really goes through all of these and identifies for these respondents which areas are they really interested in. And so if you look here, I know this is small, economic development here is number one, public safety number two, and then infrastructure number three. so again it really resonates it aligns with what we heard in public comment it it aligns with what we heard in your icebreaker statements there's a lot of alignment here as to where to prioritize And then breaking it down a little bit further, which city service or program would you like to see expanded or improved? Again, those in bold are where we heard a lot of responses. I find it interesting that youth programs is highlighted there, yet so many folks were neutral about the response to youth programs. But youth programs, public safety, economic development, homelessness services, roads and infrastructure. So again, this just tells us over and over, folks are aligned with the priorities that you all discussed as well, what staff discussed as well. Okay, so before we get into the SWAT analysis, any thoughts on what you just heard on the survey? Anything that you, slides that you want to go back to? Any feedback? Yes, Vice Mayor.

This is just my perspective, but I think us as a council, that just validates a lot of stuff that we already knew. I mean, especially from a lot of the I guess, areas that we believe that we need to improve on and some of the existing infrastructure conditions of some of our city is exactly what we have already regularly been hearing from our constituents. So this, to me, this validates a lot of stuff we already know. And from an alignment standpoint, that should get us in the same page, so to say, to moving us forward to identify how do we improve some of these areas. So thank you for the survey to help validate a lot of stuff we already know.

So no surprises. That's really great. And just like you said at the end there, this is a really helpful starting point for the discussion on priorities, which we'll get to in a minute.

Councilmember. I just want to make two general comments, one on economic development and the other on public safety. So starting with economic development, the previous city councils have identified that as a goal, as a top priority for many years. And yet the resident has not tangibly seen improvement in the city. And I think it's because we've pursued an economic development of like looking for development opportunities.

Okay.

And less so like one of the public commenters presented and outlined a project on how do we revitalize and reinvest in like what we already have and what made Vallejo successful in the past, what made it a thriving city. So I think that's something we need to look into. And then around public safety, know the one comment i will make uh in full transparency to the public is sometimes it very much feels like the council is being asked to take a stand on public safety you're either for reform or for public safety but you can't be for both and i want to make sure that we as a community norm around the need to continue to engage in reform and move that work forward because it's critically important and at the same time it's also important for a thriving city and community to have a safe city because otherwise that sense of um not feeling safe compels folks to either stay inside and not engage with the rest of the community or to go elsewhere to live And so I just wanna elevate that because I think both things can be true and we need to continue that dialogue as a city.

Those are really great points. And to touch on your earlier comment or the earlier part of your comment, when you talk about economic development, there's so much involved in economic development. And really what it comes down to is infrastructure, is part of economic development public safety is part of economic development you know they all connect because if you have that infrastructure if you're beautifying the area that's going to bring businesses in that's going to bring tax dollars in if it's a safe community same thing too so there's connection there to those three areas any other comments all right oh yes um thank you for the work one of the things that

while it's true what both of my colleagues have said and totally don't disagree and i look at the fact that it's 211 individuals speaking and i'm looking at the demographics the age one of the things that going forward i think it's really important for the city as a whole when we talk about youth services when we talk about affordable housing attainable housing what all that means as we continue to move down this journey is what kind of work do we need to do to really get in our community and make sure that we're surveying a population that is representative of of a group of people that are really representative of the population of our city. And as someone who works with the most under-income individuals in different counties that I've worked in, and when we're doing revitalization work and doing different type of work, that's the population that we hear from. And what we end up doing is we miss our future generations and the type of work we do, the things that we agree to. And these are basic fundamental infrastructure things that you have to do for the city. But as we continue to move forward and become a more healthier city and more vibrant city, we can't forget to do that. Thank you for the work.

agreed of course and you know it's pretty typical these community surveys to have a much smaller group that is responding to these surveys i mean we see it everywhere and um and the more you can engage the better off you'll be right and i'm not oh i don't know no no i don't okay i just want to make sure and i think you know as we move forward how do we help

the work as a city as council in really figuring out even working with our nonprofit organizations and them going to their stakeholders and helping us get data so it's you know this wasn't this statement is not to disparage the work it is again how do we enhance the work

And I didn't take it that way at all. And I will say actually on one of the upcoming slides, the next one, I think, on the SWOT analysis, one of the strengths that the community mentioned and your team mentioned was engagement, community engagement. So yes, there's always room for improvement, but you're off to a great start, which is good. Any other comments before we move to the SWOT? right thank you all so for the swat analysis i will say we've got a redundancy disclaimer on there you will hear some repeated information that you've already heard from the the most recent slides on the uh on the community survey and also you know we'll see some some repeats and strengths and opportunities and and and weaknesses and threats that's just how a SWAT works but what we did here was we really synthesized the information that we heard from all of our information gathering so Steve mentioned earlier the interviews that we conducted with the members of the council members of the executive team we took that information boiled it down into major themes and then compared it to what we heard in the community survey so the next four slides are a comparison of what we have there we'll start with the strengths So we have on the first column there, council and staff strengths, and then community strengths. Anywhere where we saw duplicate, we emphasize that in bold so you could really see what that was. The highlights here that I really wanna mention are, we talked about in the community survey, the residents love the location, they love the diversity, they love the weather, um the affordable housing is listed in there they have a lot of strengths that are listed there's also a lot of strengths you see um that are overlapping here public safety progress community engagement which we just talked about infrastructure investment efforts so the city is off to a really good start you're making good ground you're gaining ground you're doing a lot of really key things to move the city forward and staff and the community sees that which is huge it's a really great starting point the other piece that i really want to mention is on the council staff side we hear we see the transparency resilient workforce let's see experienced knowledgeable staff so you have a lot of organizational strengths that are helping you get there helping you move things forward which is really positive to see as well i'm going to turn it over to steve because he likes the tough stuff for some reason i get weaknesses and threats right michelle gets all the positives

So again, as we spoke candidly earlier this morning, there was perception of some mild dysfunction at times amongst the council, and that came through in the interviews. Leadership instability, hopefully that's on the path to being solidified and being resolved, but it's not just at the CM level, it's at the level below that. The trust deficit that we talked about earlier. Again, when there's a lack of trust, It's really hard to move forward. So that is a bold because I heard that from almost everybody I spoke with. So it's an important deal. Unclear organizational priorities. Well, that's what today is all about. Understanding you can't do everything, but you can do a few things very well. And today, again, you should be commended for your commitment to it. micromanagement again that goes back to not knowing roles and responsibilities so we talked about that a little bit the lack of accountability systems and that was on our board somewhere back there about trust but also accountability when someone is given a direction to do something getting it done making sure they're held accountable if not And so some of the other items on their siloed department operations, I heard from staff that said, well, there's interim people in place, and it's hard to engage with them. People are working from home. Sometimes it's hard to engage. So we heard some of that. From the community, of course, not surprising, they focus on what they see. The infrastructure comments that are consistent with what the vice mayor had mentioned earlier, homeless response, no matter how much you do to address homelessness, if people see a homeless person, they'll think the city's not doing anything about it, even though you're doing a lot about it. The lack of confidence and trust in government. Sadly, over the past, pick a date, maybe 10 years, I don't know, there's been a tremendous erosion in the confidence and trust in government at all levels of government. Lucky you, you're local government, which means you're accessible to the public. So it spills over. I'm sure you've seen it all. It spills over at the local level, just the way that people are unhappy, with what's going on in government and the fact that things have become very extreme in our country. And so that hurts us here at a local level. So you can see some of the other weaknesses there. Again, these are all things that I suspect come as no surprise to all of you.

But now for something peppy, opportunities.

Thank you. You want to get that? all right so opportunities uh what's encouraging here is there's a lot listed here on the opportunities that the city has control over the city can really make a positive difference on um so the three areas that i'm going to focus on are those that are in bold economic development expansion community confidence restoration infrastructure revitalization revitalization projects words are hard um so economic development again it keeps coming up right it's something that's really critical it's something that the city has a lot of control on and it'll bring in additional tax base it'll bring in additional jobs it'll bring in additional residents so a lot there um infrastructure revitalization we talked already about how infrastructure revitalization is something that is going to also bring folks in it's also going to bring economic opportunities in so those are something that you have control over community confidence restoration and community trust building on the on the community side Steve just spoke to this on the weaknesses and I love that it's not just a weakness it's also listed there as an opportunity this this information was taken before the leadership transition. And I know that there's been some movement since these results came out. And so I do want to emphasize that it's an opportunity that I think has already been taken advantage of on and you're moving forward in the positive direction. Back to you, Steve.

And before I jump to threats, I just want to highlight the fact that the community members, staff, the council, that there's alignment around this issue of economic development and that Vallejo is primed to take advantage of investment is huge. There's a lot of communities in the state that say, look, we don't want to grow. We want to stay the way we are and that you can't stay the way you are. A city is either growing and thriving or shrinking and dying. It's a binary choice. So the fact that there's a willingness to accept economic development because we know, to some extent, it's a little disruptive. A project comes forward and the neighbors say, I never knew about that. That's going to create what? Traffic. And so economic development doesn't come without some growing pains. But the fact that there's alignment around the desire for investment is huge, and I'm sure you'll be able to capitalize on that. So what are some of the threats that are out there? Typically threats are the things that are external. It's a little different than a weakness, but often there's a lot of crossover there. The budget, having a structural budget deficit. You've got to get a handle on your budget, and I know you're taking steps to deal with that. It's always, it's never generally a revenue problem, it's an expense problem. It's spending more than is coming in and it's burning down your fund balance. And things take a long time in government. You don't hit the wall for a long time. It's a very slow speed type of crash. So it can feel like, oh, they always, and I hate the phrase, they always find the money. I really hate, because the truth of the matter is no. You can track your fund balance. You can see if it's growing, like your savings account, or if it's spending down and then ultimately you hit the wall and bad things happen. You have to have layoffs, you have to cut back services. So the structural budget deficit is huge because without the money, you can't do anything. Turnover at the leadership level, I think the council is bringing stability there, it's great. The risk of burning out employees, heaping too much work on everybody, and so that is a risk. Again, we talked about public trust, political fragmentation finding its way into the council, even though these are nonpartisan positions in a lot of cities, they become highly partisan. The community, of course, is always concerned about crime and safety. And with crime, it's not always actually the level of crime, it's the perception of crime. Your police chief will tell you the same thing. And so things that contribute to that, homeless encampments, illegal dumping, graffiti, that creates the anxiety around residents and the perception of crime anyone who has the next door app knows anything happens and everyone freaks out right and so there's that viewed as a threat the public recognize that fiscal sustainability is very important for the city and the other items there of course homelessness a perpetual issue for cities in california so those are some of the threats Any surprises there? I'm sure even the public recognizes if you defer maintenance, it only drives up the cost of repair. And we're at that point in the life cycle of cities in California that all that infrastructure that was built 70 years ago, 80, 100 years ago, it's beginning to crumble. So now we're going to talk a little bit about the vision which is the highest level, and then we're gonna talk about the mission of the organization, and we're gonna talk about values, and if you do a good job at that, we're gonna feed you. But only if you do a good job.

All right, so we're gonna start off with vision. So a vision statement describes what we want to see in the future, where we want to be. So this is not necessarily where we are today, but it's our guiding beacon where we want to be in the future. Our team really likes the vision statement that you have. Vallejo is a safe, prosperous, and vibrant city. It's pretty good. It's simple. It's quick. You can remember it. It's a great vision statement. And the community survey, The folks thought the same thing. So again, what words or phrases best describe your ideal vision for the future of Vallejo? And we're seeing some repeats of the wording that was in the current vision statement. We have on here, safe, clean, prosperous, vibrant community, thriving. So a lot of repeats similarities there. Again, Vallejo is a safe, prosperous and vibrant city. So that's what we have there. About 50% of respondents shared that they liked the vision statement as is. A chunk of them were neutral. Not very many folks said that they disagreed or disliked the vision statement. Our recommendation is that we reconfirm this vision statement. But obviously that's up to you. So what are some of your thoughts? Do you want to reconfirm this? Do you want to tweak it, adjust it a little bit? How do you want to do this?

I'd reaffirm it. I mean, vision statement doesn't get too much into the weeds. And just listening to my colleagues comments, it really does wrap everything up, I think.

Yeah, agreed. Okay. Any other thoughts?

You know, I see the word, sorry, my name is Helen Marie. I'm Councilwoman representing District 6. I do apologize for my tardies, but we had another community event that I needed to be at. But I was wondering, I know the word prosperous means a lot, but to me it's stagnated. I want it to be highlighted, whether it says economic development opportunities, because our sign says opportunity. I think the word progress needs to be more elevated because people don't see Vileo to be such, unfortunately. I see it to be such. So if we could move that to more clear. Okay.

So emphasize. That is correct. Clarify prosperous.

Yes.

All right. Any other thoughts?

Throughout all of Vileo.

Okay.

other thoughts yes thank you uh for the question so i'm not necessarily sure i'd i'd keep both prosperous and vibrant in the vision statement um i would keep vibrant i think vibrancy gives you a pulse on where this where a city is um but i think it's just as important if the council is open to shifting this a little for us to perhaps replace like prosperous healthy healthy okay and i don't i don't mean health in just uh like physical sense organizational city-wide health right residents you know like as a community uh i think that that's important um and then the uh the only other comment was like think it's um my colleague council member let it do she often talks about you know the fact that Vallejo is a city of opportunity it's the first thing we see anyone coming in from Napa or coming through the car keyness that's not reflected in our vision statement um we don't tie it to that and I do think that incorporating you know opportunity into this vision statement uh we're also keep us all grounded in what we're working towards, which is anybody can come here and make it, you know, and be able to thrive.

Thank you. Yes.

I thought I just said that. But the reason I think healthy is a beautiful word to add to it. But I think the word prosperous is crucial because our goal, my goal, at least, is to take Vallejo to a new high end level, you know, not that stagnated. So the word prosperous is how we make our money. So in order for us to grow, we need to either add to that word, emphasize that word. I do believe that healthy should be part of it though. And opportunity should be part of it. Keep it simple and keep it moving.

Thank you, other thoughts? Yes, Vice Mayor.

I think one of the comments that I've received from quite a few people and we've had this conversation in the past of Vallejo being a destination city. And so I would recommend if we as a council are open to it is not just calling it a city, but a destination city where all of this other adjectives would fully describe us as a place that people need to come and be at.

Thank you. Any other thoughts?

