[0:01] Well, why don't we get started? Um, and I'll just assume that they have video going and we're good. Yep. Um, so with that, I, but us do take a moment to think or, or you can graduate. Also, members, true. And you did the half marathon. So I'm doing a half marathon, a marathon, a marathon, two weeks. This was a 10 mile part of my warm up, but it was only 10 miles. Okay. One downtown or the other?

[0:30] Yeah, fantastic. Congratulations. That's really a great accomplishment.

[0:35] And you probably passed all the cars that me in one of those cars.

[0:38] We were all sitting on the freeway.

[0:41] It was, it was fine. The Twin Cities Marathon.

[0:42] We all started driving over the weekend.

[0:44] They are just top notch organization and there's fans all around.

[0:47] It's so fun. Yeah.

[0:48] Pretty fun to be a part of that weekend.

[0:50] Very good.

[0:51] And then I think we should take a moment to recognize what happened in Las Vegas.

[0:56] and but for the grace of God go any city in this country right now and your

[1:05] hearts as citizens go out to the 22,000 people who were in that crowd and I have

[1:12] to take a moment to and say I'm shocked that it wasn't a higher total

[1:21] casualties given the circumstances and it shows how important our public safety

[1:25] departments are. And the, you know, it's not for me to judge, but I think that the police

[1:33] they responded quite quickly and saved a lot of life because of that. But, man, my

[1:40] heart goes out to them. Holy cow, the poor mayor from Puerto Rico. Don't, please don't

[1:47] let any president ever target me for anything, but she's got a tough job too. So,

[1:55] So with that, we have a full agenda tonight and this is one of my favorites is going through this report, the strategic performance report.

[2:07] And I think that it'll be interesting to hear how we've done, where we're keeping up with, and where we can improve, and I'll turn it over to you then City Manager Ladder.

[2:20] Thanks Madam Mayor, members of the council, this is, I want to say our fourth version of this report and it's gone through different phases of evolution, of course, driven by primarily by the strategic priorities as established by the City Council, we originally started out with six of those priorities, we then moved to five and kind of have modified some of those priorities, at least with the statements like financial sustainability,

[2:48] this particular statement reflects the council's discussion that was had at their January 7th

[2:54] team building retreat.

[2:56] Another directive that the council had made in a previous year was to take the effective

[3:02] governance strategic priority and actually make that a KPI of another priority.

[3:08] So there's been a little moving around and the report has been modified to address that.

[3:13] But there have been other additions as far as information to try to support the KPIs

[3:18] or show metrics that will serve as a dashboard, I guess, for the council and key areas that

[3:24] they've indicated have been trust.

[3:27] And so you'll notice that maybe it's a little more enhanced with content.

[3:33] And one thing that I want to point out, we'll get to at the end, but Madam Mayor, you and

[3:38] I kind of reviewed this in advance a little bit and our workforce, one of our KPIs for

[3:43] workforce engagement is to make sure that we're cultivating people from within to move

[3:49] up into supervisory positions and originally when we were looking at that, we had missed

[3:53] a couple of positions that actually we had filled.

[3:56] So originally we were going to report to you that it was a down arrow or a red arrow because

[4:02] we had three or four positions and only one of them was filled internally and actually

[4:08] So we had two of the positions we've missed.

[4:11] So it has changed on here now.

[4:14] So it's even Stephen, so it doesn't meet the 60% KPI.

[4:17] So we gave it a yellow, even arrow instead of a side

[4:24] to side arrow instead of an upper and down arrow.

[4:26] But that's the only substantive difference

[4:28] since you and I last talked about it.

[4:30] So is this the updated one over, are we going to get?

[4:34] Well, this grant and test will be updated.

[4:36] this you'll see up here. Okay, so thank you for that.

[4:38] Grant has hasn't been there. Okay.

[4:40] Madam Mayor, when we get to that,

[4:42] I mean all of us work in different versions of the

[4:45] public and private sector and you want to have a work force

[4:49] opportunity where people that work there believe that there's

[4:52] opportunity for personal growth, professional growth, whether that be

[4:56] salary, for responsibility, particularly that case.

[5:01] But there are times in this infinite world of public

[5:05] servants where we have to go outside and so there will be times where you know I think

[5:11] that it's important for us for the morale of our employees to have this as a continued

[5:16] priority but there will be times when you know when I saw that the initial analysis talked

[5:23] about four positions and three of them came from the outside you know there are going to

[5:28] be times when that's the right decision and it doesn't meet our objectives but that

[5:32] that shouldn't get us off course from keeping that drive for internal promotions as a priority in my estimation.

[5:41] I don't know about your work, Paul, but you want to keep that incentive for people internal that we want them to be all leaders in that expectation, but there will be times.

[5:53] I agree.

[5:55] I agree.

[5:55] Good comment.

[5:56] Thank you.

[5:57] So I mean said that, you know, actually I wasn't on vacation not that long ago and one

[6:02] of the things I asked Evan to work on was to work with the leadership team on updating

[6:05] the Strategic Priorities Report and he did that.

[6:08] So I asked him if he'd like to present it to Council and he said he would.

[6:13] So he's actually here to present it to me.

[6:16] Yep.

[6:17] So I'll just take you through each of the priorities and then the KPIs under them pretty

[6:21] We generally and briefly, but the first, as you know, manage a lot of noise financial

[6:25] sustainability in our intent here is to manage our finances so it can meet our spending

[6:30] commitments both now and in the future.

[6:33] This one share future generations of taxpayers do not face an unmanageable bill for local government

[6:38] services provided to the current generation.

[6:41] And for this one, the five KPIs, KPIs, excuse me, all five were met.

[6:46] The first one is fund reserves.

[6:48] This has a gold maintaining reserves between 40%, 45% of the subsequent year's budget, less debt service.

[6:58] This number is kind of the best practice from the state auditor and that's why we use those numbers specifically.

[7:05] And as noted in the chart, we've steadily been decreasing that number to come within range of our desired targets.

[7:13] So for 2016, we had an unassigned general fund balance at the end of the year of $6.5 million.

[7:22] That was 45% of the following year's budgeted expenditures minus debt service.

[7:29] So Director David will continue to examine these trends and make sure we're hitting these targets

[7:35] through our financial management policies such as the one that was approved earlier this year about fund balance.

[7:43] The second one for financial sustainability was non-tax revenue.

[7:48] This goal is that the city's non-tax revenue make up 40% at least of the general pundit

[7:54] expenditures.

[7:56] And as you can note in that line chart there, we've been doing a pretty good job of staying

[8:01] right around that area.

[8:03] I'd say since 2013 though, it's steadily increased.

[8:06] is 2018 currently has a budget of 45% for non-property tax revenue as a total of general fund expenditures.

[8:16] So looking to increase that number even further than we have,

[8:21] you know, it's an S&D staff.

[8:23] We always are trying to do this at your guys' direction and I think the most noticeable one

[8:28] that we'll be seeing in the future is the expansion of the license bureau.

[8:31] So that will hopefully in future years increase this number even further.

[8:37] The

[8:40] third one for financial sustainability is to keep a AA bond rating or better.

[8:45] We have done that again this year in 2017.

[8:50] This chart here shows what it would look like if we were AAA bond rating

[8:56] and our interest payments for these general obligation bonds.

[8:59] So you can see it's quite a bit lower than where we would currently at

[9:03] double-aid. We're going to continue to work obviously to improve this

[9:07] bond rating to perhaps double-aid plus in the future. I think that's a really

[9:10] tangible goal that Director David has. And one of the ways we do that, again, is

[9:14] through our financial management policies set by you guys.

[9:24] The fourth KPI under

[9:25] financial sustainability is our debt tax level debt tax levy ratio. We have a

[9:32] goal that external debt service remains at or below 15% of the city's total property tax

[9:38] levy. This goal has been achieved consistently in the past few years. As you can see, 2014

[9:44] was a bit below 12%. We've slowly moved that down to where it is right now. The red you

[9:51] can see coming on there is internal debt. Correct me if I'm wrong, manager lotter by believe

[9:56] that is for the street funding that, so a good goal that we're hitting Director

[10:03] David noted in her response that past history demonstrates we are consistently

[10:08] meeting this goal we need to ensure that we meet it in future years

[10:12] otherwise it could impact our boundary.

[10:17] The fifth KPI for financial sustainability is

[10:20] our maintain a 10-year capital improvement plan. We again have done that in 2017.

[10:25] As noted, you can see the different funding sources for that plan, tax-loving, making

[10:32] up 45% of it, a lot of treatment plan, and the funding there, making up another quarter

[10:38] of it.

[10:39] And this is just another example of one of the plans we use as a city to ensure good

[10:44] bond ratings and just favorable financial outcomes for the city.

[10:50] Any questions on financial standards?

[10:52] and move

[11:00] them to community engagement.

[11:02] And-

[11:03] Oh, just for a second, though, real quick metamere.

[11:05] I just, I think that when we gloss over, you know,

[11:08] the financial sustainability,

[11:10] one of the biggest things that I think

[11:11] is a feather in the cap of the city council

[11:13] for the years that you've seen before

[11:15] is to put the city on a more firm foundation financially.

[11:20] So we wouldn't have the up and downs

[11:21] and we talk about that periodically,

[11:24] but I don't want us to miss that

[11:25] just in, as we kind of just go through

[11:28] that that is the true story. This is where it comes from.

[11:31] Good point.

[11:34] I have a question. Going back to that same chart. So we put the water

[11:42] treatment plant in there, which is 24% of the budget, and that's the money that we

[11:48] will receive from the Army. From the judgment plan, yes. So if we took that out of

[11:55] there.

[11:58] What does that do to the to the chart so

[12:05] the tax levy would it be a higher

[12:09] percentage? If what you're suggesting is we would still sustain the expense of the

[12:18] water treatment facility but we wouldn't have funding from the DOJ then that's likely

[12:25] correct that the pie that is composed of the tax levy would move in that direction.

[12:33] So what you're looking at here is basically the plan of spending between the year stated

[12:38] 2017 to 2026 and the sources of those and the kind of the behind the pie chart story is

[12:48] that we have that litigated settlement agreement that provides us those funds now from the

[12:53] judgment fund through the Department of Justice to pay for the water treatment plan.

[13:01] To just to clarify?

[13:02] Yes.

[13:03] So if you took that out of there, you also wouldn't have that same expense.

[13:07] Right.

[13:07] Boom.

[13:09] So the whole amount would be different and all of them would change, wouldn't they?

[13:13] If you're assuming you're taking out the spending or the expense as well as the revenue is.

[13:19] Yeah.

[13:19] That whole pie chart looks different.

[13:21] It's a completely different.

[13:22] Nope.

[13:22] So now, analyzing a different set of circumstances.

[13:30] Okay, thank you that you've mentioned my question.

[13:32] Okay.

[13:33] So moving on to the next priority, which is community engagement that states are strategic

[13:37] intent for community engagement is to provide a broad range of opportunities for citizens and

[13:41] state holders to participate to improve the quality of life in the city of New Brighton

[13:46] and to express their opinions and expectations of the city.

[13:49] Additionally, we'll be transparent regarding our business and we will regularly and consistently

[13:53] convey information to our stakeholders regarding city deliberations of these three priorities,

[14:00] two out of the three more met and one is just kind of kept even. So for stakeholder input,

[14:06] we wanted in the 2016 version it stated to look at where our residents are getting sources

[14:12] of information and then where they would like to see more information come through.

[14:16] So, interestingly, maybe not actually, 88% of information that our residents receive about

[14:23] the city through their friends and neighbors, I think that just kind of shows the importance

[14:28] that we're proactive and accurate in our communication so that they have pertinent information

[14:33] when they're discussing certain city matters back and forth.

[14:36] The second most common way is one that the city does have direct control over and that is

[14:41] newsletters, 79% of respondents to our survey said that that's their number one source

[14:47] of information regarding city happenings. And interestingly, 90% stated that they'd like

[14:53] to use that in the future, so meaning that in 2019 when we get the results back, it's likely

[14:58] we're gonna be increasing that.

[15:02] I think that was exciting internally for us because we've made it a priority to revamp our newsletter to make it more engaging pertinent and relative for our residents. And this was in one of our previous weekly memos. But Saundra, Daniel, off the deputy state clerk is really good at publications and we're utilizing her skills internally to revamp what the newsletter could look like.

[15:29] And this is just an example, not necessarily what it will be, but it just shows how much

[15:34] more engaging it could be for our residents as opposed to how it is now, which isn't necessarily

[15:41] not.

[15:42] But if we can attract those readers just through the publication itself, I think we can

[15:46] really garner some effective communication means that way.

[15:50] We will be breaking apart the flip newsletter, you know, where the city newsletter comes back

[15:56] to back with the parks program.

[15:57] And I think that will actually alleviate some stress in the parks department because

[16:02] they have to be on a very tight time frame because they offer classes at a certain time

[16:06] and that means the information for that has to go out at a certain time.

[16:12] And it's been my wish to have maybe a more of almost like a magazine kind of experience

[16:20] with the newsletter and that seems to be something that's also consistent with conversations

[16:26] we've had in the past, when we talk about the committee engagement aspect, or a strategic

[16:32] priority, and now we have somebody on staff who actually has really good experience in

[16:38] doing that, and so we challenged her with creating a mock-up layout of what that could

[16:43] be, and not too dissimilar from when Michelle Wheeler was here and talked to us about the

[16:48] website, you know, a lot of what she concentrated on there was the correct use of font,

[16:55] very

[16:56] of open space if you put too much in there it crowds you know the eye and it

[17:01] actually turns people away from wanting to look at it and saw all those elements

[17:05] are are being built into this mockup right now and we're hoping that for the

[17:12] first quarter of the new year we would kick off a magazine style newsletter that

[17:16] would come out and it's slightly different times in the parks program so given

[17:21] the fact that our public still relies heavily on written communication we

[17:25] We actually think maybe we're missing opportunity there to continue to have touches with the public by having one combined publications that are in two separate ones.

[17:35] A question?

[17:37] Please.

[17:38] So, Manager Ladder, you have sent out letters updating the community on the water.

[17:45] And they've been really from what I've heard really well received.

[17:50] So if you put that into the newsletter, then that portion would be paid for by the same source that pays for the one.

[17:58] I mean, would you put that in there? Would you continue to have a separate?

[18:02] I keep the letters, quarterly letters separate, but we're always going to have some kind of update on the waterfutum plant.

[18:09] That's also in the newsletter. That's been a pretty regular part of that.

[18:13] It almost always mirrors the letter content though. Might lag it or lead it a little bit.

[18:18] But I don't know that that's not that we would necessarily want to start combing

[18:22] gluing the 206 settlement funds with paying for the newsletter unless we

[18:27] dedicated the newsletter to purely just that topic.

[18:31] Okay.

[18:31] Otherwise it might, it gets a little too convoluted.

[18:35] Got it.

