Special
City Council Meeting Retreat Minutes
February 17, 2015
Mayor Roe called the meeting to order at approximately 2:06
p.m.
Present: Mayor
Daniel Roe and Councilmembers Lisa Laliberte, Tammy McGehee, and Jason Etten.
City Manager Patrick Trudgeon and
Department Heads: Police Chief Rick Mathwig, Fire Chief Tim O'Neill, Finance
Director Chris Miller, Public Works Director Duane Schwartz, Parks &
Recreation Director Lonnie Brokke, and Community Development Director Paul Bilotta.
Facilitator Craig Rapp
Mayor Roe announced that
Councilmember Robert Willmus would be arriving at approximately 4:00 p.m. due
to scheduling conflicts.
At the request of Mayor Roe, City
Manager Trudgeon introduced Retreat Facilitator Craig Rapp, who provided an
overview of today's program.
- Overview of Retreat
Presented by Facilitator Craig Rapp
Mr. Rapp
provided a brief summary of his background and career in local government,
consulting, work with the Metropolitan Council, and leading various public
meetings.
Mr. Rapp asked
each participant around the table to introduce themselves and provide their
experiences to-date with strategic planning, whether good, bad or indifferent;
and their one hope and one fear for this process and retreat over the next few
days.
Mr. Rapp
reviewed the structure for the next few days, and reiterated the desire of
those present that this effort be effective and not some report that would sit
on the shelf or contain non-actionable items.
2.
Who We Are - Organizational Culture and Value Proposition
(including Presentation/Results/Discussion)
Mr. Rapp
reviewed various value propositions and culture of the organization to address
TODAY: who we are and who we want to be and where things were currently at as
far as strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT); TOMORROW:
what's important or what are our priorities, key outcomes we want, and how
we'll define those targets and address accountability to achieve them.
Mr. Rapp
referenced the previous SWOT quiz completed and submitted by participants prior
to this meeting; and advised that there would be another one today as a group.
Prior to that exercise, Mr. Rapp presented various tools he'd use throughout
the retreat.
City
Council /Staff Roles
Council owns:
purpose, direction success definition, accountability
Staff owns:
action plans, methods, performance
Council and
Staff share: perspectives, creation, mutual accountability as a team, with
staff accountable to the City Council and the City Council accountable to staff
through deliverables based on decision-making by the body or through providing
a clear direction to staff.
Mr. Rapp
provided his synopsis of strategic planning as a four-part model structured in
two parts with four main questions:
Strategic
Plan
Where
are you?
Scan the
environment; conduct internal/external analysis (SWOT); develop a strategic
profile; and identify strategic challenges.
Where
you're going:
Define your
mission; articulate core values; set a vision; establish goals; and identify
intended outcomes.
Business Plan
How you'll
get there: Develop initiatives; define performance measures; set targets
and thresholds; and cascade them throughout the organization.
What you'll
do: Create detailed action plans; and establish accountability (who, what,
where).
Mr. Rapp suggested it was important to
start with "WHY," not "WHAT," as addressed by author, Simon O. Sinek, best known for popularizing the concept
of "the golden circle" and as described by TED Talk and providing a
simple but powerful model for inspirational leadership. Mr. Rapp noted that
most business models started with WHAT and migrated to WHY, but outstanding
organizations with outstanding products started the other way, providing a more
emotional appeal making people want to come, to stay and invest by thinking
with their heard, not their head. Mr. Rapp applied this specifically to
Roseville as a community and its leadership as staff and Councilmembers
delivered core services (e.g. promises) and starting from a different place
than typically done.
Mr.
Rapp reviewed some of Roseville's WHY's, including its Mission Statement and Community
Aspirations, and asked if that encompassed the entire WHY.
Discussion
included individual perspectives on that concept, with the consensus being that
the concept may be close, it needed a vision statement that went beyond that
mission and aspirations, while being short enough to be effective while not
simply being a checklist.
Further
discussion included why people liked Roseville; examples of other communities
and their images for promoting growth and accomplishing things; and how a
community could be guided by such a vision that clearly defined Roseville.
Mr. Rapp
suggested the vision should be easy to articulate and allow aspirations molded
to fit it, with a clear understanding going forward of the WHY of and for the
community as a whole. Mr. Rapp reviewed the mandated leadership role of local
government in delivering great services (internal) and creating great
communities (external) based on larger policy choices, and determining how and
when those policies serves to help or hinder achieving a great community. Mr.
Rapp opined that the City Council and staff are responsible for both results.
