Monday, January 11, 2010
The Lakewood City Council of 2010-11
Inspired by reading other City Council people around the country who blog, I have made a point of writing much shorter and readable blog pieces for you.
That ends today ;) Well, just for today.
I wanted to report out on the retreat the City Council took on Friday and Saturday at the Oakbrook Golf and Country Club conference room. I suppose a really artful blogger would do 10 separate pieces over time about the retreat, but since there was no other media and only one member of the public there, I feel a certain responsibility to report quickly.
EXPERIENCE: First, an overview. One thing I'd not thought about is the very wide range of experience we have. On one end, you have council members Doug Richardson and Claudia Thomas, members of the original Lakewood council. They have about 28 years experience on the council between them.
Then you have Don Anderson and me, with two years and six years respectively. That's 8 between the two of us, 20 years less than the combined experience of Doug and Claudia.
And then you have Mike Brandstetter, Mary Moss and Jason Whalen, who are new to the council.
In general, it's good to have a broad range of experiences on a council. There's a learning curve to elected office. There's a learning curve to public governance. There's a learning curve to Lakewood as an elected official conducting public policy here. It's ideal to have people who are experienced AND people with fresh eyes and new ideas. One thing you have to say about this council, we sure got some pretty broad ranges.
ATMOSPHERE: This was by far the most pleasant of the retreats I've been to in terms of the congeniality of the discussions. That's because we no longer have such abrasive people on the council. Now, you can argue abrasive people have every right to be on a council - in fact, you can even argue abrasive people should be on a council because they are very clear and noticeable when they ask tough questions - but I just note this in terms of the atmosphere.
We had a facilitator of the retreat, Michael Pendleton, so the mayor could participate without having to also run the meeting, and to add an outside perspective. Michael said something that I think is probably very true: "There's a lot of high hopes for this council."
THE YEAR IN REVIEW: If you really like Lakewood data, consider taking a look at the report the council got the from the city manager about 2009. The city will also be generating an 'annual report' soon, which I'll share or which you will find on the city website.
VISION AND OVERVIEW: After Jason, Mary and Mike feel more comfortable in what's a very unusual sort of job, the council may revisit such matters as vision, mission and goals. For now, there was general agreement that the vision and mission stay as is:
Vision: Lakewood is a beautiful community with a unique and proud heritage. We are a racially and culturally diverse city where people care about each other. We are working together with our regional and military partners to build an exciting and prosperous future for our citizens.
Mission: The City of Lakewood enhances the quality of life of our residents by providing essential services in a fiscally responsible manner, ensuring public safety, promoting economic development, and preserving our natural environment.
In terms of goals, a lot of them settle on doing what we are doing now right, as opposed to any wild new ventures. We want to make sure the sewers being added to Tillicum and Woodbrook bring benefits to the community, that the construction is done right, etc ... The subject of goals probably is worth a separate post.
PURSUING THE GOALS: We had a long discussion about how the city council evaluates the city manager as an employee. This may sound a bit obscure, but it's not. The City Council only has one employee, the city manager, that it hires and evaluates. In our system of municipal government, it's the city manager who hires the rest of the stuff and manages the people who run, say, the parks or police departments.
If you have been a manager, or even been evaluated by a manager, you know what sort of difference an annual review can make. It's an opportunity to make sure the goals that the employee is pursuing square with the goals of the manager and the organization.
What Lakewood has been using is a once-a-year evaluation on a confusing form that also doesn't fit the new model of pursuing specific goals and not just general categories of government. A subcommittee was formed to evaluate how best to hold the manager accountable for goals and support those goals. I'll be on the committee, along with Mary and Jason. This isn't glamorous stuff, but as I say, if you've ever got a badly done evaluation, or a well done evaluation, or any sort of evaluation, you understand what we are after and what's at stake.
WHO DOES WHAT: The council has individual members who serve as liaisons and informal advisors to our community groups. We decided in general to shake up a lot of the liaison roles.
Yours truly will retain a role with the Landmarks board, of which I was the original chair about 120 years ago, and have a new role I'm excited about, the transportation citizens advisory committee. There's a lot going on with roads, depending on where you are at, ranging from disintegration due to lack of maintenance to a bunch of new construction.
But more seriously, the transportation committee is the only committee that's been asking the council to raise taxes to pay for more maintenance. I am eager to get my arms around the issues here.
I was also on the original parks advisory committee, but fresh eyes are good, so Deputy Mayor Don Anderson will serve as their liaison.
I was the original advisor to the relatively new arts commission, but again, with an idea that fresh eyes are good, their new liaison will be Jason Whalen.
There are other advisory groups, but maybe that's enough of a list for now. I just wanted to point out that one thing we don't want to do is get caught in a routine, but to keep fresh eyes looking at the constant stream of opportunities and challenges.
THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM: We discussed something that colors all conversations in Lakewood these days, the horrible massacre of four police officers on Nov. 29. We talked how as government leaders in the community, we all felt pressed to respond in different ways as the tragedy unfolded. The way Mike Brandstetter put it was, "I couldn't be as visibly affected as I felt."
It was an emotional discussion at times, and a couple folks teared up or had to take a break, and I'll just leave it at that.
We discussed what you might expect: concern about the impact on employees, on their families, on the city.
We also discussed a general feeling that Lakewood has changed and that the world saw something very grand in our response. And by 'our,' I mean 'your,' as one of the residents who made a tapestry of grief and resolve.
We talked about what comes next. When you look at how the community came together, "This is an open door to changing the climate of the city," said Councilwoman Claudia Thomas.
We also talked about how to eventually construct a memorial that will somehow do justice to what happened. Police Chief Bret Farrar said, as most folks agreed, that it's early to ask the families of the officers about this as well, as other city employees still very much grieving.
His current suggestion is that we broach this subject this spring at a time when the subject of memorials would come up anyway, either in association with ceremonies for fallen officers at the national level or the Washington State Law Enforcement Memorial. So the city knows we are called to do something in memorial, but also know we want some more healing time to pass.
BITS AND PIECES:
- Everyone's eager to see a new master plan that Camp Murray will be submitting. Among other things, it apparently would change the entryway to the state installation. If you've seen traffic around there, that's good news.
- A workshop with translation is planned for the Korean-American community along South Tacoma Way to discuss the economy there. This is part of outreach to that community.
- There's a lot of work behind the scenes to clean up addresses for the 2010 US Census and to prepare to help make for an accurate count this year. The working theory is that the census undercounted Lakewood by about 2,500 people in 2000. If that's correct, it was an error of roughly 4 or 5 percent. An undercount costs the city in terms of its share of federal grant monies, other allocations from other governments, etc... in that we thus got that much percent less in funding.
- There was discussion of the issue of minicasino regulation. You may recall there was a citizen referendum on this matter awhile back. The short version is that the city's official position remains that we'd prefer to have authority from the state to freeze the casinos to existing operations, and at existing locations. That's what we seek from the Legislature.
Mike Brandstetter said he'd prefer to see minicasinos gone at some point, and expect this will come up during the development of a comprehensive plan for the community within the next couple years (the comprehensive plan will be another blog topic, soon) Don Anderson and I agreed we'd like to see the city find a way to phase out reliance on minicasino revenues for essential services. I can't speak for Don, but my thinking is that the citizens may someday vote to eliminate minicasinos, and if that happened it should not affect essential services.
- Lakewood collects less per capita in property tax than other communities owing to the relatively low values of some of the land around the highway and other factors. This is one reason we are pushing economic development, to add dollars for police, parks, etc.. without raising taxes. The police chief and others reminded us that our newest ventures, including a staff person to work with victims of domestic violence, are totally dependent on grant funding. If we want to keep these jobs going after a few years on our local budget, we need to see the economy grow to do it.
