HomeMy WebLinkAbout2001 12-11 SpecialMeridian City Council Special Meeting December 11, 2001
The special meeting of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 5:45 P.M. on Tuesday, December 11, 2001, by Keith Bird.
Members Present: Ron Anderson, Tammy de Weerd, Keith Bird
Members Absent: Mayor Robert Corrie, Cherie McCandless
Others Present: John Luthy, Ken Bowers, John Haener, Stacy Kilchenmann, Bill Nichols, Mike Worley, Will Berg.
Issue: Presentation by Mr. John Luthy for explanation of the Strategic
Planning process for the City of Meridian
Bird: I’ll call the special workshop meeting to order at 5:45 p.m. Mr. John Luthy is going to discuss the procedures and process for strategic planning goals and objectives for the
City of Meridian. John, I’ll turn it over to you.
Luthy: Thank you very much Mr. Chairman. Ladies and gentlemen, do I need to speak into the microphone the whole time or can I wonder? How does that work?
Bird: We would like to pick you up as much as we can, but we can turn it up like this.
Luthy: I want to be able to work with these flipcharts, so I’ll just use my long arms here. In the time we have, I want to go over several things, I want to ask you all, Do you all
have with you the memorandum that I sent out that describes what it is we are going to try to get accomplished? Let me in the time we have just describe what we are going to accomplish
tonight. First I’ll give you a brief status on where we are, what’s going on with the departments, and then talk about a time line and sequence of getting the planning brought to the
goal line. And then talk about the process and how we’ve gone through it and what we’re coming out with and where it starts really ducktailing into Council and Mayor interaction because
this is coming up really beginning tonight. I think it’s very, very important to start describing that. Very quickly, in terms of brief status. I had said in my memo that all departments
should have their plans pretty much drafted by the 15th, and I think we’re going to be pretty much on schedule with that. What I had told them is lets get all the holes filled and there’s
about seven or eight sections of the plan, but then we can polish after that as we get into the bid in late December and on into January. I think they are comfortable with that. So
I think we are doing very well. They have just been a delight to work with. I really have to applaud all for being on board – everybody’s in there, and is very much engaged and working
very hard. So I think we are going to hit those timelines, I think the last two weeks we’ll be able to polish like I said, in that time we get back together again, with the Council for
our work session. Which will
probably be a true, roll up our sleeves work session. In early January, we should have most of the drafts ready to utilize. The time line is, which I’ve just mentioned partially, is
to try to have most of the drafts in from the departments by the middle of January to be polished toward the end of January, at the end of that first week. And then we’ll start working
with the Mayor and Council to do a what I call a roll up plan. In other words the City needs an overall plan of the City’s goals, of the City’s vision, of the City’s operating values,
and what I think the critical part of the plan for cities or counties is to have a part of the plan that’s up front and basically described the major challenges facing the community.
Now what I’ve asked the departments to do, and they’ve gone through some processes, all of them gone through this process of identifying the major issues and challenges internally as
well as externally in the community. So we’ll have that to work from and you might have seen some things that they haven’t seen although I think that they’ve hit pretty much everything
that I can imagine but we’ll have that to work from. The question then becomes what does this Council want to, in essence, put in the front of that book to say these are the major
challenges facing this community? And then generally within that write up, there’s a one and a half or two page write up on each one of those. I’ve asked the departments to begin thinking
about what they want to offer for at least perspective areas, and then we’ll begin our work session to discuss which ones you want to put in that section. So they will actually take
their issues and challenges, the ones they think are most critical for the community and then we’ll pass those on up to you all. Then we’ll have to discuss those. Within each one of
those write ups, which again are about a page a half or two pages per, and I’m guessing it could be as many as ten or fifteen of them, we’ll have the major strategies that you are looking
at, your major goals that you might look at. But certainly a very clear explanation of what that problem or challenge is, so that when we look at it, we know what the community is facing.
I think that’s if anything the showcase part of the plan, because when a reader reads this, they need to look at the city’s goals, and certainly need to look at the major challenge
areas with some information that’s behind it and the details. That’s where the work that the work that I think this Council will be doing as we get into January, but a lot of the gathering
of date together with information that is coming from the departments, so you’ll have a lot of information to work with. You won’t have to start out cold. I think we should start
working on that in early January, I would hope that by the third week of January, and i would hope that we could have two or three sessions on that, and we could pretty much have the
whole thing framed. I’ll come back to processing. What I’ve been doing is -- I’ll hold this up -- I had brought this with me when I met with you last, a big binder from another county.