Councilmember
McGehee opined that she saw that as the "HOW," in developing great communities
and delivering great services, noting that was what she hoped to get out of
this retreat. Councilmember McGehee opined that the City already knew how to
deliver great services, but it didn't know how to create a great community.
Mr. Rapp
responded that it would be interesting to see how that came out at the end of
this retreat based on his perspective on strategic planning service programs
analysis.
Mayor Roe stated
that he didn't want to be super great at delivering a service that didn't serve
to create a great community.
Culture and
Value Proposition:
What is our
city? (unique selling point or value proposition)
What do we want
it to be? (as a place to live and as an organization charged with the responsibility
to serve its citizens, guide development and regulate laws).
Mr. Rapp defined
"core culture" as the way things really get done, with culture what you spend
time doing: how you're rewarded, how you make decisions, how you talk to each
other, how you treat citizens, and how you deal with stakeholders.
Mr. Rapp defined
the "core value proposition" as the primary benefit of an organization's
service or product, how that organization differentiates itself, what values it
delivers, and which of the three disciplines or value propositions the
organization would choose:
·
Operational Excellence-Customer adjusts to them (command
and control)
·
Product/Service Leadership-Customer oohs and ahs over
our services (competence)
·
Customer Intimacy-We get to know customers and solve
their problems and satisfy their needs (collaborative)
Four Core
Cultures:
Control culture
(military - command and control)
Competence
culture (research lab/u - best and brightest)
Collaboration
culture (family - teams)
Cultivation
culture (church - mission/values)
As part of the
upcoming exercise, Mr. Rapp advised that the questions should consider who the
City is and who they wanted to be without constraint as they considered which
of the four core cultures were appropriate in each area.
At the end of
the exercise, Mr. Rapp and participants reviewed survey results and those
results specific to the City Council, those of staff, and the combined value
for each. Mr. Rapp summarized the results indicated participants wanted to
have a "cultivation culture" seeking "customer intimacy" in a collaborative
environment. Mr. Rapp advised that this is a common desire in most
organizations, and the next step would be to reconcile whether it could be
done, and if done, what it meant to the organization known as the City of
Roseville.
Reactions
from Participants
Councilmember
Etten opined that you didn't need to spend money or find more money resources
to be customer intimate, while you may decide to spend available money differently
or approach people differently. Based on his experience in serving on the
Parks & Recreation Commission and development and implementation of the
Parks Renewal Program, Councilmember Etten noted that significant amount of
time spend deciding what to do and the details involved, with the result being
a process not just to build, but to build it in the best way to address
community interests. Councilmember Etten noted that sometimes that meant
spending more, but sometimes less, and sometimes not having any dollar
increase.
Mr. Rapp
summarized that as figuring out what we're trying to achieve and the level of
service to provide.
Councilmember
McGehee seconded those comments, and chose to look at it from the development
context. Councilmember McGehee opined that it was important for residents to
maintain existing amenities through the City Council's maintenance of its tax
base while not hurting existing residents and when considering development. She
opined that we need to figure out why we wanted to do a development and get a
community consensus of the goal to raise the City's tax base. As another
example, if the decision is for a community center, Councilmember McGehee
opined that this was a different process in which one should first go to the
community to see what they wanted and how they proposed to get, thus
establishing what the priorities were in the community being served by the City
Council. At that point, Councilmember McGehee opined that the City Council
could then come back to make things work within a framework of consultation,
cooperation and collaboration within the community, which she saw as the HOW.
Councilmember McGehee stated that she strongly supported this type of process
rather than the way the City regularly did things, taking ideas from a
development and trying to implement them by forcing the ideas on a community
that did not support them.
City Manager
Trudgeon opined that his interpretation of why customer intimacy is desired is
that, at the end of the day, staff and the City Council is serving people in
the purest sense of the form, not customers per se, but its residents. Since
he viewed that job as serving individuals, Mr. Trudgeon opined that it only
made sense to approach it that way; and form a selfish point of view, noted
that it felt good to help people and solve problems, not just meet goals.
Finance Director
Miller opined that he saw a difference between providing a high level of
service to all customers, but as a reality check, staff and the City Council
was also here to provide service to all customers, even those who never came
forward.
Mr. Rapp noted
that staff had responded on the survey highest for customer intimacy and the
next response being for all of the above. From hearing staff's opinions so
far, Mr. Rapp suggested he was hearing questions about what staff should be
doing; and while there were unique solutions for each person, it was typically
hard for staff to discern value propositions. Rather, Mr. Rapp opined that the
reality of value propositions were usually one primary and some modest set of
standards for the other two. Mr. Rapp further opined that this was the
importance of a value proposition exercise, for staff to hear the City Council
say they supported the primary value proposition rather than expressing
confusion about which was the most important.