- The council discussed strategies to deal with the Point Defiance Bypass, a plan to route dramatically more rail traffic through Lakewood streets.
- We're all very excited about a program that will put police officers, code enforcement staff, community services officer and an attorney on teams to work on individual neighborhood concerns. I'll be blogging more about these neighborhood-centric community teams, but just wanted to say we all expect these will help drive government and community crime prevention efforts deep into the heart of Lakewood's different areas.
THE END: Well .... that was rather long-winded, and it still feels like I did not do the retreat justice. Hopefully I gave you one individual council member's snapshots of some of what he saw, and some sense of the issues.
Forward this post
That ends today ;) Well, just for today.
I wanted to report out on the retreat the City Council took on Friday and Saturday at the Oakbrook Golf and Country Club conference room. I suppose a really artful blogger would do 10 separate pieces over time about the retreat, but since there was no other media and only one member of the public there, I feel a certain responsibility to report quickly.
EXPERIENCE: First, an overview. One thing I'd not thought about is the very wide range of experience we have. On one end, you have council members Doug Richardson and Claudia Thomas, members of the original Lakewood council. They have about 28 years experience on the council between them.
Then you have Don Anderson and me, with two years and six years respectively. That's 8 between the two of us, 20 years less than the combined experience of Doug and Claudia.
And then you have Mike Brandstetter, Mary Moss and Jason Whalen, who are new to the council.
In general, it's good to have a broad range of experiences on a council. There's a learning curve to elected office. There's a learning curve to public governance. There's a learning curve to Lakewood as an elected official conducting public policy here. It's ideal to have people who are experienced AND people with fresh eyes and new ideas. One thing you have to say about this council, we sure got some pretty broad ranges.
ATMOSPHERE: This was by far the most pleasant of the retreats I've been to in terms of the congeniality of the discussions. That's because we no longer have such abrasive people on the council. Now, you can argue abrasive people have every right to be on a council - in fact, you can even argue abrasive people should be on a council because they are very clear and noticeable when they ask tough questions - but I just note this in terms of the atmosphere.
We had a facilitator of the retreat, Michael Pendleton, so the mayor could participate without having to also run the meeting, and to add an outside perspective. Michael said something that I think is probably very true: "There's a lot of high hopes for this council."
THE YEAR IN REVIEW: If you really like Lakewood data, consider taking a look at the report the council got the from the city manager about 2009. The city will also be generating an 'annual report' soon, which I'll share or which you will find on the city website.
VISION AND OVERVIEW: After Jason, Mary and Mike feel more comfortable in what's a very unusual sort of job, the council may revisit such matters as vision, mission and goals. For now, there was general agreement that the vision and mission stay as is:
Vision: Lakewood is a beautiful community with a unique and proud heritage. We are a racially and culturally diverse city where people care about each other. We are working together with our regional and military partners to build an exciting and prosperous future for our citizens.
Mission: The City of Lakewood enhances the quality of life of our residents by providing essential services in a fiscally responsible manner, ensuring public safety, promoting economic development, and preserving our natural environment.
In terms of goals, a lot of them settle on doing what we are doing now right, as opposed to any wild new ventures. We want to make sure the sewers being added to Tillicum and Woodbrook bring benefits to the community, that the construction is done right, etc ... The subject of goals probably is worth a separate post.
PURSUING THE GOALS: We had a long discussion about how the city council evaluates the city manager as an employee. This may sound a bit obscure, but it's not. The City Council only has one employee, the city manager, that it hires and evaluates. In our system of municipal government, it's the city manager who hires the rest of the stuff and manages the people who run, say, the parks or police departments.
If you have been a manager, or even been evaluated by a manager, you know what sort of difference an annual review can make. It's an opportunity to make sure the goals that the employee is pursuing square with the goals of the manager and the organization.
