CITY OF SAN MATEO
CITY OF SAN MATEO
Agenda Report
City Hall
330 W. 20th Avenue
San Mateo CA 94403
www.cityofsanmateo.org
Agenda Number: 1 Section Name: STUDY SESSION Account Number: 10-1311 File ID: 26-10978 TO: City Council
FROM: Alex Khojikian, City Manager
PREPARED BY: City Manager's Office
MEETING DATE: March 16, 2026
SUBJECT:
City Council SMART Activities Priority List — Direction RECOMMENDATION:
Provide direction on the draft Fiscal Year 2026-27 SMART Activities Priority List.
BACKGROUND:
The City Council goal setting process includes a three-step deliberation process resulting in the Adopted City Council Priority List for each fiscal year. The first step in the deliberation process is the Blue Sky Workshop, which was held on February 7, 2026. During this time, the City Council received a status update on its 2025/2026 Fiscal Year Priority List, which contained 41 priorities within three timeframe categories. The categories represent expected completion within one fiscal year, 2-5 fiscal years, or 5 or more years.
With the adoption of the City’s first Strategic Plan on September 15, 2025, the Blue Sky goal setting workshop folded in the City’s Strategic Plan into the City Council goal setting process. The Strategic Plan offers a comprehensive framework for City Council to utilize when making decisions for both long-term and immediate priorities. It enables the City to move in an intentional, strategic direction over a longer timeframe. This is critically important to ensure resources are used to carry out City Council priorities with the utmost efficiency and impact.
The City is now transitioning away from the three timeframe categories for the Council priorities and implementing “SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) Activities” that represent the City Council’s priorities. The intention of the SMART Activities is to provide intentional, achievable actions that can be completed within the upcoming fiscal year. This allows staff to better report to Council and the community on progress made. If progress is unlikely in the upcoming fiscal year, it’s important to not lose sight of these actions, so staff also created “2-5 Year Objectives” that will be revisited in the future.
Staff made recommendations to remove completed priorities, convert incomplete priorities to SMART Activities, and move priorities into the 2-5 Year Objectives category based on progress to date and work remaining. At the workshop, Council reviewed the 41 priorities and directed staff to remove, convert to SMART Activities, or move to the 2-5 Year Category.
In addition, the Council also heard a report on staff’s existing work plan items that are unrelated to formalized Council priorities but are a part of each department’s daily work. Further, each Councilmember presented three proposed new priorities to be integrated into the list of Adopted City Council priorities for the new fiscal year and deliberated on whether they should be retained.
The March 16, 2026 meeting marks the second step in the process when the Council will be reviewing and providing final
CITY OF SAN MATEO
direction on the new draft Fiscal Year 2026-27 SMART Activities Priority List. To assist in this conversation, Attachment 1 provides the full list of the previous year’s Council priorities converted into SMART Activities and shown within the structure of the Strategic Plan.
Attachment 2 provides the new Council-proposed priorities that gained consensus by at least three Councilmembers at Blue Sky. The priorities that received majority agreement by the Council have been converted into SMART Activities by staff. In total, there are 56 SMART Activities proposed for Fiscal Year 2026-27 between Attachment 1 and Attachment 2.
At the meeting, staff will be available to answer any remaining questions and will be seeking final direction on the draft Fiscal Year 2026-27 SMART Activities Priority List so we can proceed to the third and final step, which is to finalize and adopt the list as part of the City’s annual budgeting process. Tonight, we ask Council:
1. Do you have any final revisions to the verbiage of any of the priorities?
2. Are there any priorities you wish to remove?
BUDGET IMPACT:
There is no budget impact from this item. A majority of the resource requirements for the adopted Priority List will be incorporated into the fiscal year 2026-27 budget proposal and the remainder will be brought back as needed, as the projects evolve following further analysis and Council direction.
ENVIRONMENTAL DETERMINATION:
This item is not a project subject to CEQA, because it is an organizational or administrative activity that will not result in direct or indirect physical changes in the environment. (CEQA Guidelines Section 15378(b)(5).)
NOTICE PROVIDED
All meeting noticing requirements were met.
ATTACHMENTS
Att 1 – Converted SMART Activities
Att 2 – Council-proposed SMART Activities
STAFF CONTACT
Zachary Reda, Senior Management Analyst
[email protected]
(650) 435-0823