In other words,
Mayor Roe stated that the City Council needed to own the value proposition and
not keep giving staff different directions.
In hearing
budget discussions before starting today, Mr. Rapp suggested the value propositions
should guide the City's budget as well. But in the long run, Mr. Rapp
recognized that it cost money to tailor things in the long run, and while money
can be reallocated to provide higher service levels in some areas, uniformly
the entire budget may have to be notched up.
Mayor Roe opined
that there needed to be community buy-in as well; and as stated by
Councilmember McGehee, there should be no disconnect between the desired
customer intimacy model and having the community state they only wanted an
operational budget; but to somehow find the best of both.
To build on
that, Councilmember McGehee opined that the transparency piece would be to
provide citizens and the public with education, background and facts about each
issue in order for them to help the City Council make the right choices to meet
their expectations.
Mr. Rapp noted
that, in a government model, that approach was more complicated and also took
into account locations of various agency operations, languages spoken, special
needs, one-on-one needs and other unique citizen and customer needs to
accommodate, and how to organize to become or remain effective in that way to
fulfill those needs.
Mr. Rapp
continued with results of the individual surveys and City Council, staff and collected
information based on the current culture and differences in those responses.
Mr. Rapp
reviewed some questions these responses may create in determining why people
work for government versus private, in the desire to serve (cultivation culture
concept), which he observed in responses, while the reality was that they were
living in a control culture similar to that of the rest of the world. Mr. Rapp
reviewed the connection in a control culture and operational excellence as a
value proposition that provided a good fit since they overlapped but provided
no variation or allowed any "coloring outside the lines"). In moving toward a
customer intimacy role, as apparently the overriding desire, Mr. Rapp noted
that the control model didn't fit as well as the chain of command continued to
fight against freelancing to solve problems.
Mayor Roe
suggested different models in different roles within departments, such as with
public safety staff when responding to fire, EMT, or police calls in a
controlled environment with controlled responses versus doing community
speaking or education or one-on-one training within an entirely different
culture context.
Councilmember
McGehee opined that the part controlled by the City Council was in setting
policies, which was her main goal she hoped would result from this retreat:
being sure to engage the community and citizens at the outset of major
planning, projects or initiatives, with periodic community surveys providing
the community an opportunity to submit their ideas for what they'd like or
where they think we should go as a community. From that standpoint,
Councilmember McGehee suggested that there were changes the City Council could
make in its HOW.
Mayor Roe asked
to hear from individual Department Heads on the control versus cultivation
models. Mayor Roe asked if the Police Department could have a cultivation culture
in its role, while noting the Parks & Recreation Department naturally fell
into that model through its intensive interaction with customers and basic job
requirements. However, Mayor Roe expressed his curiosity in hearing from other
Departments how and if they shared the customer intimacy model desire, and if
so, how they felt that could and would work best in a cultivation culture
within the organization of the City.
Community
Development Director Bilotta stated that he had formerly worked in a community
that was good at that culture within a highly team-based, decision-based, and
cross-functional arena. Under that model, Mr. Bilotta opined that it was hard
to go back into the silo mentality; but when adding in outside people and/or
associations, it became messier. Mr. Bilotta advised that this previous organization
had ongoing exercises to keep things on track, with annual details and the City
Council and staff both on board and staff on board with neighborhood
organizations. Mr. Bilotta noted that a typical silo mentality worked well
from the top down, but led to problems as well.
Police Chief
Mathwig stated that 70% of his department's responsibility fell into the realm
of core services (e.g. arrests, report writing, etc.) while the remaining 30% involved
officers working with neighborhoods, individual citizens or organizations, with
various building tenants or other ways using different paths intended to obtain
the same results. Chief Mathwig stated that his goal was to have his Sergeants
and other officers find meaningful purpose in their jobs as well as in figuring
out to solve problems, while a Lieutenant may have gotten into the law
enforcement business for some other reason, but they all shared those different
paths to the same result.
Public Works
Director Schwartz opined that the difficulty was trying to move from that
control top down in an outcome-based, lean organization charged with achieving
efficiencies while meeting the programs/services provided. Mr. Schwartz noted
that this didn't leave a lot of time to move outside that structure to get things
done, at least not in the Public Works Department while it may be applicable in
other departments. Within their day-to-day operations, Mr. Schwartz opined
that they didn't have 30% down time to develop intimacy with customers.
