DATE: May 23, 2023
TO: Mayor and City Council
FROM: City Manager
SUBJECT: Strategic Roadmap: Review and Discuss Revisions to the City's Strategic Roadmap
RECOMMENDATION
That the Council reviews the attached documents and provides feedback on proposed revisions to the Strategic Roadmap.
SUMMARY
It has been three years since Council adopted the City’s first three-year Strategic Roadmap. At the Council retreat on May 9, 2023, Council reviewed and discussed edits to the Vision Statement and Priority Areas adopted in 2020. In addition, Council discussed and dot voted on their priority projects for the next three years. Since May 9, staff reviewed Council’s comments and dot votes and is proposing the attached revised Strategic Roadmap, which attempts to balance Council’s priorities with staff capacity and previous commitments. Staff is seeking feedback on this revised draft, which staff will then incorporate into a final draft to present to Council for adoption on June 6, 2023.
BACKGROUND AND DISCUSSION
Each year starting in 2020, the City Council has adopted a Strategic Roadmap to help Council prioritize projects and initiatives and to help staff understand where to focus resources. The process for Roadmap creation and adoption usually begins with a Council retreat in January or early February. This year, due to the orientation and appointment of four new Council Members, the retreat was postponed until May 9.
At the May 9 Council retreat, Council Members reviewed and discussed the Vision Statement and Priority Areas for the Roadmap, as well as a proposal to add an Education City lens. In addition, Council Members dot voted on their priority projects for the next three years. Over the past week, staff reviewed Council’s comments and dot votes and is proposing the attached revisions, which attempt to balance Council’s priorities with staff capacity and previous commitments. Staff is seeking feedback on this revised draft, which staff will then incorporate into a final draft to present to Council for adoption on June 6, 2023.
Due to the short turnaround between May 9 and now, staff has not yet completed the full meeting summary of the retreat. That summary will be complete by May 30 and attached to the staff report for the June 6 meeting.
Both Council and staff have provided general feedback about the Strategic Roadmap process. Staff is actively considering how to incorporate this feedback into next year’s process, including the following items:
As in past years, next year the retreat will be held in January or early February to give staff and Council more time for discussion, revisions, and incorporation into annual budget requests.
Next year, staff will provide more information about which projects are required due to mandates or grant funding versus which projects have more flexibility. If it makes sense, staff may separate these projects.
While most projects in the Roadmap are special projects or process improvements, a handful are more operational in nature and therefore have little flexibility (in the iceberg analogy, these would be below the water line). Next year, staff will work to separate these further.
Next year, staff will provide up-front analysis of the estimated staff impact for each project by work group.
Vision Statement
On May 9, Council provided several recommendations for wording changes to the vision statement. In addition, there was discussion about the length of the vision, with a recommendation to either shorten the statement or include a summary version at the top that can be used for communication materials and other purposes. Attachment II shows staff’s proposed revisions. Staff is seeking Council’s feedback on the following options:
Only keep the longer statement (see redlined edits in Attachment II) Keep the longer statement with a summary version at the top – Option 1 or 2 Only keep one of the two shorter statements – Option 1 or 2 Education City Lens
On May 9, Council discussed a proposal to add an Education City lens to the Strategic Roadmap, which identifies projects throughout the Roadmap that support the goal of having robust cradle-to-career educational opportunities for residents. There was not full consensus on the proposal at the retreat, though a majority of Council Members were comfortable with the lens approach. Council agreed to mark which projects they felt support the Education City goal during the dot voting exercise.
Attachment III shows staffs revisions to the lens based on Council comments at the retreat and Attachment IV shows an icon next to Council-identified Education City projects. Staff is seeking further feedback from Council on whether to include the Education City lens in the adopted roadmap, and if the attached revisions reflect Council’s recommendations.