Well, this is yours, and what I’ve been doing is running the developments of the departments, each department has a tab. Its developing nicely. Most of the departments are coming
along well. What we’ll end up with is a book like this. There are two fundamental sections of this book. The back part of this book is all the independent department plans. And one
of the recommendations I would make to Council is to recognize that -- I would always recommend that these become sovereign. In other words, this is their plan, this
is a professional team that says these are the goals that we see, these are the objectives. But the whole front part of this plan is really your part. It’s the goals that you see,
many of which will be reflected in the back, as you might pull forward, the major goals and challenges, an overview of your values and your visions and the mission of the City. So
that there will basically be a front part and a back part, and all the details back here, if anybody wants to read details, its right here. The public normally wants to see a synopsis,
that’s what the front part of the plan is, a synopsis. Most people want to see your major challenge areas, and your major strategies. That’s how its taking place. Most of these back
sections will finished with the next two or three weeks, pretty much down to refined and complete drafts. Then we can polish those in January. That back section will be done, and then
we’ll be ready to do the front part. What I’d like to do and I’ll probably forget if I don’t say it, I would like to meet with each one of you independently at your place of business
or wherever you can carve out some time. I would like to sit down with you and visit with each of you. Bill, I would like to meet with you as well. Ron, I know you are leaving the Council
but I would like to come over to Nampa and sit down and talk with you, if that’s permissible. But all the Council members, I’d like to spend time with you sit down and answer questions
-- go over the process, but also to share with you some of these keys areas and getting you calibrated for the work session. I think that would be a lot easier to do that independently
than come in cold and start working. If that’s permissible, I’ll work with the city clerk to figure out how to contact you and then I’ll begin that process hopefully next week. If that’s
permissible I will begin doing that. Trying to think if there is anything I want to go over…… I think the key thing that I want to talk with you tonight about if we could, if there
are any other specific areas that you would identify tonight, prior to beginning to move into our early January session, the three questions that I listed on this memorandum to you.
The first two questions are really critical. What do you feel are the most critical internal issues or challenges that the city government faces? In other words what keeps you from
doing your highest and your best? What inhibits you from doing your highest and your best? Some of those things could be emotional, like lack of communication, lack of feeling of connectivity,
right down to my truck has a 175 thousand miles on it and doesn’t run half the time. Some are going to be tangible things that we can maybe put a dollar sign on. Some are going to
be more intangible. They’ve done a very good job of identifying the things that internally keep them from doing the best work. But from your standpoint, you have a different perspective
and it’s a very critical perspective, it’s important for the Council members to rub your chins and say what do we from our perspective see within the departments that might keep them,
within city government as an entity, keep us from doing our best work. Is it an image problem? Community trust? What might it be? While they are very diligently looking at their
own department, I said don’t be afraid to hold up a mirror, be tough on yourself, and hold the mirror and say where do we have barnacles on us? Departments have done a darn good job,
a pretty honest job….. very interesting conversations internally, saying here’s where we think we don’t do as well as we probably should. From your standpoint, the question is a critical
question. Where from your viewpoint do you feel the city government stubs its toe? Where do you feel like it might have some barnacles on it that we can clean up and help us sail
a little smoother and straighter. So that’s the questions. Now what I’d like to do rather than try to answer those questions tonight is at least have the opportunity to raise those
questions, and see if you have any need for clarification. Do you see what we’re after within that context? Does that make sense to everybody?