From their
perspective, Parks & Recreation Director Brokke opined that their
continuing standard was to achieve customer intimacy in meeting community
expectations.
Finance Director
Miller opined that in the prevalently controlled environment of finance, there
wasn't much discretion available, while staff tried to remain consistency from
one circumstance to the next; with consistency and accuracy being huge in that
arena. Mr. Miller opined that an employee going about their own unique way to
connect with individual citizens had a tendency to create problems for that
employee as well as undermining public trust. Mr. Miller also noted the need
to be consistent with other cities with driving sensibilities and maintaining
control, to avoid losing the department's accountability.
Mayor Roe asked
if Finance Director Miller found that any different in the Information
Technology (IT) or License Center business models.
Mr. Miller
responded negatively, that IT was very structured and while having similar
priorities within the department, opined that the License Center had even more
structure.
Mr. Rapp
suggested a comparison between the Finance and Public Works Departments and
ways to think about their roles. Mr. Rapp noted that Mr. Schwartz had hit upon
an interesting point: with staff being so lean and continually performing the
day-to-day workload, it was hard for employees to think about solving customer
problems, let along having the time available to actually resolve them. Also,
from the perspective of the Finance Department, Mr. Rapp noted that their stock
in trade is accuracy and transparency year in and year out. Mr. Rapp suggested
customer intimacy and excellence may come into play in determining the reasons
for doing things, and trying to tailor things in unique situations (e.g.
plowing cul-de-sacs for Public Works) and how those areas may be tailored, even
if costing more money, but in presenting a new plan to the City Council to
address them. For Finance, Mr. Rapp suggested it may be in defining who its
customers were (e.g. City Council and outside world) and how it can better
support those customers through differently formatted reports, or how choices
affected and made things better or achieved customer intimacy while not
sacrificing transparency and accuracy; and then articulate those choices to the
decision-makers to make policy.
Councilmember
Laliberte noted an example of Mr. Schwartz and his staff providing options to
the City Council last year to address the frozen pipe issue.
When talking
about focusing on one value proposition, Mayor Roe suggested that it addressed
the resource side as well; opining that if spending a lot of time and resources
above the minimum in other areas, by using the value proposition model, it
could free up resources for other areas; but it would take some analysis to
figure out the benefit of doing so.
From her
personal background in research, Councilmember McGehee stated that if operational
expectations are strong and tight, an organization should be able to manage
brainstorming at 30% of its time while meeting as a group to review policy
ideas within that group and see the issues and ways to shift and change the
culture. Councilmember McGehee opined that there were times when the
organization had to be controlled, but the rest of the time, cross training
should work.
Mr. Rapp noted
that, at the end of the day, the City appeared to still want to be operationally
excellence (control), but also still wanted some customer intimacy, on opposite
ends of the spectrum; and asked participants to define which way they wanted to
move.
City Manager
Trudgeon sought to focus on challenges, acknowledging that a lot of what the
organization did was silo-oriented, with departments containing experts in
their various fields. However, Mr. Trudgeon noted that staff was finding that
most solutions actually reach across departments and are multi-level in nature,
and needed tailoring for each of those specific issues. As an example, Mr.
Trudgeon referenced the Karen refugee population and how several departments
were working with them on landlord issues (School District, and Community
Development and Police Departments, and the Housing & Redevelopment
Authority) and breaking new ground to do it, with no standard operating
manual. However, Mr. Trudgeon noted that, while trying to break free of the
silo approach to problem solving, it was still necessary to have some hierarchy
in place, without falling back on department-specific solutions, but seeking a
collaborative approach within the hierarchy. Mr. Trudgeon opined that this was
what he'd like to see and be used more broadly.
Mr. Rapp
acknowledged that a collaborative culture most strongly supported a customer
intimacy approach, and while being more complicated to manage, it was inclusive
and achieved the end goal. Mr. Rapp advised that in order to accomplish that
objective, however, it would require change on two fronts: movement away from
operational excellence value proposition and control culture, since it's hard
to do both. Mr. Rapp opined that as long as participants understood what was
involved, it could work. As an example, Mr. Rapp recognized that an incident
command situation was not collaborative, but other areas were as long everyone
understood the implication of making the shift.
Councilmember Willmus arrived at
this time, approximately 3:48 p.m.