[18:36] If I could be asking a quick question, because when you say breaking it apart,

[18:40] because I've heard both sides, the people that love it the way it is today,

[18:44] because they get one thing from the city, they know what to look for,

[18:47] And they know it's got two things on both sides and it also gives them these are people that sometimes don't

[18:52] Look through the park and wreck part of it too often, but they do because they get the city one on the other side of it, so

[19:01] Would it be I

[19:04] Guess my little question as I kind of look at that is that seems to be where we pick up probably some of our new people

[19:10] That don't even that may not even look at the programming. You know if we did separate news

[19:16] Because I guess I'm a little bit, you know, thinking that might, the separation of that

[19:21] might be, I don't know, something to reconsider, or just to think about, you know, how we pick

[19:27] up then some of the people I think we pick up that just look for the news and then pick

[19:31] up the park and wreck stuff and come into the program and based on that.

[19:34] Okay.

[19:36] Can I ask a question?

[19:38] Yes.

[19:38] So, when the way I'm understanding is because that's paid for in a different source, using

[19:45] the means of water, your water, the means of water, right, we're not saying, it's the

[19:50] law.

[19:50] The resident news letter on the water?

[19:52] On the water.

[19:52] Is paid up for by the Army?

[19:54] Correct.

[19:54] Yeah, by the federal fund.

[19:55] So, if you incorporate it, I'm thinking of where you're saying that, to be able to, you know,

[20:02] The only thing that maybe could solve it is to say we're going to do whatever that newsletter entails.

[20:14] Putting the cost of that would stay static to that.

[20:20] And then prove that that's always going to be in that magazine in that way.

[20:28] So that it could be still paid for possibly that way and state the money.

[20:34] And you know, kind of bookmark it for just that in that magazine.

[20:39] And then you could still maybe get by with saying, okay, that's a percentage.

[20:43] This is what we pay for.

[20:45] Normally it's going to now be incorporated in this and we can pay for it possibly.

[20:50] I don't know.

[20:52] You're right, though, and the funding source is how that goes over.

[20:55] But as long as I think you stay, you know, a board and transparent board, maybe it can be done.

[21:02] Yeah, let me, but, let me add my thoughts to that too.

[21:08] I think by keeping the water letter separate, it residents have come to expect that.

[21:17] They know that when they see something from the city of New Brighton in that particular envelope,

[21:21] It's typically a letter from the City Manager regarding our water situation.

[21:27] And I can see your concern that you have with the separating the parks from this.

[21:36] I also understand that the, what the park's out is on newsprint, which is a little less expensive.

[21:45] But I think it's, I think we're maybe looking at not a huge expense adding a sentence.

[21:51] So what if we were to do a magazine feel with a staple stitch on the inside in newsprint

[22:01] of the park programs so that if you're interested in the parks, you're able to tear that out.

[22:06] You've got that information and then otherwise you still have a nice glossy cover look of what

[22:13] is happening in New Brighton.

[22:14] So it's just something to think about there, but I do, I have to admit that I really like

[22:21] the look and feel of what I just saw up here in that I would read that front to cover.

[22:27] I don't know that I, I shouldn't even say this out loud, but I don't even know that I read

[22:31] all of the information that comes out in the park thing because it's text heavy, it's not

[22:40] necessarily reader-friendly. You know people don't have the attention span to read half that stuff.

[22:50] So maybe what I'm saying is I don't have the attention span.

[22:55] But I think there are some ways

[22:56] that we can look at it. We're just seeing an idea here and not necessarily the interpretation of cost.

[23:03] And quite frankly you can also do some advertising in a two to offset cost if you wanted to look at it

[23:08] that way. Exactly. And I do, I would say, I love these ideas. And for me, it's a quick,

[23:14] I see a street sweep where I can go, what's that? Because I, instead of me having to hunt through

[23:18] whatever, go, oh, they're blowing out the things. So I can just go look over here and this little

[23:23] quick thing here. It's a lot easier to find the information on that layout. That is phenomenal.

[23:28] I think that's going to really score very high for us. Good. Good.

[23:32] And one last comment, getting most of their information

[23:35] from friends and neighbors.

[23:39] I don't know how accurate the information is always is.

[23:42] That's coming from friends and neighbors.

[23:45] So I'm really happy that people are talking to each other

[23:49] and interacting and getting what they think

[23:53] might be the best information.

[23:55] But if we can come up with something

[23:56] like this suggested newsletter, we're using your example again.

[24:01] and they see a picture of a street sweeper, they know.

[24:03] It's not gonna be speculation or rumor.

[24:10] So, plow in the wintertime or whatever,

[24:12] I mean, those are just really holy cow

[24:15] to get your message across the easiest way

[24:17] their ever could be, that is phenomenal.

[24:20] Yeah.

[24:20] Well, I think Madam Mayor, the, you know,

[24:23] in the data point of 88% of folks get their information

[24:28] from their friends and neighbors is a statement of fact,

[24:30] We don't have control over that, what we have control over is making sure that the quality

[24:37] of the information, the accuracy of the information that is out there is out there as prominently

[24:42] as well as it can be.

[24:44] And it was a thought process in the back of my head that said perhaps we're not quite

[24:51] reaching our readership with the newsletter because it's back to back and upside down on

[24:56] the parks information.

[24:58] and just because we do have a large volume

[25:02] of high profile things going on,

[25:03] whether it's the water,

[25:04] they're new bright and exchange or development there,

[25:07] the parks projects that we have going on,

[25:10] the Eagles Nest Lions Park,

[25:13] our street projects are getting bigger each year

[25:17] with our plan, you know,

[25:18] we're doing larger versions of that project.

[25:21] And so, and of course, we have the Hanson Park project.

[25:24] so it makes sense in my mind to really accentuate that just because of that

[25:31] data point. That's what really struck me when I looked at the survey results was

[25:35] folks before the newsletter or the website or anything? It's their neighbor.

[25:45] And to your point Dean, if they could grab something really quick that you know

[25:48] I have to admit if you were to ask me could I find my Brighton Park and

[25:54] correct programming folder to be able to find the information on the backside. I probably couldn't, but if I had a

[26:00] nice little shiny little thing that was like that that I could go look really quick and go, oh that's what's going on.

[26:05] They're going to be blowing out the sewers and the phone. Oh, they plow when we hit like two inches and they started randomly cool

[26:12] stuff. And I could find that probably a lot easier.

[26:15] I agree. Yeah, that's a great thought. And then I can make another comment. Please.

[26:19] So, just as far as the parks program being really wordy and very verbose, and I think that there's an opportunity for us to go through a little bit of an exercise like we went through with the website, like we're talking about having gone through with the newsletter, to maybe make that document less word intensive, and maybe try to grab people's attention more.

[26:49] with it by virtue of doing that.

[26:52] I do know that our staff member over there

[26:56] is Amici Floyd really has a strong background

[26:58] in marketing too.

[27:00] And I don't think we'd tap her always as much

[27:03] as we could as far as our skill set is concerned,

[27:06] or that she's necessarily always been positioned to do that.

[27:09] And I think that's gonna change.

[27:11] Be great.

[27:12] That would be phenomenal.

[27:13] And I do appreciate your comment,

[27:15] It comes from a revolman about the, you know, if you put together a plan that it's all that letter about water is always going to be in there and plan on seeing it there.

[27:29] I just hate mixing that bigality with with other stuff within the city.

[27:38] I just, I, it doesn't set well quite frankly with me.

[27:42] I'd rather just see it be a completely separate thing,

[27:45] handled the way it's been handled.

[27:47] Every, you know, when you talk about friends and neighbors

[27:49] and having good information,

[27:53] that's the one thing where I think our citizens are really

[27:56] well informed is on the water.

[27:58] And it could be because it's their number one concern,

[28:00] but those newsletters are, I think this is trying

[28:04] trying to add on to what council member was saying and how if that was something that

[28:10] could be done, that's maybe how it could be done, not to say it had to be done.

[28:18] Okay, thank you very much.

[28:20] Just one more quick comment on this, it's kind of innocuous looking here, but the social

[28:24] media since 2013 when we were measuring these has gone from 40 percent to 42 percent and

[28:31] up to 53% and then they said in the future 60% said they would like to receive their information through social media.

[28:40] So again, I think we'll see this climb even farther.

[28:43] So as a city, we've really focused on making sure that our messaging on social media is pertinent and accurate and also engaging just like we are with the newsletter.

[28:52] And I think you guys have probably seen that to public safety Facebook and the city Facebook page trying to

[28:57] Garner residents that way and get information to him through those means next one is citizen participation and this kind of state constant since the last report was published.

[29:12] And I don't know if you know these two metrics are the best for deciding how what level of citizen participation we have within the city here.

[29:22] One way we measured is the public attendance at town hall meetings and

[29:27] specifically who fills out the forms that rank how the meeting went.

[29:32] That dropped from 2016 to 2017, whether the amount of people actually there dropped.

[29:38] We don't know just the amount of people that fill out surveys did at least.

[29:41] So Madam Mayor, I went back and looked at my notes and my count in 2016 was 98 people in the room.

[29:50] And again, it fluctuates during the day, of course, but at a similar time, this 2017 was a hundred and twenty-seven.

[30:00] I mean, and, you know, you have to find some consistent way to measure. So I'm not trying to be critical of this one. And counting heads at 9 AM only works if the same enthusiasm for the 9 AM subject is one year to the next, right? You know, people might come later for a subject or they might come early and leave. It's a fluid event. And so it is a challenge to put a hard number on that. But certainly there's more bodies in the room than this.

[30:28] I think that's at least some of it.

[30:30] Yeah, and when you look at it, it looks pretty dramatic,

[30:33] but really that's 14 people.

[30:34] Yeah, it's not a big number, but yeah,

[30:40] maybe there's something else we can do,

[30:41] you know, have a drawing.

[30:43] I don't even know if that's legal,

[30:44] but hand out tickets or to everybody that comes in, so.

[30:48] The second one we measure is our national night out parties

[30:51] that we have registered in that drop by 10 since 2016,

[30:55] but has remained pretty stable over the years.

[30:57] than as we all know is much higher than kind of our national and regional cities.

[31:02] It would be interesting about that is just I don't know what you guys experience with

[31:07] mine going out this time is I think that drop is combining parties.

[31:10] I think if we were to look at a participation by the number of residents we'd find that that

[31:16] probably if not stays constant actually probably goes up because we have very big parties right now

[31:22] that we didn't have before. That's interesting. I know that when we were out visiting

[31:26] There were, I didn't keep track of how many said, you know, were that neighborhood and that neighborhood and we just put it together?

[31:31] Yeah, yeah.

[31:32] And for me it was almost everyone I went to.

[31:34] Was we, we used to have one, oh yeah, we combined with them because they all want to be together at the same party.

[31:39] It's more fun.

[31:40] So like the last one, I would, you know, our metric on parties is great, but I think we should find some way to figure out about participation level.

[31:48] Because I think that stays more constant too.

[31:51] So it might be a, people could let us know how many they had if they would do it or have

[32:00] someone check with them.

[32:03] The third one in community engagement is our advisory commission participation.

[32:08] In 2017 we had the most applications since 2014 and more than in 2012 but what's interesting

[32:17] in this one is we had less vacancies than in 2014 so we had the widest gap between vacancies

[32:24] and applications that we've had in 2017 which is good and I think it shows that people are

[32:31] interested in reserving in some capacity with the city and I think this came down to kind of council

[32:37] remember you know getting the word out that there's these openings as well as the city so.

[32:41] And I think we should all be very proud of that number.

[32:43] Yeah, that's just look at that chart. That's pretty amazing actually going back further

[32:52] There were times when there are more vacancies than there were yeah people that applied and we had to say well

[32:57] We got to wait to fill it because we got to get the word out

[33:01] And that goes earlier earlier on but

[33:03] Any

[33:07] more questions on community engagement what we've on so we're on the economic development three out of the four

[33:14] KPIs were met here one remained constant

[33:17] In addition, physical redevelopment is our first KPI and our goal is to achieve residential

[33:23] tax-based growth of 9.5 million by 2019 and commercial industrial tax-based growth 5 million

[33:31] by 2016.

[33:32] Both of those targets were kind of blown out of the water, so to speak.

[33:38] We, since 2012, the residential tax, the residential tax-based growth has gone up by 186.5 million.

[33:48] And the commercial industrial tax-based growth has gone up by 23 million dollars.

[33:53] So it beat both of the KPIs that were set for this one back in 2012, because when I think

[34:01] they were set.

[34:01] So the exchange coming online has really helped increase those numbers.

[34:14] We're going to add to that, the second

[34:19] one under economic development is business retention

[34:22] and expansion and we want to define ways that we could retain our existing businesses through

[34:30] helping them out with certain needs, but also adding and helping them expand as well.

[34:35] This has been done through a couple of different ways, but last January, the council approved the EDC's recommended business retention expansion plan, and that has been implemented over time since then up until the day and earlier this year in 2016 annual report was presented to the EDC and it said that 89 hours of assistance were given to new writing businesses.

[35:02] There was another report given to the EDC and said 29 hours of assistance were given.

[35:07] So, when talking with Assistant Director Grunlock about this, she just stressed to me kind of that there's not really these tangible results from this right now, but it's more kind of the long term process of helping these businesses, and we might not get some of the same time staying because of this program, but over time it could result in some more tangible benefits for the city.

[35:29] I

[35:34] can add maybe a little bit to that too but I know how I have a meeting with a business

[35:39] here in town that has a grown their facility and they want me to work with them because

[35:45] they want to stay in New Brighton.

[35:46] So I'm not met with them, I don't know really much about them anyway but I'm having that

[35:54] meeting through Sierra Friday but I am starting to hear from more and more of our businesses

[36:00] and I'm really like the fact that they're reaching out to somebody either on council or the mayor or whomever and trying to find ways to either expand their business in New Brighton or stay in New Brighton or whatever reasons.

[36:19] I'm not getting complaints from businesses and saying, gosh, your taxes are too high or you don't have a great environment for my business or anything such as that and I'm really pleased with that.

[36:30] I think we should also keep in mind that this past year we all worked very hard to make sure that the API expansion, which is not ready yet but that we've partnered with them and situated them for success by coming up with a good plan that they can move into that process.

[36:47] property when they're into that third lot when they're ready.

[36:50] So we can talk about the open to business, which I think is a good asset to them, but

[36:57] there is a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes that really is not measured, but

[37:03] is happening.

[37:06] Yeah, Madam Mayor.

[37:07] I mean, this doesn't measure too soon choosing to stay here.

[37:12] Right.

[37:12] I mean, they did that on their own, I mean, and when CSI moved to the exchange neighborhood

[37:21] that opened up other business space down by McDonald's in the water tower, this is a really

[37:27] good story on a number of levels.

[37:29] It is, and we've had some businesses move out like my comm, but for no other reason than

[37:35] they retired, you know, and sold the business to somebody else.

[37:39] So I think we're doing pretty darn well in terms of our economic development.

[37:51] The third one is housing programs and the goal of this priority was to develop programs

[37:56] aimed at the maintenance and modernization of our existing single-family and multi-family

[38:01] housing.

[38:02] And the EDC has played a role again in this and has discussed it twice this year both in April

[38:08] and in August on what these programs could look like if there were programs.

[38:14] There's been no concrete outcomes from these meetings yet, but

[38:18] it sounds like the EDC will likely just want to continue supporting our existing programs that are helping single family and multi-family housing units expand and then create improvements.

[38:35] And again,

[38:38] we have some opportunities coming up this next year, assuming the purchase

[38:42] goes through on the Korean church in the right-and-school area.

[38:47] I think that will be good.