As a quick aside, one of the diagrams that I give when I did the training, I want everyone to recognize that strategic planning, and I hope you’ll remember this for this rest of your
tenor and also your careers, that planning has to be in two dimensions, it has to be external and it has to be external. I find that in studies that I do around the united states,
like I was telling Councilman nary that I do work as far as Manchester, New Hampshire, its always the same thing. Most planning deals with the tangible parts of this, in other words,
the community, the roads, the bridges and how many police cars we have the way crime is and it deals with the tangibles in the interim. Our infrastructure, how many trucks do we have,
how many trucks do we have, whether or not we have good space and enough people and dollars. Its all tangible stuff. What we forget about in the tangible things out here, that always
comes out to bite us, the intangible things, internal things. Strategically in planning it’s a great frustrating that most folks focus on the external and only the external tangible
because that’s easy enough to put dollars against and easy enough to address. And we kind of stay straight and narrow. But when we get into talking about the external intangibles,
it gets a little less clear, and that has to do with the community trust. And how well we are connected to the community and how people view us as government. Do they feel like we
are accessible? And how do we know unless we ask? We need to find these things out. So I’ve asked the departments to do a real assessment of how well they feel like we’re doing in
terms of external intangibles. The same thing is true with internal. We talk about our facilities, our vehicles, how many firetrucks do we have, how many stations we have , how police
officers we have and things like that. But its much more difficult to talk about the intangibles that keep us from doing our highest, our best work. Do we collaborate now? Do we share
information? Do we share expertise? Do we actively asked for help? Do we actively offer help? These are questions that I’m sure you’ve heard many times in leadership. But if we don’t
look at this strategically then it is just going to continue to drift. And some people tease and say its touchy feely stuff. Well maybe so, but across the board, 70 percent of all
internal and external problems end up being here, not here. So I think its important for a Council, whenever I meet with Council, or commissions, I always say part of your work as
I perceive it, is to make sure that we work in all of these dimensions and that when we do plan, we raise questions that take all these into consideration. Otherwise we miss part of
the equation. So what I’ve asked the departments, and I think they are doing a very good job in this, with regards to the internal intangibles, one of the tings that has come up is
the question, are the departments going to have the opportunity to meet with Council? Together. So I
will raise that question to you tonight. And I’m not sure that’s a rhetorical question or if it is an actual practical one. Is there an opportunity to have the department directors
meet with the Council in a real working session, maybe offsite as many do, and if so, is that possible sometime in late January? And maybe we leave that as a rhetorical question at
this point, but I’d like to pose it to you and have you think about it. I think it is very, very important. I feel like there is a need for that and I think it would be very valuable
for the departments as well as for the Council.
De Weerd: I think so. I don’t see how we could do it without meeting in person.
Bird: I agree -- it could be just an open session -- we’ve had them before, (indiscernible discussion amongst Council members)
Anderson: Actually I do care, I think its important that that whatever the department heads think, or whatever their goals and objectives are, I think its very important that the
Council know those and that we provide the opportunity to voice their concerns and their goals.
Luthy: Well I appreciate that, I think that is the prevailing feeling, is the need to come together. I think there is an understanding that, as I was talking to councilman Bird before
we began, that there's an understanding that there's finite resources. Within those finite resources, there’s limited resources. But I think its important for us all to recognize that
the issues are the issues, and they are only going to change if we address them. And it is important that we have informed decisions. And so one of my recommendations to you is to allow
the departments to come to you with some good solid information, and I think my recommendation always is that I found very practical people within the department, I don’t think they
are given to adornment or hyperbole – I think they are basically saying, these are the facts as we’ve gathered them, as we see them. Now once those come to your lap, my encouragement
is the best we can do is give those to the Council members in a professional manner and say these are the facts. And then make recommendations as we seen them as to how we address
those facts. Then it is your unenviable task to sort out the priorities, and figure out where do we put those dollars and where do we get the biggest bang for the buck. But I think
there's a clear understanding that that’s the task you have to grapple with every week, if not every day, but in the meantime I think the professional responsibility within the departments
is to give you the very best information to make those decisions and that is what this process on an annualized basis will give you. Working with Stacy in finance, this will be tied
directly to the budget, and directly to the departmental performance reviews, that you’ll be able to on an annualized basis be able to say , we said we’re going to do this, how did we
do? Did we raise the bar, did we jump over it, and if not, what happened? There is always a various report. And that will be an annual process that I am going to really recommend,
and as you said earlier, it has to be a
continuous process. It usually takes three years for it to become cultural. To say this is how we do it here. The first year is always bumpy. Kind crazy pulling it all together.
Second year it gets more organized, third year – its part of your culture. I hope you’ll stay with it. When we get into the external world, I want to encourage you as you begin thinking,
as I begin sending you homework. I want to ask you to think about things in this way. The departments have read this over and over again. The question is, when you look at this community,
what is too high, that you want to reduce? Any context, crime, traffic accidents, congestion. The clearest way when I teach planning, I say, and I teach it to organizations like this,
I don’t teach it to schools, what is too high that we want to reduce, and what is just too low here that we want to increase? Training, level of confidence in certain areas, participation.