Before recessing
for a break, Mr. Rapp advised that this accomplished the "big picture," and
next was reviewing the environment and results of the SWOT exercise to identify
strategic challenges, with participants broken into groups to identify 4-5
strategic priorities, then moving on to identify 2-3 key outcome indicators or
priorities, and finally 3-5 strategic initiatives or priorities.
Recess
Mr. Rapp recessed the meeting
at approximately 3:49 p.m., and reconvened at approximately 4:03 p.m.
3. Where We Are -SWOT Analysis (including Presentation /Results /Discussion)
Before breaking
into groups for this short exercise, Mr. Rapp reviewed the three-step process
to be used based on the SWOT handouts: (S=strengths, W=weaknesses,
O=opportunities, and T=threats). Each group was given a category for the
purpose of correlating and combining similar items into priority statements.
Results reported by each group are listed as follows:
STRENGTHS
1)
Financial health - city and broader community
2)
City staff
3)
Caring and engaged citizens
4)
City services provided
5)
Location in Twin Cities
Mr. Etten, in
summarizing his group's report, noted that almost no one from staff brought up
city financing as a strength, with that being the most striking difference in
staff and City Councilmember responses.
WEAKNESSES
1)
Looking backwards instead of forward on dialogue held
2) Top-down public engagement process pushing information rather than
listening first - development process
3)
City Council deliberation process - personal attacks and indecision
during the process
4)
Concept between lean budgeting vs. willingness to cut or reduce programs
in order to free resources for other programs
5)
Changing demographics and workforce - Councilmembers and staff all
brought this up in both areas
6)
Housing was prevalent in the list (the lack of move-up housing options)
7)
Silo approach within the organizational structure or a lack of
departmental collaboration
In summarizing
the list, Mr. Miller and Councilmember Willmus concurred that there appeared to
be Rapp agreement on those issues from both the Councilmembers and staff, and
no particular order to the concerns. Councilmember Willmus noted that Councilmembers
called out changing demographics and workforce issues, but staff flagged that
item related from a demographic support context. Councilmember Willmus opined
that it seemed applicable to the community becoming more aware of broader
changes I demographics in the community and the City's response to that change.
OPPORTUNITIES
1)
Redevelopment sites
2)
Engagement/collaboration - people are or want to be engaged (volunteers)
and Police Department interested in collaborating in other
communities/neighborhoods (e.g. Southeast Roseville), also with other agencies
(e.g. Metro Transit, Ramsey County) on shared interests
3)
Situational advantages
4)
Organizational evolution efficiencies, technologies, increasing revenue
sources
At the request
of Mr. Rapp, in her summary Councilmember Laliberte noted nothing more
representative of Councilmembers or staff.
THREATS
1)
Politics - staff concern expressed was that the City Council seemed to
be attack-oriented
2)
Development - competition - tension between neighborhoods/developments and
business community with few or no independent stores; more chains and a decline
of smaller stores
3)
Crime - bigger issue on staff side than Councilmember side, but still
there, but more strong on staff's list
4)
Demographics - much more or a concern on staff side; interesting
demographic - see us losing older people in community who care about community
and volunteering; losing that valuable resource - some replacements not filing
that gap
5)
Housing - declining housing stock and not having move-up stock
6)
Location - strong positive, but strong threat to lose out to competition
(e.g. TCAPP); concern that Roseville didn't become a dead zone between the City
of St. Paul and TCAAP
7)
Resources - needed to do what we want to do
Councilmember
McGehee concluded her group's report.
4.
Identifying Organizational and Community Challenges
Using the
information gleaned from the last exercise, Mr. Rapp advised that the next
group exercise would be to match strengths with opportunities to find strategic
challenges or issues to maximize. Mr. Rapp noted a parallel exercise would be
to match weaknesses and threats to define strategic issues to minimize. At the
conclusion of this break-out exercise, Mr. Rapp advised that the groups would
again combine and report their findings. Mr. Rapp opined that this should
provide a clear picture of things right in front of us that tended to trip up
our goals or keep us from achieving objectives.
The
STRENGTHS/OPPORTUNITIES groups combined (Mayor Roe, Councilmembers Laliberte
and Etten, City Manager Trudgeon, Police Chief Mathwig, and Parks & Recreation
Director Brokke).
The
WEAKNESSES/THREATS groups combined (Councilmembers Willmus and McGehee, Finance
Director Miller, Public Works Director Schwartz, Community Development Director
Bilotta, and Fire Chief O'Neill).
As an example,
Mr. Rapp clarified that the intent of the exercise was how to leverage
strengths and opportunities that represented inherent things in the
organization or community; and strategic issues to maximize and issues to
minimize as well. Mr. Rapp advised that step three in the exercise would be to
combine all four SWOT again as a full group to determine any crossover items
and determine what strategic issues or challenges emerged.