Mayor? I think I'm actually okay with it. I'm okay with it as is. I think it captures everything and my I guess my suggestion would be if it's possible for us to look at everything holistically, because I think we're going to have a lot of things like I want to see inclusion in there somewhere. I want to see inclusive in there somewhere, but it doesn't have to be in this if it can be in the mission. So that might be my suggestion is I don't want us to throw a word salad at our vision statement. I like that it's crisp. um but to make sure that we holistically with everything fitting together hit on all of the priorities that we have so i don't know if there's a way to sort of back and almost like look at the mission and then come back of course we can definitely do that steve's gonna take we take us through the mission exercise um and then we'll go into the values you have the acronym be great

currently for your values. And what we can do is have each of those conversations and come back to this or we can have each of those conversations take down all of the information that you share for each and then send back recommended revisions for your review. So are you ready to jump to the mission then right now? Let's see what that looks like.

Okay.

I have a question.

Yes.

So as we're talking about the vision and mission statement, I think it's also important and I get all the roles that are in play to be really respectful. But when you're creating a mission and vision statement, I think what we're also missing in this dialogue is our leadership team in our city government. And I think that's really important because the reality is on a day-to-day basis, the city staff under the leadership of the city manager, they're carrying out the vision. And so how do we create that buy-in if we're going to really go through this exercise? um so i just would like to offer that in this room today because i think it's important from my perspective as someone who leads teams okay do you want to speak to that city manager black i i think what i heard was another adding another

layer of perspective in terms of how we engage this, and that layer of perspective would be staff, the operational elements of the organization. And so I think that's really, you know, what I'm here for to a great extent. Staff are here listening and prepared to participate however way it dynamically unfolds today. So with all of this, we should be approaching it from the standpoint of realism and our ability to operationalize and execute. And so that's one of the perspectives that I view as my responsibility as well in terms of participating here. So that's, I guess, my response to the feedback.

And I would just add, and I think the mayor's suggestion is a good one, we'll walk through mission and talk about values, then you're doing good, so we'll let you have lunch. And then we'll circle back on that. I would respectfully push back a little bit on the concept of including the staff in the vision. I think it's more appropriate perhaps at the mission level. The council's the policy makers. the staff executes the vision of the council it's your vision it's the council's vision does staff have opinions based on their expertise and their own you know personalities as individuals absolutely they do but when it comes to setting policy where the city is going what we're going to pursue again that's why the council gets the big bucks that's the council level decision yeah absolutely and i would add

we're going to provide the greatest value when we start talking about the goals and the objectives the objectives are you know how we're going to how are we going to go about achieving the goals and a lot of that will be of an operational nature strategy tactics and things of that nature that we will be able to contribute to this conversation

Any more thoughts before? That's fine. I just want to close it out, but that's fine. And I will also say where I agree that we are policymakers and we are setting a vision. There's an executive team that you're leading and you're part of that executive team. And I think it's also important those voices, the executive team voice is sitting in that policy. I set policy in many places. And it is important. So I do want to end with that.

Thank you. Yeah, that's great. And your willingness to hear those voices is commendable. So moving to the mission statement, and again, a lot of organizations confuse their vision statement, their mission statement, fairly common thing. But a mission statement comes down, if a vision statement's that 40,000 foot, or if it's the guiding beacon, what do we ultimately... hope to become, even if we never really get there. The mission statement is more about, okay, what is our purpose? So it speaks more to the municipal organization, not the city, this general concept of the city of Vallejo. What is it, right? It's really what is the city government all about? It's a concise declaration of its purpose. What it exists for, why it exists, what does it do? Your current mission statement in all candor is a little bit of a cop out because all of it, the only duty it confers on the city is to facilitate connections to inspire. doesn't say we will provide excellent municipal services or we will it is uh not typically what you see in most other cities it's not as affirmative as i think it could be i see smiles amongst the council people uh am am i right in assuming that my take on it is not that dissimilar than maybe some of the council members any thoughts on it yeah i agree i

I think we should redo this. And I think service needs to be in there. And that's really the only thing I feel strongly about is that it be in that we in some way, capture that the mission is city of Leo is to serve the community.

Yeah, you play a vital role. It's making connections is important, but you also provide a tremendous amount of services. That's why the city exists. Any other thoughts on the current mission statement? And any thoughts on things you'd like to see in a mission statement? Councilmember.

I'll be quick here, but I laughed because that's how it very much feels sometimes like being a council member on this body. And I really mean that this does this is not criticism to this group or I'm sure it will sound that way. But we were put in these positions to make decisions, not to, you know, try to make everyone happy because that's not real life. So I do think we need to work on that and take some ownership around what we can control as a group because otherwise like we're always gonna leave folks unhappy because we're not taking a stand on where we should go as a city, so.

Yeah, well stated. I took a stab at it. Oh, council member, before we get to your thoughts.

Thank you. having trouble turning this into like a very concise pithy comment but bear with me but something along the lines of you know i don't disagree with the the service aspect but us really like owning the issues that happen in the city something that's more forward, proactive, but just really accepting that we're taking ownership of these issues. I don't want to get into a digression about that, but I hope that makes sense versus we provide services. And then I think for some who, I think some might hear that and think, well, that sounds like you'll just do the bare minimum. And I don't want to communicate that. I want to communicate that we're owning the issues and we're making sure that we're going back to that vision, that we want to be a prosperous, vibrant community, whatever we settle on, but along those lines.

Certainly, you're saying the city needs to take responsibilities for things, right? It's not just we'll make a connection and say, hey, you guys work it out, right? The city is an active participant in economic development. The city is an active participant in public safety. You don't control all of those things. I can't tell you how many times I had to explain to people, well, the city doesn't really control private lease arrangements between retailers and landlords, yet the city is asked to promote economic development. You have a role. You have a responsibility.

So I'd like to add that when we talk about our role, we're creating conditions. We're creating conditions for people to do what they need to do and making a decision to accept to do those things because the conditions are actually there so that you can thrive, so that you can do those things. And when we're setting the conditions, that means that we are taking the responsibility to ensure those conditions exist. Very well stated.

can i just really quickly jump back in because i when i said service i was thinking public service of like service to the community as public servants we're also we also need to provide excellent municipal services so we almost need service in there twice somehow we needed to capture both of those meanings because i think you can provide services to someone without being a public servant public service is being responsive to community needs, addressing the issues, like what the council members were saying, that's what I was envisioning is having a government that is actually responsive to community needs, to community priorities, that getting back to the trust that can be trusted when people pay their taxes, they can trust that that tax dollar is gonna be used mindfully and wisely in service of their aims, in service of the broader community, not making everybody happy, but in service of bettering the community.

Yeah, it's really what local government is all about. And local government in our country, thankfully, is accessible and a lot more responsive than a lot of other places. And we should recognize that. So I took a stab at it. I'll let you ruminate on these for a minute or two. Again, we'll circle back on all of this probably after lunch, but here were some thoughts, tried to be a little more concise. So my first one was to deliver excellent public services that promote safety, prosperity, and quality of life in Vallejo. strengthen vallejo through effective governance community partnership and sustainable progress and to improve quality of life by providing excellent services and fostering community success these are what i would say would be more typical of the type of a mission statement that you would see in a city without holding you to anything without making any final decisions Does any one of the three come anywhere close to what would resonate with each member of the council? Is there one up there that there might be a little more consensus on that we could maybe modify a little bit later when we get into it? Just let me stop and pause and check in with the council. Council member.

Councilwoman Gordon here. I wrote this out as I was reading the first one and of course it could be concise I think one of them start off with your option wine will foster inclusive collaboration and transparency leadership to ensure safe community. A seller economic development stability across our city.

Okay, thank you for that i'm going to grab your notes, if I can because it was a lot any other thoughts any any other option up there begin to appeal to any Member of the Council don't worry I have no private authorship doesn't matter.

I like the first one, I mean I could. Sue on a little bit more to think if there's any words I want to take in or out, but I think what I like about the first one is if I talked to. just a resident who's not even really paying attention to or city council means they know what those these words mean right it's not kind of like a necessary conversation of like what the city's responsibilities was like i want safety you know like i want i want prosperity like they understand what those words mean and i think for anyone reading them like okay i understand that and they're trying to get they're trying to make that happen for the city so

Yeah, they get those concepts and they know it when they see it, right? And they know it when they don't see it. Vice Mayor.

Yeah, I'm... I actually like option one and two, and both option two. I'm leaning more towards option two, more the fact that it highlights community, because I think that's where a lot of our constituents feel like they're left out of it. So I think if that is part of the conversation or part of the mission statement, I think that speaks to the community versus this coming directly from us or speaking on our behalf, because community is, in my mind, a huge part of how we, run and make policy and set these conditions that the community participates in.

Any other thoughts before we move to the values?

I am also leaning towards one, but with a slight modification, which would be everything that you're saying and include effective community partnerships in there. Because I think if we're engaging in effective community partnership, then we're holding ourselves to delivering those excellent services, but we're also committing ourselves to working with community to see the Vallejo that we all want to see. So it's a slight modification to one, but I think one hits the mark. And I'm in agreement with Council Member Palmares on that.

Mayor, did you have a comment?

Yeah, I was gonna, I mean, I think any of the three are a massive improvement and start getting us there. I think some combination of one and two, I would, I would concur. I mean, you could even just add, I mean, I like, I like starting with strength to strengthen Vallejo. Um, So you could do something like to strengthen Vallejo through excellent public services that promote safety, prosperity, and quality of life. And then we'd have to add a little clause like partnership with community. That starts to get a little wordy, but something that kind of just combines those two. Okay. All right.

Well, so we don't want to, oh, Council Member.

So somebody who really, really read people's visions and mission statements, I hold these words to my heart. The part that you emphasize that we as councils are the policy holders, the word governance is important. The word community is important. If you look at the word community, it has unity in it. So I like the fact that was suggested through the mayor and vice chair, vice mayor. It emphasized that relationship. My campaign is Stronger Together. So I think if there's some way you can collaborate them together and maybe tone it down a little bit so it's not wordy, would be great. But I think the word governance, community and partnership definitely should be part of that. And it goes to that word progress that I mentioned earlier. So I think that would be crucial.

So in a moment, we're gonna jump to talk about the values and then we'll do our lunch break and we'll circle back on this, but I don't wanna force an outcome today this is really good discussion so if we don't get to an outcome it's not a failure it's we've started the conversation about it and we would then work to get ultimately to uh to landing place but it's really helpful these comments let me turn it over to Michelle just to round out and talk about your values and see if you have one of many any changes there

All right, so the city's current values spell out the acronym BE GREAT. Values are supposed to be the guiding principles for the organization. So bravery, efficiency, growth, respect, excellence, accountability, and trust. And each of these words, each of these values has a definition that incorporates a little bit more there, right? We heard... on the community survey that overall folks are in line with this. With this acronym, we have a star rating out of five here. The majority are in the threes, which is pretty reasonable. And then besides the city's existing values, we asked if there were any additional values that they thought would be better describing the city. Top is transparency, then integrity and service. So same idea here. We can talk through. Is this something that you want to confirm? Is this something that you want to adjust? What are your thoughts, your immediate thoughts seeing this?

I'll go first. Well, I think integrity needs to be in there. I think equity, something alluding to equity needs to be there or inclusivity. I don't know what growth as a value. I mean, I don't know if the predecessors might've been just trying to make an acronym fit. I would rather not have an acronym and have it be targeted values. So I wouldn't mind redoing this.

The words that really resonate, right? As opposed to trying to make something out of it. Yeah. Any other thoughts? No? No strong feelings here? Do you want me to go back to the prior slide? Would that be helpful? Okay. Here we go. So be great. Take a minute to digest that.

yes council member i mean it's just what i said like a few minutes ago on bravery courageously working together to achieve common goals and we got the lowest score on that so um yeah is that a mic drop there

So I think the real question is, without even looking at that, what are the values that we hold as this body, regardless of what's there? And I think that's the real question. What are our values? And exploring what our values are.

So we heard a few from the mayor. Anything you want to add to the list? So can we write them down? I don't know what they are. Yep, we've got them right here.

Can we see them?

And there was one more, growth, right?

I was criticizing growth.

Oh.

So I think it was inclusive.

I would criticize growth and I would criticize bravery because although I agree with the spirit of these, I don't think the words get that. I would keep accountability. I would add service, integrity, equity. We might want to add transparency as a public's number one. Yes. I'd probably, I mean, yeah, that's where I would probably go.

Any other? Any other thoughts? And we'll we can play around with these as we're taking our lunch break as well.

Vice Mayor, I think I think critical word that that speaks resonates with our community would be compassion. The fact that we are actually listening to what they may be have issues with but actually understanding it and to understand it would mean to get a clear action to address those.

Thank you.

Yes. I'm sorry. Let me just see what's on the board. Sure.

So we've got integrity, equity, accountability, service, transparency, and compassion.

And best practice, we kind of want somewhere between five and seven. You have too many on campus.

So you said how many do we want to have?

Best practice is five to seven.

Okay.

And I know that there was mention from Madam Mayor and perhaps from others of you of some that you want to keep too, right? Accountability, trust.

So I think the only comment I would make is I'm generally in agreement with all of these i think the only one i have an issue with and we can have a whole debate about it is uh transparency and i would actually swap that out for ethics um because um two different people unless we align on what transparency look like transparency can look like many different things um whereas like if you're being ethical you're doing what's right um i think that that'll take you far longer with the public and in life than like whatever my version of transparency is because I'm always for let's release everything but that might may not be the same for everyone um so I think that's the only one I would want to tease out and talk with the public about it we're going to keep transparency on there

That sounds good to me that was the public's number one but it's what was the spirit behind it would you I don't know that we would need integrity and ethics, would you have a preference between the two I think they kind of speak to the same thing. I was also doing equity and inclusion. Those were the two. I was like, I don't want, I don't think we want both, but I think we want one. One of them? One of them.

I mean, I guess I would ask you guys, like, what would you think about, like, integrity versus, like, ethics in a local government? You work with hundreds of cities, like.

The word is ethics.

Ethics, not ethical behavior, yeah.

I think the term integrity encapsulates the concept that you're speaking to. I think a person with integrity acts in an ethical way.

And we would have the little, like we get a descriptor, so we could have it in the descriptor.

Yes, you could use it within the descriptor. And so what we can do is we can identify what those values are going to be, and then we can prepare some draft descriptors for you to review.

So under integrity, we could say, you know, transparent ethic, like ethical behavior. Yes, yes. Like we could put that under it if we wanted. Okay.

So that it's not highlighted, but it's still part of it.

So I'd like to add human dignity. Human dignity, okay. And that encapsulates authentic dialogue, that encapsulates when we're dealing with individuals who are unhoused, our policing, all the services that we deal with when we're talking about being human centered.

I'm saying my teacher is coming out. What if we did dignity? What if we folded compassion into dignity? I was going to say there's definitely that connection. So dignity is the value and compassion folds into it is what I'm suggesting.

I don't know. I didn't ask for compassion, so we have to ask the vice mayor how he feels about that.

