This is the third part of my thoughts on the City of Richardson's Goal setting meeting. I'm finally getting to the Goals. The Council reviewed the existing goals:
Goals
To effectively, efficiently, and transparently manage city resources while maintaining and enhancing city services
To have residents and all stakeholders choose Richardson as the best place to locate, contribute, and engage
To have clear, effective, efficient, continuously improved, and consistently applied processes and policies that make it easy for residents, employees, and all stakeholders to interact with the City
To have well-trained, engaged, and innovative employees who deliver an exceptional customer experience while working in a safe, inclusive, and equitable environment
Source: City of Richardson.
This part of the meeting lasted 20 minutes. For each goal, most council members were satisfied with the current wording. The ones who wanted changes mostly suggested minor wordsmithing (change "innovative" to "forward-thinking") or minor restructuring (break the customer service goal into two, one for residents and one for businesses). Rick Robinson took notes and will bring back tweaked goals for council review.
At this point, Mayor Pro Tem Ken Hutchenrider interjected:
I'm not sure where we need to put this, but this has been an overarching concern that I have, and I don't know if, I want to carefully try to bring this up. One of the concerns I have as we've started to get into this year, and I even have seen it a little bit from last year, our previous council, is we have 120,000 people in this city. We have, I'm not even sure how many businesses, and sometimes I feel like we get caught up in a very small minority group that are vocal and it pulls us in a direction that doesn't necessarily represent the entire city. And I don't know where to put that in here, but I feel strongly that we've always got to keep the vision. I don't want to use the word vision that, 'cause then I'm, I'm not trying to go back to the vision statement. I'm just trying to say, I think we have to keep it in our mind that we've got to represent the entire city. And sometimes there's a very large group that are not vocal and they kind of get left out. And I don't know how to, I don't know how to capture that, but I worry a lot, especially in the realm of, of when, when we start, you know, in the realm of, um, social media, oftentimes we have people that get very, very vocal, but they don't necessarily represent the majority. But we get pulled in that direction. And I may be the only one feeling that way, and I'll freely say that, but somewhere I feel like we need to, my opinion, we need to acknowledge that and figure out how, how do we, how do we recognize that? And I'm not saying that we shouldn't listen, I'm not suggesting that at all. But I think we got to balance it, and sometimes I don't think we have that balance. And I don't, and I don't know how to, I don't know how to capture that. Am I making, does anyone else feel that way? Does anyone else, uh, am I making sense what I'm trying to say? And I, and I don't know.Source: City of Richardson.
Mayor Amir Omar responded in a straightforward way. He said that in the Role of Council and in the Rules of Engagement it already says the Council should provide a voice for residents and all stakeholders. Neither he nor anyone else asked what I thought were obvious questions. Which actions of the city council does Hutchenrider feel were out of step? And does he include himself in this critique or is it others of the council who are out of step? If so, who and when? How does Hutchenrider gauge the opinion of the "entire city?" To me, the rebuke felt passive-aggressive. I found myself wishing the Council had spent the previous two hours discussing Hutchenrider's point rather than having the discussion they did have.
After a short break, the council then reviewed their thirteen current strategies: I'll get to those in the next installment.
Quotes have been lightly edited for clarity and brevity (cough).
End of Part 3.
Part 1 |
Part 2 |
Part 3 |
Part 4.
"He muddles through thoughts,
Not sure where to place his doubt.
Does no one share it?"
—h/t ChatGPT
3 comments:
The mayor pro tem seems kinda psychotic.
The mayor protem ought to be able to communicate effectively. No need to talk in code. Just spit it out. Put the ego aside and say what you mean.
Last 2 cents: I’m still convinced the whole city could use a full-on forensic audit, top to bottom, every department & done by a neutral third-party accounting firm from outside. No biases, just the facts. Then, make those findings completely public online for everyone to see, including the F.B.I.
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