What Lakewood has been using is a once-a-year evaluation on a confusing form that also doesn't fit the new model of pursuing specific goals and not just general categories of government. A subcommittee was formed to evaluate how best to hold the manager accountable for goals and support those goals. I'll be on the committee, along with Mary and Jason. This isn't glamorous stuff, but as I say, if you've ever got a badly done evaluation, or a well done evaluation, or any sort of evaluation, you understand what we are after and what's at stake.
WHO DOES WHAT: The council has individual members who serve as liaisons and informal advisors to our community groups. We decided in general to shake up a lot of the liaison roles.
Yours truly will retain a role with the Landmarks board, of which I was the original chair about 120 years ago, and have a new role I'm excited about, the transportation citizens advisory committee. There's a lot going on with roads, depending on where you are at, ranging from disintegration due to lack of maintenance to a bunch of new construction.
But more seriously, the transportation committee is the only committee that's been asking the council to raise taxes to pay for more maintenance. I am eager to get my arms around the issues here.
I was also on the original parks advisory committee, but fresh eyes are good, so Deputy Mayor Don Anderson will serve as their liaison.
I was the original advisor to the relatively new arts commission, but again, with an idea that fresh eyes are good, their new liaison will be Jason Whalen.
There are other advisory groups, but maybe that's enough of a list for now. I just wanted to point out that one thing we don't want to do is get caught in a routine, but to keep fresh eyes looking at the constant stream of opportunities and challenges.
THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM: We discussed something that colors all conversations in Lakewood these days, the horrible massacre of four police officers on Nov. 29. We talked how as government leaders in the community, we all felt pressed to respond in different ways as the tragedy unfolded. The way Mike Brandstetter put it was, "I couldn't be as visibly affected as I felt."
It was an emotional discussion at times, and a couple folks teared up or had to take a break, and I'll just leave it at that.
We discussed what you might expect: concern about the impact on employees, on their families, on the city.
We also discussed a general feeling that Lakewood has changed and that the world saw something very grand in our response. And by 'our,' I mean 'your,' as one of the residents who made a tapestry of grief and resolve.
We talked about what comes next. When you look at how the community came together, "This is an open door to changing the climate of the city," said Councilwoman Claudia Thomas.
We also talked about how to eventually construct a memorial that will somehow do justice to what happened. Police Chief Bret Farrar said, as most folks agreed, that it's early to ask the families of the officers about this as well, as other city employees still very much grieving.
His current suggestion is that we broach this subject this spring at a time when the subject of memorials would come up anyway, either in association with ceremonies for fallen officers at the national level or the Washington State Law Enforcement Memorial. So the city knows we are called to do something in memorial, but also know we want some more healing time to pass.
BITS AND PIECES:
- Everyone's eager to see a new master plan that Camp Murray will be submitting. Among other things, it apparently would change the entryway to the state installation. If you've seen traffic around there, that's good news.
- A workshop with translation is planned for the Korean-American community along South Tacoma Way to discuss the economy there. This is part of outreach to that community.
- There's a lot of work behind the scenes to clean up addresses for the 2010 US Census and to prepare to help make for an accurate count this year. The working theory is that the census undercounted Lakewood by about 2,500 people in 2000. If that's correct, it was an error of roughly 4 or 5 percent. An undercount costs the city in terms of its share of federal grant monies, other allocations from other governments, etc... in that we thus got that much percent less in funding.
- There was discussion of the issue of minicasino regulation. You may recall there was a citizen referendum on this matter awhile back. The short version is that the city's official position remains that we'd prefer to have authority from the state to freeze the casinos to existing operations, and at existing locations. That's what we seek from the Legislature.
Mike Brandstetter said he'd prefer to see minicasinos gone at some point, and expect this will come up during the development of a comprehensive plan for the community within the next couple years (the comprehensive plan will be another blog topic, soon) Don Anderson and I agreed we'd like to see the city find a way to phase out reliance on minicasino revenues for essential services. I can't speak for Don, but my thinking is that the citizens may someday vote to eliminate minicasinos, and if that happened it should not affect essential services.