Reports from the
groups were as follows:
STRENGTHS/OPPORTUNITIES
(Summarized
for the group by City Manager Trudgeon)
1)
Engagement/collaboration of citizens and staff - volunteering,
connecting to neighborhood groups
2)
Redevelopment sites - financial health/citizens/location - get what we
want, not just be reactive to what development wants to locate in Roseville
3)
Employees/new ideas?
WEAKNESSES/THREATS
(Summarized
for the group by Councilmember McGehee)
1)
Minimize ineffective allocation of available resources
2)
Consider public safety impacts on day-to-day decisions
3)
Ineffective decision-making/politics
4)
Housing diversity/quality
5)
Ineffective public engagement
Discussion
ensued as Mr. Rapp asked for obvious items participants observed:
Councilmember
Willmus stated that weaknesses are opportunities (e.g. community engagement,
housing, redevelopment efforts).
Councilmember
Etten questioned what "ineffective decision-making" meant.
On behalf of
their group, Community Development Director responded that it was meant as
looking backwards versus forward through dwelling on issues that involved
personal attacks and tended to delay decision-making.
Councilmember
Etten questioned how that played into ineffective decision-making versus public
engagement and if that delayed decision making came from ineffective, misconstrued
public engagement.
Participants
concurred that those were connected, but Mr. Rapp opined that to him they
seemed to come from two distinct realms: ineffective decision-making in the
governance realm (decision-making), and ineffective public engagement based on
on-the-ground public deployment (community outreach).
Councilmember
Etten admitted his struggle to connect communities and engagement and the difference
in community engagement held upfront, paused, or completely destroyed and that
ramification on decision-making, with a decision needed on how to do
decision-making while still generally engaging the public.
Mr. Rapp
suggested defining one of the challenges as: "ineffective/effective
decision-making." Mr. Rapp noted this could be broadened into the category of
governance by making decisions as a governing body that determined the needs of
stakeholders and expectations of citizens, since the group concurred that they
seemed to be tied together.
Councilmember
McGehee opined that from her perspective it was less politics than process.
Councilmember Laliberte opined that public safety also went into the engagement/collaboration
category, since recent community survey information indicated that public
safety mattered to citizens, and while there was no indication that the current
status was wrong or bad, it was an important issue for the community.
Councilmember
Willmus opined that it was an overarching concept, and he saw it as broader
than just crime but incorporating all areas of public safety.
Community
Development Director Bilotta opined that public safety needed to be a consideration
in all decisions, since it was not done in a vacuum, and should enter into the
discussion earlier in the process.
Councilmember
Laliberte applauded the group for including that item, as she found it tying to
many other things, including housing values that could be affected if not
addressed.
Councilmember
Willmus concurred, opining that was a good observation.
Mr. Rapp offered
a list of challenges he was hearing and after more discussion, suggested
refinement of that list.
·
Engagement
·
Housing
·
Redevelopment
·
Ineffective/effective decision-making
·
Public safety implications
·
Determining priorities/greatness
·
Organizational value proposition/service delivery premise
·
Service levels/quality
Mr. Rapp
provided examples of strategic challenge such as:
Financial
instability, tax base
Community
unrest, services/taxes
Infrastructure
condition/age/quality
Development/redevelopment,
economic decline
Organizational
effectiveness/efficiency
Workforce
issues, replacement, performance, discontent
Councilmember
Laliberte opined that it was important to keep the City's aging infrastructure
and funding for it on the radar.
Mayor Roe
expressed his surprise that didn't end up on one of the lists.
Finance Director
Miller opined that one thing still missing was the decision point of what the
City chose to be great at and what they only sought to attain a level of good;
by setting priorities or somehow deciding what they wanted and subsequently how
to allocate resources accordingly.
Councilmember
McGehee suggested that reviewing the process to change engagement and
collaboration among staff departments, coupled with proactive development,
should provide additional time on the frontend that may not prove expensive or
actually cost more. Councilmember McGehee opined that much more staff time and
finances had been spent to coerce or ameliorate problems due to being reactive
versus proactive.
Mayor Roe
observed that, in the desire for customer intimacy versus organizational control,
somehow that was going to need to be dealt with.
At the prompting
of Councilmember Laliberte, participants concurred with the comments expressed
by Finance Director Miller.
