1 Damien O'Bid
Subject: FW: Proposal for City of Cotati Council Workshop - attached Damien, good talking to you yesterday and thank you for the material you sent. Looks like you have a good system and practice in place when it comes to new Councilmember orientations. The information you go over with your newly appointed Councilmembers is excellent, in fact, the two articles you shared with me by Kevin Duggan and Ken Hampian I used to go over with my Council(s) as well. Both Kevin and Ken were good friends and colleagues of mine during my tenure with the City of Santa Maria and I think we could use Kevin’s article “An Effective City Council/City Manager Relationship” as a starting point to open up a good conversation with your Council at the workshop. Prior to my interviews with Council, I would ask that you can send them my proposed list of questions (below) as well as a copy of Kevin’s article and ask that they review both (my questions and the article) prior to my interviews with them. Then, during the interviews I can ask them what about that article resonated with them – that would allow for a good discussion regarding effective Council – City Manager Teamwork during the workshop.
During my interviews with Council, I would then be asking the following questions:
1. What do you view as some of the City’s recent key accomplishments?
2. What are some major challenges facing Cotati?
3. What was their initial reasoning for running for City Council?
4. What are they personally hoping to accomplish while on the City Council?
5. After reading the Kevin Duggan article, what about that article resonated with them?
6. What are your expectations around the City Council working effectively together?
7. What would they like to accomplish at the workshop?
Questions 3, 4, and 5 will provide opportunities for Council to have some open dialog and some good discussions during the workshop. In addition, we always like to start the morning with an ice breaker. The ice breaker would be another great opportunity for Councilmembers to open‐up and talk about themselves, thereby providing their colleagues with some insight into who they are as a person. Question 7 would also provide you and I with some insight into anything else that Council may want to discuss at the workshop which again, would open it up for further discussion and interaction. In addition, we could also conduct an exercise that results in what each member of Council has in common, and we can talk more about that when we get closer picking a date for the workshop.
I believe the above addresses your interest in having a workshop that’s designed for Councilmember interaction and getting to know each other more as opposed to a strategic planning workshop.
Should the above meet with your expectation, I would ask that you kindly send back both the signed proposal (with your signature on the last page) and the City’s standard contractual agreement language for us to process at your earliest convenience so we can start calendaring Council interviews and pick a date for the workshop.
2 Rick Haydon
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