City Council Goals 2025-2027 (Part 4 of 4)

This is the fourth part of my thoughts on the City of Richardson's Goal setting meeting. Let's see if I can get through Strategies and Tactics in this one.

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Strategies

1. Attract, develop, and retain high-quality, innovative employees
2. Continue to explore unique opportunities to attract and retain residents and all stakeholders
3. Promote economic development that benefits the whole city
4. Ensure systems are safe and secure
5. Maintain a strong fund balance and bond rating
6. Promote avenues for public engagement and input
7. Improve access, usability, and user experience with policies, processes, and procedures
8. Value, protect, and create a positive return on city, resident, and other stakeholder investments in the City
9. Document and continuously improve business processes
10. Work to maintain a balance between responsible neighborhood integrity and the regulatory environment
11. Promote an innovative approach to business processes
12. Leverage our regional leadership position to positively impact county, state, and federal issues
13. Leverage county, state, and federal opportunities

Source: City of Richardson.

Note that this is the previous term's list of strategies, with the only changes being the prioritized order. The two priorities in italics were new last term and are prioritized #2 and #3 this time. Rick Robinson suggested that this is common, that as strategies get implemented, they become less strategic and more operational.

Rick Robinson reported that no one wanted to add any new strategies. But apparently they wanted to talk about the strategies.

The last strategy was expanded to include "alternative funding opportunities" and not just "county, state, and federal opportunities."

The second strategy seemed weighted more towards attracting businesses than residents. Councilmember Corcoran suggested there be a strategy more focused on residents. Councilmember Barrios warned, "We need to keep in mind that we're serving all our residents, not just those in single family housing." Councilmember Jennifer Justice said, "We may have some work to do on that one."

Despite (or perhaps because of) no one coming prepared with any specific changes they wanted to see, the discussion wandered over a lot of the strategies, whether one was really a goal, whether another was really a tactic, whether yet another had become operational and could be dropped, whether neighborhoods had enough focus, etc. They wondered whether we needed a 14th strategy dealing with the regulatory environment, whether we should strengthen strategy 10, whether we could combine strategies 9 and 11, and so on. They worked through lunch editing the slide with the strategies.

If the discussion rambled, it might be because the connection between the goals and the strategies is not explicit. We have four goals. We have thirteen strategies, but which strategy is in support of which goal is nowhere spelled out. And so, the fundamental question, "If we achieve all of our strategies, will we have met our goals?", is hard to answer.

After a lunch break, the council broke into two groups of four (with the City Manager added to the seven council members). They were tasked with coming up with their top ten or so tactics. I was confused. There are 13 strategies, but only 10 tactics? Rick Robinson explained that council will decide the top ten tactics, but staff will come back with a long, full list of tactics. When the council came back together they had eight unique tactics, which I wasn't able to capture. Rick Robinson will take the list and do some combining and type them up. The council as a whole then talked about other tactics they wanted to add. Individual council members offered individual tactics. There was little attempt at voting to accept or reject the ideas offered, only some wordsmithing, as always, so I don't know how this discussion will move forward. It seemed to me they ran out of time to produce what I most wanted, a SMART set of short-term action items for the next two years.

The last exercise was called WDWNFEO, or "What Do We Need From Each Other?" The first two to speak were Mayor Omar and Mayor Pro Tem Hutchenrider. Contrasting their answers illuminated a fundamental difference in style.

Rick Robinson: "So, Mr. Mayor, what's your first thing? What do you need from the rest of council?"

Mayor Omar: "Grace."

Mayor Pro Tem Hutchenrider: "Are we supposed to use one word? Is that, is that what this is? No? Okay. Just one thing. Mine's really simple. I think we need focus. When we're in the meetings, because our meetings are getting longer and longer and longer and longer. And what I find is people are saying things that we really don't need to talk about. You know, I mean, we all know all of our professional experience, our personal experience at this point, et cetera, et cetera. And so, you know, please, if you put your red light on and the mayor recognizes you, and let's say you were someone here who's presenting a zoning case, you know, you don't need to say, you know, 'thank you for coming. I have several questions for you this evening.' Just get into the question. Save the time, have real focus, have your questions ready to go before you hit your red light. So that we're being efficient, effective, and focused. I feel like we've gotten away from that. And it just drags out the meetings. And I don't think, the later we get at night, then we rush and we're not effective."

Source: City of Richardson.

I can't say he's wrong. But Hutchenrider's words were unintentionally ironic coming from him. He used 196 words to tell others to "focus." I'll leave it at that.

And that was it. Rick Robinson will write up what the City Council came up with and present it for the council to review sometime in August. Then, in September, the city staff will present a list of tactics in support of the Council's goals and strategies.

My takeaway? Same old, same old. There's even less input from the City Council on the tactics than last year. But I probably shouldn't have expected that taking the same council and same facilitator would result in something new. I expected more from swapping out Mayor Dubey for Mayor Omar, but I didn't get it. They just dusted off the existing, generic, unspecific goals and strategies, wordsmithed them a lot without changing much meaning. and then turned it all over to the City Manager to decide the tactics. As long as he can introduce each agenda item for the next two years by saying, "This is in support of your Goal such and such", it's his road map. The city council is just along for the ride.

That last paragraph isn't entirely accurate. There was one change from all prior goals-setting meetings. That wasn't in the results, it was in the process. This meeting was video recorded. That's a first. Given that the only change is Mayor Omar, I want to compliment his commitment to improved transparency. It's a campaign promise kept. The city council likes to talk about transparency, but up until now, they didn't take the one simple transparent step of keeping a video record of their goals-setting meeting. Kudos to the new mayor.

Quotes have been lightly edited for clarity and brevity (cough).

End of Part 4.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4.

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"Many cities could
Claim these same vague strategies.
Council phones it in."
—h/t ChatGPT