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HomeMy WebLinkAboutCity Council - 06/16/1998 - Workshop APPROVED MINUTES CITY COUNCIL/STAFF WORKSHOP TUESDAY, JUNE 16, 1998 5:00 PM, CITY CENTER Council Chamber 8080 Mitchell Road CITY COUNCIL: Mayor Jean Harris, Sherry Butcher-Younghans, Ronald Case, Ross Thorfinnson, Jr., and Nancy Tyra-Lukens CITY COUNCIL STAFF: City Manager Carl J. Jullie, Assistant City Manager Chris Enger, Director of Parks, Recreation & Natural Resources Bob Lambert, Director of Public Works Eugene Dietz, Director of Human Resources, Community Information & Services Natalie Swaggert, Chief of Police Jim Clark, and Council Recorder Jan Nelson I. CALL MEETING TO ORDER Mayor Harris called the meeting to order at 5:15 p.m. She said there are four questions that have guided the process: What have we learned? Where are we now? What are the challenges? How do we adjust our visions? We need to adopt a Strategic Management Plan. It is a process with multiple components that we have begun and are now coming to the first stage of input. The Council has done a number of things to articulate our version of the community values. We now need to measure the findings we have against the grid of City responsibilities. The information generated in the next step is a very major analytical step which will take us to the third step -- the plan. H. OVERVIEW OF STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT PROCESS A. VISION 2001/A STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT PROCESS Enger played a ten minute video of Mayor Harris describing the Vision 2001 Strategic Management Process. B. REPORT ON BOARD AND COMMISSION PRESENTATIONS Thorfinnson said the video was not available for the first of the three meetings and he felt it was a rather disappointing session. It was effective because we learned some things and altered our presentation for the other two meetings. It was a small group, but they were very receptive to what we talked about. They were able to grasp the issues, asked questions and wanted to know where they fit in the process. Boards and Commissions want to be kept up to date on the process, and they enjoy being in the same room with other boards and commissions in order to have a chance to talk among themselves. CITY COUNCIL WORKSHOP MRgUTES June 16, 1998 Page 2 Enger said they presented the 30-minute Bill Morris tape at the first meeting. It turned out to be too long so they abbreviated it for the second meeting. The commission members seemed ready to dialogue We presented the commission charters, and they appreciated that the commissions had been set up according to some traditional structuring. It made sense to have commissions that represented the needs and desires of the community. There was a need for gap analysis that will overlay the commission charters and show the gaps between the commissions and the expectations of the community. He said each of the three meetings had a different Council host. 1. Participation Levels 2. Insights/Outcomes Tyra-Lukens said Councilmember Thorfinnson already reviewed what happened at the first meeting. They went over the allotted time even though there were very few participants. People were interested and excited about the direction, but they didn't get to go through any examples. Enger noted we asked them to look at what focus areas their commission might be involved with, to pick an issue within the focus area, and to work through a strategic action plan for reaching the goal in that area. He said that exercise worked better each time we met. Case hosted the second meeting. He said the education piece was very effective, and people on commissions have shown they don't mind additional meetings if it isn't wasting their time. He thought we have the potential to right some of the overlap on the boards and commissions. Butcher-Younghans said the third meeting went very well, probably because all of the bugs were out of it by then. Everyone knew something, but they weren't on the same page in terms of the process. They talked about examples of how it fits and discussed how we could combine the commissions for some events. She could see some people make the big leap and relate the abstract information to how it applied to their work. Enger said as the commission members began to understand the information, they also saw potential conflicts. He said they were challenged to use the Council/Management Values in their work to begin a framework of things to include those values, and to take the tapes and material back to the commissions and to give a presentation to the groups. Tyra-Lukens asked if the Arts Commission is doing a strategic plan. Swaggert said Tria Mann is planning to incorporate that into their planning. Thorfinnson said she came to the Council because she was CITY COUNCIL WORKSHOP NIINUTES June 16, 1998 Page 3 concerned about how their plan would fit in with all of this. We told her it was okay to do it, but to keep in mind the basic concepts. Swaggert said after we met in February we intended to gather input, but as we went through the process, we found the commissions weren't ready to give input back. We needed to educate them on the process in order to make them aware that we expect them to start using the values in their work. We also needed to make sure to lay the groundwork for potential changes in the alignment of boards and commissions. We wanted to encourage them in a more active involvement with the Council on a regular basis and to bring forward the kinds of things they are working on rather than having them wait for the Council to call on them for a joint meeting. Swaggert said the commission members now expect that we will complete an analysis of all the charter statements and will look at setting up new boards or commissions or merging the current ones. They also expect we will find a way to have them get together at another point besides the annual banquet. We will need to determine how we want to do that. C. COMMUNITY FORUM - FINAL REPORT 1. Community Focus Areas and Values 2. Use and Application Enger reviewed the consultant's final report, noting that transportation is the over-riding issue. The focus areas could very easily be picked up and looked at as a plan, but it is not a plan. Swaggert said the biggest danger lies in someone seeing it who hasn't been briefed and who assumes it is a strategic plan. They are working with the liaisons about that, and will emphasize that this is a point of reference for us as we go forward. M. DEVELOPMENT OF STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT PLAN A. IDENTIFICATION OF "STRATEGIC FOCUS AREAS" Thorfinnson said the next step is to move to the Staff to gather information that will be used to help develop the Strategic Plan. We will compare the focus areas and the service areas in the City to find those that don't fall neatly into the focus areas. Enger suggested we take some time to review the handout and make sure the focus areas cover what our focus area needs will be in the future. The people were present-bound in the meetings, as were Council and Staff in the beginning CITY COUNCIL WORKSHOP MINUTES June 16, 1998 Page 4 of the process. The community focus areas should not completely drive the process. Thorfinnson said we need to keep in mind that not everything we do as City government will fit neatly into one of the focus areas, and we need to add everything else we do to the strategic focus areas. We need to look at the two lists and see if there is anything that is glaringly missing. Harris thought many of the things in Public Works don't necessarily fit into the focus areas, but we will continue to do them. She thought the focus areas were areas to look at going into the future, and then we look at how the things in Public Works support these areas. We also need to ask if there are services we now provide that are no longer essential. She thought the community takes services for granted. In order to evaluate what should be maintained, Case thought we need to list out what the essential functions are currently, along with this list of emerging needs. We have another category of managing government. He wanted to see those items in the list. Thorfumson said we would like to run this together without getting into that detail, and then see what we do day to day and where it fits. Tyra-Lukens thought the Strategic Plan should not be just the focus areas. Dietz thought the report synthesizes what a lay person would say. People talked about maintaining what we have. There was a lot of stuff that was said that did not make the cut for the report. While there is a lot of discussion on doing more with less, we seem to have dropped the concept of doing more with less increase. Swaggert noted Enger added that during the presentations. