From: Jo Ann Mandinach
To: Council, City
Cc: Landesmann, Jennifer; Mary Gallagher; Port Ross; CeCi Kettendorf; Ann Balin; Jeanne Fleming; Rita Vrhel Subject: Setting City Priorities
Date: Saturday, January 11, 2025 3:39:28 PM
CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautious of opening attachments and clicking on links.
Hello. I'd like to echo Jennifer Landesmann's points about how city priorities are set, especially since the priority surveys often get few responses and ignore priorities of concern to many of us.
I therefore urge you to consider these long-overdue priorities of concern to many residents:
1) Delivering COST-EFFECTIVE services with an eye toward ensuring fiscal responsibility (the constant CPAU rate hikes when you're already overcharging us $24,000,000+ a year is a case in point).
2) Accountability of staff and consultants to elected officials and taxpaying residents to ensure OUR concerns are addressed rather than allowing staff to spend our money on a bevy of consultants with little or no local knowledge.
Example: For years we've requested Asian and other food markets, concerns ignored by the consultants who recommend sleeping pods instead and have only YEARS later finally addressed OUR request for more street cleaning which is much cheaper than spending $43,000,000 on the disruptive construction of wider sidewalks.
3) Making Outreach to Resident / Taxpayers a top priority 4) Expanding Public Comments and City Council's responses to the Public Comments since many feel that residents/taxpayers views are being ignored by staff and that the City Clerk is changing the rules on comments with little or no public warning so we don't waste our time on presentations that can't be heard.
Example: The clerk's Administrative Assistant III told us at 4:57 PM -- 3 minutes before the close of business on the Friday before the change in council leadership -- that our group of long-term residents was barred from speaking. When / why was this policy changed and by whom?
Sincerely,
Jo Ann Mandinach
From: Jennifer Landesmann
To: Council, City
Subject: Item #2 Jan 13 Council meeting- City"s Priority Setting process & Consideration of Performance Measures Date: Saturday, January 11, 2025 2:48:10 PM
CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautious of opening attachments and clicking on links.
Dear Mayor Lauing, Councilmembers, and City Manager,
As the City's 2025 Council priority-setting retreat is coming up, I appreciate that you will be addressing on Monday the City's priority setting process and find it promising that the Policy & Services Committee voted on December 10, to make improvements to the process and for "the consideration of performance measures." Another topic was postponed by P&S related to the lack of impact that Councilmembers have on setting the public Agenda because it is largely set by staff.
Stepping back, my frustration has always been that the City's priority setting process is used to create headlines that appear great, but then it's an arbitrary "fill in the blank" process where months after the headlines, a spreadsheet of 70 plus objectives (to advance priorities) is produced using past City workloads and eventually the headlines morph into objectives that the public has no way to engage on. Last year the Health and Safety priority that citizens have long worked to put and to keep on the Agenda was diluted by the addition of "wellness and belonging" which are very different portfolios; the issues I care about never made the agenda and actually there's no way to tell the relative attention to the new priorities either. Now there is a proposal to add the word "action" to the Climate priority when "action" should probably apply for other priorities as well, especially the ones that have been neglected.
The first step for performance measurement is that the City's priority objectives/headlines/criteria are not arbitrarily adjusted to suit how the specific body wants to measure itself on a given day. Regularly checking in with the public that works to put some of the issues on the City's radar and involving and informing the public at large is critical.
The topic of performance measurement and "how topics make the public Agenda" are tied and should be discussed together. Investments in how much the public has been allowed to weigh in on a topic is a performance metric. Zero public agenda time for an issue means that you are either making decisions in a non-transparent manner or not making decisions at all.
Not even to adjust course or to make improvements. The P&S Committee has so far postponed the discussion about how the public Agenda is set; one reason given (to not change anything) roughly was that some issues are too complex to put on an Agenda, or to be careful about overburdening staff. Lack of public engagement and limited transparency is actually a recipe for neglecting complex issues and why planning, prioritizing and performance measurement is needed.
Which brings up another topic that you may be discussing, the use of Ad Hoc Committees; possibly how some of those issues could be going to the Standing Committees. Please note that some priority issues may not have a standing committee or an Ad Hoc, please address this, and as regards Health & Safety (loss of property, life, environmental hazards). Finally, another performance metric is of course the amount of money invested in an issue. As you are responsible for these strategic allocations, it is necessary to please have reporting on these decisions to track over time.
Thank you for your leadership, I wish everyone a Happy New Year! and congratulations to the new Council members!
Best,
Jennifer