[38:49] And at a later date, maybe we can talk about what Koon Rapids has done and maybe Koon Rapids

[39:00] has taken the design of several kind of standard homes and has shown their

[39:07] citizens how they can upgrade relatively inexpensively, but I think if we

[39:12] can make a tool like that available, that might be a great exercise for EDC to

[39:20] go through and see if we can come up with something. Now, Kun Rapids went to the

[39:24] point of actually buying homes as model homes and that sort of thing I don't

[39:28] know that we're necessarily want to get into that maybe, but I think there's

[39:31] some happy median in between there.

[39:34] Because a lot of our homes were kind of,

[39:40] I say this lovingly because I lived in one,

[39:42] there are boxes with different floor plans

[39:46] on the inside.

[39:48] And if people could see some of the variations

[39:51] of floor plans that could be done within those walls,

[39:54] it's pretty eye opening.

[39:58] So maybe that's something for next year.

[40:01] Madam Mayor, I understand that the EDC in their next meeting is going to be discussing some of these issues and

[40:07] I look forward to hearing some feedback from that discussion and their feedback from just reviewing this.

[40:14] Clearly, there's some endorsement of the things that the city is doing well to support private investment in largely in single family homes.

[40:23] I think there's a separate discussion to be had about multi-family units, whether the

[40:30] duplex as a city staff is talked about as a separate category versus the larger apartment

[40:36] buildings and by larger that could be I mean four or greater and we have many that are

[40:41] much greater than four but I mean I start with four but separate those from the duplexes

[40:45] but on your discussion, the EDC has offered some nice compliments and endorsements to what

[40:57] the city's been doing thus far, but you and I were participated in a League of

[41:05] Minnesota City's conference where the Koon Rapids folks talked about their programs and

[41:09] there are other programs and a big no mistake about it, our housing is either Cape Cods

[41:15] That's from the 50s, ramblers from the 60s, or houses from the 80s.

[41:20] That's the vast majority of our houses here.

[41:23] And to keep on top of that, that this is an attractive place for

[41:29] millennials who are not even yet buying homes, some of which are.

[41:33] But largely, their cohort is not yet buying homes.

[41:36] To keep on track of that, this is a grand, grand opportunity for

[41:41] the city to have leadership and so I'll wait to see the EDC's done a nice job getting

[41:48] us to this point recognizing things that are done well and are supportive and it will

[41:55] be up to this body to say it's good enough good enough or can we be more proactive, can

[42:01] we take this as an opportunity to ensure that new brighten in 2040 matches our land use plans

[42:09] with the desirability of what we know is very, very old housing and how to keep

[42:15] incentivizing and modernizing that and publicizing that. So when these hipsters

[42:21] in Northeast look to get out of their up-floor rental unit, they don't go to

[42:27] blame for a brand-new home. So they don't go to St. Paul for a hundred-year-old

[42:32] home. So they come here for the school's services and proximity that they really

[42:37] want. And that is dependent on the future reaction to this particular KPI.

[42:47] Thank you.

[42:51] The final one of economic development is sense of place. And the goal here was just

[42:55] to explore how we could as a city implement kind of smaller, more incremental projects

[43:00] that add to the sense of place here within existing public improvement projects.

[43:05] We are doing this through the comprehensive plan, making sure that place making is a part

[43:11] of that throughout each chapter of that plan.

[43:15] On all our public improvement projects, we use those to make sure we have the ability

[43:21] to add sidewalks, streetscapes and such like that, like over by the exchange, how that was

[43:28] done.

[43:29] But all along E2, Madam Mayor, I mean, that's an impressive change from what it was.

[43:36] The fact that you could push a stroller or a wheelchair down to the, was a pump and

[43:42] munch, whatever people used to call it, you could go down there and get a candy bar and

[43:49] walk back safely now. I mean, this is a healthy snack. Yeah, or a healthy snack. I would

[43:55] get a candy bar, but I mean, the notion that this is part of the dialogue is another

[44:01] credit Madam Mayor to the EDC and their leadership and determination on this. And there are

[44:08] tangible, tangible results in this community where people can go to and whether it be the

[44:19] What you're not directly related to us, but they're certainly affiliated with us.

[44:25] Yeah, and I think it's important to know too that our current budget for next year does not include some things that we keep hearing about, which is monument signs.

[44:44] Some bussing trails we keep hearing about public arts and noting to that the farmer's market was established by two or three people in this community that just got together and made it happen.

[44:58] It had nothing to do with it.

[45:00] Anything that we as a community, or we as a council or city, wanted to do it. It is a great testimony to the fact that we have citizens who will do that kind of stuff, take the initiative and help with their sense of place. But we're still missing that messaging that when you come into this city, you're in New Brighton, you're welcome here. And a lot of that has to do with mine and signs.

[45:29] And when cities like Arden Hills, who are very small but yet have monument signs all over

[45:36] their city, and Shoreview has one of the biggest monument signs and one of the biggest

[45:42] headaches they had on that for a while, but you know, how do you know if you're a visitor

[45:48] that you're in the city of New Brighton other than those tacky little metal signs that

[45:57] So I still say that this is one area to that I think we need to continue to work on is the sense of place.

[46:05] And that goes from everything from monument signs to potentially a whole new makeover in our local.

[46:13] And I just throw that out into the atmosphere.

[46:16] I'm not saying that we necessarily have to do that.

[46:18] I know Brooklyn Center just did that this last year and they've got a new motto and they're

[46:24] painting their water towers now and putting that new motto on there.

[46:27] So let's just not lose sight of this, that we have a sense of place, and it's a sense

[46:34] of place that we hear a new bright and feel, but how do we make our outside visitors, people

[46:41] who come to see what we're all about know that they're here within our city limits.

[46:45] And we have another opportunity coming up that we need to focus on this next year, but

[46:52] that's with the sound walls that are going to go on the freeways here.

[46:57] And if you drive through Maplewood, you see a nice Maplewood leaf.

[47:01] You drive through Little Canada and you see, I guess that's also a Maple leaf.

[47:08] But if we put that NB on the side of those walls, I don't know that anybody's going to know

[47:15] even what that is. If you live in New Brighton, you know that it stands for an

[47:20] N.B. But if you're outside this city and you don't, you've never heard the

[47:25] words New Brighton and you drive by and you see a line and a little line lower

[47:29] and it's kind of scratched, is that our identity? And those things need to be

[47:34] decided in this next year also. What is going to be put on those walls? And maybe

[47:41] Maybe it's just the words new bright, and I don't know, but think about it.

[47:48] On to the fourth one, which is effective service quality, and we reached all four of these

[47:53] KPIs.

[47:54] The first being service quality, in the 2016 version of this report it said that in 2017 we

[48:00] would look at comparing our core services with our national and regional benchmarks as identified

[48:05] through our citizen survey that was recently completed, so it's kind of a lot of information packed

[48:11] into a few tables here, but this much higher and the higher and the similar and the lower kind of seems like a nebulous way of saying how we compare.

[48:21] But it's actually pretty scientific and that if it's much higher or much lower, that means it's more than twice the margin of error away through the survey, which is 5%, so if it's much higher than 10% or more people said we had excellent services compared to our benchmarking.

[48:39] And then if it's higher, lower, it's within that five percent or, yeah, within that five percent.

[48:45] So that's how that works.

[48:47] So with the CAD, you know, our street repair and maintenance and snow plowing ranked much

[48:53] higher than our national and regional benchmarks.

[48:56] Land use planning and zowing was much higher than our national benchmarks and higher than our

[49:00] regional ones.

[49:02] And then economic development was much higher than national and similar to our regional comparisons.

[49:07] Public safety kind of clean house there, much higher on all of our core services we track within public safety, fire prevention and education it's higher than our regional comparisons, but much higher than our national comparisons kind of an interesting one one in parks, the level of participation in a recreation program or activity was much lower than our national comparisons and lower than our regional comparisons comparisons, excuse me, but the amount of people that

[49:36] But visited a neighborhood park or city park was much higher and much higher, so make

[49:41] about what you will that perhaps people are visiting parks more independently than joining

[49:46] the RAC program activity.

[49:49] But the public library at the Ramzan County one at the community service was mused much

[49:54] higher, nationally and regionally, city services to youth are higher, nationally and regionally.

[50:02] I'm very proud of these of course, but I think the notion that there are a couple that were just lower would be things that at some point I'd love to hear our new parks and recreation directors analysis of with her team as somebody that's new to the department, you may have fresh eyes, I mean, we're very proud of the numbers and the different programs we have, but maybe there's a gap that she would be able to identify with her, you know, being new to our department that would be better

[50:31] I agree. I think it's an exciting time for Director Fink to be coming on board.

[50:40] I just hesitate

[50:41] with her name. I'll tell you. I never mind. My mother saw her doctor today, same name. I'm like,

[50:48] oh, so you call her Doctor Fink. She'll like it. Yeah. So I'll be calling Jennifer Doctor Fink.

[50:53] Oh, no, maybe she will be. But it is an exciting time to be the director in that area. And I agree.

[51:01] For finance, it's kind of harder to track a core service, but we do have a question about

[51:05] the value of the services for the taxes paid in New Brighton, and our residents rated

[51:10] those much higher nationally than national comparisons and regional comparisons.

[51:15] Administration, same type of deal, a little bit more harder to find a core service that's

[51:19] measurable, but attended a meeting of local elected officials was much higher here in New Brighton

[51:25] than our national and regional comparison,

[51:27] which is maybe a better way to look at that citizen,

[51:30] participation, metric in the previous KPI.

[51:34] The overall impression of sitting employees

[51:36] was much higher in New Brighton

[51:37] than our national and regional comparisons.

[51:40] And then just generally, the overall quality of services

[51:43] were much higher than our national and regional benchmarks.

[51:46] So proud of that internally.

[51:49] And we think we're based on this doing a good job

[51:52] with this KPI and hope to do so in the future.

[51:58] The State Performance Report is another one that we use.

[52:01] This is the made look familiar because this is the one that was submitted in 2016,

[52:06] which we did meet all of the metrics that are required through the State Auditor.

[52:10] However, in 2017, we did not submit one due to staff turnover,

[52:15] meeting me coming on board and not knowing we did this.

[52:18] So this is just the same one in 2016 and 2018, we will submit one again.

[52:23] And effective

[52:27] governance, this is, I guess, new for this report rather than 2016, but I think you can measure effective governance in a variety of ways.

[52:36] We chose to just look at kind of the value you get for your dollar within the city of New Brighton.

[52:41] And this graph probably looks familiar to all our budget conversations, but the cost of services per capita with our comparable cities per capita.

[52:53] our residents pay $431 total for the services received.

[52:58] That's the second lowest out of our comparable cities.

[53:03] And kind of noted in the response here, after looking at the overall quality of services,

[53:08] ranking much higher nationally and regionally and then having a nice low per capita for

[53:15] services is a kind of good justice position there.

[53:18] This

[53:23] is similar to the core services, but it's a more broad community-based kind of services.

[53:28] So, again, the much higher in the higher, much higher would be greater than 10%, higher

[53:34] would be 5% to 10%, similar is within 5% who right now is a place to live, ranked much

[53:40] higher than our national benchmark cities, higher from our regional ones.

[53:45] Your neighborhood is a place to live much higher than our national and higher than regional.

[53:50] and then New Brighton has a place to raise children to work to retire and go

[53:55] overall quality of like much higher than our national and regional benchmark

[53:58] cities overall

[54:03] government performance some of these were touched on in the

[54:05] earlier core services ones but the value of services for the taxes paid is much

[54:09] higher than our national regional benchmarks overall direction that New

[54:13] Brighton is taking is much higher than our national benchmarks and higher than our

[54:18] regional benchmarks and then the job New Brighton government does at

[54:22] that welcoming citizen involvement is similar to our benchmarks in this.

[54:30] Well, into the next one, I want to ask these questions.

[54:32] Okay, one.

[54:35] The final priority is workforce engagement and development,

[54:39] which managed a lot of kind of touched on earlier.

[54:43] Employee capabilities, we want 90% of our employees meeting the job competency requirements

[54:47] through their performance reviews.

[54:50] For the performance reviews completed in 2017, so far, which is the majority.

[54:55] 98% of employees meet or exceeds those standards, about 50% of employees, where exceeds expectations

[55:06] for their essential job accountability, which is a pretty good number.

[55:11] So we met that one in 2017 as well.

[55:21] This is our internal promotions KPI that was talked about earlier.

[55:25] We had six supervisory positions either become open or be created.

[55:30] three of those were filled internally,

[55:32] three of those were filled externally.

[55:34] And kind of important to note,

[55:35] based on what you were saying,

[55:37] council members, drew that, you know,

[55:39] for the external hires,

[55:40] we didn't have any internal applicants even.

[55:42] So we can't always control who's applying

[55:44] for those job openings, but 50%.

[55:48] It's right below the 60% mark that we want to be at.

[55:51] And the license bureau supervisor,

[55:55] we really didn't have anyone

[55:58] that was trained in that, necessarily.

[56:03] Right, and the internal.

[56:06] And the internal.

[56:07] Through park director, there was no internal candidate.

[56:10] Right, right.

[56:12] There was no option there.

[56:13] Two out of three, or I don't know what the other third person was.

[56:17] That's just the finance director.

[56:20] Oh, and I don't know if anybody applied from like in the city.

[56:27] And kind of in the response here about how we want to meet this in the future,

[56:30] again, is an administration we've begun to look at developing an internal kind of supervisory

[56:36] training program for employees who aren't quite at that supervisory level but we can obviously

[56:42] tell have the capabilities and the desire to be in those positions. They have the opportunity

[56:46] to come to some of these courses that we're going to bring outside consultants in and third parties

[56:51] in to teach them, you know, the basics of supervision, discipline, having those hard conversations.

[56:56] So hopefully that when we do get a vacancy, we have someone ready to go who's been almost kind of training for that position beforehand.

[57:06] I know that the city manager and his team has put together a strong effort on the employee recognition and the annual breakfast and another kind of internal morale opportunities including a lot of focus.

[57:22] I'm glad I know a lot of appropriate amount of focus on the Michael J. Walker spirit award and

[57:28] Recruiting people for these kind of recognitions and promotions. My question in the city management mayor is this particular

[57:36] KPI that

[57:37] The five of us as a body have decided that it's a

[57:41] Expectation of ours that

[57:43] these management positions will be

[57:45] Filled internally when possible. Is that something that our rank and file staff know as well that

[57:53] Are they aware that this is, you know, not just this is a council directive?

[58:01] Yeah, I think that the answer to that is yes, because there are, I'll give public works.

[58:07] I'll use that as an example.

[58:10] You know, this was communicated to the directors.

[58:13] The directors were directed to communicate it to their supervisors and so for instance in the public works section of decad.

[58:21] The superintendent, their Scott Polar, had been looking over years.

[58:27] And actually, in one of his efforts, which would be with Jesse Hartman, Scott's efforts

[58:33] to groom him for upward mobility, preceded this strategic priority even existing.

[58:38] So there was already a culture of that in some of these instances.

[58:44] I don't know that I think different departments have different strengths in that respect.

[58:51] Public safety by virtue of just their profession has so many more outside opportunities to be exposed to

[59:01] like principles of supervision, inherent in like NIMS training for example.