I think this is, once again, an individual's own interpretation of what a lot of this is. So if we identify some of these words and we put the descriptors of what we translate or what we mean by it, then people would be able to relate it to whatever fits in their particular situation. So I'm fine with all of these words, but I think it speaks more to what does this mean to us as a council, us as a city, to help the general public understand what we're meaning by that, so they can potentially relate to those in a better way.

What was that last comment?

So, and can I just want to just to the teacher element here. I want to go back to the word ethics and integrity and From my perspective, and we can look up what it really means, they are very different. And from my preference, I would really like to see ethics versus integrity, because ethics is a system of accountability. Integrity is, am I going to do that and how will I act? But ethics is, this is what we do, this is our expectation, and this is what we're holding ourselves accountable to. So I'd like for us to reconsider that.

OK, we can put them both on the list. And once we come back and circle back with these, we can discuss what those finals are going to look like and go from there. Does that sound good? Are there other thoughts that you want to add? Yes.

Myself? Thank you. Maybe we can turn some words around for the word excellent, for example. Efficiency is incorporated into excellence, number one. Or we can say growth is incorporated into continuous improvement and learning with the word excellent. I think the word excellent, it really does hold accountability, but I think that it should be more highlighted than what it's saying now currently. I think we shouldn't take it away because we want excellence. I just think we just need to maybe either twist it to something else or add to it or take away what's there now and just add this meeting. For example, like I said, efficiency is incorporated into excellence. You can take a copy of it or just add the word incorporated into continuous improvement and learning. It's not said it's being going to what our city manager said, being realistic, not just putting words up there and hope that we can run with it and keep it moving. I think that improvement and learning shows that we're vulnerable and that's why we have commissions so we can hear from more voices. We're not up here by ourselves, basically.

Right, understood. any other comments before we break for lunch on this we're taking everything down and we'll come back and continue that okay uh thank you all i think half an hour what's that yeah okay uh about half an hour for lunch so it's just past 11 50 right now so if we can plan on coming back here um and be ready to start at 12 20 we will continue with this conversation we like steve said we might not finalize this today but we'll take all the information that we heard and come back if we're not able to finalize because we do want to jump into the priorities following this as well. So 30 minute break for lunch. We'll come back to this piece. Thank you.

any lunches you lose everybody if we could get the council members back yeah

We need to incorporate dogs into our workshops.

We need to incorporate dogs into our workshops.

Yeah, that's great. I was going to ask, and I'm just going to make this as a

Three. We had more council members before lunch. One went to the restroom. I saw. Where'd he go? Yeah. I hope not.

Thank you.

Okay, four, five, all right, five, okay. All right, we're getting ourselves back. That's always a dangerous part of a workshop is the lunch break and getting everyone back after lunch. We've talked a lot, we spent the morning session kind of laying the groundwork for what we're really here to do is goal setting, that's what it was billed as. But you can, and hopefully the council members and the public and the staff here recognize the importance of the arc of our discussion. Because we all have to really get in alignment to then be able to identify what goals are important and then set our intentions and identify our objectives. And I just want to mention, we spent a lot of time before lunch talking about the mission, vision, and values. We don't want to force an outcome on that today. We took notes and what we're going to do is go back and subsequent to this meeting, we will work up some options based on what we heard and then we'll work with the manager and his team to surface that back to the council and reach a consensus. But Vice Mayor, I believe you had a comment as well.

Yes, thank you for that. And once again, I wanna acknowledge the community that came out and joined us on their Saturday to listen to what we're doing. And as we've been talking about where we value community input and stuff, So I was, if there isn't an opportunity, because I know we as a council are talking about a lot of our goals, visions, and what our end goal is here, is there a way that the community can potentially chime in post this goal setting session? Maybe if there's a website that they can add maybe comments of some of the things that you've been right around from what we've been talking about, but I would love to hear what potentially the community may have that may be different from what we're talking about, just to get some community input. feedback and participation in this particular setting.

And I would turn to the city manager and ask if there might be an additional opportunity for perhaps those who didn't participate in the community survey to share thoughts on mission, vision, and values.

Absolutely. It's a great, great question. What we can do, which I think might be most effective, is that we can set up a webpage on the website that sort of has a two-way functionality to it where we can sort of communicate this process how we got here what has been discussed uh and whatever the final decisions are sort of be a dynamic page uh and they can provide we'll set it up so that they can provide feedback as well appreciate that okay so it has heard that thank you

So now we're gonna talk about goal setting or priority setting, however you choose to use the term. But this is really about what are the, You know, we talk about the big vision for the city, what do we want the city to become, but what are the goals that we want to pursue? And you can't have a conversation about goal setting without talking about the constraints, the limits on your ability to pursue this. If you had no constraints, if you had unlimited resources, you would pursue everything, but we don't. So you have to be somewhat utilitarian And so let's talk about the importance and role of goal setting. You can't do everything. It's just not possible. But you can do some things very, very well if you put your minds to it, you execute correctly. Some important things to keep in mind about goal setting. We often lose sight of the fact that the city that provides the services to the community, most of what it does is the provision of those day-to-day services. cleaning up the parks, servicing the street, providing water, policing, responding to emergency medical calls and fire calls. That's the day-to-day operation of the city. And that's what most of the city employees are engaged in. You'll see in a minute, we actually broke it down. so that's important just doing that alone takes time and is a process of constant improvement necessary just to do the day-to-day that's a challenge for elected officials because people look at elected officials and they say what are you doing over and above i already take for granted my trash gets picked up and i take for granted the street lights work and that there's a police officer what are you doing to solve my issue du jour And so all that is the additional capacity on top of the day-to-day, and that's a difficult thing to reconcile. Again, a good way to do it is to maintain your collaborative trusting relationship with the city manager and the staff and all work towards the goals that get identified. Setting a few focused goals is key. An organization that has 20 goals is setting themselves up for failure. right fewer goals is better there's an intersection of all of these as we talked about today there's an intersection of economic development infrastructure and and safety right a community where there's investment creates economic development you extract from developers money to enhance your infrastructure A place that's inviting, we talked about it earlier, I think the vice mayor mentioned it, a place where people wanna be creates its own energy and it creates a safety around that because it's safe, it's well lit, people are there. So when we talk about our goals, we need to keep in mind that they're not mutually exclusive. They all kind of bleed into one another. I've often thought we should do this as like a vein diagram rather than kind of blocks because people can see where they all intersect. So the big challenge here is balancing your resources. You have limited staff resources, limited capacity, limited money, but the council has priorities and goals. What is that thing that we want to get done? And how do we balance the two? How much can we put upon the staff that are just trying to keep the operations of the city moving? And I love this chart because I think it brings it home, it makes it real. We do this in a lot of the cities we work in. Your city has 661 budgeted full-time positions, and this is after making reductions. About 460 of them are what we would call operations or technical staff. They have a pretty specific job. You can't really ask a public works maintenance worker to go respond to emergency medical call. So just saying we have so many staff, we have all these people, can't they just get something done? Well, a lot of them are very specialized in what they do. So there's not a lot of cross-fertilization that can occur. You have 140 vacancies last time we checked. That's 21% vacancy rate. That is a very high vacancy rate. Now granted, COVID and then post-COVID, most cities did experience pretty high vacancies. Pre-COVID, a vacancy rate of around 5% was considered pretty good. 21% is four times that. It's very high. And we reviewed the list of all the vacancies you have in the city, police officers, firefighters, public works people. It's a lot of vacancies. Priority number one, really needs to be filling a lot of those positions but again as we talked about earlier today part of the challenge in recruitment is the tone at the top so the council has the opportunity to set the tone at the top where people say hey vallejo is a is a council that's interested in running a well-run city They're not the crazies. They agree to disagree respectfully. They treat the staff well. They have a good, strong, experienced city manager. That's the place I want to go work. Because frankly, employees right now, they call the shots where they want to work. There's lots of job openings up and down the state for people who want to work in cities. So when you boil all that down, you've got maybe 60, 61 positions that are available for what you might call special projects or things over and above. And this is primarily your professional staff. But even then, you're not going to take a management analyst in the police department and have them work on a land use issue that falls in the planning department. So even then, that's overly optimistic. So I hate to be a downer, but the truth of the matter is you've got limited staff capacity.

You've got to get staffed up to be able to pursue a lot of these initiatives.

So it's important. That's one big, big constraint. Another big constraint is money. So your fund balance. Your fund balance is your savings account. always think of the operating budget you always adopt a budget a balanced budget by law you have to adopt a budget a balanced budget but is it really balanced does it rely on one-time money does it draw on fund balance i would submit to you that's balanced only in name if you're digging into your savings account every month in your personal life you know your budget is not balanced I was a budget administrator for many years. I love the budget. I geek out on this stuff. And I would always like to explain to people, look, this is your savings account. Your savings account's either growing or shrinking. And of course, as time goes out, the dollars are smaller because of the effect of inflation. So $10 million in five years It won't be worth as much as it is today. So let's look at your fund balance. This excludes your measure P. And the good news is it's been growing. So that's good. But then when you look in the out years, and some of this is projections, and projections can either be overly conservative or overly optimistic. you know, the manager and his team will delve into that. But you can see, generally speaking, it goes up, fund balance is growing, but then it's dropping. And again, the nice thing is it occurs slowly. So you have time to adjust to this. You have time to do what you need to do economic development-wise and cost basis-wise to reverse this trend. But this is a concern. And this is something that the council needs to be concerned about. And so you don't need all these other distractions to take you away from the big picture. Because if you don't have the money, you get nothing done. Here's your revenue and expense line historically, and we can all see what happened around the COVID and then the subsequent economic, you know, bottom dropping out, how your revenues just tank, right? And you can see how long it takes for them to recover. Meanwhile, your expenses continue to rise. The effect of inflation in the broader economy has resulted in a lot of labor agreements with city employee groups. They're demanding higher COLAs. And so that puts pressure on your budget as well. So again, optimistically speaking, you're hoping to start breaking even in a couple of years. You're not even breaking even now. And as you know, because you just adopted your budget, you have to make painful decisions to bring it in balance just for your future fiscal year. So this is not all meant to be a downer, but it's meant to be a dose of realism when we talk about what's achievable in terms of our goals and objectives. Mr. City Manager, I just wanted to turn to you. Any other finer points you'd like to point on as it relates to the budget or staffing?

No, no, I think you're just validating what we already know and what we've been talking about. Obviously, one of the goals coming out of this, I think, is probably a no-brainer. It's long-term fiscal sustainability. I'm assuming will be one of those goals that we get to. And so with this, this is very true. As Steve has mentioned, I don't know, Steve, I mean, you're in better tune with the state than I am, but I would say that probably the vast majority of cities in California are either underwater or treading water financially. So this is not, you know, this is a broader issue across the state. Vallejo is is probably in the middle of the pack with respect to that, which is encouraging because it means that the work that we're going to end up having to do as it relates to long-term financial planning will be work, but we'll be in a lot better position than a great many other cities in California. But it will be work, nevertheless. And we're going to get there. You know, we're going to put in place a long-range financial plan that's going to look at everything. And hopefully, if we do it the right way, we'll be much, much better off in the long term.

Yeah, and the last few years obviously were difficult. COVID really was a gut punch for so many cities. And then the ARPA relief was helpful, but some cities used that money to add a lot of permanent employees. The city of Orange down in Southern California is currently dealing with that. They added like 40 employees with their ARPA money. Well, that money went away and they're like, gee, surprise. So, you know, people are dealing with that, but it created a distortion as to what the true economic picture was.

I have a question. Yes. As you looked at the chart where you showed the triangle upside down with the staffing, did you do any analysis around that or you just simply collated the data?

We didn't really do too deep of analysis. We just wanted to ride this big picture. I did look at what kind of positions were vacant and where they were, but we didn't take it down to the level of, for instance, if I was a staff member and I really wanted to understand where our greatest needs were in the organization, I obviously would have done more of that. This is just to provide the high level snapshot. just to identify the issue that having the people and the right people, not just any people, having the right people on the bus doing the work is critical and there's a need to fill these positions.

So my second question, and it probably might be no, did you do any type of benchmarking just to determine based on what you see, even though you didn't dig deep, based on what you see, do you believe that the positions are in line with what the city's needs are?

I didn't we didn't do any analysis as determined as say the number of firefighters is that the right number for a city of this size we didn't do any of that okay and we didn't benchmark to other cities but based on our experience with other cities 21 percent is is on towards the higher end agency factor so thank you you answered my question I love doing that kind of work but that's not our engagement

Oh, I understand that. I just thought with, you know, as you're trying to do co-setting with us, just how much did you dig or did not? And I wasn't expecting you to do a deep analysis. Thank you, though. Those are fantastic questions. Thank you.

We can add those to the list. So just some terminology that we'll use for the balance of our time together. When we talk about a goal, what we mean is it's a broad overarching something like public safety. It's not a particular tangible thing. Economic development, we all know it when we see it, but it's not a thing, right? It's a general intent of what we want. Recreational activities, it could be a goal. and we all can think of our head immediately what those type of activities would be, but it's a general description of something. It has a long-term focus. Fiscal sustainability is something that you will always have to be working on. You never say it's solved. You might say it's solved for the next few years, but you have to stay vigilant or you'll get in a bad place again. That's why you see boom and bust lots of times with budgets. It's aspirational again. You can't always measure it. You can measure your individual objectives. So your individual objectives, they're specific They're measurable, they're time bound, and they support a goal. And they're more detailed and concrete. So just as we talked through it this afternoon, goal is big overarching, objective is what's the specific thing we're gonna do about it. So these are your existing goals. And in the interviews I had with the council people, I would submit to you, I think these probably ought to be your current set of goals. Because virtually everything that we can talk about will fall into one of these areas and as i mentioned there's a lot of crossover in them and so our first step is to check in with the council to see if these are the right goals if there is a desire to make any changes virtually every city will have these as their goals maybe the quality of life one might be different but economic development, financial and organizational sustainability. I like to add organizational sustainability along with financial sustainability because you need them both. You need to have the workforce, you need to have the positions filled, you need to have a stable organization, and you need to have the financial resources. Public safety, job number one for local government, and then Across the state, a lot of agencies might have different. Quality of life encompasses a lot of things. So I want to check in with the council. During the interviews, which granted was a few months ago, these seemed to be about right. And the issue for the council is, yeah, but what specifically are we doing? for public safety what are we actually doing in economic development and that's our next step but to get there we want to confirm or make some modifications to these so let me stop and check in with council members do these resonate mayor put you on the spot

I don't have a problem with them. What you just said is the task I want us to undertake, which is what do these actually mean and what do they look like in practice? Because the city of Vallejo has had the same goals for 10 years and there's not really been much measurable progress for the community on any of them. I think we've made some just in the past year, but I think we need to delve into what exactly we mean by these.

Yeah, the objectives is where the rubber hits the road.

Yeah, but in terms of these goals, I think they still apply.

Yeah. Colleagues on the council?