Councilmember
McGehee questioned front-line staff if they saw things becoming more automatic
as more engagement issues were fixed, and if that happened, whether one-on-one
or in general, it was done without being more expensive.
Community
Development Director Bilotta noted that one of the major issues was one having
a staff implication. Mr. Bilotta noted that, often the lack of engagement was
not due to a lack of desire on staff's part, but at least in his department and
from his observation that of the Public Works Department, they were set up to
process permits from one end of the assembly line's point A to point B, and
that day-to-day operation took up their time. While that wasn't what the
community wanted from its city staff, unfortunately Mr. Billota noted that this
was their reality and to achieve long-term efficiencies, it would take
significant staff time and reorganization things to bet the objective metrics
in place. Mr. Bilotta noted that staff wanted to please, and would work hard
to do so, but there came a point when they had to say "No," that they could not
take on one more thing, even deemed minor or small. Mr. Bilotta noted that the
consequences of continuing to take on more and more over time was that they no
longer saw their family and it added to their stress, creating struggles and
dissatisfaction with the job, their life and general demeanor. While the
City's staffing was set up to be lean, Mr. Bilotta opined that the more this
strategy could be put together and became more predictable with priorities
established for departments, the better it became for everyone.
Participating
staff members concurred, noting as prime examples the Information Technology
and Public Works Department stresses noted in recent discussions.
Mr. Rapp advised
that these challenges would be taken into consideration as these preliminary
exercises were undertaking, and as an end result, identification of 4-6
strategic priorities from that initial list of challenges. To frame that end
goal, Mr. Rapp suggested consideration of a balanced scorecard as the best
practice example. Mr. Rapp noted this included from a financial perspective,
how the city looked to its shareholders; from a customer perspective, how it
looked to its customers; from a learning and growth perspective, how changes
could be made to make improvements; and from the business process perspective,
how effective the organization was internally.
Mr. Rapp
reviewed public and private sector similarities, and internal and external customers,
with those same considerations at play: financial, operations,
citizen/customer, and workforce (employees).
Discussion
ensued on any of the areas of challenge that could be combined as the list was
further refined.
Councilmember
Willmus suggested housing and redevelopment could be combined.
Mr. Rapp offered
his suggestion for combining those challenges as follows, recognizing that some
of the items listed as challenges would become part of those broader categories
as follows:
·
Engagement
·
Housing & Redevelopment
·
Public safety implications
·
Development/Aging infrastructure
·
Determining priorities/greatness
At the request
of City Manager Trudgeon, Councilmember McGehee explained their group's
definition of "public safety implications," (e.g. WalMart versus Target redevelopments
and greater impacts on the Fire and Police Departments) and specialized training,
such as for a senior housing facility.
Councilmember
Willmus noted that the challenge initially started out defined as "crime" and
had morphed into a broader public safety picture.
City Manager
Trudgeon noted that public safety was also tied to development; and questioned
why Mr. Rapp didn't include the initial challenge of i"nfrastructure/roads."
Mr. Rapp
responded that the category "infrastructure/roads" was more of a "how" and
advised that it would turn up at a later stage as participants defined what it
meant for development initiatives and strategies, but at this stage, the intent
was to clearly identify strategic priorities.
Under
governance, Mayor Roe noted two issues: what we do and how we do it. Mayor Roe
questioned if that was also part of decision-making or needed a subcategory.
Mr. Rapp advised
that during his observations of discussions in the weaknesses/threats subgroup,
he heard that involve politics and how things were discussed (e.g. backward
versus forward looking), and also considered that part of the engagement model,
as well as the City Council as a governing board at the table.
Councilmember
Laliberte opined that she found it to be two separate issues: effective/ineffective
decision-making by the City Council, and how the City Council engaged its
citizenry in its decision-making process. Councilmember Laliberte asked that
more discussion be held as the process continued.
Mr. Rapp
clarified that from his perspective "effective governance" involved how the
five Councilmembers did their business: among themselves, with staff, and for
and with the community.
Mr. Rapp
clarified that "civic engagement" and his suggested category of "engagement"
involved a variety of settings: how to deploy into the community as well as
what occurred in the City Council Chambers.
Councilmember
Laliberte felt strongly that this not be eliminated from the list.
Councilmember
Etten opined that "effective governance" should be a category, involving City
Council decision-making, determining priorities, and which areas in which the
City wanted to excel or be great, in defining its gold standard. Councilmember
Etten then suggested making subcategories of that challenge to include City
Council decision-making, determining priorities and areas of greatness.
Mr. Rapp cautioned
that there was a fine line between targeting too many challenges at a task or
solution level, even though they were all valid.