[59:07] There are a lot of lessons that are learned as far as organization, communication, delegation

[59:12] that are very applicable, although not unnecessarily, a crisis response, but very applicable to everyday management within an organization, so different service areas of our city, I think, get that support in different ways, but all of the departments are aware that there's a desire to promote from within frequently when there's an opening.

[59:41] It's not uncommon for me, even, or the director of a given area to pull somebody aside who they think is ready and or at the very least would benefit by going through an interview process to prepare them at some other point in time for the future.

[1:00:00] And encourage. So I think in a lot of different ways that that message has been delivered. Just another comment, too, about the supervisory training that's being developed. These are meant to be kind of light and fast moving classes. The initial training will be a principle of supervision. And we've already identified with the help of the directors, people who can benefit from that. And we do have a lot of new folks in supervisory positions.

[1:00:29] It's Devon as a new folk in that position, Jennifer Fink is new in that position within

[1:00:34] our organization, Lee Crawford, who's our licensed bureau supervisor, Gina Smith, who's

[1:00:39] our assistant finance director, are all in supervisory positions, and even some of our

[1:00:45] sergeants, Tony thinks, could benefit by principles of supervision training.

[1:00:50] So the trainings primary focus is to grab people already in supervision and augment their

[1:00:58] training with regards to things like delegation communicating clearly, recognizing that your

[1:01:04] style of communication may work with you, but I may have to change my style if it's with

[1:01:10] you.

[1:01:11] And so these training classes will focus on things like that.

[1:01:15] So I've identified kind of four primary areas, performance management, feedback are all part

[1:01:22] of those initial training sets.

[1:01:24] And so there will be opportunity also, though, for individuals who are probably emerging leaders to be grabbed up into some of those training sessions too, but the primary focus is really to go after and support those folks who are in those leading roles now and could clearly move on at some other point in time further in the organization somewhere.

[1:01:48] So I think we try to message that through a variety of channels.

[1:01:51] So I would like to, I would have some concern, and I know I voiced this in the past, that the folks that have brought us to this place where we are today, who have been here have longevity with our city, how are they being, how is that being addressed with those people that you're saying all these newer, younger, I mean, I don't want us to be agist and also, you know, people that sit quietly and do a really good job.

[1:02:20] that don't get that kind of attention because they aren't the outspoken person that you may not

[1:02:26] personally, you guys might not work with because they're in a different area of the organization.

[1:02:33] And I don't need an answer, but I don't want those folks forgotten about so that they're

[1:02:40] feeling left out or being passed up for all the efforts that they've done over years and

[1:02:46] been supportive to make us who we are today. Now we have new folks coming in and they're getting

[1:02:52] opportunities that are not,

[1:02:56] you know, that they're being bypassed or overlooked in what

[1:03:01] how much good they've done. So I know that that's been our city in the past. I don't think it's been

[1:03:08] lately, but I want to make sure, and I brought this up, you know, over the years, that I want to make

[1:03:12] make sure that we're recognizing the good things that folks do throughout our agency,

[1:03:20] whether or not they're young and up and coming stars.

[1:03:24] Yeah, and my thoughts on that are not to be contrarian, but doing good work doesn't necessarily,

[1:03:30] in your current job, doesn't necessarily mean that means you're good as a supervisor or leader.

[1:03:35] I think that, for instance, in the Parks and Rec area, I think with our new director,

[1:03:39] after she's going to have such a much different approach as far as interacting with people.

[1:03:43] She's already tried to meet with all the full-time staff one-on-one to spend time with them,

[1:03:49] just to understand what they think and feel and want about the work environment and opportunity.

[1:03:54] And I think she's naturally going to uncover if there are any folks perhaps in that service

[1:03:59] area that haven't felt particularly supported over the years to be supported.

[1:04:04] For instance, Craig in the Decat Department, at the end of every year, once he's done performance evaluations, he then has a separate sit-down with every single employee and talks about how pushes and dreams, where are they at, how do they feel, what do they want out of the work environment, who's interested in gaining more education in some areas, not always to be in a supervisory position.

[1:04:32] I wasn't referring to that.

[1:04:34] I was talking about the others that aren't trying to be supervisors.

[1:04:38] It's sometimes also about gaining proficiency or an opportunity to work in another area.

[1:04:44] And I think the one city mantra has emphasized that to the fullest extent.

[1:04:50] So you have made that comment over the years and feel like it's been addressed.

[1:04:54] Still bringing it up.

[1:04:55] Just to not forget that, you know, I think it's good not to forget it, but I think there's

[1:04:59] There's also some things that are being done, there are those people who simply don't want to be supervisors,

[1:05:08] but want to have a good work environment, and I think that's important is making sure we do have the right supervisors for them,

[1:05:15] that we are doing things like the employee breakfast and recognition type of deal.

[1:05:21] I think we're doing service awards for numbers, years of service, and I'm trying to think back to

[1:05:29] when I was in the business world,

[1:05:31] but some of the things that we did.

[1:05:32] But I think we're doing some of that stuff.

[1:05:34] And I think we should continue with that,

[1:05:37] and maybe even enhance it.

[1:05:39] But the best thing that we can do for employees,

[1:05:41] I think, who are in those situations

[1:05:44] where they're plugging away, working hard,

[1:05:46] is making sure that they have supervisors

[1:05:48] who are recognizing that, talking to them,

[1:05:51] appreciating them, and looking for their feedback.

[1:05:56] People want to have a voice.

[1:05:57] So I think you bring up a really good, good subject and I think I think we all should

[1:06:05] always ask that question, always be focused on it and making sure that we are doing those

[1:06:10] little things that go a long way for folks.

[1:06:15] Please, I'll kind of take on to what I think Mary's talking about, too, though.

[1:06:19] was, when you sit and you are in place for a while in that job for a long period of time,

[1:06:29] what are we doing or what can we do to let them feel more purposeful or give them opportunities

[1:06:37] to maybe enhance the job that they're doing today, what ideas do they have that can do that,

[1:06:43] where maybe that can kind of fulfill their part in that department.

[1:06:50] It's not just, I'm going to do my job and I do it well,

[1:06:53] but maybe I have some ideas about how that job can function better

[1:06:57] or streamline it and how can it move the whole department

[1:07:02] and then get that recognition for doing something like that

[1:07:05] rather than just being in place every day.

[1:07:10] So, I think I know where you're going with that, where sometimes it's really difficult

[1:07:15] to be that person to say, I'm doing a great job.

[1:07:19] I think that maybe, but how can we enhance or make them feel that they are valued and

[1:07:27] have that worth and what can they do moving forward to maybe make their jobs a little more

[1:07:32] interesting or their job can, you know, just something that could be some feedback on.

[1:07:39] That would be a great challenge for your leadership team to, you know, in from where I'm

[1:07:48] sitting, I don't know that that's necessarily even a concern of employees because nobody

[1:07:52] is, well, I don't know that they've talked to us.

[1:07:56] Well, they're allowed to talk to us.

[1:07:59] Not in a negative way if they have it, they're supposed to talk to us.

[1:08:02] Yeah.

[1:08:03] Are we getting off track?

[1:08:04] You're doing a little bit?

[1:08:05] But they shouldn't, yeah, they shouldn't necessarily have to talk to us.

[1:08:09] That's not our job, that's the job of management.

[1:08:18] So maybe we can take that off topic.

[1:08:22] You know what?

[1:08:23] I want to say that the culture that's been created here has been outstanding.

[1:08:26] Yeah.

[1:08:27] I want to make sure that it can so I can redirect my comments.

[1:08:30] We have an outstanding group of people that work here, and I want everyone recognized for

[1:08:35] it.

[1:08:35] And it comes from the leadership at the top, and I totally appreciate it.

[1:08:40] So I think we need to focus on all of our staff, everybody's important.

[1:08:45] And I want everyone to know it.

[1:08:46] And thank you for what you guys do.

[1:08:48] Thank you.

[1:08:50] Continue to try and fill these supervise your positions internally in the future.

[1:08:54] The final one is employee satisfaction and the KPI here is to have a rate of 50% or

[1:09:00] or better on employee service, employee surveys

[1:09:03] of being a net promoter.

[1:09:06] This may look familiar too,

[1:09:07] because the last internal survey we did was in 2015.

[1:09:11] We're playing on doing another one in the first half of 2018

[1:09:14] so that this can be updated with our strategic priorities report

[1:09:18] in 2018, but the last one that we did was met at 72%.

[1:09:24] And one of the things that we're achieving

[1:09:26] with finally getting some of those supervised retraining

[1:09:29] in place is to actually respond to the staff comments that came out of that.

[1:09:35] It's been a while we've tried to create a more formal program.

[1:09:39] I've talked, I think, in the past, right mentioned about the idea of a New Brighton University.

[1:09:45] And it's difficult to get that off the ground.

[1:09:47] We've looked into other cities that have done it and some don't do it anymore.

[1:09:52] And so right now, I think kind of at least get it started kind of momentum.

[1:09:58] Some project is, and I'm working with Barge Strandell,

[1:10:01] that's the facilitator that would help

[1:10:03] with some of the supervised re-level training.

[1:10:07] And I think it's gonna be very cost-effective

[1:10:10] and it's not gonna take a half a day or a full day

[1:10:12] kinda stuff, you know, it'll be good, quick, 90s minute

[1:10:16] kind of sessions where people are given, you know,

[1:10:21] work to do in advance and they come in prepared

[1:10:23] and so you make the most of that time,

[1:10:26] and you don't keep people away from their city

[1:10:28] work too long. So, let's try to achieve all those goals. But it is that this is done

[1:10:33] with these comments in mind. And one of the things down and I talked about is maybe next

[1:10:38] year we need to do, we need to launch another employee survey of the entire city because it'll

[1:10:45] be three years then at that stage of the game. So, it's getting old. This data is getting old,

[1:10:50] in other words.

[1:10:53] So of all the KPIs, we had none that we're view as an unacceptable performance and three that kind of were maintained in the rest we achieved.

[1:11:05] The three that were maintained, one is the citizen input.

[1:11:12] But yeah, and we're basing that citizen input on three, or is on two, a national night out parties.

[1:11:26] I don't know that that's a fair assessment of citizen input lately.

[1:11:33] I think the fact that we've had the most applications ever for commission openings.

[1:11:40] The fact that we launched a new website designed to be more user friendly for our citizen

[1:11:47] and to get their input, the fact that the city is more engaged on social networks, you

[1:11:57] know, the public safety, when they put something out on their network, they're getting a ton

[1:12:04] of interaction and a lot of things, these are things that have grown over the last few

[1:12:12] years. And I don't know that it's fair to say that we are steady-eddy because I think

[1:12:19] we're making some really strong efforts as a council, even as individual council members,

[1:12:26] and as city people to listen to what citizens want. I

[1:12:35] don't know. I don't think that

[1:12:37] that we should base our whole interaction, our whole evaluation on these two events,

[1:12:45] which are really, we've just talked about, so we don't do a good job at measuring them.

[1:12:51] Council members, do you count to how many more people than are even reflected on here

[1:12:55] at the town hall meeting, and national and night out parties?

[1:12:58] How many people did we talk to that said that they had murdered their parties?

[1:13:03] So if we're going to base our yellow almost caution line, I think we're not using something

[1:13:14] that is a little bit of legitimate measurement.

[1:13:19] Council Member Burke.

[1:13:20] Even measuring all the times we've had residents in our council chambers for all the wonderful

[1:13:27] things that people do for each other, we could include that.

[1:13:30] We could include all kinds of interactions that we have, the blood drive.

[1:13:36] You have so many 26 pints every two months, that's as frequent as they do it because you have to wait 56 days to give again.

[1:13:46] There's so many little things like that that we all just take for granted.

[1:13:52] And maybe that would be a good thing to consider that there's a lot of other opportunities.

[1:13:56] There's so many other opportunities where we're engaging citizens and employees.

[1:14:02] Park, you know, the park.

[1:14:04] Yeah, we had 200 hours just on the Lions Park build of volunteers.

[1:14:11] We had a business that volunteered time.

[1:14:14] I don't know if any of you were up there, but it was pretty amazing.

[1:14:18] And I got to know the park staff a little bit better and they're a funny group of people.

[1:14:24] They have a good sense of humor and they take good care of each other.

[1:14:29] It was really a fun event to be a part of.

[1:14:33] So I don't know.

[1:14:35] I just think that this is not a fair measurement.

[1:14:42] It comes from a member, Bob.

[1:14:43] If you look at, you can't do a comparison within the comparison, because the national night

[1:14:52] part is really more safety oriented and it's not issue driven. It's just a

[1:14:57] night out and the people so

[1:15:00] That is engagement. But it's hard to define engagement, too, because when it's issue-driven, that's when they come to the chambers. When it's national night out, it's public safety more. When it's town hall, it's kind of an overview of what's going on. It's defining that. Exactly how we're going to mix that and measure it. So, I think that there is...

[1:15:29] There is something missing on some of the things that we do.

[1:15:36] But yet, what we do do is well.

[1:15:40] So if you look at that measurement itself,

[1:15:43] the tone hall, there's not much more you can do there.

[1:15:46] The national laid out parties are what they are.

[1:15:50] And so those measurements are OK.

[1:15:53] But it's the rest of them.

[1:15:54] How do you get that other interaction or that other engagement,

[1:15:58] And I think that we're talking about so, but you're right, there's there's other things in the city that they participate in and

[1:16:04] I think there are rooms to grow with this. I think it's hard to say change today because you have nothing to measure it against.

[1:16:13] So when I look at this, I at least you're right, because what I say is that at least there's something to measure against period we have historical data.

[1:16:21] If you put anything in, we could say this is great. We think we knocked it out of the park.

[1:16:25] We have nothing to compare it to two to say if we're not going to park or not and so I do believe by the way that this does need to grow and change because it does we don't I don't think it

[1:16:35] Wreck accurately reflects what we want it to reflect. I

[1:16:39] Just don't know how that could happen in any you know quick change and still be able to have it be anything

[1:16:44] But you don't want me to be able to read even if we came up with new measurements would happen

[1:16:49] The assembler because we would have nothing to measure the cancer well

[1:17:01] But if you're going to measure yourself against

[1:17:05] That's not faulty or poorly attained data, that's not fair either.

[1:17:13] I just say we've worked to change that.

[1:17:15] We have what we have today to measure something else.

[1:17:19] We don't want to give us a measurement of now.

[1:17:22] It wouldn't give us anything in the past to go back and compare to,

[1:17:25] unless we gathered something.

[1:17:27] Unless we gathered something and there are things.

[1:17:29] You know, this is entitled community engagement.

[1:17:33] you know how many people are engaged at the community center. How many people go through

[1:17:43] the library. We have those numbers now. But you know I look at 2017 and it's 40 maybe

[1:17:51] about 44 people on the public attendance at town hall meetings and we're going by the

[1:17:56] number of surveys that we're filled out. And that's at the end by the way just to be able

[1:18:01] So 44 people were hungry.

[1:18:05] That's exactly what you just got.

[1:18:06] That's just not an accurate reflection.

[1:18:07] Yeah, that's not an accurate reflection.

[1:18:09] And I just, we need to improve on how we're getting the data.

[1:18:15] And so I understand where you, where you're saying we have to have something to measure against.

[1:18:20] But, but we're measuring against bad data.

[1:18:29] And we are, we are still just apples to apples.

[1:18:32] Yeah, Amy Johns or subway. Yeah, what are they going to stick around for? Yeah, and you're you're do have an interesting take on it here with

[1:18:42] The difference

[1:18:47] You know, we're looking at two different kinds of things take out the

[1:18:51] You know public attendance at

[1:18:53] Neighborhood meetings how many neighborhood meetings that we hold how many people attended them that's not in here

[1:19:00] And that's all community engagement and we know the attendance of those right that's actually that's actually

[1:19:05] really I think more financial reflection. Yeah. You know, and maybe it's shame on us as a council

[1:19:11] because we did the Vermont Park thing last year and we didn't do anything this year.

[1:19:16] It's not over. Well, I mean, it's not over in number two. There was a Hanson Park meeting

[1:19:23] that was standing remotely. Yeah. There were two meetings on the comprehensive plan. Yeah.

[1:19:28] So if you had those three of those three meetings surpassed the tenants at the town hall.

[1:19:34] And they're different people, they're different, it's a different group of people.

[1:19:37] And we have city staff participating in stockier days with the Comprehensive Plan.

[1:19:41] We have worked really, really hard to get citizens engaged this year.

[1:19:46] And so then to look at this and report to the public that we didn't do a good job.

[1:19:54] Well, in fairness, Madam Mayor, one of the things that I've liked about this document is every year after we ask the city staff to tabulate this thing, we look at it and go, well, how many people stuck around in the end of town halls and get us there and every year, they've come back with different.

[1:20:11] So this report, the first time I looked at it, I was like, what on earth would we use that measurement for this objective?

[1:20:18] of, you know, any of these, I mean, the EDC, so much work, nothing it was mentioned in

[1:20:24] there about two suit and the new buildings, but these are the metrics that a year ago

[1:20:29] we asked our leadership to come back with. And that's part of this as we look at it. Well,

[1:20:35] yeah, well, maybe there's another thing that could better reflect that. I mean, I've got,

[1:20:40] I keep attendance at every council meeting. And I marked down attendees and then I also

[1:20:48] So subtract staff because there are nights when we have 11 people here and 10 of them are here to give reports.

[1:20:53] So I can do a citizen, but with all the scout troops and the youth groups that have been here and the Izzy groups from Irondale, there's no doubt there are more bodies that come into this hall on Tuesday nights at council meetings in 2017 and there were in 2014 and I could back that up if I had a couple hours to plug those into my end of an Excel spreadsheet.

[1:21:18] So, this is, as I think you just said, cost member Jacobson, this is what it is.

[1:21:27] But is there a way to put an addendum in there that says, here's other things that have

[1:21:36] happened over this last year?

[1:21:38] I think you put it in the commentary.

[1:21:40] I really think that this is where, you know, interpretation, I think, so, for me, that's

[1:21:46] I think what I would do, I would say the interpretation that we've, you know, derived that this is we see while these two measures are similar, they don't take into account, the other things that we have, and that's exactly what you do here is you put it in the interpretation response, one of the two, but probably an interpretation just to say there's more here than meets the eye.

[1:22:04] X number of people attended that that's exact meeting X number of people attended the two separate as a plan meetings

[1:22:12] And you put right in with that in the neighborhood

[1:22:14] Track of what happened at stock your days as examples of other things other

[1:22:22] I'll meet you easily add that in and bring this back and just have it on your

[1:22:27] Consent agenda or approval at a future council meeting

[1:22:32] to illustrate all of those things that you've talked about

[1:22:35] of taking some notes.

[1:22:36] Okay.

[1:22:37] Are you all conscious member?

[1:22:38] So this is very, this is a, I'm going to throw this out.

[1:22:43] Town Hall meeting.

[1:22:44] Let's say we don't get an accurate reflection by counting comments.

[1:22:49] So instead we have a ticket, you know, we have a tear off ticket and you give them everyone

[1:22:53] that walks in the door.

[1:22:54] It's a ticket.

[1:22:55] The other ticket they can throw in and maybe they're going to win two months, two

[1:23:00] three month paths for the community center or something and the other one goes for picking

[1:23:04] up their donut because more people are there during the donuts and they just throw it

[1:23:09] in and you grab one and maybe it'll double but it would be more people that are there

[1:23:14] in the first two hours. They come in late, they might not be there at the beginning, they

[1:23:19] leave before lunch. So you get 48 people that eat a box lunch but you might have 100 people

[1:23:24] that had a donut and then a name drawing and they might there's an incentive to do it because

[1:23:28] maybe we throw in something like one of those fleece jackets and extra fleece jacket that

[1:23:33] we have here or something or a little package a new bright and stuff that's pens and fleece jacket

[1:23:39] and an umbrella that's sitting in a corner somewhere from other years and this is the basket you're

[1:23:44] going to get your names in the bed you just fill it out and put it in there and that could be you win

[1:23:48] the lost and found at the community that are there and just say hey if we had some drawing

[1:23:56] stuff that we could do. Could you guys have anything that's there, too, that we could pick out a little drawing thing and do

[1:24:03] Periodically throughout the day. You'd catch all the people that don't stay all the way

[1:24:07] Yeah, it's a better reflection you're actually right something. Yeah, but I think it's a great challenge to the people who organize that event

[1:24:15] Who see if there's a better way for us to count and reflect who's who's spare in attendance?

[1:24:22] Well, like another pitching one that does come around that we as a city give out free eagles and

[1:24:29] ass passes to parents who show up for that because again that group is wildly, wildly underrepresented at Saturday morning at nine o'clock.

[1:24:38] And, you know, some additional touch of trucks in the parking lot, if it's not a rainy day, if it is a rainy day will be good, but, you know, to get some

[1:24:49] some broader representation, there's probably some things that could be done to try to promote

[1:24:56] it to a younger audience as well.

[1:25:01] In addition to those who have come.

[1:25:04] Or measure how many times people viewed it online.

[1:25:07] Some people don't come, they just take a look online, that could be part of that measurement

[1:25:12] too.

[1:25:13] Were you going to say something?

[1:25:14] Yeah, or maybe, and not to say it's not always good,

[1:25:18] but maybe we can have a different agenda

[1:25:21] that makes people want to call more.

[1:25:24] You know, instead of kind of the same,

[1:25:26] we,

[1:25:29] I don't want to call it the same,

[1:25:32] but it's kind of the same.

[1:25:34] And maybe we could do different issues,

[1:25:36] driven things, or maybe we could do something

[1:25:38] that's, we'll make somebody come,

[1:25:42] it, not make them come,

[1:25:44] but want, you know, so they want to come to these things and I don't know, but it just

[1:25:51] seems like I think if some people think, well, I've went to one, I was kind of the same,

[1:25:55] you know, there's not really much to it anymore.

[1:25:58] So I don't really know.

[1:26:00] I think we could almost make that, I don't know what that little fill out thing says, does

[1:26:06] it say, what would you like to see next year, what would you, do we do say that on that?

[1:26:12] I don't know that we come out and specifically ask that.

[1:26:14] I think it specifically will say, you know, like if there's three sessions, three of the

[1:26:18] five questions will be, how would you rate, you know, session one, two, and three?

[1:26:23] You know what I mean?

[1:26:24] Do you say, hey, what would you like to see us talk about next year, what would you like to

[1:26:28] I just don't remember.

[1:26:30] We ask if you would like to be a participant, like, vendor in the next year's one.

[1:26:34] So that's our future oriented question, you know?

[1:26:36] But topical.

[1:26:37] No topical.

[1:26:38] So some people just voluntarily make suggestions because they do have an opportunity to write, but, you know, to your point, maybe we could do a more overt or better job of soliciting ideas, you know.

[1:26:56] So that's a really good point because a few years ago you did that for our neighborhood

[1:27:01] meetings and you had someone come and talk about snow plowing and you took, and I think

[1:27:06] you went right to the staff and you had the staff, the people I'm talking about that just

[1:27:10] due to the day-to-day work stuff that aren't supervisors and don't ever want to be.

[1:27:15] They could even be asked, what's the topic that you think, I mean it might be a survey within

[1:27:21] our staff. What's a topic that could be a good conversation at our town hall meeting

[1:27:26] and you never know what you're going to hear. Ultimately you have to make a decision

[1:27:31] how you put it together but finding things that have us will bring a group of younger

[1:27:39] families there and you know more interest. I mean that's the challenge to do this every

[1:27:45] year. So that's your challenge. It's a good one. Because we have so much to offer.

[1:27:51] Yeah, you know, one of my thoughts had been in the past when we did do neighborhood meetings or more neighborhood meetings, you know, I think we always felt like we wanted to treat those respective neighborhoods the same and therefore they got the same program.

[1:28:08] And it's not that big of a city, you know, I mean, maybe we at one of the neighborhood centers, it's a very park program in centric presentation.

[1:28:18] You know, everything you, and maybe the overall program is called everything you wanted

[1:28:23] to know, but we're afraid to ask about your city.

[1:28:26] And the first one is just park centric and try to really, maybe that would maybe directly

[1:28:32] tie out to that one metric that shows people, people's involvement in our actual programs

[1:28:37] is lower than the region or the national.

[1:28:40] Maybe that's a way to get at that is just to, you know, that's at Hanson.

[1:28:44] And then freedom is something else.

[1:28:48] It pertains to whatever we would want to,

[1:28:51] but pick a topic, streets, maybe another one's water.

[1:28:55] And that's all it's focused on.

[1:28:56] And so it's not three hours, it's shorter.

[1:28:58] Because I honestly think that was always

[1:29:00] one of the goals I tried to achieve, too,

[1:29:03] was I don't think people want to sit there for three hours now.

[1:29:06] I really don't think they want to sit there for two hours.

[1:29:10] And in the past, we've talked about finance

[1:29:14] We've talked about the exchange development because when we didn't, when we stopped talking about Northwest Quadrant, we heard from people saying,

[1:29:23] don't stop talking about that now, you're trying to avoid talking about it.

[1:29:28] And so we'd bring it back. So that was very direct feedback that we got for a number of years from people.

[1:29:34] And so we responded and then we always kept that as part of our town hall agenda for a period of time in our neighborhood needs.

[1:29:40] we couldn't get away from it because people wouldn't let us but maybe that's

[1:29:45] one thought would be you know if we did I'm not promoting more night meetings

[1:29:50] for everyone but if there were instead of having the same replay of the same

[1:29:56] three to five topics at Hanson Freedom Totem and Sonny

[1:30:00] May be you target it, so then the folks that are interested with young kids that want to get involved in programming, they just go to that one. So 45-minute program with Q&A on your way after that. And I think possibly we would see more involvement if the time commitment is shorter. I mean, we're hearing that so much in so many ways that people just don't have the time.

[1:30:29] So, moms and dads with kids are never going to come on a weeknight, they got homework and they got kids in bed.

[1:30:35] And you touched on that it got so long. I mean, you feel it when the room starts going like this.

[1:30:41] And it's like, okay, wind it up now and somebody's still up their yak and not even because they got to get through their presentation, not reading the crowd.

[1:30:49] So maybe the park program thing is that the community center on a afternoon, you know, Saturday afternoon, I mean everybody's busy all the time.

[1:31:01] Yeah, to your point, Madam Mayor, to your point when you talked about staff who do the service making the presentation that was.

[1:31:10] I saw that early on when I first started working for the city back when I and Kran was still in our public works department.

[1:31:16] that was one of the first neighborhood meetings I attended and I don't think the title of his

[1:31:21] presentation was quite this blatant but it was something along the lines of you know why we

[1:31:27] knock your mailbox over in the wintertime snowplowing and and it was a really profound moment

[1:31:33] for a completely unintended reason and that's because when I in walked up there of course you know

[1:31:38] plot truck drivers in our maintenance shop aren't necessarily out there speaking on a regular basis

[1:31:46] and so I and walks up there and he was a big guy you know big stature and I remember when he

[1:31:52] turned around and he looked at all the folks staring back at him he froze and you know he got

[1:31:59] a dry throat and he couldn't speak and I got up and I started walking and once I got halfway

[1:32:07] up there because I was going to try to rescue him. He just simply had a very authentic moment with

[1:32:13] residents and he said, I don't public speak and I'm frightened. And like everyone

[1:32:20] all of a sudden just be like became his biggest fan and it was such a successful

[1:32:25] presentation because you know he took this topic of why do we knock your mailbox

[1:32:30] over in the winter time. It's something everyone gripes about or they get their

[1:32:34] sod torn up or whatever the case might be and it humanized that and you realize

[1:32:38] there's like real human being behind the wheel of that truck that probably has

[1:32:44] worked many hours sometimes at night. If you've ever been in one of those trucks

[1:32:48] at night, it's really snowing and those strobes are going. They're bouncing off

[1:32:52] the flakes and they're reflecting off the snow and coming back at you. It's a

[1:32:56] very exhausting thing to do. And you know if you get out of one snow removal and

[1:33:03] you've only hit one mailbox, that's a moral victory. Can you do it all night? You've

[1:33:08] just been up all day, hopefully slept a couple hours

[1:33:10] before he came in at two in the morning.

[1:33:12] Right, right.

[1:33:14] So it's a big deal.

[1:33:15] So I mean, there's validity in all those comments,

[1:33:19] but I'm open to any kind of suggestions about agendas,

[1:33:24] approach to agendas, the town hall agenda,

[1:33:26] what that looks like.

[1:33:29] Yeah, and I think we've kind of gotten off course here,

[1:33:33] but it's been a good discussion

[1:33:36] And maybe this is something that we concentrate on prior to the next town hall meeting or maybe put it on a work session so that we can specifically dive into it.

[1:33:47] But why don't we move on and see if there's any other comments about this particular presentation at this time.

[1:33:55] And I'm not trying to cut anybody short because it is a good conversation, but I do want to be respectful of the time that we've got going here.

[1:34:05] anybody have any other concerns about this particular presentation? Devin, you did a great

[1:34:13] job for the first time around. And the week that Dean was gone, there was a lot going

[1:34:19] on in the city. And when I heard that after the fact that he had also told you this, I feel

[1:34:25] bad now for some of the things that were going on.

[1:34:27] It's fun.

[1:34:29] So, but I think it's all good news for the most part.

[1:34:34] It's all really good news that we should all be very, very proud of, and it just goes

[1:34:40] to show you how well run this city is.

[1:34:46] Can I just add to that, Devin?

[1:34:49] I think it should be recognized that there was an issue and that was needed to call the council

[1:34:56] members and I just want to say I appreciate Devin's phone call and the way he handled

[1:35:01] the situation at the time, I think he did a great job at that so I just knew I didn't

[1:35:06] know he should be recognized for that like we're done.

[1:35:08] That's great.

[1:35:09] That's good.

[1:35:10] Yeah we did talk a little bit about that the last council meeting too in the work session

[1:35:14] and I agree.

[1:35:17] Thank you for making that note.

[1:35:21] And that wasn't the only thing that happened.

[1:35:23] No.

[1:35:23] Yeah, we can't go into the other things on camera, but there was a couple of other things

[1:35:30] that did require him to hold it together until I got back and we could formulate a game

[1:35:36] plan.

[1:35:36] And he's still working here, so it's a good thing.

[1:35:38] He made it.

[1:35:39] It's a good confidence folder.

[1:35:42] Well, you became my best friend that week.

[1:35:44] So at any rate?

[1:35:46] I want them before.

[1:35:47] Oh, yeah.

[1:35:48] Before.

[1:35:50] I wanted to break that to you at the six-month anniversary.

[1:35:53] So very good, but great presentation.

[1:35:57] Thank you to your staff for putting that together.

[1:36:00] And let's make those additions on the community engagement

[1:36:04] one and then in January.

[1:36:08] I would suggest that whomever is sitting around the table

[1:36:12] is taking a look at how we measure that going forward.

[1:36:16] Can I ask a random question that maybe manage a lot

[1:36:18] or a system-manager, MassPoo would look for when I'm looking

[1:36:23] Having a granticus, we have shared folders for the commissions and then there was kind

[1:36:28] of a common, I guess, common folder for it.

[1:36:31] And they used to percolate at the top and then they're kind of way down.

[1:36:36] I ask for two reasons, the one I think that the common, I personally like when the common

[1:36:40] folders are up at the top so I can plug in and see what practice doing or EDC is doing,

[1:36:46] or at least what the common folders were, but then secondly, within the council common folder

[1:36:51] or I'm not sure I was able to find the final version

[1:36:54] of the community survey that was talked about

[1:36:59] at the town hall in April.

[1:37:02] And I know there was a draft on there

[1:37:04] that I'm not positive the final one was on there.

[1:37:07] Because I was looking at these KPIs

[1:37:10] and kind of what measures we had, I'd love to see

[1:37:15] if number one, if it makes, if it's not hard work

[1:37:18] to get those common folders,

[1:37:20] is percolate a state at the top of the list.

[1:37:23] It's a manual maintenance thing,

[1:37:25] just because of the way the software is,

[1:37:27] we've actually asked Granicus to try to write some language

[1:37:31] that we could demarcate certain folders

[1:37:33] to always just stay at the top.

[1:37:35] But what happens is every time a new packet gets loaded,

[1:37:38] whether it's planning commissioner council,

[1:37:40] it goes up on top.

[1:37:42] And so the person doing that has to be cognizantly

[1:37:46] move those common folders up.

[1:37:47] So it's a it's a small manual effort. It's not a big time consumer. It's just at least it probably doesn't know to do that

[1:37:54] And so we can communicate that with it. I want to say thank you because I think I asked in that question all the time

[1:38:00] But never remember to do it when I see you guys in person. Yeah, always I was

[1:38:04] The common folders. Those kind of folders are helpful really help folks there. Yeah

[1:38:12] But yeah, it's it can be done. It'll be done. Thank you

[1:38:19] So shall we move on to the second topic tonight, which is a continuation of our discussion

[1:38:29] about the, again, there's not really a name, but an inclusive task force or a,

[1:38:41] but you

[1:38:41] know what I'm talking about, community relations task force, whatever the case might be.

[1:38:45] So we brought this idea up to you and what was it two weeks ago now at the work session

[1:38:53] that we held upstairs.

[1:38:56] One of the things that was of concern was selecting the people to be on this task force

[1:39:05] and I met with City Manager Lotter yesterday and we talked about that a little bit.

[1:39:14] You guys have had a couple of weeks to think about it and I'd like to, let me turn it over to you

[1:39:21] City manager lotter to

[1:39:23] Take it from there because I know you put together some stuff on it and let's have a discussion

[1:39:29] so

[1:39:31] You know, we're I think what we originally talked about Madam Mayor was the

[1:39:35] Resolution that would actually create the set task force was supposed to be on the last meeting in September

[1:39:41] Just simply due to timing and other circumstances that wasn't able to happen so that'll be on the October 10th agenda for your consideration at that time.

[1:39:54] One of the things that I had hoped to do because we did identify some folks that could serve well on the task force and the resolution creating a task force would basically make that task force kind of a temporary body.

[1:40:10] that would look at several different things.

[1:40:13] One of those things is the need for a more longer standing commission.

[1:40:19] Okay.

[1:40:20] And so in an effort to move the task force conversation forward,

[1:40:26] it was suggested at least the last for the initial discussion that was

[1:40:30] had with the council that the, I'm calling it the founding committee

[1:40:37] is the mayor and I, some city staff and some residents who have begun these conversations.

[1:40:43] So I'm kind of calling them the founding committee of this task force.

[1:40:48] Some of those members have each suggested folks they know in the community that they think would make excellent task force members.

[1:40:55] And so one of the things that I really wanted to do for today was have reached out to each and every one of these folks.

[1:41:04] and we were going to modify our commission application packet to have a task force box on there and then have these folks actually put down their background just like the council expects for commission applicants.

[1:41:19] I was hoping to be able to accomplish that and bring that into you so you could look at those pack application packets then decide do you want to bring these folks into and interview them at a future council meeting.

[1:41:30] just to kind of give you that familiarity and that opportunity to put your

[1:41:35] fingerprint on the membership and I just I wasn't able to achieve that with

[1:41:41] our with beat on vacation and then coming back and focusing my time on some

[1:41:46] other things I popped up last week. So having said that I do have a list of

[1:41:50] folks and for example there's Sam Kuru and Cassandra Schlangen their

[1:41:59] or educators within the school district

[1:42:00] that we feel in the discussions

[1:42:03] that this neighborhood group has had

[1:42:04] that having a connection,

[1:42:06] more hard-line connection with the school district

[1:42:08] makes a lot of sense.

[1:42:11] And so maybe one of those individuals

[1:42:13] or both of them,

[1:42:16] Abdallah Qadid,

[1:42:17] who is the owner and operator of Unigato,

[1:42:20] also firefighter, personal color,

[1:42:23] and would be a representative business community

[1:42:27] in that respect.

[1:42:28] Claudia Valdez. She is a current resident of ours. She's Latina, lives in Oak Grove,

[1:42:35] and she's a police explorer. And so you'd get the kind of that younger perspective,

[1:42:42] person of color, both Tony, director of pacenic, and our community engagement offer.

[1:42:48] Officer Brandt Krabzbach can't say enough good things about Miss Valdez.

[1:42:53] And she was a great support when I was working with the folks at Oak Grove.

[1:43:00] She's dynamite.

[1:43:05] So another person that is recommended or has been recommended for consideration is one

[1:43:11] of our current planning commissioners and she's in the audience answering fine weaver resident

[1:43:16] writer, educator has a wonderfully applicable background.

[1:43:21] background. Another resident of ours recommended an individual named Wakan Anderson. I've not

[1:43:26] met him and I don't know what his background is. I can't speak to what that is. And then

[1:43:33] another person that has been meeting with us regularly is, I think it's Anna Viserra, who's

[1:43:40] a pastor at Christy King Church and leads up their Hispanic community kind of liaison relationship

[1:43:48] with that church. So you also have a faith-based arm, you've got a business arm, there's an

[1:43:56] educational arm, there's kind of a young person, a member of our community arm. And so that's

[1:44:03] kind of the initial group that was suggested, and if you'd like, I can pursue all of these

[1:44:09] individuals, have them fill out application packets, upload those into the files that will be

[1:44:15] raised up to the top of the iPad for your consideration, and then if you'd like to schedule

[1:44:20] them maybe to come in at a very soon work session.

[1:44:25] And if you all have suggestions on people who should be a part of this task force, we

[1:44:32] don't have a, well, I've not met Joaquin.

[1:44:36] I don't know if he's Caucasian, African-American, I don't know anything about him, but we don't

[1:44:43] have a strong African American presence on that task force as it stands right now.

[1:44:50] So if there are other suggestions of people that you think should be considered, let's

[1:44:55] them on a, let's have the conversation with them, let's get them.

[1:45:00] I'd like to fill out an application to and consider them for the task force, but I'd like to move on that sooner rather than later.

[1:45:11] Sounds good. Thoughts? Is there a question? Please. Is Dr. Howard that came to our last councilman? Is that George's dad? I wondered the same thing. Councilman, we're very good. No. No, I've met George's dad before. Yeah, I have to. Yeah, however, I, you know.

[1:45:28] No, we have an address he gave it to a committee.

[1:45:33] It's rather a forward cracker.

[1:45:35] You know, I could certainly reach out to them.

[1:45:38] Please.

[1:45:39] I have a question about the whole thing.

[1:45:43] One, will this task force determine the purpose?

[1:45:48] Yes.

[1:45:48] Okay.

[1:45:49] At least that's what I envision.

[1:45:51] That they would determine the purpose of a commission going forward.

[1:45:59] It makes some recommendations, I think Madam Mayor, you know, one of the things that I look back upon or reflect upon is when I look at the urban farming task force, for example, you know, the very first meeting was just kind of a housekeeping, get to know you establish who's chair, take care of that stuff and then lay out the calendar.

[1:46:16] And then the second meeting was to study at least what was known to the city at that time about the issue.

[1:46:23] I think the third meeting, there was a listening session, there was a three and a half hour

[1:46:27] of public hearing on the topic, and so I could easily see something similar to that approach

[1:46:33] being used by this particular task force, and part of the question is, you know, is there

[1:46:39] a need for the outreach or not, and that would be one of the things the task force would

[1:46:46] try to explore and bring back.

[1:46:49] So that's I think over time originally I think the conversation was to establish a

[1:46:54] commission of some kind and this founders committee kind of moved more in the

[1:46:58] direction of a task force because we're recognizing we don't know what we

[1:47:03] don't know and we go and have the conversation ask these folks to help us have the

[1:47:09] conversation with the four corners of the city and then determine are there

[1:47:13] things that we should be doing or it's everything great and you know could

[1:47:20] simply be that we find out people just simply want more about community

[1:47:25] sense of place opportunity to interact and that becomes the focus of the

[1:47:30] effort it could potentially take a direction we don't even anticipate so I see

[1:47:35] it as more of an exploratory task force that might exist six months that would

[1:47:41] look at these questions and in the event they're making good ground but they need more times they'd have to come back to the council and make that ask.

[1:47:50] Make that ask or we set up a commission that then moves forward on various issues I think identified.

[1:48:03] One of the things I would, I'm already moving forward beyond, one of the things that I would say their task would be is community engagement.

[1:48:14] If we're having them look into it, is that a piece that we need to address?

[1:48:18] Absolutely.

[1:48:20] So that would be, I mean, I, I'm very supportive of having a task force to look into these kinds of needs,

[1:48:29] as I mentioned, I don't know if it was in the room, I don't think you're here yet, Mayor,

[1:48:33] that I had two unsolicited, two folks were you and you and I said, yeah, but I don't think

[1:48:38] we run.

[1:48:39] I won't start.

[1:48:40] Today on my job and I work in a very diverse community and I had two different people come

[1:48:46] up to me and talk to me or casually we were just talking and they brought up that in their

[1:48:50] communities they're doing this sort of thing and then I also have a dear coworker that

[1:48:57] that has was a refugee and has been through trauma

[1:49:00] and she's actually, you know, a Ph.D. level person.

[1:49:03] She's going to school for that and she's a supervisor

[1:49:06] and she's living in fear of being departed

[1:49:08] and she's a naturalized citizen

[1:49:10] and she's having all kinds of issues

[1:49:14] with like she took herself off Facebook

[1:49:16] because she's afraid of being on Facebook.

[1:49:19] And I think, I sat with her and I said,

[1:49:23] I can't relate to that.

[1:49:24] I'm sorry you're feeling that way.

[1:49:25] Okay, I think that's one of the things we could learn about.

[1:49:29] I work in a very, very diverse area, so I know that my family members don't get the same

[1:49:35] exposure I do to the diversity, and I think it would be beneficial to them.

[1:49:39] So I think I support having a person like that.

[1:49:43] Thank you for that comment, and I think from a public safety point of view, we don't understand

[1:49:48] necessarily, we being a council don't understand necessarily what the needs are from a citizen

[1:49:56] point of view. I think there's a great connection between public safety and our diverse

[1:50:05] community, but they don't want to wear this wrong, but the kind of public safety takes care

[1:50:14] of what's in front of them and is not necessarily coming back to the City Council and saying,

[1:50:21] okay, here's what this community is saying that they need.

[1:50:24] And they take care of it from their perspective and maybe there's something that would come

[1:50:30] back and say, okay, here's what this community needs and we can help them in our parks area

[1:50:35] or we could help them in different areas in economic development as an example.

[1:50:45] It's such a sensitive topic because nobody wants to say the wrong thing.

[1:50:52] And we as nice people don't want to say the wrong thing, and we also think that everything

[1:51:00] is okay because we're not necessarily hearing about it.

[1:51:04] But I want to be proactive and I want to set up a task force that goes out and purposely

[1:51:09] they've looked for ways that we can engage the entire community at ways that they want

[1:51:16] to be engaged.

[1:51:18] One of the things I've learned is that I was interested in doing this because I'm not

[1:51:27] seeing that diversity when I go up to the exchange or adagios or the eagles or church or

[1:51:34] wherever.

[1:51:34] I'm not just I'm not seeing that diversity and so I'm judging the community based on that

[1:51:41] whereas people don't necessarily it's not bad that they don't want to engage

[1:51:48] outside of their little neighborhoods you know and so when we set up this task force

[1:51:55] I think one of the things we'll learn is that in some cases we have to go and meet people on their

[1:51:59] turf. You know, and I'll use my friends at Oak Grove now as an example. It wasn't, they weren't

[1:52:07] going to come to City Hall. But when City Hall came to them, oh my gosh, the things I learned and the

[1:52:15] improvements that I think that they're going to feel is amazing. But I just assume that people pick up

[1:52:26] fall in call city hall or write something on Facebook when they're disgruntled and go from there.

[1:52:30] No, they don't have the same culture.

[1:52:32] They don't have the same culture.

[1:52:33] So I think this is going to be a real eye-opener for not only myself, but the entire community.

[1:52:43] And as I mentioned last week, one of the real benefits was for me after having this group meeting

[1:52:50] at Oak Grove and meeting ownership and our residents is that the residents invited me

[1:52:59] to a meal. And I got to experience getting to know a whole new group of folks that I might

[1:53:05] not have normally interacted with. And now I'm going to look at that area and I'm not

[1:53:11] going to drive by. I'm going to drive in and enjoy the friendships that I've made.

[1:53:19] And

[1:53:20] And we can create that kind of environment for all of our citizens so that if they feel

[1:53:25] like they want to go into Oak Grove or go to a national night out party with the people

[1:53:33] at Garden View, no, what's done by you?

[1:53:36] Is it Garden View?

[1:53:37] No, but on Southern Strait?

[1:53:40] Yeah, okay.

[1:53:41] I used to live there.

[1:53:42] Field Polly?

[1:53:42] Yeah.

[1:53:43] It's Garden View states.

[1:53:44] Okay.

[1:53:45] There's another garden, something, an old 8 that I used to live in.

[1:53:49] But you know, if they want to go into that neighborhood and enjoy the festivities that are going on there because their kids go to school together, but we don't bring them into interact.

[1:54:01] Gosh, let's take down those barriers and make everybody feel welcome.

[1:54:09] I would say one last thing and then I'll be quiet, but all of our surveys show that

[1:54:19] New Brighton is a great place to live, it's a great place to work.

[1:54:24] We have a great park systems, I mean we just went through this whole exercise where it

[1:54:28] showed how great we are, and there's a reason people live here.

[1:54:33] Let's share that greatness with everybody.

[1:54:37] So, I'm proud of the city. I'm so proud of the city. And I want to make sure everybody

[1:54:42] who's living here has that chance to feel proud of their city. And the folks in Oak Grove,

[1:54:47] man, they can't say enough good things about New Brighton.

[1:54:52] They talk about, yeah, somebody,

[1:54:54] the police came by and they took us away or they stopped us. And I'd look at them and say,

[1:54:58] the New Brighton police? And they go, no, those guys are fine. It's, you know, other people.

[1:55:03] It's Ranzi County, it's other people, so anyway, I'm done, I appreciate Council Member Berg's support here.

[1:55:11] I think that we'll have an opportunity if we move forward with this to learn a lot and

[1:55:20] offer our own support and our own ideas and different things that we'd like to see.

[1:55:24] I've been vocal, Council Member Jacobin, what are you thinking?

[1:55:28] I think it's a tough spot to be, and I think it's not weird that other communities are struggling,

[1:55:36] struggling with identifying what it is and how you're going to put something together too.

[1:55:40] I don't know that we're going to be able to get a six-month task force and figure out what other groups have not figured out either.

[1:55:47] My concern is that we're going to focus on just a couple of communities, and that's not what New Brighton is.

[1:55:52] New Brighton is a lot of different communities that fit together.

[1:55:54] I can even just go up and say sunny side is very different from totem part and the patch in neighborhood.

[1:56:00] I can go and say the people on the other side of 35 W that say the wrong side of 35 W, whole different route.

[1:56:07] And I'm not even talking about differences in culture by, you know, defining it by I have to have somebody from Oak Grove.

[1:56:15] I'm talking about we haven't even engaged in getting these separate entities together other than to do one meeting in Vermont.

[1:56:21] And so I do think there's a lot of different parts that could fold into this that are very different.

[1:56:28] Will it need a commission, and at this point in time, I'd probably say I'm not so sure

[1:56:33] would need a commission, a task force, a cool idea.

[1:56:36] I just don't want us to focus and have some parts of new brighten dictate what might happen

[1:56:43] with other ones we're not engaging.

[1:56:45] And so even defining who is going to be on this task force or what a representative would be

[1:56:50] on the task force, I think, is interesting by itself because I could just say, well, why

[1:56:57] wouldn't we have somebody from Vermont neighborhood on, where they patchy neighborhood, or, you

[1:57:02] know, some of the different neighborhoods, Aspen Glen, why is there anybody from Aspen

[1:57:06] Glen? Those are all different cultural areas that are defined very distinctly by the geography

[1:57:12] and the neighborhoods that they are part of. And they don't have voices. They don't come

[1:57:17] here, I don't think that we get a lot of complaints from the senior high rises we have around the communities and that's a very

[1:57:24] you could say it's an underserved group of people in New Brighton at least they would say that to some extent

[1:57:30] in it we're not doing a senior citizen task force or a senior citizen commission so I think it's just an interesting

[1:57:38] it's well one I believe we have to take and dip our toe into the water either come and play or you don't

[1:57:46] We need to play. I agree that that's true. I just think that the devil's in the details, you know

[1:57:52] We have to figure out what that means and what it means for new brighten and for all the citizens in the brighten

[1:57:58] Not just some components of new brighten, but then we'll try to fold in because I don't think we reach

[1:58:05] all of the new brighten today

[1:58:07] And I think there's groups that are unrepresented today and it has nothing to do with

[1:58:12] just I'm from old Grove. It could be I'm from Vermont and we have underrepresentation.

[1:58:18] So I appreciate your comments. I think, however, that this task force is about engaging

[1:58:30] people of color and it could be, it's about engaging a defined underserved community.

[1:58:46] and your comments about others being underserved,

[1:58:50] then I would suggest and challenge you to do the same thing.

[1:58:56] If you think that there should be a task force for senior citizens,

[1:58:59] then bring it to the council.

[1:59:02] But that's like any city has different pockets.

[1:59:06] If you go into New York City, you have the Italian district.

[1:59:09] You have the, I don't know, I haven't been to it.

[1:59:12] We have 190 different ethnic districts in New York City that

[1:59:16] you're crazy and German but that doesn't mean that they're uncomfortable you know

[1:59:24] it does not mean that the people who live in Vermont or in that the southeast side of

[1:59:31] the city are uncomfortable in their city.

[1:59:33] What I'm trying to make sure is that these people who have identified themselves as being

[1:59:39] uncomfortable in our city are getting a voice. And so, if there are other people who are uncomfortable, then let's get them in here.

[1:59:48] Well, that's what I say. I think the devil's in the details, because defining a task force, unless we really have a very specified. And I think we talked about that last time.

[1:59:58] we'd have to really determine what

[2:00:00] What is the role of the task force? Because it would have to be specific enough, because if it's broad enough, then who am I serving on the task force? Or who is going to be on the task force? Well, I could make a lot of different suggestions. But I think that, you know, for me, it almost, it's crazy. It sounds, it almost goes to public safety. And so you guys already have connections. Tell me who would be from all the different areas, you know, that you work with today. That seems to be, if I brought all the areas together and all the groups together,

[2:00:29] But if that's not the way the task force is going to be formed or set up to be it's going to be more

[2:00:35] distinct than that and more refined than that. And I think we really need to talk about what it really is.

[2:00:42] And who it's going to serve. And if it's for all the people in the Brighton, let's make it in all the people in the Brighton

[2:00:48] Commission. If it's to say no, let's serve the underserved, that even is very different and a very different definition because

[2:00:55] because there's a lot of underserved areas and people groups that we have in the

[2:01:00] break. If it's because I want to give a voice to people who don't have a voice

[2:01:04] together today or feel they don't, then I think we still define what those are.

[2:01:09] But I think that's where the devil's in the details.

[2:01:13] I'll spend a moment. I appreciate your comments.

[2:01:19] I'm a little bit regarding when you said they're going to define what the

[2:01:24] purposes of the task force I think there should be ground rules from us where

[2:01:30] that direction.

[2:01:34] Like I said it's about government where government by here. If

[2:01:39] you want to talk about community that's a whole different subject matter but

[2:01:43] what government is going to how can we maybe relate to more of what's going on in

[2:01:51] the city with different ethnic backgrounds that's fine, but that's on a city level, on

[2:01:57] a community level, that isn't, that isn't us in the sense of what we can do, but if we're

[2:02:07] going to have a task force, I believe it should be inclusive of a lot of people and maybe

[2:02:13] that's what we need to do is meld people together.

[2:02:16] And if we're not melding people together, even within that group.

[2:02:20] Now I work, where I work, I happen to, I always, I always call them highway highs, so I'm,

[2:02:29] I'm walking in a hallway and I always tend to say hi to people and I end up at the

[2:02:34] time he was always, I was with this gentleman all the time and I was going, hey, so finally

[2:02:38] I said, what's your name?

[2:02:39] I always, so his name was Bernard, Bernard lives in Brighton Village just happens to live,

[2:02:44] but he's from somewhere else.

[2:02:46] He is not from here, and he is African-American.

[2:02:51] And so he lives in Brighton Village.

[2:02:54] But I also know in Brighton Village,

[2:02:56] I used to do, and I had my shop.

[2:02:57] I did Kins and Yes.

[2:03:00] There's people from Mexico in that apartment building.

[2:03:05] I know those people.

[2:03:07] They used to come to my home.

[2:03:09] So, it isn't where, personally, you know a lot of people that way.

[2:03:18] To consummate with Jacob from this point, we have to have some type of purpose, or what

[2:03:25] is this purpose, but we have to define it rather than just feeling like we're doing something.

[2:03:31] And I don't see that we're having some type of a,

[2:03:37] to say that these people are going to define

[2:03:39] what this task force is about. I say absolutely not. We need to have some type of input because

[2:03:47] this is the task force we are creating and responsible for in government so I just I think that

[2:03:54] is there um are you part of this group it's city manager part of this group and then you know

[2:04:01] how are we all involved in this in the sense of they're only going to get to know you and him or

[2:04:07] all of us, how is this going to work? So I believe everything would be a posted

[2:04:13] open meeting and that any of us could show up and it would be a posted so it

[2:04:17] wouldn't be an open meeting violation. But this isn't I'm this isn't I'm

[2:04:28] not

[2:04:28] bringing this to the council to say that I'm doing all the work work body and

[2:04:36] You've been very clear with me on that particular situation.

[2:04:40] We're a body of five.

[2:04:43] And I think that what I'm proposing here is getting,

[2:04:52] I think you're

[2:04:58] making it too broad.

[2:04:59] I think you're making it too broad.

[2:05:01] And I think that one of the purpose of this

[2:05:04] is to find out what we don't know.

[2:05:06] And so, when City Manager Lotter says to us, okay, the first meeting might be getting to know you, housekeeping rules, all of that kind of stuff.

[2:05:15] The second meeting might be looking at the demographics of the city, who lives in this city, how many people are African-American, how many people are Latino, or Hispanic descent, and doing this kind of thing.

[2:05:28] And then, if we can engage people throughout the community that will say to us, okay,

[2:05:34] Do you know that this is going on in New Brighton?

[2:05:37] Because you've met Bernard and you've had people in your home and, you know, God bless you

[2:05:44] for that.

[2:05:46] But that doesn't mean you, I don't feel I have a handle on how the racially different

[2:05:56] people than myself feel about New Brighton.

[2:05:59] And that's what I'd like this task force to figure out.

[2:06:02] I'm going to go to you for a esteem because you had your hand up first.

[2:06:08] So the resolution that's being worked on that would be brought forward to Council

[2:06:13] would have has different suggestions on directives that the Council would have for the task force.

[2:06:19] So the point that the Council should be directing the work of the task force would be fundamentally

[2:06:26] reflected in the resolution.

[2:06:27] The resolution would be there for your consideration.

[2:06:30] You may choose to add, subtract, modify.

[2:06:33] So that the resolution is relating your message to this task force.

[2:06:39] But I think that there are maybe two things that are getting a little confused.

[2:06:44] So the task force would be perhaps a multicultural.

[2:06:48] So it's an inclusive community task force is the name that's been used.

[2:06:52] And so there have been suggestions that we haven't even mentioned people with disabilities.

[2:07:00] You know the suggestion Councilmember Jacobson's making is perhaps seniors are 55 and up.

[2:07:06] There might be an opportunity essentially that the task force cultivates because all of

[2:07:15] our residents, all regardless of your ethnicity or your racial makeup or your religious

[2:07:22] police have seniors in your population and have young people in your population.

[2:07:27] I think the idea is generally to reach out in what may almost kind of seem like a

[2:07:34] somewhat fumbly, bumbly, stumbly but full of good intent way to simply find out, do

[2:07:42] people feel connected to City Hall? It's oftentimes been or to the community at

[2:07:48] whole as a whole. I've heard comments or when you look at those who participate in the

[2:07:54] neighborhood meetings and town hall meetings, things of that nature, it's very homogeneous

[2:07:58] and it's very agent. And so for the most part, so I think that you know a lot of times

[2:08:05] just the natural course of activity that cities have historically engaged in are familiar

[2:08:11] to certain sections of our population. New members of our community or people who

[2:08:17] who haven't started out their lives speaking English first don't have that experience and

[2:08:24] they don't have that background, they don't necessarily know much about the city.

[2:08:29] And so one of the things Devon and I was even talking about was with a launch of that

[2:08:33] new newsletter, I didn't want to complicate that discussion too much, but maybe we identified

[2:08:38] the top three, four or five languages that are being spoken in our community and we actually

[2:08:44] to publish the newsletter so that Somali resident can read it in their native language.

[2:08:52] And a Russian resident can read it in their native language and a Spanish-speaking resident

[2:08:56] can read it in their native language.

[2:08:59] And that might be an example of, that's an idea we've already had, but it could be even

[2:09:04] just ideas like that that a task force or ultimately some more formal body comes forward.

[2:09:11] So, I really think that there is an opportunity, once the resolution is being considered to

[2:09:16] maybe have a robust discussion on the direction that's going to give into that task force

[2:09:21] and that will be a council directive, so that, I think, satisfies your concern, the council

[2:09:25] member of Bowman, and frankly, you can add to it, shrink it, you can do whatever you want

[2:09:34] because you are the council.

[2:09:35] And then if in the event that they recommend creating some more formal body, then that's

[2:09:41] going to be up to you because you'll have to adopt an ordinance that enabling an ordinance

[2:09:45] that creates that body and adds it into Section 2 of the colon.

[2:09:50] So there's a lot of opportunities for touches with the council on this.

[2:09:54] And I think that all of those comments or interests can probably be reflected or achieved

[2:09:59] in the discussion.

[2:10:00] By meeting the needs of the group that I've been discussing, does not mean I'm not interested in our age of population.

[2:10:13] It doesn't mean I'm not giving a voice to the people up at sunny side.

[2:10:17] I'm not,

[2:10:20] you know, I'm trying to find a way, I'm

[2:10:26] trying to find a way to not be 1960s.

[2:10:31] The time for this has come, this is right now.

[2:10:35] I mean, just a few years ago I was looking up, again, a Liberian man's body was found

[2:10:40] in Rush Lake and Long Lake Park and our police department went into, now we've got to build

[2:10:50] or enhance our relationships with the Liberian community.

[2:10:54] You know, we all know the tragedy that happened in Falcon Heights, and the time for action is now when there's not a problem.

[2:11:02] The time for action is now when communities of color in this community look at the five of us and say I'm not represented there.

[2:11:11] They look at our police force and say I'm not represented there.

[2:11:14] And they listen to this debate and think, well, you know what, what they need is some more Ukrainians on there.

[2:11:19] maybe we do we have to start this right now and we have to start this as soon as

[2:11:24] possible so that those people that you met in Oak Grove so that the parents that

[2:11:28] I see at Bel Air so that the students at Irondale think that when they

[2:11:33] graduate if they stay in this community that there's a place for them at the

[2:11:37] table we start now and then we build on to it and we learn from it as a body and we

[2:11:42] don't put anything in in ordinance until we've had that learning period but

[2:11:46] At the time starts now, those folks that I speak to that represent communities of color

[2:11:51] are bored of death waiting for us to take some kind of action that makes clear to them

[2:11:57] that there's a welcome man outside this hall.

[2:11:59] We know that it's there.

[2:12:00] It's not that it's not there, but it's not in Spanish.

[2:12:05] It's not in Somali.

[2:12:06] It's not in Russian.

[2:12:09] So let's put it out there and do it now and then learn from it, learn from our mistakes.

[2:12:14] We might make some mistakes, but if we don't put the welcome mat out, we'll continue to get the same results.

[2:12:21] If we talk about this more, we'll lose the inertia that we have at this time, or the folks that you met with.

[2:12:28] The folks that are in this community want to know, is there a place for somebody like me at the table?

[2:12:35] I think you, Councilmember Strueb, this morning, when I was talking to my friend from Latin

[2:12:43] America, and she said, well, she said a lot of things and maybe I shouldn't say it right

[2:12:49] now.

[2:12:49] But I encourage somebody that was Latino to get active in our community running for City

[2:12:56] Council some years ago, and he said there's the inclusivity isn't there, and I said, well,

[2:13:02] Well, you know, look at the people, okay, we all have white privilege.