I don't disagree with these goals. I'm just communicating right now that there are a few things regarding housing and homelessness, but I could nest that into at least a couple of these, right? So I have no problem with that. Like you said, it's Robert Mesa Road. So goals as far as these are concerned are fine with me.

Okay. Yeah, and again, we're not locked into this, but we can kind of put a pin in this and kind of move forward. But one thing I did want to talk about before we start getting to objectives is as an outside person looking at the city of Vallejo and knowing you're trying to achieve your goals, I want to touch on a subject that happens in a lot of cities. We do a lot of these workshops. We do a lot of goal setting. We do a lot of strategic planning. And then invariably what happens at the next council meeting is all a discussion that goes on here in this type of a workshop is forgotten. And a council member will turn to the manager and say, Mr. City Manager, I think we need a report on painting City Hall purple. And in the case of Vallejo, you'd say, let's add that to council referral list. And then someone will say, okay, that needs to go to step one process. Staff needs to scope it. What would it mean? How many gallons of paint do we need? How many brushes or are we gonna use a roller? And then that'll come back after several months. And then you'll go to your step two process. Okay, are we actually gonna paint City Hall purple? Well, I don't know. We need another report. And then after about six months, you'll fish or cut bait. You'll paint City Hall or not. There's a tendency to do that in almost every city that goes through goal setting because there's no shortage of issues and no shortage of good ideas. And so council people have all the good ideas that if the staff would only just get them done, it would solve for all these goals. But the truth of the matter is it's self-defeating. Most cities are not achieving their goals because they get bogged down in things like a referral list, which is frankly a task list. I reviewed it. I've reviewed it a couple of times. There's a lot of things on there that can be handled through different ways to not take up the council's attention away from the big goals. Now I know the city manager is making a lot of progress on it, because he showed me what it looked like before. And they're crossing a lot of things off the list. But I would submit to you, there's possibly a better way to deal with it. And so some things you might consider. I talked to the city manager about, well, does the council have standing subcommittees? I understand you have one for public safety, but almost everything else is ad hoc. In a city your size of 120,000 people, I was actually surprised that you don't have some standing subcommittees of the council where a lot of issues can get worked on and then your council meetings can be much more efficient. They don't need to last six hours. Oftentimes, if you look at most cities that have standing subcommittees, there's an economic development committee, a public safety committee, a finance committee. Those are kind of the typical, maybe a legislative policy committee. They don't need to meet as often, but they do. Also, each one member of the council should be meeting with the city manager one-on-one, whether it's once a month or every two weeks, whether it's in person or out of the office. You should be having bilateral meetings with the manager. That's the time you say to the manager, hey, my constituent is asking about this, or what about that? And you'll be surprised how magically so many things can get taken care of through that process rather than having to elevate it to have a whole discussion at a council level where you're not going to be able to control the outcome and it may never happen. The manager has the mysterious way of getting stuff done. and he works with the staff and he can say well by the way x department is already has that on their work plan so that's another great way to dispose of things i noticed on your referral list one of the items was council should discuss taking a position on a piece of legislation do you have an adopted legislative platform if it's consistent with the legislative platform there shouldn't need to be a discussion the letter gets written mayor signs it that's the efficient way to operate So I don't wanna pick on your list because everybody does it. We do our work and we leave, but we don't want people to fall back into that same thing of, gee, we're spending all of our time on tactics. and not on the big issues. So just a word there. Let me stop just to give an opportunity to counsel people. Does any of that resonate? Is it helpful or should I just pack up and get out of here?

A thousand percent. I really do appreciate that, transparency. Because I think sometimes when we get elected, we come in, I speak for myself, I come in especially when you're an advocate and you see what's missing and you're just trying to find something that will solidify it and put some teeth to it versus being an advocate, you know? And you just want to see some real change and you don't care what happens to you if you put teeth to it it can't ever be challenged, not easy at least. So I think that's probably my thought when I came in. I did, I had a ridiculous list. It was a Christmas wishlist, but it was a wishlist that my community was asking for. And so I wanted them to know, I hear you, I see you, How can I do this where I'm not asking staff to either be repetitive or overworked? Because my previous colleagues, they had wish lists, you know. And when I saw theirs, I was like, oh, I can blend into this one because it's the same ask. So I think that's probably like something I'm learning to be transparent. And I hope that's okay for me to say that. But I'm learning. And so I appreciate that transparency. Thank you.

And it's all done with the best of intentions. And again, I always say there's no shortage of good ideas. There's lots of good ideas. But you have limited resources. And so Stephen Covey, the man who wrote the book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, had this whole concept about the big rocks. And he has a jar and big rocks and small rocks and sand. And depending on how you put them in, if you put the sand in first and the little gravel, there's no room for the big rocks. If you put the big rocks in first, you can get the other stuff in there. The big rocks represent the big goals you want to get achieved. If all you're doing is spending your time on the little things that matter not a whole lot in the grand scheme of it all, you're never going to get to the big thing. And then you're going to spend your four years on the council and go, what did we achieve? So, you know, and it's a rule for anyone, for the manager too, as a city manager, every year I would say, okay, no matter what happens throughout the year, because no plan survives the very next workday because of what walks in the door, but what are the half a dozen things, no matter what, I'm going to get done this year. And you gotta just like a Gila monster when it bites, you gotta just get into that and stick on it. Sorry for that analogy. So looking at those goals, I spent a little time looking at some of the council meetings and some of the documents you have, and I'm offering up, Michelle and I are offering up some possible objectives. And here's really a lot of council participation here. Through the four goal areas, we're gonna offer up some possible objectives, like three in each area. Because again, too many and you're gonna fail. Three that we think are important that will allow you to build a strong foundation for further objectives. and we have our department heads here who you know happy to be here today and so if there's a need to ask a clarifying question we have them available to us but we wanted to talk through these and spend our afternoon working through them and really coming out of here today with a solid set of objectives that we can then put together in a document and make it clear to everyone the staff the council the community the this is the work plan these are the objectives for the next year for the city so economic development i pulled directly from your economic development strategic plan and the three possible objectives here i'm going to run through them all and then we'll circle back how's that was to streamline your development process through cross-departmental efforts now that's important because if you're going to get investment in your community Developers want certainty and timeliness in the development review process. So I could see why that's there. Develop and implement a communications and marketing plan and create a vision for the city-owned assets. Where can you leverage the city's assets? So it's right out of your economic development strategic plan that the council approved. In the area of financial and organizational sustainability, we're suggesting that you develop a five-year general fund forecast model That you implement a plan to eliminate your structural deficit in the general plan in the general fund and reduce your staff vacancies by 5% in the next year. I think that's a pretty bold goal objective. In the area of public safety, we heard a lot from the community and from the council members about the steps the city took to make sure you have supplemental law enforcement. People really appreciated that. They recognized that was a leadership move on behalf of the city. So to continue that partnership with the CHP to address things like street takeovers and other quality of life issues as it relates to public safety. Monitor and report to the council quarterly on the success of your violence reduction plan. What gets measured gets done. So monitoring something, measuring it, reporting is a good way to keep focus on it. And take steps to reduce response time. In the area of quality of life, we heard some public speakers talk about this, completing the environmental justice amendments to the general plan and continuing the promote of your 311 system. So those were just what we thought. Now we wanna kick it open for the council. First of all, do you think that the four goals that we talked about, do we wanna work from that premise? I think it's reasonable, but it's your city, you tell me.

I'm fine with these goals. I want police reform in there. That's my highest priority. in public safety yeah i want that as an objective in public okay great and i think under i think we have to nest housing under somewhere under quality of life i think the housing stuff has to be in there and i think it has it probably best fits under quality of life okay so with within economic development are these three good objectives again they came from your economic development strategic plan or should we change one or more of them out council members

So, I mean, I'm generally fine with number three. I think three should stay. I think we're working on that right now, if I'm not mistaken. Two, I have mixed feelings about, because we tried that in 2018, 2019, and there was some mixed results around it. So, I mean, what is that really working towards? My question, because we tried it and I don't know if the residents were really feeling it. It didn't attract investment in the way that it should have. So I would want to hear my colleagues' thoughts about that one. And then one I don't agree with, and here's what I don't agree with that one. So over the past year, you know, I've had a lot of conversations with small business owners. There's been multiple studies done on permitting, the development process, all the things, and yet, What I think we have is a management problem, so if a business is trying to set up shop here they deal with 19 different people. And it takes a guy ungodly amount of months, if not years for them to be able to open up their business so um. We had a presentation by the development team, they came back and spoke to us about specific steps they had taken to streamline the process and yet with new businesses we've had open up in the past couple months it's been Councilmember. I dealt with God knows how many different people. And then every single time I got these five things done, whether it was from building or this department or that department, then someone else came in and said I had to do X, Y, Z. So there's uncertainty in the process. There isn't one person who's helping guide the business through the process. And that to me speaks more to management than like the actual process. I know our interim city manager has experience in that realm and has worked on those issues in other jurisdictions. So I would, my expectation would be that that would be a focus of his, through his normal course, working in partnership with the director of that group and having us make that a goal, if that makes any sense.

It sounds like you're making a strong case for it to be an objective.

I don't know if it should be a, I don't know if it should be a council goal though. Cause I, cause to me.

Your goal's economic development.

It is.

And is it important to further your desires in the area of economic development to eliminate the bottlenecks in the development review process that you just cited?

I guess what I'm saying is I feel like that's already underway and we already know what needs to be done. And so I consider that to be a management issue, not an objective of the council. Like an objective of the council for me would be, let's set up a plan to revitalize our business corridors.

For the most part, achieving these objectives will be done through the staff. Because the council sets the goal, agrees on the objective, but the staff executes on it.

I understand.

So really what you're saying is... You expect them to do the streamlining. So whether you say it officially or not, that's an objective. And then you're saying you want to add another objective by creating a plan.

So you see what I'm saying? What I'm saying is that we've already identified this as an objective. Staff has been working on it. And the bottleneck I see us in being successful has more to do with management than us continuing to set it as an objective.

Well. Those are not mutually exclusive things. The problem may be management, but the objective of streamlining it still stands as an objective. What I'm concerned with is, again, talking about you have limited resources, It's fine if it's not an objective, but understand if you expect that the staff's still going to do it and you want them to go do something else, you probably don't have the resources in the example that I'm using.

Can I ask a question to that? And I want to make a clarifying question, because I agree with my council member is, and I understand what you're saying. But from a perspective of the day to day operation at this moment in time, that has been identified, it should be part of the normal course of business. And I shouldn't have to check market off as a council member, from a policymaking perspective. So it shouldn't be there it's something that Mr black will continue to work on, and the fact of the matter is, I think part of you know when we think about being in the session today is we've had a change in leadership on the day to day operations that's quite different. and so it's going to make a difference how this gets done and it doesn't need to be this council's goal or one of its objective and that's really i agree with what he is saying i understand what you're saying but because we have moved from to a new leadership he's going to handle it and we want to put something else there because that's operational work That's day-to-day management.

I just say, well, no, it's a big lift to overhaul your development review process. And I would argue that it's not day-to-day. In fact, it's breaking down the day-to-day and reconstituting it in a way that is efficient. And it will take a lot of effort. So I'll drop it if it's not an objective that the council wants to see. But understand, it's not something that just gets taken care of. When we assume that these things just magically happen, they take the staff away from other things.

So I'm not saying it's magically going to happen. So I agree with you. I sit in a CEO seat. I agree that it's not going to magically happen. And this is where, from my perspective, when I think about the operations of the city and policy intersecting is, if he doesn't believe that, and he can chime in here if you don't believe that you're almost there based on what you know or you just need to do a real true restructuring then i would ask for him to state that and then we would have to look at it differently in terms of objectives uh just from the perspective of city manager of a city manager uh

One in three, I would recommend to be objectives. They're heavy lifts, but they can change things. They can transform things. If achieved, they can But it's a citywide endeavor. It's a big endeavor requiring major commitment of staff time and resources. I'll just give you an example. You go to any city in America, and you ask the citizens or the business community, what are your top three problems? Or what are your top three issues with your local government? I guarantee you each time the building permits and inspections process will be one of the three. And so when I got to Cincinnati, I said, I wanted to solve this problem. And so we were able to solve it, but it was a two year endeavor involving just about every department in the city. But the council had to make it clear that it was in support of that endeavor and committed to supporting the organization to achieve it. And we did. We were able to reduce the process cycle time for a building permit by 45%. We're also able to do that in Stockton. So I think that one in three are prototypical objectives. This is your goal setting workshop. But that would just be my recommendation.

Thank you, Chair. Mayor.

They're facilitating.

Okay, you facilitate. Okay, sorry.

Councilmember, head of. Councilwoman Garner. All three of you wanted to say something.

So this is what I see when I look at all three of these. Gold economic development, streamline the development process by improving cost development, collaboration, reducing barriers, and developing efficient, transparent services that support business growth and investment. Your next one. develop and implementing a strategy communication and marketing plan that promotes the layout assets attracts new businesses and investments and strengthening the city's economic identity the last one create a goal term vision for city-owned asset. By identifying redevelopment opportunities, leveraging strategy, partnership, and maximizing community and economic values. I think the problem, I myself personally, I feel these to be realistic, all three of these, adding my own thoughts to what that mean. I think the problem that we have had is the lack of trust can this move forward and so i think that's probably where we need to build that trust and i really believe under this new administration i believe that this world will move forward and i believe if we have those concepts in mind that i read out loud i believe we can do great things for the city of alejo

yes setting some realistic objectives that are clear and then achieving them build on that success but obviously first step is build realistic objectives councilmember you are waiting for some time no thank you so i i hear the city manager's uh comment uh and i recognize also that these are objectives and i have my own list of

very specific district four things downtown mary island i could go on and on um but taking a step back and recognizing my role as a council member for the entire city and like you know what our task is right now I hear you, number one and three, but what I'd like to comment about, number one, and maybe it's a little extraneous, but I feel like I just have to name this, is to Council Member Matias' point about the streamlining, streamlining is great, and we've got to do that, but I don't think that is going to be the catalyst. I think there's got to be something that's said about the active facilitation, that very customer service forward not so much attitude, but directly soliciting businesses, developers, so on and so forth, and really creating the conditions for that more exponential economic growth. Interim Economic Development Director, Brad Paul, We have lengthy discussions about activation, right? And so that's more, that's kind of, I mean, it's beyond just the process, right? But it's setting the conditions for something else. So I don't really know how to put that into number one, but maybe you guys can help me out here. But I feel like that, I just wanna beef it up a little bit.

Yeah, and I would submit to you, I'd say that number one is a prerequisite to that next step that you just articulated. Because if you're going to go out and you're going to lure developers to your town, they're going to want predictability in the process. Time is money. And they're going to want to know there's a lot at the end of the tunnel. And that's where you build on that.

I will push back gently on that because we have the planning development services department and we also have the economic development department. And I don't think it's asking for too much to do both at the same time. I mean, planning is doing a wonderful job. There's always room for improvement, but I also think there is room for other departments to be more part of the solution of like that active solicitation, but also looking for anyone else has any comments on that.

Sure, sure. Well, council member, you had a comment as well.

Yeah, I just want to make a quick some quick follow-up comment. So again, if you were looking at that plan that you looked at in a vacuum, I would agree with you that we should focus on streamlining development process through cross-departmental efforts as an objective. I would agree with you there. However, if you look at the conversation that took place when that strategic plan was presented, Part of the concerns that the previous council had with that plan was that they had identified it as an objective. The departments had already done work around it and had already done presentations, which we have our director here. She presented on some of the streamlining that took place last year. She came to the council and she gave a presentation on it. So the work has been. happening it has been happening for years and yet the problem that businesses are speaking to is more of a management issue in my um in my opinion based on what i heard from folks and less so around there being a an objective around it because that objective was set many years ago and there's already been so much work done around this so I think for me, that's why I continue to struggle with that objective, because in the vacuum, yes, we could say, yes, let's focus more on streamlining development. And yet that's not, that has been a focus of a past council, multiple past councils. We've done a lot of work around it and it's something that they're continuing to weave into their operation and into their management of the city. So that's one. Two, the reason, I think you're hearing some of this pushback from multiple council members is because to your point, you know, we have limited staff capacity to be able to focus on objectives, right? And so if they're already as part of their operational work, working on streamlining this, it's something that they started several years ago. and we have a limited opportunity to have them focus on another objective, why wouldn't we instead tell them to focus on infill development or some of these other areas that we've been talking about where we haven't really seen progress? And so I think that's also what you're hearing from the group. Like, can there be a special project or a special objective that goes above and beyond what past councils have already tasked departments to focus on.

And what I'm saying with all due respect is if you could have your cake and eat it too, that's great. The truth of the matter is you can't. And so the exercise here is to realize the fact that unless you tell the staff, this is the objective we want you to focus on. Now, if they're doing it already, that's great. We can hear from the manager and economic development director. Maybe these aren't the right objectives. But I would say in the context of our discussions today, it's a myth to think that with a 21% vacancy rate and the day-to-day workload that you can assume that staff will take care of things that are over and above the day-to-day and so therefore you don't need to acknowledge them or make them objectives and then you can identify a whole bunch of other objectives and assume they'll get done. That's not realistic. And so the part of building the trust, part of building the capacity is to setting realistic objectives and not assuming things that you're signaling to the organization, this is what we want you to focus your capacity on. And if it's not an objective, that's fine. The signal you send is, that's not where we want you to put your resources. We want you to do it on the things we've articulated.

so again if you could have both great you will be the only city in the country that can do that mary yeah i feel i feel very strongly that number one is the probably the most important thing that the city needs to do to promote economic development and i mean what i'm hearing I mean it's not that i'm disagreeing with what needs to be done, but if we've had it on our objective list for years and years and years. We haven't achieved it, and I think the indicator that the thing that that signals is that it takes work it takes effort if it were easy, the city would have already done it and so. I feel very strongly that it needs to be on here and that we need to signal very powerfully as the council to the city manager to then go to department heads and say, this is our priority, but also outwardly to the development community that our priority is a streamlined development process. So we are an easy city to work with. And if we don't do that, we can kiss goodbye the rest of economic development so for me that is the absolute top priority um the only other thing that i was gonna add is that the strategic plan i was i leaned over the vice mayor and asked him if he was part of approving it i i was incredibly unhappy with the strategic plan and i remember the council being very unhappy with the strategic plan so i would just say you know, in as much as we can not just defer back to the strategic plan, given that none of the seven of us were on the council when that was developed and it was like a no bid contract that like it had like pop ups and stuff. I mean, I don't think I think we are going to constrain ourselves significantly if we don't at least have a conversation about whether that's still where we want to go. I don't think we need to redo it, but I think, you know, we need to we need to think bigger. Number two for me, I feel like that's probably nests under three. in a sense, because part of creating a vision for city-owned assets is marketing those assets and communicating others. I mean, I don't think you, I don't think communications and marketing is the binding constraint for us. I think the binding constraint for us is that the development process is unclear and streamlined and people have to work with 20 different people to get, and we have a reputation of that. And so folks aren't coming here. And we're not marketing our existing spaces that we have. um i think this is okay for now having that that one and three what i'd like to see ideally in the near future is us to genuinely identify big projects it has this city has felt like groundhog day for years and years and years with the exact same projects in the pipeline the fairground solano 360 the waterfront north south middle mirror island the there's a there's a parcel downtown I think we actually have to, as a council, eventually say, once we've streamlined the process and gotten everything together, we need to activate and market these parcels and actually get developers in and actually execute on it. Because otherwise, we're going to just keep kicking the can. We're always perpetually five years away, three to five years away from the next big thing in economic development. If we don't invest now in starting that clock on that three to five years of the next big thing, we're just going to keep staying in that groundhog day of, well, yeah, we have this amazing gold mine in the fairgrounds. We have this incredible asset in our north waterfront. We have this incredible asset on our south waterfront. But if we don't actually give staff the time and space to sit down and market those properties for development and activate them, like actually put them out to bid, get developers in, and start a multi-year process, I mean, that's how you pay for everything else. That's how you grow and bring in revenue and pay for everything else. And those are your opportunity sites. Yeah.

And you want to take a close look at those to see if there needs to be any changes to zoning or what have you to make them more enticing. But yeah, those are the things you want to identify and market hard on that.

But yeah, I guess my question, I feel like here and I would ask the city manager, I think one in three are almost prerequisites to that. And so maybe just sticking to the starting the process for our city owned assets, which includes some of those sites and streamline the process then sets us up for whatever the next phase is to start getting those big ticket development projects through and pushing those forward. Because in the absence of the city, those don't get done. Like in the absence of us taking leadership on that.

No, I agree. So perhaps an additional objective could be you all really establishing as an objective, because the thought behind all of this is that this is a rolling 12-month process. You come back. And so what I'm hearing is perhaps an objective could be where we identify one or two real estate assets that we can take to the marketplace. And that's gonna involve some research analysis, strategy, marketing, engagement in terms of the investor community. I think that would be a good objective.

Yeah, and again, there's nothing magical about three. Three is always a nice number to start from. But from what I'm hearing from the conversation is, Number two is kind of squishy, but general consensus, whether it should be an objective or not, there's consensus that the development process needs to be improved. I hear everybody say that. And leveraging your city-owned assets is a great way to kickstart the city's local economy. So it seems that there is consensus on those two. Is that correct as I look?

No.

No. And why not?

for the very fact that I've stated. And what I go back to is, and I know the timing is not the best because you're just coming on. And I really, if you're going to make that an objective that we're managing, something that's really important to me and has always been from the very beginning is What does the timeline look like? Even though we're saying this is a one-year rolling process, what does the timeline look like and what are we going to achieve in that one year to this particular objective? Because of where we have been and the very fact that there has been, as the mayor has stated, Alex has stated, we've had presentation, that oh we've done the streamlining so really what i'd like to know if i'm going to make this an objective and i'm only one vote i'm one council member what are the gaps because i think that's a very important question when i'm making an operational objective, because that's how I see it. And I come from the city and county of San Francisco, so I understand across the nation and so forth and on what it looks like when you're trying to revamp a whole process. And it doesn't happen in a day. It doesn't happen in a year or two years. And simultaneously, how are you doing all the things and the accountability around it? And I think that's really important if I'm going to just say, yeah, I want that to be my number one objective. so can i ask you to elaborate when you say the gaps are you saying you would you would expect a streamlined process as part of that to identify the gap no so what i'm saying is if we over the over time there's been work done on this and yes we have new leadership just last year we heard oh we did x y and z so what is the assessment to say cross-departmental efforts where are we still having challenges because the question really becomes is it as stated by council member matias is it really a management issue and we need to do some adjustment within our staffing work or is it that We need to do a whole revamping and there are many other things going on to get all of this together. And so I really want to understand that to make it my number one goal.

And again, this isn't ranked in terms of priority. And I would also say, too, you're already jumping to diagnosis of the problem. And we're not even there yet. Again, I often caution, don't jump to solutions yet. All we are at is a starting point of whether we're going to say, Mr. Manager, you and your team, we want you over the course of the next 12 months. We've heard this for years and years and years. It's not getting better. We want you to get serious, and we want you to streamline our development review process.

You're not asking for the diagnosis of where the gaps are yet.

You're just saying we want you to work on it.

So respectfully, I understand that, and respectfully, For the time period that we have sat here with a lot of different things, and I don't mean here today, I have a reason for saying that. And I'm more than happy that it can be an objective but I also want to understand where we are even though you're right we're trying I'm asking for specific information but there's a reason for that because it's a part of the accountability in are we really at the right place because if it's not the right goal that's not what I want to be doing right and it's and and if I set it as a goal at this moment in time I'm saying this is the right goal and this is where I want you to spend all your time. Not all your time. Spend X amount of hours. But the way we're portraying streamlining a development process, yeah, it takes a lot of time, but what is it? And that's all I'm saying from a very caution, being cautionary. is very important. So this is just my opinion, because again, I say I'm only one council member, and there's others here who can vote yes, and I will go with it.

Well, no one's going to vote on anything today because it's not agendized. But we are looking for consensus. And I dare say, I know you'll correct me if I have it wrong, I dare say in all of what you said, and there was a lot in there and I appreciate that, I suspect you can still get behind the notion that your development review process isn't where it needs to be.

I can get behind that notion, but I'm telling you while you're asking for consensus, this whole point of this discussion is so we really can agree, right? We really, we're not here because it's a good thing to do. We have community here. We have community members who have been in our community. Ms. Liat has said, told you, three decades, on and on and on and on. And I am, myself, as a council member, I really want to set a set of objectives that we're gonna get behind and we're going to see real progress behind. And without the bantering back and forth, which is very important, that's not possible. And I think it's really important for the council, for us to be honest about where we are, how we view things, we all have our opinions and when we're done with it at the end of the day we'll walk away and say okay we're moving forward but i think it's important the dialogue that we're having because we have residents who are very invested and residents like myself we want to see our city become vibrant and this is the kind of dialogue and the discourse that it takes to get there exactly and the the supposition is that

Dealing with your development process is key to furthering that goal of economic development.

Thank you. I've stood where you're standing right now, so I know this is an easy job. So I'm going to try to get us out of a jam here. So I'm hearing everyone's comments. And I think one way to get us out of this is that, you know, I'm personally interested on very specific projects. I'm so sure everyone else is as well. So what I would recommend is, and I don't know what the next slides are gonna be, but let's talk about later, what are measures of effectiveness? What does progress look like? The city manager mentioned like, oh, like what are the few city assets and that's showing like we're making progress. So right now we're focusing on process, but at the end of the day, there's supposed to be some sort of result of that. If at the end of the day, or at the end of 365 days from now, that we're not seeing our special projects, we're not seeing progress on that, then we have to come back to this and say like, what are we doing wrong with our goals? Or what are we doing wrong in terms of our tasks? So I don't disagree with number one and three, I feel like on a separate conversation, we should have a conversation on what are those measures of effectiveness? What are those metrics look like? And showing that we have made progress. And I think, at least I'm gonna speak for myself on this. I also would like have a vigorous conversation about what streamlining looks like. I think there's streamlining just to answer the mail, but it's also streamline in terms of like the more customer service forward. you know, attitude. But I don't want to die on that hill right now, but I feel like we can have that conversation later. Like, what does that look like between all the departments? And so that would be fine as objective, but we could get to the details of all these other things maybe on a separate tracker or in a later conversation.

So we'll get to you real quick, Councilman. I just want to mention before we go down a rabbit hole too far. Today, we're not talking about specific projects, and that's not what goal setting's about. In my view of it, the arc of all of this is you have the cities that are trying to do everything all the time, the shotgun. It doesn't work. It's failure. The first step is goal setting. That's what you're doing here now. You're saying first principles. This is what we're about. These are the big rocks that we want to deal with, and here are some particular objectives we want to work on. We do a lot of strategic planning, which is the next step. It's more detailed than goal setting. It breaks down into particular strategies. We develop workbooks for our clients to use to track their measurements. So it's a continuum. Our assessment is, as an organization, you're not there yet. You're not ready for that. Our hope is that with new leadership, next year's conversation is more the strategic planning conversation. But you've got to walk before you can run. You've got to crawl before you can walk. And it's very simple, first things first. And today is really about first things first. And it's not about when are we getting to the 20 projects that I want done in my district. what are we gonna do with the city of Alejo to make sure that its projection is upward and we're all pointed and we're all aligned. And that's kind of the fundamental discussion. So I get that a lot of the conversation still seems somewhat lofty because you have to meet your constituents where they say, when are you gonna fix that? Or when are you gonna activate this? But this is honestly how you do it. One step at a time, you eat the elephant one bite at a time. and by setting realistic objectives that the staff can pursue and return back to the council and say, we've made improvements and this is what we've done, great, time for a new objective. That's how you build it. Council Member.