Those are the kind of things. If we think that we have too low participation in certain recreational programs, that we do have available that can bring us revenue, then we need to
increase that. Therefore the goal becomes very simple. To increase in whatever that subject matter is. Goals and objective begin with either need to increase or decrease. That makes
it so simple and so concise, in terms of measurability, what we’re finding and what I’ve been dong for a long time, is that most planning ends up with just listed activities. But what
I want Council to understand is that your focus here and into the future needs to be just on what is too high that we do not want to be high and we need to reduce it. And what is just
too low here? Would it be revenue or participation? Then the question becomes we want to increase, by how much? There’s your measurability. The process that we’ve undertaken is a very
concise and very simplistic process that related directly back into performance based budget. Many of the plans I look at, I get a lot of plans, over a hundred a year from around the
country, having aggregate lists of To Do’s, and they call them goals or objectives, but they are really not. They know if they did them or not, but they don’t now what the measurability
is other than did you get it done or not. So this process will allow you to measure and allow you to actually calibrate and calculate how much you got accomplished on a quarter by
quarter or month by month basis. My question to you as we look toward our next planning session, what is too high that you would to see reduced and what is too low that you would like
to see increase. If we can answer those questions then we have the makings of our goals. The makings of our objectives. Then we can measure them and now we have the framework built
for continuous improvements within the community. It is as simple as that. That’s what the department has been working on now for 8 weeks and again I think doing an extremely good
job. That’s a major question. Within this, I would ask the question again, what do you believe are the major challenges this community faces? That is going to be a major question
that we are going to have to really put our arms around as we get into January. The departments are already answer that from their context, each department’s perspective based on what
their mission is, why they’re there in the first place. But the Council has to have purview over the entire community. So your purview is going to be very important to look at it from
your view point, what kind of challenges is this community faces. Growth -- what’s the subtext? It has to be congestion. Demand for services. Those are the times that crime is
increasing. Comment has been made, out at water this afternoon, been made before in law enforcement., we can’t just say we’re going to reduce crime. As the city grows, crime is probably
going to grow too, but we can reduce the rate of increase. Keep the lid on a little tighter. Same thing is true in some of the water department conversations this afternoon. We can’t
just reduce the demand, but at least we can reduce the number of problems associated with it by doing what? That becomes your ‘how’. Those are your actions you are going to take. So
what we’re doing through his process is, and I think that the departments are really understanding the strategic planning process, and they are starting to drill down pastiest activities
to actual measurement and actually performance of strategies that will get you to the goal you want. And of course again those who said, where you said, you have to be able to take that
information and apply it to the broader context for the community. So we’re getting close to being there, but I think what we’re going to have to do at first is get where we can be in
early January, take what we’ve done here, begin that process of development.
De Weerd: So you will meet with us first, and then we’ll get together as a group and start developing an overall picture before we see the departments issues?
Luthy: I’d rather do that.
De Weerd: I’d rather do that.
Luthy: Because it makes sense, and I’ve never seen this different in twenty-some years of doing this, that my sense is that they are going to overlay very nicely. That is best thing
to do, you all do it and then --
De Weerd: I know our departments have always been interested in what we are envisioning, and how theirs fit into it, so I would want us to see those before we actually begin our process.
I guess my second part to that question is, where does the public come into it? We have our vision, our bosses are our citizens, their perceptions are very real and when does that
come into this process?
Luthy: It can come in at a lot of different places. Everybody does it differently. When we did Ada County’s, the way we did it, the first question which is somewhat rhetorical, but
philosophical as well, do we believe that this Council represents the community? And if we say, yes we would think it does. And if that is really the concept of an elected Council,
then, yes you represent the community. There is a sense that says we probably are pretty much on target with what you believe and with what the departments come up with and what they
believe, and we overlayed that. What Ada County did is go to that process, finish the basic plan and then we had a big community meeting and it was at the Owyhee Plaza, it was a whole
day, and what we ended up doing, and this is just one option, and in fact we did it in El Paso county which is Colorado Springs, we ended up having each department having their own table
in a big area. It almost looked like a political convention. Each department has their own sign on the
table. All people interest in law enforcement would go through all their issues and all their challenges and have input there. Same thing with Fire. Every department would have their
own table. It was wonderfully successful. People could come and go all day and learn the issues and talk to the actual people. They could talk to Vaughn Killeen about his thing, talk
to different department heads. We did the same thing in El Paso. Now they do it every year and it’s a big community deal. They get input and further refine with that input, the next
year’s planning process. They don’t to fix it at that time -- we have to do one first, and use that as a calibration point. The next year they factored that in and also created a citizens
advisory and I think you already have some of those operating, they had a citizens advisory group who came in and looked at everything, internal issues as well as operational issues.
Some communities don’t like the community, the public to be involved in internal operation issues because they don’t know about internal operations but they like them very much to be
involved in externals, particularly issue identification and strategies, the what’s versus the how's. We can put the what's up on the wall, but then you’ve got to say how are we going
to fix that? And a lot of times its good to have them involved. I would leave that up to you. The community in Ada County was a fairly selective group. There was over 300 people there.
It was a big deal. It wasn’t exactly an all come, it was in the paper but they sent out selected invitations to a very wide group of people and it was very well attended. People came.