Dot Voting Results
On May 9, Council discussed projects in each of the six priority areas and made recommended edits, and then dot voted on these projects. Attachment V shows the redlined edits to the projects and the dot votes. Staff created a “score” for each project based on the number of red dots (first priority – 2 points) and blue dots (second priority – 1 point). Staff has color coded the score column in Attachment V to roughly show Council’s joint priorities: Green = the top third priority projects, Yellow = the second third, Orange = the last third.
The dot voting resulted in the addition of 14 Council-added projects, which are listed in Attachment V. If four or more Council Members placed a red dot next to a Council-added project, that project was added to the Roadmap. The Council-added projects with fewer than four red dots have been documented and will be included in the full meeting summary of the retreat for future reference.
Alignment with Staff Resources and Previous Commitments The purpose of the dot voting exercise was to give staff general insight into Council’s collective priorities. Over the past week, staff reviewed the dot vote tallies from the retreat and created revisions to the timeline for the Roadmap that attempt to balance the Council’s priorities with staff capacity and previous commitments. Attachment VI shows staff comments to explain why staff is proposing to implement or delay each project in FY 2024, and the amount of time staff is recommending spending on projects in FY 2024.
Attachment IV shows a clean version of the Roadmap without staff’s comments and notes. Staff is seeking feedback from Council on any concerns or questions they have on this clean version before the June 6 adoption. The projects will be renumbered to the correct order after the May 23 work session.
Staffing
In past years, staff has not provided a staffing analysis of the Strategic Roadmap. Over the past week, staff members from each department have reviewed Council’s dot votes and provided a rough estimate of the hours needed to complete projects in FY 2024, which is shown in Attachment VII. Over the next year, staff will refine this analysis and explore project management tools to better show staff resources and impacts.
The recommended timelines for each project in the draft Strategic Roadmap (Attachment IV) assume that any current vacancies can be filled or work can be done by temporary staff. Staff will provide status updates throughout the year if we are unable to fill these vacancies.
Key current vacancies that impact the Strategic Roadmap include:
Equity Officer
Management Analyst in Community Services
Economic Development Specialist
Community Program Specialist in Economic Development
Human Resources Manager – Employee and Labor Relations
Human Resources Manager – Organizational Development
Police Management Analyst
Police Wellness Specialist
Civil Engineering Technician
Senior Transportation Engineer
Associate Transportation Engineer
Utilities Engineer
FISCAL IMPACT
Most projects in the Strategic Roadmap will be absorbed into annual departmental operating budgets or existing capital projects. After reviewing Council’s dot voting from the May 9 Retreat, staff is proposing the following additions to the FY 2024 General Fund Budget to fund high priority projects.
For each of these items, staff is seeking direction from Council on whether to add the item to the FY 2024 Budget, or revisit the item in a future year:
Item
Roadmap Project
Amount
Department
Software Subscription
Ticketing system for tracking Council/constituent requests $ 10,000
City Manager
Consultant Services
360 Evaluations and Executive Coaching for Department Heads $ 92,000
Human Resources
Gateway sign removal and replacement
Replacement of monument gateway sign on Jackson and Silva $ 200,000
Maintenance Services
Consultant Services
Broadband: Analysis of existing conditions and strategic plan $ 300,000
Public Works
Contract with Organization(s)
Expand litter collection services (like the Downtown Streets Team) $ 100,000
Public Works
TOTAL
$ 702,000
NEXT STEPS
Based on Council’s feedback, staff will prepare any needed revisions to the Strategic Roadmap and to the FY 2024 Budget and will return to Council on June 6 for adoption. Once adopted, the revised document will be included in the Adopted FY 2024 Operating Budget document and reviewed and updated, if necessary, as part of the mid-year and annual budget processes.
Prepared by: Mary Thomas, Assistant to the City Manager Irene Perez, Management Analyst
Emily Hwang, Management Fellow
Recommended by: Regina Youngblood, Assistant City Manager Approved by:
__________________________________________
Kelly McAdoo, City Manager
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