So I'm just gonna make one comment on what's going on right now, and then a separate comment on this slide. So in the first half of the day, You were presenting information to us and then we were sharing with you. Well, maybe we should add this or maybe we should tinker with that. And it was aligned with what you were saying around. This is the start of a conversation. We're going to synthesize all this information and present it back to you at a later date. this conversation feels like you're making us decide like, well, these are the three objectives. You're saying that this is the start of the conversation, but then you're pushing heavy for us to like really hunker down around these three objectives. And I think what would be more helpful is to just hear from the council, what are some other things that should be on there? And then we should come back at the August date and then whittle it down after we've had some time to think about it. us having an argument with you about why one should stay on there without you having all the full context is just not appropriate like i mean that's just my opinion no i appreciate that um so so i think that that would probably be a more helpful exercise if i were to just hear from my colleagues like what else should be on the list then it gets put into a report and then at the next meeting we can align around okay these are the two things knowing that they're staffing constraints Knowing that we don't have a lot of money that we can focus on over the next year. That would be my recommendation. Now, when it comes to economic development, one thing that we have not talked about that's not even on here that I think we should prioritize is actually creating an infrastructure plan for the city. We have so much aging infrastructure. The number one thing folks are complaining about is the roads, and that's tied to economic development. Whether you agree with it or not, it is. We have a lot of piping, a lot of even our downtown owners, just to give you an example, and that's not my district, but I'm elevating it as a concern for the business community like I've had folks tell me I can't set up a restaurant because you guys don't have enough power going into the downtown area for me to put the equipment I need to be able to run a business. So that whole process of getting PG&E to update the grid in our downtown area would be several years. So as a city, If we want to stimulate economic development, how are we setting up the infrastructure? And that could be an objective for this Council to make sure that we're being responsive to different types of businesses, that we're also putting a plan forward to deal with our roads in a meaningful way instead of the reactionary investment we're making every year which is not really making a dent so um that would be one item i would add that i would just have the council think about that i think is just as important as some of these other things that we're um you know discussing today

Appreciate your comments. And yes, I am trying to drive consensus amongst the council because ideally we would come out of here today with one to three objectives for each of the goals. So yeah, I'm guilty of that. Are these the three that you need to do? No, certainly not. And again, you have the manager and you have the staff here if the council wants to reconsider any and all. But I am trying to get you to a place where you come away with some identified objectives. We have, I think, consensus on the goals. If you're not able to reach consensus on objectives today, okay and there can be a further process to get there but we wanted to take advantage of of your time today to hopefully get to that point so it's up to the council whether you're going to identify goal objectives or not today and i'll defer to the desire of the council i i just have one you were saying earlier uh the order of

your whole idea and I make the difference. I think team building should have been number one. We're 18 months in and then the feedback that I get in the community that there's no trust amongst the councils and we're at each other or going against each other and that's heartbreaking. That's from either also from other council members who watch in and so I think team building is crucial so that we can not go have coffee together, but at least come to some type of sense where we're supporting one another. know when i i'm not trying to be the all let's get along whatever but we have an obligation to the city of vallejo and if we're pulling stuff back from thousands of years that's not helping valeo move forward we can't deal with what you said earlier the big projects where we can actually see tangible work that we actually did. We want a center here. We want large, huge opportunities where folks can come and spend money at, build up not only the waterfront by the city hall, but all the way from Carquinez Bridge to Highway 37. Those are big money opportunities that we can actually visually see and benefit. I think that's something that we missed here was the team building. And I think in order for us to move forward, we do need to consider that. Every employment I did, whether I was an employee or became a employer, I made sure that team building was part of that conversation. So just wanted to add to that.

No, I appreciate that. In our interview, you've talked a lot about the team building. we didn't come in today heavy on the team building because frankly there's a trust deficit And my hope is that today, even though at some points may feel a little cringy, that it will go to help to fill up that deficit. And having you, all the council members here, almost all the council members here today, should help to lift that trust. And we talked about roles and responsibilities earlier. So I'm hopeful that it's on the positive swing. And when you do another one of these downstream, whether it be goal setting, strategic planning, you can build on that. Our assessment was, as an organization, it wasn't quite right for that. And we wouldn't be having an honest conversation like, frankly, we're having, which are sometimes difficult conversations. Thank you for that transparency. Appreciate that. I just want to do this because I want to check in. Is the council interested in walking through and maybe identifying two to three objectives in each of these areas or for some of our clients we just kind of stop at goal setting and we talk generally about each of those goal areas and then the staff separately develops some suggested objectives and brings those back to the council but understand then that creates a whole other conversation dynamic however you wish to proceed and i would ask the manager to chime in with his good thoughts we're prepared to proceed we're at the disposal of the council

We can either try and do that here today or with the conclusion of what we're going to do today, and they're going to provide several deliverables to us, we can, from a staff standpoint, we can take all that material and set up a future study session and to build out, you know, the objectives component of this. We could easily do that. Something else that I, we have what, four goals or are we at five? Four. Four. I don't know if this would qualify as a goal or not, but I think it would. Because see, what I'm hearing and what I've been hearing is a, thirst for accountability and results. But what we haven't really been talking about is mechanisms and tools that can actually, that you all can use to measure. We all can do it as a total organization, but these tools that would allow you to have a means for, you know, Establishing accountability. So I'm thinking performance management and data analytics because we can't do any of this stuff unless we've got a performance management system. And if we're not data rich or data analytics capable. And so I think we want to be known as a city that is high performing. that's through your performance management system and we we know where we've come from and we know where we're going because we have the data to inform everything that we do we talk about the development process but the question is that i would ask is how do we know that do we know you see how do we know can we verify and validate things uh so that would be my thoughts in terms of the question You all can continue with developing objectives today, or we spend more time with the goals. And then once we get the final products, we can design and structure a study session that can sort of finalize and build out what we want to see. Steve?

i would look to the mayor i know her colleagues also have a few comments they'd like to make yeah i am yeah i think some version of that will be needed anyway we're already going to need a follow-up i think what i know about this council is we're going to want objectives i think that's what we've been long i mean the fact that we're a year and a half into our time and we're just doing this we're we've we've been feeling the lack of objectives. The other thing that I would sort of raise thinking more about this is that I wrote down infrastructure as well. And I think there's a couple of cross-cutting objectives we're going to have that maybe we might think about. the data management is crucial and that doesn't happen in a vacuum. Like you have to actually be intentional about how are we collecting data and tracking progress and measuring progress. And then there's also, how are we creating the infrastructure and investing in the infrastructure? And it kind of hits all of these, frankly. And I don't know whether that goes under, I mean, our residents, if we don't have the roads on here, I think we're failing our residents. If we don't have something that'll capture the roads, somewhere in here we're going to be you know not doing right by our residents because they've been clamoring for that for years but where that goes it's like yeah it connects to economic development but we almost we need the economic development to pay for the roads you know to pay for the maintenance to pay for the infrastructure the roads are connected to public safety they really connect quality of life and they also connect to sustainability because the longer we kick the can the more the with deferred maintenance the you know poor we're going to be equipped for that second one so

That would be my question, I guess, is where do we put some of that overarching... To answer that, I would suggest you either put it under quality of life or you just add infrastructure. And a lot of cities have that. It's primarily handled through your capital improvement budget. But you could have a fifth goal, which is infrastructure. You could change quality of life to infrastructure, or it could certainly fit under quality of life.

I mean, I would defer. I don't want to have too many goals either. But I think quality of life, we're going to be risking having quality of life be a catch-all where we have illegal dumping and housing and homelessness and roads. And it's like, ah, that's okay. That's defeating the purpose. So I'm not sure. I guess I'm raising it as a question.

I mean, we could have five quality of life objectives and those things could fall right within there.

Council Member.

You cool with that? Yeah. Hold on. So I have to ask you. So can I just make a proposal? Because personally, when I saw, I think these are the right goals. And when I was seeing you go through the other goals, I was generally in agreement with the other stuff that you listed under the other buckets. I think the only one where there is robust debate is economic development because we haven't gotten it right we make a lot of promises i'm sure we're every year is the same thing and we've fallen short so that's all to say why don't we just go through the other ones and we try to get agreement on those and then we can come back and we can just hear from the full group and you guys can take notes like what's not on there what is on there and then we you can then pull us again at the end and we can try to get consensus on ed but i just

i just think it would be helpful to hear from the six of us so can we put a pin on it go through the other ones and then come back if the council is willing to do that i think that would be an excellent way to proceed to walk through each one of the goal areas and see if there's consensus on some of the objectives that are listed we'll make note of that and then we'll work with the manager and the staff to fill in additional gaps and that'll come back to the council great idea that you had councilman

I agree. And honestly, I think the economic development one was the only thing I was going to be the most nitpicky about. But your comment about the infrastructure, spot on. I think the power thing is going to be huge, especially when we talk about manufacturing, which requires a lot of electricity. So we'll circle back to it. I am going to flag that I want to say something about improving infrastructure for priority development areas. So it's a little bit more specific. And the mayor, those whatever five that you hypothetically rounded up, those are it. I think those are pretty nice, actually. So I think I really wanna go through all the objectives today and knock it out, honestly.

All right, so let's- I have one last comment. Sure. I think it's important just to your point, City Manager Black, is performance management, data analytics, accountability. That has to be somewhere in here because we don't have the systems in place. And the bottom line is we can have, I've said this from day one on the dais, we can have all the goals in the world. and all the objectives in the world. But if there's no performance management, there's no data analytics systems in place, none of this matters because you don't know where you started. You don't know where you are in the middle of it. You don't know how many staff hours are required to do a job to get things done. And that makes a difference when you're looking at the goals and having to recalibrate as you're moving through the process. And really having a plan of action of we have this many staff hours, here are the objectives, and this is what we can do. Because we can set all these goals and still realize with the number of staff we have, with the very fact that we are, we do not have a structural budget, You yourself just told us, oh, you need to reduce your staff count by 5%, or something you said.

I suggested reducing your vacancy rate.

I apologize, yeah, the vacancy rate, whatever it is. But the bottom line is, across the nation, we're the only city that has not done the work over the last two years since we have been in this financial situation across government and so without all of these things the performance management none of this matters and this is really important to me and this is why also while everyone says the goals are fine the goals are fine and the pushback on economic development just to the point that was made. But the reality is without the performance data analytic management piece of the work, I don't know where it will flow, we won't be able to really know what we're doing.

So let's get into it then. Under financial and organizational sustainability, The objectives that we had suggested were the three that you see here. We heard about systems and data analytics. Would that be one that the council would be more interested substituting out one of these four? So let me just see. How do these, is there consensus among the council on these? Should one drop off? Should one be added in its place?

Actually, I kind of wanted to ask the city manager what he recommends, because I think we could add some of that other stuff in here. And I know we already have the longer, maybe one and two could be compliant and long range financial plan. But I kind of just want to get your suggestion here.

Yeah, I think in that we are in the process of pursuing the development of long range financial plan, which will have a 10 year time horizon, it will do one and two. I mean, that's what it will be. So I would I would would change the 5 to 10 to coincide with the intent of a 10-year financial long-range financial plan again you know reducing the vacancy rate that's that's critical that's critical we need to be working at that all the time and It will never end. It's an endless pursuit. But we have to be aggressive about it. And so the idea is that with all of these objectives, we would establish corresponding key performance indicators for each one of them. And so that's why they are important. We may have reduced that vacancy rate by 5%. We need to track. On an ongoing basis, are we hitting that 5% or how far off are we, et cetera? So obviously, the most important thing in this area is a long range financial plan, which the intent is to, over time, eliminate the structural deficit.

So if we did that and sort of combine one and two into the long-range financial plan, kept the staffing up, and then the third goal has to do with the performance management and measurement and all, what Council Member Letters, you were just saying, that piece, would that fit and feel appropriate?

Absolutely. Developing a performance management and data analytics capability. across the organization. I know departments are probably doing something related to this as departments, but what I think is even more important is being able to deploy that on an organization-wide basis. And that will take a little bit of time, some investment, but just like the long range finance plan, having the performance management and data analytics capacity and capability is a top three necessity. It's a necessity.

So what I'm hearing is the development of your five-year, the development of your general fund forecast model will be part of your plan to eliminate the structural deficit. That creates capacity to add an objective for your data analytics model. Does that resonate with the council?

Yes. So the other, number three, really isn't an objective because the bottom line is with the performance management rollout with the 10-year strategic financial plan, it addresses everything right here. It's all part of that. That goal of reducing staff vacancy is a part of when you're forecasting out all of your financial data and your performance management. Every year you come back and you're looking at your budget, you're managing that. That might be a direction that might happen or a suggestion from the projections that we're looking at, but it's not actually an objective.

so am i hearing right that under financial and organizational sustainability really the two most critical things that need to happen is and i would completely agree with you the plan to eliminate your structural deficit and having the systems in place to measure your progress. That's your systems analytics and data management, right? Those two things alone would be huge wins, right? And it would further the city quite a long way in this area of financial sustainability, right?

Correct. And it connects right to all of the other goals that we're, the goals that we have, economic development, on and on and on. Okay, that's great.

Let's proceed. in the area of public safety? Oh, Dr. Murray.

So I'm just a little bit confused here and maybe you can help me. How do we, go back to your original slide please, conquer three, but yet we let go 10 and ask you to let go 25 more. How do we balance that? Because it sounds like a conflicted message. Can you give me that one more time? How do we conquer number three, but yet we've let go 10 and plus ask for 25? Okay, I got you. Well, there's a lot of different moving pieces here.

Vacancy rate is a function of how many vacant positions you have on your approved complement of staff, your total number of staff. Budgetarily, if the budget's not right, you may have to reduce staff. right as you reduce positions if you did nothing different if you filled none of your vacant positions if you reduced your total number of positions your vacancy rate would come down that's not what's implied here what's implied here is that you fill the vacant positions that are budgeted but the two are different things. So you may budgetarily need to reduce your total staffing compliment in the city to balance the budget, but of the positions that you say you're going to keep that you need, you gotta fill those. So there are two challenges. This is just one side of that challenge. Does that make sense? Okay. So in the area of public safety, and again, with not knowing all that you know from being on the ground from your perspective. Do any of these objectives that are here, is there a consensus? Do they resonate? Is there one or two worth keeping on here and then work with the manager and the staff to fill in? Should they all go start fresh? Again, we want to hear the council's good thoughts.

start again i like i i don't know that i love the wording of two but i think two and three are good i think we've already pretty much but i would be confident to say we have consensus on those two in general um number one seems a little specific to me and i said earlier that i wanted to see reform so that would probably be the one that i would replace with reform if it were up to me um yeah other thoughts councilmember

Just two general thoughts, my colleague's perspective on it. So one, we've talked a lot about police staffing in particular and wanting to see improvement there. So I'm not sure if that needs to be called out as an objective on reform and slotting that in for one. The other one is I know of at least three programs that we have provided some level of funding to that in the next couple years they're going to be running out of funds and so around public safety what I would like to see is the development of a financial like sustainability model. I know that that can have a tie into the last slide or the last bucket but I want to make sure that that's work that starts now so that we don't have a situation it's a situation that's been playing out the last two years where we'll have pd or city manager's office come come have um we have a shortage for this program here's how we're gonna so i just want to see an object like i want to see some work done around uh before those plans run out yeah okay any other thoughts on your public safety yeah

I'm going to go back to kind of the comment made at ED Goal. We say reduce average police response time. And I might be wrong. Again, I'm one person. I don't know if that's an objective more now that it is more of a function of management because we have been on this trajectory where we have done a lot of work. And I'm just wondering, just like the comment was made, we're having, we would like to see police reform. You know, and so what does that really mean and what does reduce average police response time really mean as a objective when this is what we have been doing for the entire time that we have sat on this Council, and so it just seems really. like in the weeds. So it's like, how do we bring it up? You know, what are we really talking about now? We're out of the state of emergency. We have utilized bringing the county resources in to assist us along with CHP, those kinds of things. And we say continue partnership with CHP to address street takeovers. And so really at this point, because we have a limited time in relationship with some of our law enforcement officers for varying reasons. So when I look at partnership, is it continued partnerships with law enforcement across state, local government, whatever the case may be, because that's what we do and we should continue to strengthen those relationships versus just saying CHP. And I'm just trying to bring the goals up further.

Sure, and again, we're talking about objectives under the goal.

I mean the objectives under this goal.

I apologize. Well stated, thank you.