[2:13:06] We don't know what it's like to not have it because we do.

[2:13:10] We go everywhere and we're just, we have that.

[2:13:12] We don't know the difference.

[2:13:13] We don't know what it's like to not have it.

[2:13:15] And I said, we can't do what, look at who's up here.

[2:13:19] We can't move forward as all of being people of white privilege.

[2:13:23] We can't because we don't know the difference of not having it.

[2:13:26] By talking to people or having people that have the other experience and find out what is

[2:13:31] it that we can do to change our community to make it more inclusive would be the reason

[2:13:36] would be the purpose.

[2:13:37] But I would ask please tell us what we want to, what is it that we have to accomplish

[2:13:42] to make our community more diverse and more, not more diverse, we have a diverse community.

[2:13:47] How can we make our diverse community more inclusive?

[2:13:51] I have ideas, I can't do it unless we all work together, all work together.

[2:13:57] I'm not just talking about this little group of half a dozen people that have come from

[2:14:03] Northern Europe, you know, and we can't raise you.

[2:14:06] So I think this is critically important, and I think your point of the young people

[2:14:10] that are going through our schools to stay in our community and feel welcome.

[2:14:16] It's just exactly what we need to do.

[2:14:20] And there's not going to be any disadvantage in this.

[2:14:22] There's no disadvantage. There's only a disadvantage in not taking advantage of this opportunity. That's what I think.

[2:14:30] Madam Mayor, I hope Council Member Bowman's friend from her work might be interested in this as well.

[2:14:35] And if she can contact our city folks or extend an invitation, there should be a likely room at the table.

[2:14:43] You can't kind of remember, Bob?

[2:14:46] Yeah.

[2:14:47] I resent what you just said.

[2:14:49] I mean, because I'm white,

[2:14:53] you think I was privileged my whole life?

[2:14:55] Are you kidding?

[2:14:56] I grew up in an Italian neighborhood when they came here.

[2:15:00] They didn't speak English, but they were treated very well, and that's why they lived in the neighborhood they lived in. I grew up that way. However, you grew up knowing that, but you never treat people differently because of their skin color, and I would never pander to somebody because of it. But I resent that you think that I had white privilege. I didn't come from...

[2:15:28] I understand what you're saying, but maybe they get treated differently, but I, you want

[2:15:34] to know what I work for somebody from South America, from Holland, from everywhere, everybody

[2:15:42] I work for or with is usually from another country.

[2:15:46] And they say to me, here's what they say, is we as Americans don't realize, and it doesn't

[2:15:52] matter what color we are as Americans, because I believe we are all Americans, is that we are

[2:15:57] privileged to just live here. So and they we don't realize how privileged we are but we want to

[2:16:04] make these differences half the time and they said we're just happy to be here because you don't

[2:16:10] want to live in some of our countries. So I totally 100% agree with you. So I don't want to

[2:16:17] think that this body doesn't feel that they can't represent people because they're white.

[2:16:24] And that again to me is just saying, I'm different because of color. No, I might be different

[2:16:31] because of culture, because of tradition. But those are the things that I think I always

[2:16:37] ask when I, because I work with these people, I ask about their country, I ask about their

[2:16:42] families, I ask how it is, how they feel about America, all of that. That's how you get

[2:16:48] to know somebody. That's how you get to understand where they come from and where their opinions

[2:16:53] comes from. But I don't think you can make such a broad brush and say that we've all been privileged

[2:16:59] or that we don't understand because we're white. No one can live in, so European people, you're

[2:17:09] kind of, so the gentleman that I know is Dodge that I worked for, I think he would disagree with you

[2:17:15] that his culture is different, but he's living here. Indonesia, there's a lot of people

[2:17:23] that I work with, that would probably disagree

[2:17:25] with some of what we've said.

[2:17:27] Can I quantify or clarify what I meant?

[2:17:30] Yes, please.

[2:17:32] The reference to being white privilege

[2:17:34] means that if you were not, if you walked in,

[2:17:38] if you were of color and you walked into a place,

[2:17:41] somebody might, a person you could walk by

[2:17:47] and they'd be like this, but somebody of color go by

[2:17:49] and they go like this, that's the difference

[2:17:51] because it just does happen and we can't really relate to it, so I'm not saying that because

[2:17:59] I think I'm an open person too and I believe you when you say that, I feel that probably

[2:18:05] all of us sitting at this table want to be, I know each and every one of you were really

[2:18:11] good people, but we don't have all of our community feeling comfortable with us.

[2:18:17] And so I want to bring those folks that don't maybe feel comfortable in our community forward to feel comfortable to stay here and live here.

[2:18:25] That's what I mean by that. That's what the reference is.

[2:18:27] And it's not to offend anyone, but it's a matter of something that people live with.

[2:18:37] You, um, does anybody else want to say anything to this first?

[2:18:48] You are the exact reason we need this, this commission.

[2:18:53] If you don't understand the white privilege, then you are not representing those people.

[2:18:58] You're not willing to listen to them.

[2:19:04] And what you have just said is the most racist excuse me.

[2:19:12] Don't you ever, ever accuse me of that.

[2:19:16] You have no basis to say something like that in public and no basis to say something like

[2:19:23] that.

[2:19:24] Then let me, let me rephrase it.

[2:19:26] That statement was one of the most racist things I've ever heard.

[2:19:29] What statement?

[2:19:30] That you, that you are offended by the fact that you're not feeling the white privilege thing.

[2:19:36] weight privilege exists and it is something that we need to accept in this

[2:19:45] country and you're interrupting me and by the way I'm running on camera I'm

[2:19:53] running this is in me of something pretty big here I yep it's unacceptable

[2:19:57] because you have no case you're out of order you're out of order no I have basis

[2:20:04] is for it based on what you just said.

[2:20:06] No, you don't.

[2:20:07] Well, because you said hi to Bernard.

[2:20:09] You understand?

[2:20:11] Oh, excuse me, I work with the,

[2:20:12] I probably know many more people of color than you do.

[2:20:16] And I work with them.

[2:20:17] So I do not want to have this argument with you.

[2:20:20] But you are out of order and you're out of line.

[2:20:23] OK, fine.

[2:20:24] Let me just say this, that the discussion I just heard now

[2:20:29] makes me so angry.

[2:20:30] I'm shaking. You refuse to understand how other people in this community feel.

[2:20:46] How do you? You refuse. How do I refuse? Because you're obviously not going to support

[2:20:51] this. You're obviously not going to support this. And what you're doing, you don't know what

[2:20:57] I'm going to support. But I have a quick interrupting me. You're accusing me of things

[2:21:03] that are going to quit interrupting me. I'm going to finish my statement. What I heard

[2:21:08] was a racist statement. What I heard was a racist statement. No,

[2:21:16] you're just crediting.

[2:21:25] I'm passionate about this. I'm so passionate about hearing all sides of the story. And for

[2:21:32] For you to disregard the fact that white privilege exists is beyond me,

[2:21:43] I'm going to let you

[2:21:44] go in and I'm going to excuse myself for two minutes.

[2:21:48] Minute-minute members of the council, so I think just by virtue of the past 10 to 15 minutes

[2:21:54] we can understand that there is energy and a dynamic just around this very topic.

[2:22:00] And I think at the end of the day, if we stop and ask ourselves, can we confidently say

[2:22:10] that every single person in New Brighton feels included, feels comfortable, feels that

[2:22:15] the city is available to them on the exact same level?

[2:22:18] And maybe the answer is yes.

[2:22:21] I don't know that any of us are in a position to know that.

[2:22:24] And I think if we just looked at the task force as a way to get the answer to that question

[2:22:30] because as community leaders, wouldn't we rest easier at night if we knew one that everyone

[2:22:37] did feel that there was an inclusive nature to new brighten?

[2:22:41] And if there isn't, wouldn't we all at least feel better if we tried to make at least some

[2:22:45] sort of effort at identifying what those initiatives might be to at least chip away at that?

[2:22:51] that, you know, we're not going to find perfection in anything that we do, but we can strive for

[2:22:57] excellence. And I think that this is an opportunity to position the community for excellence.

[2:23:03] And I think we just are asking questions because we don't necessarily know all the answers

[2:23:08] to them. And I'd have to believe that everybody around this table wants everyone to be comfortable

[2:23:14] in this community. And if there are things that we can do, even if it's simply to have

[2:23:19] listening sessions. One of the things that Mayor Johnson I think achieved when she interacted

[2:23:25] with the old-girl neighborhood a few weeks ago is that one, as she said, city hall came

[2:23:32] to them. The mayor came to them. Two, we found out something that we didn't know. And that

[2:23:39] is that there was an employee of that particular organization that was interfering in the city

[2:23:45] having a good relationship with that neighborhood, and Director Pacenic made it clear that there

[2:23:52] have been efforts even with our community engagement staff or with our public safety staff,

[2:23:59] just to get in there, spread information about who do you call if there's a particular issue

[2:24:05] or problem that you might have, and there's been resistance to that, and by virtue of these

[2:24:11] conversations. This population felt recognized, they felt heard, and that

[2:24:18] employer became aware of what a problem they had with that employee. And my

[2:24:22] understanding is that at least temporarily she's been reassigned, and there's a

[2:24:27] very strong likelihood she may not return. And I don't know what that means if

[2:24:32] she'll go somewhere else in the organization or what. But the fact of the matter

[2:24:36] is the ownership then spent a couple of different days interacting directly with their

[2:24:44] residents to hear directly what their issues and concerns were.

[2:24:48] Another member of our founding committee, Rugen Vasquez, sat by his side to interpret

[2:24:53] form.

[2:24:55] And just to make sure there wasn't a language barrier there, and really helped out.

[2:25:00] And so I think that's kind of what we're talking about, like it might not even be so much

[2:25:05] that there's a direct initiative that even the city's got to get involved in

[2:25:11] sometimes just simply by listening, hearing, there was no city resources that

[2:25:18] were you know invoked in that and there's no ongoing program that's coming

[2:25:23] about from it. There was a connection that was made I think that the people that

[2:25:27] live there. We found we didn't know this. How does that neighborhood feel about our

[2:25:31] public safety. And we now know, based on the mayor's interactions, that they actually

[2:25:37] feel pretty good about them. Isn't that good for us to know that? I think it is.

[2:25:42] Isn't it good for us to know that? And so I think that's how I'd rather, you know, the

[2:25:47] council kind of approached this topic. It's not by virtue of its name, it's meant to be

[2:25:53] an inclusive community effort. And, you know, I think that we can't be all things to all

[2:26:01] people either so maybe the council has to wrestle with that yet. How do you bite off a piece that

[2:26:08] isn't too big? And that doesn't mean that we're ever stopping with it. It's possible that for a

[2:26:16] period of time it's there's a focus in certain areas of our community and then maybe once that has

[2:26:24] gotten up and running council then chooses to reassign that task force. Maybe that means a membership

[2:26:30] of change of some kind, maybe you only, maybe you keep some for experience and you bring

[2:26:35] on new ones, but then you go after something else.

[2:26:38] And that could be, you know, maybe dealing with shut-ins regardless of what ethnicity they

[2:26:45] are.

[2:26:46] You know, when people get old and they lose a spouse and their kids have grown up and moved

[2:26:50] away, and you have shut-ins, I guess I want to know how big of a problem is that we have

[2:26:57] an aging population, I would have to think that there is a segment of our population that

[2:27:02] is there with a need like that. It could be a very simple thing that where we are able

[2:27:08] to interact with folks and then that gets to your point, Council Member Jacobson.

[2:27:13] I appreciate it.

[2:27:14] So, because that actually is, I think that you put it, I think, good, good scope or good

[2:27:19] focus on it. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, so I think maybe if we can approach it from

[2:27:25] that standpoint that we're we don't necessarily we have questions and we don't

[2:27:30] necessarily know what the answers are to them and we're not going to tackle all

[2:27:34] the issues with this task force but it's we'll get a lot of good things out of

[2:27:39] it I think we'll also get kind of an agenda and approach that we

[2:27:42] template if you will that we can then use to continue to reach out. It's a this

[2:27:49] This is, community engagement is never done, but the focus will be different.

[2:27:57] And that, to me, is reflective of an organic and an agile community that responds to

[2:28:03] the changing, or a council that responds to the changing needs of a given community.

[2:28:10] And sometimes that's with aging in place and sometimes that's with immigrant populations

[2:28:16] and sometimes it's a blend of all of that.

[2:28:18] But I think that everyone around this table once would like to know that people feel good.

[2:28:28] Like the way I set it to the founding committee is when somebody who lives here leaves to go to work or they leave to go shopping

[2:28:36] or they leave New Brighton, how do they feel as they're in their vehicle or on their bus or on their bike or just walking?

[2:28:43] How do they feel as they're returning? Are they looking forward to returning?

[2:28:47] you know just it gets after that sense of place issue you know there are ways to

[2:28:54] define it and maybe if we can build some inroads into different communities then

[2:29:00] we can produce city surveys in those neighborhoods that are actually written

[2:29:05] in their language and so that you get opened up a lot of opportunity to interact

[2:29:11] and have tough conversations.

[2:29:15] Yeah, we're not so tough.

[2:29:18] But we actually do face what it is,

[2:29:20] because we don't know what it is.

[2:29:22] And so I just say that, you know,

[2:29:24] it could be very emotional, it could be very happy,

[2:29:26] it could be very not so happy.

[2:29:28] We don't know.

[2:29:29] And I do appreciate that,

[2:29:31] because I appreciate Dean with your scope statement

[2:29:37] and your definition statement on the task force stuff.

[2:29:40] because I do think that I don't know how we get it right the first time.

[2:29:44] I don't think everybody gets it right the first time. Nobody gets it right the first time

[2:29:47] but you keep working at it knowing that you make a difference.

[2:29:51] The reality is, you know, do I know every population that's in New Bright and I don't?

[2:29:57] Do I want every voice to be heard in New Bright?

[2:30:00] And then have a, you know, feel they could be engaged and make a difference in the right. Oh, you know that. You know, that's the world. I would say that's all of us here. You know, how radical do we want to make the changes? I don't know. I don't know. I think the task force is a good idea. My concern as I was sitting before is just who's the voices or where we starting or what's the scope that makes it the starting point? What is the starting point? I like when you said it can just be the starting point period.

[2:30:29] and we have a scope document.

[2:30:31] We can change it if it looks like we got to make changes

[2:30:34] till we can have people.

[2:30:35] We can change the focus.

[2:30:37] We can do what we do for you.

[2:30:40] And I agree with what you said comes from members true.

[2:30:42] We got to start somewhere.

[2:30:43] That's true.

[2:30:44] That's so true.

[2:30:46] Now, we could talk about this until all the culture

[2:30:49] were blue in the face, but until you do something,

[2:30:51] that's when you make a difference.

[2:30:53] So I think that I do appreciate that

[2:30:56] and I would support that type of approach.

[2:31:03] Any other comments?

[2:31:07] I want to thank you folks for what you've done to reach out and to bring this forward.

[2:31:14] Any other comments?

[2:31:16] No.

[2:31:18] Meeting's adjourned.

[2:31:19] Thank you.

[2:31:20] Thank you.

[2:31:20] That's

[2:31:23] it.

October 3, 2017 Work Session

Agenda

Transcript