From staff's
perspective, Mr. Schwartz suggested that effective government should be a
separate item on the list of challenges as it affected the amount of time staff
invested in bringing things forward to the City Council and public.
Councilmember
Laliberte agreed that "governance" should remain on the list of challenges for
now, whether or not it fell off after further refinement tomorrow. Councilmember
Laliberte opined that "determining priorities/greatness" would eventually edge
out "governance" or they could be combined.
Mayor Roe
agreed, opining that it better matched the organization with what participants
wanted it to be.
Therefore, Mr.
Rapp reclassified the final five as follows:
·
Civic Engagement
·
Housing & Redevelopment
·
Public Safety/Implications
·
Aging Infrastructure
·
Determining Priorities/Greatness
·
Effective Governance
At the request of Finance Director Miller,
Mayor Roe and Councilmembers Laliberte and Willmus clarified that "aging
infrastructure" was intended to incorporate city-owned infrastructure and its
fleet.
6.
Public Comment
At 5:45 p.m., Mr. Rapp turned the meeting
over to Mayor Roe who opened it to hear public comment.
Public
Comment
Gary
Grefenberg, 91 Mid Oaks Lane
Mr. Grefenberg
clarified that he was speaking personally and based on his eight years observing
Roseville government and community engagement experiences.
Mr. Grefenberg
advised that he had asked for an opportunity for public comment at this
retreat; however, at that time he hadn't realized it was intended for
televising. Based on his past communication dialogue with Mayor Roe and City
Manager Trudgeon, Mr. Grefenberg stated that he had received both of their
assurances that there would be an opportunity for community engagement, and
residents would be welcome at the table, not just City Councilmembers and
Department Heads. Mr. Grefenberg opined that he was much more comfortable with
this retreat and its intent than he had initially been.
Mr. Grefenberg
advised that his only thing to add was to ask that when the final report is
given by Mr. Rapp, another opportunity for public comment be given, with
sufficient notice of that opportunity for community engagement.
Mr. Grefenberg
opined that it may take a minimum of a few weeks to digest things being
discussed and brought out by Mr. Rapp; and recognizing the numerous discussion
points needing community engagement. Mr. Grefenberg further opined that, when
looking at Roseville's past compared to community engagement today, remarkable
progress had been made, especially with other communication improvements,
including the City's website and future efforts to make it more interactive and
get citizen responses to the many issues being discussed at this retreat.
For the benefit
of all of those present and listening, Mr. Grefenberg expressed concern in his
perception of growing politization and polarization of Roseville, noting his
understanding that the DFL party was looking at an endorsement program for the
City Council. Mr. Grefenberg opined that disagreement didn't mean one side was
wrong, but suggested this may be something else the City Council wished to
address.
Mr. Grefenberg
distributed copies of the City of Edina's budget process and their five
performance standards and guidelines, of which one included communications/engagement.
Mr. Grefenberg noted their community's pride in the key performance indicators
and inclusion of those in budget goals, and suggested a similar approach would
be applicable to the City of Roseville in the future. Mr. Grefenberg noted
that communication drove engagement and suggested the City continue to
reinforce efforts already taken to improve community engagement.
Mr. Grefenberg
further suggested that, depending on the format of the final report, copies be
transmitted to the City's various advisory commissions for their review, as
well as allowing the community time to review the final report and make
comments about those findings. Mr. Grefenberg suggested including the final
report on the City's website as well as in the newsletter, in addition to an
open discussion at a future City Council meeting in the near future.
Sherry
Sanders
Ms. Sanders
expressed her favorable impressions with how everyone has come together to work
as a group today to improve her City, and expressed her respect for the time
and efforts taken by participants. Ms. Sanders further thanked the City for
allowing residents to observe the process.
With no one else
appearing to speak, Mayor Roe concluded public comment at approximately 5:54
p.m., thanking citizens for observing this process.
5.
Wrap Up Meeting and Preview Wednesday Items
In conclusion,
Mayor Roe wrapped up today's meeting and the intended outcome of this retreat,
clarifying that this was not Mr. Rapp's report, but the City of Roseville's
report, and wanted to make sure that was very clear to everyone.
As part two of
this retreat to be held tomorrow, Mayor Roe advised that the meeting would
further refine those items developed today and take them to the next steps.
Mayor Roe advised that his key take away involved developing measurable
outcomes and whether the City is currently or can achieve those goals.
7.
Adjourn
The retreat for today was adjourned at approximately
5:57 p.m.