Can I make a follow-on comment to that? That was the other one that I had on my list in terms of broader part. I think number one is too narrow.

Too specific.

But I do, it's about what we have capacity to do I think other partnerships are important. We're going to have the sheriff cycling out, but what does that ongoing partnership with the county look like? And we also, if we're going to take the violence intervention reduction seriously, there are other agencies we can be partnering with as well. So I would second the partnership piece. I don't know where we'd put it if we had to cut priorities. But the other thing I was going to add off of that is that I think the improvements of response time and the reforms connect. in the sense of people being able to trust that. I think a lot of the feeling of safety is comes from a sense of trust. And there's two pieces of trust right there is that you can trust the police, you can trust that the police will arrive and you can trust the police that arrive. And so that would be my in my head. The linkage of those two things together would be we're improving response time so people trust that the police arrive and we're implementing and communicating out the reforms A, because they're required, we're required to implement them and we're in trouble if we don't speed up the implementation, but also because it builds trust. And people know that they can, you know, here's how you know you're going to be able to trust. So those two, like that's how I see those two kind of...

And when you're thinking about objectives, I think your term linkage is a perfect one because there is a linkage just as there's overlap with goals. There's linkage with objectives. But remember back when we were showing you sort of the definition of each, an objective wants to be something that you can measure that specific objective. It's time bound and everyone understands it. So yes, is... Better response time, help promote trust, yes. But I wouldn't try to blend it all in with, say, reform. I would call out reform. I don't think you intended to.

Yeah, I still want those to be two separate objectives, but I think they're complementary. Yeah, I think they're complementary.

As you'll see with most of these. That's great. Any other thoughts on public safety?

So what I struggle with this slide is I feel like all three are really into the weeds and uh and I say that also saying that BPD is doing a lot uh they're implementing a lot of strategies and they are all priorities and I wouldn't even say like oh let's just do these three because I know they're going to execute all the other ones as well I mean they're very important and there are a few that are missing here but I'm not worried that all of a sudden they're gonna interpret this goal setting session like, okay, I guess we're not gonna do sex trafficking reduction anymore. I don't think they're gonna be confused about that. So I don't really know exactly what to push here in terms of an objective other than just like, stop crime, just do your job. That's kind of what I wanna tell them to be honest with you. I don't know what's, and I guess what I'm trying to frame this as maybe is, you know what is the one or two things that need to do that will that's within their power to kind of unlock their potential to that like that'll make them exponentially more effective and i don't really know exactly what that is but just starting as a maybe as a talking point and maybe my colleagues might have a better idea than i do

Well, I think based on our conversation this afternoon, what's likely to occur is we won't be definitive on this. Following this workshop, the manager, the chief will consult. And probably the chief will say, look, these are probably the three most impactful objectives that we could pursue to really address public safety concerns. And that would come back to the council.

Steve. So listen to this whole conversation. And I'm trying to relate this to what I do on a daily basis at the school district, where I run what are called success team meetings. And the meeting is broken down to identifying SMART goals. And that's what I'm identifying is what the objectives are, are SMART goals. And for those that aren't aware, the SMART is the acronym for Specific, Measurable, Achievable. realistic and time bound. And so that's what I'm relating to objectives, but within those SMART goals, there are what are called action plans. And this is the one slide that gets to the action plans of, these are more specific of what actions are you taking to achieve what those SMART goals are. So this is the slide that's been more, specific as far as what those actions are to where maybe we're too deep in the weeds on this one that's from an objective standpoint, but when you go back to economic development and the other slides, I think you're right on the spot with the objective to where we're trying to identify what these specific measurable achievable realistic and time-bound goals so i think if we use that as the conceptual plan of what we're trying to identify as objectives i think that may get us to to separate the weeds from the action plans versus what are what are the goals of the These are basically, in my mind, check marks of have we achieved these? And by achieving those, there's a roadmap of how to get there that are more built in internal deadlines or internal action plans to identify are we on the pathway or do we need to change our objective or a SMART goal that we're trying to achieve?

Yeah, precisely. Next workshop, you'll do it. But again, for our purposes here, These objectives, do they need more work? Are there any up here that there's consensus on? We've heard some discussion we need to make sure that we have police reform in there. Mr. City Manager, I think you were going to make a comment.

Yeah, just an observation. So when I think of this particular goal, what comes to mind are really four categories just for you to consider. One is obviously violence prevention. I think we would agree is it's always gonna need to be a priority. The police reform effort, the chief's ongoing organizational development efforts, and the DOJ. Those are the four core, areas from my perspective. So if that helps you in terms of thinking about what might be an objective or objectives for this category,

So I would agree with you. Police reform is DOJ, correct? And violence prevention, to Councilmember Palmaris' point, some of the things that we talk about on our safety committee, human trafficking, and we have vision and all of these other things under it, which is violence prevention. And I think that brings up our objectives to a higher level. And then within there are all of the little steps and goals and how we're doing that work.

I just have a so I don't I don't disagree. Yeah, I think reform should be one of them. Violence prevention should be another. again i just want to throw out infrastructure and whether or not it sits here or sits on the ed side something for you guys to think about just i'm just throwing it out there just to make sure we don't lose track of it and then the other piece i want to elevate is i think we as a council are always talking about public safety through the lens of like what we can control but an area that I don't think we've explored as much, which we can control just as much, is how are we coordinating with the other agencies in our city to ensure that the public's safety is also a priority in those other areas? So, like, how are we ensuring folks are safe in our schools, in our parks? in facilities that the wastewater district owns right so um i don't know if it falls under violence prevention under the violence prevention objective but i also want to make sure that we're being intentional and like coordinating with other agencies because i haven't necessarily i don't necessarily feel like we're there yet like everybody's kind of doing their own thing

um yeah and again that's a great comment a great observation that needs to be done i do dare say that that starts to fall into again determining a solution and that should be part of your broader safety strategy so it's an excellent point but i think at the point that we're talking objectives that may be a little deeper down

so could we not name that as our continued partnership partnership strategy i mean just to the point between myself and the mayor you know when you talk about yes we've worked with the sheriff's department chp all of that safety so when we talk about who are our stakeholders and how are we strategizing with our stakeholders could versus saying continued partnership with chp to address street takeovers it's more than street takeovers right so it could be partnerships with multiple agents right yes absolutely

And then in terms of quality of life, again, these don't have to be them, but it's food for thought. So do either one of these seem like objectives that are important to pursue, or are there other objectives that should take the place here? We were talking about infrastructure. There may be some other things that rise to a level. And again, this is perpetual. The city is a perpetual institution. it goes on forever so just because something isn't an objective now doesn't mean it won't become one but again first things first what are the most utilitarian frankly things that you want to deal with most immediately so in the area of quality of life what are the things that should fill up the objectives under this goal council members

I do appreciate this because unfortunately in the district that I represent, this is a common view regarding number two particularly. The only challenge is this, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, with Chief Todd, he said that unless you see the person, you got their license plate, you can actually see who's the one dumping, it becomes a challenge for them. Like they can't go after, if I said, oh, I seen this and that, and I seen the license plate, but unless I got the person, it seems like it's a lot of issues, particularly to this. Now, unless we help empower him and just say, hey, if we got the car that's doing this illegal dumping and we give it to you, then you can go after them. But how far do we go with that? So that's my only question is, if we add this, is there going to be a whole host of issues and make this years, two years later down the line before we can actually deal with it.

Well, there's two pieces to the issue of illegal dumping. Catching people are actually doing it in the act, which is difficult. As I understand, your 311 system works like most other cities. It's really about when people in a neighborhood come across something that's been dumped illegally, they use the system to alert the city to go pick it up. It's really as simple as that, but it really contributed dumping items, which has become such a problem up and down the state. It really adds to the blight in a neighborhood. Getting those items picked up quickly does a lot for people's quality of life because someone sees, oh, this is the place I can dump my mattress because someone else did it. So then it just grows more and more and more. So that's how I understand that effort. I would look to the manager or maybe anybody else on staff to confirm that. could you could you restate the question the notion here of this objective is mostly promoting the use of the the c click fix system to report illegal dumping so the city can quickly get rid of it it's less about catching people in the act right right absolutely uh so for quality of life

you know, when we talk about illegal dumping, we should, what do we want to achieve with it should be a part of the statement, you know, to do what with respect to illegal dumping. I think we know, but I'm just saying when we codify this, I think we're going to, we're doing number two and we'll always be doing number two. So let me add the part two to that.

The part two to that is not only mattress and so forth and all that. We're talking about vehicles, RVs, and now, just because fees has gone up in the marinas, now they're dumping boats in our districts. I mean, you can go up and down anywhere in Vallejo, but particularly in District 6, you can surely run into a boat here and there. And now we have a great big old yacht. And so it's cars and these, I mean, it's just ridiculous. So then I hear, oh, we don't have the capacity to store them. And then we have fires now. Now we have fires all of a sudden happening. We have, what, two fires. We have two RV fires that happened the last two to three weeks. And are the city managers aware of that? Yeah.

So something that extends beyond this, and it goes to code enforcement and other related issues. Are there other thoughts as it pertains to quality of life?

Yeah, I was going to suggest, because yeah, number two is just promoting cyclic fix. I would rather focus on, okay, how are we addressing blight? We have our graffiti removal. I know, again, I can't speak for the whole council, but I know we have a very strong consensus on neighborhood law and abandoned buildings and neighborhood law, abandoned buildings, squatters, dealing with that. That's been a huge problem. So I think something that more encompasses more broader blight, and then one of the things that i one of the first things i wrote when we put up the four goals was i think we've got to have housing justice here too because if we do goal setting and we have objectives where our unhoused residents are only included in our objectives as blight i'm not going to be comfortable with that there's got to be something in there about how we're going to you know focus on affordability that includes housing affordability so it's it's so i don't think it's you know environmental justice amendments are needed but i think it's like all of the renter protection stabilization like all the stuff we've been talking about as a council and some strategies for some strategies for addressing those affordability concerns okay i was going to ask you you just articulated a few of them so helpful um about what sort of objectives around tenants rights would be

Okay, thank you. Vice Mayor. And I think number two is, I think to the mayor's point, it addresses blight and just the beauty aesthetics of a city in general, where the illegal dumping talks about just the garbage and things of that nature. But I think, because for the point of speaking of our unhoused, in the three years I've been on council, we've already built three temporary transitional homes. to help support that and my question is how much has that decreased our unhoused population and I think we just got our recent pick out and so I'm not sure if that has at all so I think that's the question of that's going to be a perpetual circle that we're going to continually have to go through but I don't but us the fact we've done three housing projects to address that and we haven't moved the needle in any direction this in at least in a positive direction for to minimize our unhoused population what then that looks that tells me we need to pivot and identify other means and methods to figure out how do we address that so i so once again i think two is is more of a specific that i think we need to broaden it to just the overall beauty from this uh quality of life issue from our from a city as a whole

So I agree with the mayor's comment about blight and there's a lot you could put into that. Definitely needs to be in there. With regard to homelessness, definitely an issue I would like for that to be touched here and named specifically as an objective. But what I would lean into just a little bit is maybe recognizing like the the constraints we have but more focus on improving our collaboration and coordination with our other agencies and stakeholders to address homelessness and the last thing is there's the homelessness piece but also I want to address housing in general like how to get more kinds of housing all the kinds of housings for all sorts of incomes I think that needs to be part of this and it's related to affordability having a place to stay in Vallejo not constantly chasing the the most affordable rent and not being able to get anything so I think that needs to be part of this I could unpack a little bit further, but in terms of permitting and whatnot, but I feel like that needs to be part of the quality of life issue as well.

So what we're hearing is quality of life needs to encompass tenants' rights issues, homelessness, housing, all the things that really make a community. Council Member.

So I agree with all that was said. And I think more importantly is when we categorize it, how are we going to categorize it so that when we begin to work on it and we look at performance management we can really drill down because what we're really speaking to is when we talk about housing we're talking about to council member palmaris's point looking at our community and determining how we're building housing for every AMI, not just market rate, not just what we call attainable housing, but we're really talking about affordable housing. And back to Vice Mayor, when you're talking about, oh, we've built three structures, what has that done as it relates to eliminating homelessness? But it goes back to something that's very critical and essential is what is the preventive work that we're doing? before people become unhoused. that's where we need to focus and that's where miss leighette and company crystal and so forth and on have been talking to us since i've been on this dais and we really need to look at our tenant right protections we need to look at how do we work across the jurisdiction with our county and whomever else as it relates to not just tenant protections but how are we paying and setting up for legal assistance so how do we encompass this program around a housing Justice program and that's what we need to think about because it deals with all of those elements the unhoused those who are on the verge of losing their housing and how we're going to build affordable housing within the structure of our city

Yeah, multifaceted issues that don't have a simple solution. And so there's all these different ways to proceed to resolve them. So at this juncture, I think what we want to do is circle back. I think a very robust discussion about the goals. Seems that there's pretty much agreement on the goals that's consistent with what we heard in the interviews. Healthy discussion about the objectives, what are objectives. There was some consensus about some of the items that were offered in the first instance, but we've been taking copious notes. And so what we're going to do is go back, work with the manager and his team, to tease out some of the themes that we've heard through this very healthy discussion and bring that back to the council for consideration along with getting to a final point on mission and vision and values. So, and then ultimately that will all be synthesized and summarized in a document that you can share widely with the public. So everyone clearly understands these are the city's goals. These are objectives. This is a rolling plan. As we complete objectives, we add new objectives and that's how progress is measured. Council member.

Economic development.

Oh, yeah, we circle back on that one. Thank you.

Yes. So I just want to hear from the group. Because we haven't talked. I just generally want to hear what folks What are their thoughts?

So like I mentioned before, I could live with number one and three. Not live with. Those are really good objectives. But I want to circle back to Council Member Matias' comment about the infrastructure. And that is critical for a lot of things. The flood and wastewater infrastructure on Mare Island, the power that's needed for also Mare Island, but also downtown, and also just for our light industrial spaces. So there's a lot that needs to be done, recognizing that we're not going to finish them all in a year, But let's name that. Let's put it on the plate right now and start thinking about what are the tiny improvements we can make. Let's not let that get lost years down the road. And we've got great permitting, but we don't have the infrastructure to back it up. So I think that's a good thing, a very good thing we should add as far as objective. And I think I could live with those three objectives.

Other thoughts?

I was in the restroom, so I don't know what they are, but they sound reasonable. Well, you'll see them when they come back. I did sidebar with the city manager because I wanted some advisement on whether infrastructure would best fit under quality of life because we're also talking about roads. We're talking about a lot of stuff. When we say infrastructure, whether we should have it as a fifth goal, whether we should nest it under quality of life. He mentioned that nesting it under quality of life would make sense, but I think we need to dig into it a little more because it is one of those overarching ones. I don't think it matters where we nest it as much as that we have the right objective.