But they came with something to work on. And that was the difference in just coming. You betcha, the citizens can come to a meeting, we can all sit back and eat some pastries and talk
-- they came with something to hold in their hand and look at. That might be something you want to do because that allows you then to work on the 2003 planning process and just dial
that right in and keep right on moving. It would be good, it works great, works very well. I think we should talk about that when we get into January or February – the processes that
you think would work in this community. Other questions?
Anderson: Not a question I guess but a comment along that lines because I’ve been involved now with a couple of these strategic planning processes where they’ve tried the town hall
meeting method, then you just talk about it. I’m not as convinced that that’s the most effected method. In fact we even tried it here within some of our own departments, and I know
the Fire Department in particular tried to do strategic planning, and you have five or six people show up to the meeting. and even in Ada County having 300 people, to me that is not
representative of the 200, 000 or 300,000 that live in Ada County. Those are the same people who show up to all the community events and those types of things. There are other methods,
and that’s what we had to eventually do in the fire dept was resort to other methods to actually get the citizen input. If that means hanging out in front of Fred Meyer or Walmart or
Albertsons and doing customer surveys or going door to door and knocking and asking what people want because I don’t think town hall meetings are as effective as they used to be in the
old days. You get the same people who come out to those kind of things. And you’re still not reaching the bulk of the constituents that you’re really serving out
there. I think you have to look at more creative methods to be able to get that input nowadays.
Luthy: That’s absolutely true. One of the reasons that Ada County, and with that same comments made by maybe Roger Simmons, virtually the same comment, that if you just have a ‘you
all come’ meeting, open forum meeting, you’ll have the same people. So the meeting they had, they went through thousands and thousands of people and ended up doing special invitation
because they wanted specific input. But they tried to get people who represented other people. Like people who headed associations or neighborhood associations or represented other groupings
and that worked very well. But you’re right. If we just want broad community input, there are a lot of different ways to get it, and none of them are easy. Or if they are easy they
might not get you what you want. Again after doing this for so many years and in so many different venues, what I found is that very rarely does a Council or a commission, people who
represent the public, miss the mark by much. Very rarely, don’t know if I’ve ever seen that to be honest with you. But there is usually a few things – it is like doing a bell curve
and a few things over here and a few things over here that we have to go back and say Oh gee, we forgot about this -- but that’s why, however you would do it, you need to pick that
up, if we do it in the spring, do it in the summer, whatever is a good time here. Those are the kind of things we need to talk about. What do you feel would work best in Meridian?
I have a feel for it but you would have a better feel I think. I think that if we could keep this timeline, we’ll end up by the end of January having things pulled together and still
have time to refine if we need to and then we’re getting close to budget time again. The next phase really is to begin tying this into the budget process. I’ve told the departments,
I’ve been very open and honest, that I am going to tell the Council that if somebody comes to the Council with a budget request that is above the basic operations, it is something new
and different, it needs to be tied to an issue. If it is not tied to an issue, it is not articulated in an issue or a goal, we have to close that loop. It has to be an issue in these
plans. I think there is a real strong understanding that this will lace everything together in your process, which will be very good.
Nary: I appreciate it John, you identifying right at the start that the tangible and intangible, because at least in my experience, what I have found is that its exactly like you said.
The intangible, people tend to not realize, is really what's driving the problem. They focus on the tangible, if you get me a new computer, a new truck, new equipment then my job will
be easier and everything will be fine -- when really it is that the person they have to sit next to they can’t get along with and communicate with and that makes it even harder. I
think most of the time what happens is people tend to focus on, or forget to focus on those things because they are only looking at can the person adequately do the job, meet the minimum
standards? Can they turn on a computer, answer the phone, whatever their job requires them to do? And they tend to forget can they get along, can they work together? Can they communicate?
And those are things that really get
people wound around the axle pretty quick. So I appreciate you identifying that up front. As we go through these particular points, we really need to focus on those things.
Luthy: I appreciate that very much. The whole EQ thing is very real. That is why I say seven percent of the things that keep us from doing our best are from that area. So we’ll
be addressing those things.
Bird: Any other questions? John thank, you very much, we appreciate this. We appreciate what you are doing. I’m sure its going to make us a better city and much better councilmen and
mayor.
Luthy: I appreciate that Mr. Chairman.
Bird: Council with your permission I think we’ll adjourn until 6:30, which is our normal starting time for our planning session. You can go eat.
Anderson: So moved.
De Weerd: Second.
Bird: All in favor? Ayes.
Special Workshop adjourned at 6:22 p.m.
(TAPE ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS)
APPROVED:
/ /
ROBERT D. CORRIE, MAYOR DATE APPROVED
ATTESTED:
WILLIAM G. BERG, JR., CITY CLERK