- Lakewood collects less per capita in property tax than other communities owing to the relatively low values of some of the land around the highway and other factors. This is one reason we are pushing economic development, to add dollars for police, parks, etc.. without raising taxes. The police chief and others reminded us that our newest ventures, including a staff person to work with victims of domestic violence, are totally dependent on grant funding. If we want to keep these jobs going after a few years on our local budget, we need to see the economy grow to do it.
- The council discussed strategies to deal with the Point Defiance Bypass, a plan to route dramatically more rail traffic through Lakewood streets.
- We're all very excited about a program that will put police officers, code enforcement staff, community services officer and an attorney on teams to work on individual neighborhood concerns. I'll be blogging more about these neighborhood-centric community teams, but just wanted to say we all expect these will help drive government and community crime prevention efforts deep into the heart of Lakewood's different areas.
THE END: Well .... that was rather long-winded, and it still feels like I did not do the retreat justice. Hopefully I gave you one individual council member's snapshots of some of what he saw, and some sense of the issues.
Comments:
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Abrasiveness has value. While its negative connotation can refer to aggressive insensitivity, if you are cleaning a stove you could use some Comet.
Featured on the MRSC website the past week there is a column by Eric Svaren that "offers guidance on how organizations can increase good cognitive conflict and reduce bad emotional conflict."
His point is that conflict is a good thing. Indeed, "conflict is a fact of life throughout society. Conflict that hones the edge of an organization and keeps it mindful of and true to its purposes is healthy. An organization with no conflict at all must have either no purpose at all or, at best, a very frivolous purpose." (Antagonists in The Church, p.12)
"Indecisiveness and unanimous votes often result from the desire to avoid confrontation. Boards sometimes deliberate on inconsequential issues to avoid dealing with a difficult, unspoken issue. What appears as a preoccupation with trivia may be fear of confronting the larger issues in a group setting. Board members deprived of trivia might not know how to spend their time." (Boards that Govern, p.137)
"Inexperienced CEO's think they want loyalty. But don't kid yourself. When it comes to making critical decisions, loyalty can be a big handicap. What you need is somebody who can stand up to your crazy ideas. Understand we're not talking about someone who will undermine your basic principles. We're talking tactics - how you move ahead, how you use resources to meet your goals. You want somebody who can help you think things through. Often that means somebody who can tell you you're wrong." (INC magazine, July 1991, p.44).
Have all the nay-sayers and truth-tellers left the council?
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Featured on the MRSC website the past week there is a column by Eric Svaren that "offers guidance on how organizations can increase good cognitive conflict and reduce bad emotional conflict."
His point is that conflict is a good thing. Indeed, "conflict is a fact of life throughout society. Conflict that hones the edge of an organization and keeps it mindful of and true to its purposes is healthy. An organization with no conflict at all must have either no purpose at all or, at best, a very frivolous purpose." (Antagonists in The Church, p.12)
"Indecisiveness and unanimous votes often result from the desire to avoid confrontation. Boards sometimes deliberate on inconsequential issues to avoid dealing with a difficult, unspoken issue. What appears as a preoccupation with trivia may be fear of confronting the larger issues in a group setting. Board members deprived of trivia might not know how to spend their time." (Boards that Govern, p.137)
"Inexperienced CEO's think they want loyalty. But don't kid yourself. When it comes to making critical decisions, loyalty can be a big handicap. What you need is somebody who can stand up to your crazy ideas. Understand we're not talking about someone who will undermine your basic principles. We're talking tactics - how you move ahead, how you use resources to meet your goals. You want somebody who can help you think things through. Often that means somebody who can tell you you're wrong." (INC magazine, July 1991, p.44).
Have all the nay-sayers and truth-tellers left the council?
<< Home