Yeah, I mean, I think that infrastructure is so critical here that it probably should be a goal. I mean, because of the magnitude of where we are with respect to infrastructure, I mean, I think the infrastructure question is one of the top three questions, period, in terms of the future.

the city and i believe that infrastructure at the state and federal level is a goal at at the state and federal level infrastructure is a goal and if we if and we didn't bring this up in our conversation today but you know the other question i'm just going to zoom out for a minute is as we're setting goals, how do those goals align at the state, at the federal state and county level? And when we're thinking about doing this work, how do we tap into those dollars that really help us to, you know, we're saying we have this, we have a lot of work to do in Vallejo and we know it, and you've been trying to get us down to three or maybe four goals. And I get that. but you have a city that really is needing to move forward. And so while we set the goals, and if we say we're gonna expand and add an additional goal, we have to think about globally, how are we in alignment at federal, state and county level And when we're thinking about laying them out, then how are we going to really achieve them by being able to proactively tap into the funds that are available by working with our assembly person, working with our state person, and being able to say, are these really achievable even though we have six goals here? And we have to think about how are we thinking about laying the plan out holistically, even setting the goals. So in my, if I think about infrastructure, it is a goal at federal, state, and county level. And it could sit on its own. It could be worked well if we could tap in.

Vice Mayor and Council Member.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. So just a couple of quick points on economic development. Number one, I think the city of Vallejo needs to prioritize business corridor revitalization. A lot of the focus has been downtown, waterfront, Mare Island. There's been less focus on Tennessee, Sonoma Boulevard, Springs Road, and even what an expansion of a business corridor may look like in the Glen Cove area and in South Vallejo. So I think that I'd want to see a plan, and I think that should be an objective of the city for once. Two, I don't see as much of a focus on the part of the city when it comes to workforce development. So I want to see us maximize or like really be intentional in securing state, federal and philanthropic dollars to support workforce development in our community, especially with the maritime plan that we just developed. And then when it comes to our strategic plan, which you referenced earlier in the conversation, there's a very intentional focus on attracting advanced manufacturing, bio, software and film. So we just approved our master fee schedule. uh that kind of kept rates at the same level for any type of business what i would want to see is uh a prioritization on the part of the city if we're going to move that plan forward to really figure out how do we attract those specific businesses um to our city so i would i mean i know i just said rather off like four or five things but Those are tangible areas that I think we can make headway in that are in alignment with our goals outlined in the plan and also with some of the investments that this council made last year. Great, great, great thoughts.

Yeah, and so I think, and to council member Ladejew and then from the rest of my council members and the mayor have been talking about is there's a collaboration coordination topic that we really haven't delved into too much is our, the agencies we actually work with. For example, CHP and specifically to Vallejo, there are agencies specific like Vallejo Flood and Wastewater, Mare Island Company. These are agencies that we had no control over, but we need to collaborate with them for us to move forward with a lot of our economic development, a lot of our public safety, a lot of other tangible issues. So that's another thing where I think you bring up the idea of the or the issue of subcommittees that may be agency subcommittee that if we have a subcommittee amongst our council members that two or three of us can meet with some of these agents to identify and understand how can we better collaborate a lot of things that we need to collaborate with them on but we're either not having those conversations or we're not broaching them with ideas or goals that we would like them that we would need to collaborate with them. So that's a different type of conversation. But getting us back to this economic development, I think Council Member Matias just listed off a whole bunch of objectives that I think that our goals or that our goals and attainable action plans that we should we could be achieving which brings up the the idea of it's all starts with a conversation and council member matias and i we have been collaborating for over a year now of using like the dual prong approach of the planning commission along with economic development Because they kind of work hand in hand to where we finally had a report from the planning commission to our economic development team to identify or suggestions of how do we go about having that collaboration. And one of the great questions that came up as we talked about the corridor specific plan. And the point that was brought up by, I think, is he still here? Well, he brought it up in that meeting was, well, the quarter specific plan that focuses on Sonoma Boulevard, but what about on the east side of 80, where we get most of our traffic? So that's the type of questioning that I think those collaboration between those commissions would start a healthy conversation to identify, Do we need to or can we change the zoning in this area? Can we identify different uses, land use issues for that to where economic development can have a voice in helping us to identify ways that we can do business differently by where typically it's the planning department and our zoning that starts the conversation of what goes where.

Absolutely. And those are all good thoughts. But again, I keep sort of trying to remind the council to avoid that temptation to just jump to solutions part of strategic planning is to is to separate yourself from a particular project even though it's very important that say one particular corridor be improved it's important to constituents you got to step back and you say okay in my goal in my big goal area of say economic development what are the objectives that are going to move the needle for economic development and what we all do we all do it is we immediately jump to i've got the solution we need to do this corridor project or this facade improvement or that item and those are all good things but those aren't strategic Those are tactics. And part of this whole exercise today, hopefully, and I can see it in our discussion, is thinking at that broader level. So we have to keep that in mind. So when this comes back to you, after the staff has an opportunity to work on it, even though objectives are more specific, they're measurable, they're time-defined, they're still somewhat broad. They're not always going to be, we're going to do this thing to that item. Councilmember?

Yeah, so I don't think we need to name the specific places as far as the objectives. We've already identified priority development areas in Vallejo, but the task at hand for the city manager is, you know, there's an action plan for all those places. So it's not just the downtown and the waterfront just getting love, although I'd love to see that all day long, for sure. But there are other priority development areas that haven't identified. And six months from now, a year from now, what I'm expecting is a report. What's the progress for those plazas? What are the progress for those empty storefronts? And I'd also like to double down on a comment that customer Matias made about more forest development. I think a criticism may be like, well, that's kind of outside of our wheelhouse. However, though, for the shipbuilding strategy from the Roosevelt Group, that was the number one thing that we got to do in order to signal to large firms, large employer firms, to show that we're serious about this. So there is definitely a domino effect for that. And even just more... saliently, you know, we're in the HR1 era and we got to get jobs like yesterday. So anything we could do to facilitate that. And I don't think it needs to be a heavy handed thing. There are already organizations and agencies out there and leaders who are doing this work. just need to be up front and responsible and bring it back to the vision statement or the mission statement we made earlier we're going to own that piece we cannot just rely on the county or some other leader to take that care of that when we have convening power let's take advantage of that and let's make sure we're getting jobs to the folks that are in Vallejo and I should know better but does the city have a workforce investment board

A WHIP? THE COUNTY. THE COUNTY DOES. DO YOU PARTICIPATE IN IT? YEAH, WE DO.

GREAT. THAT'S GOOD. SO JUST REAL QUICK FOR MY EDIFICATION, SORRY. SO WHAT DID WE DECIDE ABOUT THE POSSIBLE OBJECTIVES UNDER E, D, AND WHAT DID WE DECIDE ABOUT THE INFRASTRUCTURE PIECE?

MAYOR? I DON'T KNOW. I've been just sort of taking notes and throwing around ideas, and I feel like there's almost a throughput on all of our goals of infrastructure and of partnerships. So I almost feel like we should just embed that in all of them, because all of them have the need for partnership and relationship development, at least the public safety quality of life on housing and homelessness than this one, maybe less the fiscal stuff. And then all of them have an infrastructure component. I mean, with economic development, I think the vice mayor knows that the public works department has presented some new projects for funding for a new cycle of funding that's coming through OBAG, the Bay Area grants, that is going to come, I think it's coming to the council, if not on Tuesday at the next meeting, but they align very directly with the priority development areas. It's like Broadway, Georgia, we already have Springs, I think. So making sure that our infrastructure investments align with our economic development goals would be here. And then the fiscal sustainability piece, obviously it's making sure we have a financing plan for our infrastructure needs. And then on, you know, so I think there's a through, there's almost a throughput here, quality of life, making sure there's infrastructure, you know.

But I wouldn't enumerate it under everyone. There certainly is a connection.

Yeah. So should it be goal number five then?

I think infrastructure should be your fifth goal.

Yeah.

so can i just make one point to that um i think in the general planner so somewhere if we when you talk about infrastructure too if we had a safety we did the safety element had a safety plan that would overall address all of our infrastructure because it's sea level rise it's everything so that's just that food for thought where you could literally you already have a thing called a capital improvement budget and that is essentially your infrastructure plan yeah so then it's just how do you drive that right so

It's been a lively discussion. It's been great. Hopefully, the council members feel that it was of value. I think the staff finds it of value. Our marching orders is to take all the input that we heard today, go back, work closely with the city manager and the staff, return back to the council with a little more of a greater formed plan, if you will, that has the mission, vision, values for the council to consider to finalize and some objectives in each of the goal areas based on our conversations today and in consultations with the professional staff. And that will come back to the council. With that I think we're kind of at that point in the day where we've probably taken ourselves as far as we can go today and I want to thank all the council for their participation for the staff and the public for coming out. This is normally when we turn it over to get some final thoughts from the city manager and the council people so it seems like the appropriate time to do that when we start with the manager because we always give the council the last word.

Okay, I wanna thank you all for facilitating this for us today. I think it's a good, productive, successful day. I look at it as a first step of many more to come. And we weren't gonna solve all of our challenges today, but we're taking the initial steps to move forward. And so I'm optimistic And I also want to thank staff for helping to pull all of this together and for being here today.

Maybe work our way over and conclude with the mayor, if that's acceptable.

just want to first say thank you to all the city staff for all the hard work especially to our tech team you had to drag all of this equipment out here and i just want to thank you because it's a lot of work so thank you so much for what you do You keep us live, so thank you. And thank you to Narcissa. She coordinated the mills and supported the city manager. Thank you for your work. Thank you to the executive team and thank you for being here, present and engaged. And I want to thank the community for being present, whether you were live in the building with us or online. And this work really is about all of you in our community because we definitely want to serve you well. So I want to thank you for all of your support for the last several hours as we've all been here and to our facilitators, my colleagues and the ability to have a lively discussion because this is what makes it real. And this will help us get to where we need to go as a city. So thank you for being here and taking the time to gather all of our data and information.

Thank you.

Well, I first of all want to say I appreciate this opportunity to hear from the consultants. I appreciate the quality that you put into it. The city manager told me I would not be disappointed, and he is correct. I am not. I am very pleased. I don't want to re-echo what Councilwoman Letijous said, but I really do need to emphasize the thanks because the quality you put in means you've been hearing us for 18 months that we want Vallejo to go to the next level. And we really do want people to not only stay here, but bring folks here too. And all of Vallejo, because we have to have that visual equally and so i just want to say thank you to everyone and for the community because you are only your presence here says that you believe in us you came to help share your words to what we are doing if you didn't show up that would say you didn't believe in us so i appreciate that so thank you to you And to my colleagues, thank you for wanting to move all of the Lael up, but most importantly, collaborating with us and hearing each other, sharing each other's names, saying that you not only agree with them, but you're willing to put the work in with us. And so I want to say thank you to them. And again, to the staff who organized this opportunity, you know, you get a lot of the calls. And I would not want to be Narcissa or Don. I know I complain about my few emails, but I do get a lot, but I appreciate them forwarding that information to us. And I got a compliment today, by the way, to Dawn and to Narcissa. I wanted to tell them thank you because in my district, they said they've been used to being ignored, but they haven't felt that from you all. So I just want to say publicly thank you to you. And my last comment is we as a team can do this. We just have to be nice. So I want to say, thank you.

um just want to thank uh community for their patience um at least for me you know i've been uh in office um a little over 15 months now uh we've worked really hard to make progress in day-to-day issues and some of the bigger things we're not going as fast as we can but uh we're making decisions to um you know really really dial it up to the next level as councilwoman gordon just alluded to. So please continue to bear with us there. And then to city staff, I know it's been a bumpy ride. I'm just going to leave it there. But I hope over the next couple of months, we can really bring some stability and get all on the same page so we can get some stuff done. Because I think we're headed in that direction. And this next year and a half, there'll be a lot of exciting stuff for us to work on together as a community. So thank you for your service.

wearing my social worker hat here. You can never say thank you enough to everyone to acknowledge because it's a matter of acknowledging everyone's efforts and putting this all together. So thank you to the staff. And thank you to my fellow colleagues. Thank you just to the facilitators. I mean, but I want to do a special thank you out to the community that spent the entire day here. I think this is the first the the first goal setting session where everybody showed up and pretty much everybody stayed for the entire session. So I wanna thank the community for showing your passion and your willingness to understand what we're going through here today. But of my four years and this being, I think the fourth goal setting session we've had, I would like to think, and I would rate it as one of the best, if not, the best goal setting session the way it was organized the way it was programmed and the way you facilitated the conversation here i want to thank you all in the team all your team behind the scenes that we didn't get to meet today so thank you thank you to everyone and thank you to um uh the entire city for for joining us today all right

Yeah, I'll close this out. And I think, you know, obviously echo the thanks to everybody, especially the community members that came out. I see the layout of the room is not ideal, but hopefully, even though we didn't make a lot of eye contact because we're facing the other way, you felt our appreciation of you. And I think the way that I want to close for the community is that know our city has been through a lot over the last 30 or so years and we've had ups and downs and everything in between and we've got a council that is you know new as of now i mean not new i guess anymore but but new as of 2023 basically to elected office coming in with a vision for moving the city forward and the change doesn't happen overnight. I don't think we were ever, you know, under a delusion that it would but I think this is what it looks like and I do share the city manager's optimism I share everybody's optimism I think we are on the cusp of really getting going and I want to remind everyone community anybody that needs to hear it that I think the turbulence that we experience as part of the process. Turbulence isn't always a bad thing. I grew up in the South and I think about the eye of the hurricane is the calmest part of the hurricane. And sometimes you need to get out of the storm entirely. And in order to get out of the storm, you have to fly through. And it's that saying, the only way out is through. I just wanna remind everybody that In moments of conflict and strife and difficulty, the worst thing that we can do is turn back or turn on each other. We have to get through. And so I wouldn't see turbulence as a bad thing. I wouldn't see disagreement. I see disagreement as a good thing. I wouldn't see it as a bad thing at all. And bumps in the roads and tripping and falling on our face, and maybe we try something and it doesn't work. That's us getting through it. And when we come out the other side, it's going to feel so good for Vallejo. It is going to be so positive. for us in our community. And I think the takeaway from today is hopefully that there is a lot of alignment. Even if it hasn't felt like we've all been on the same team at times, we have been, and there's a lot of alignment amongst the council and the staff and the community, the surveys showed it, and there's a lot that we can do in that alignment. So I would close there and again, thank our facilitators everybody that came out and made this possible. I'm excited and looking forward to continuing these conversations with City Manager Black and the whole staff team and everybody. So thank you all again for joining us.

And thank you, Mayor, as you stated, the obstacle is the opportunity.

And I think with that, I will adjourn us at 2.58 PM. Thank you all again.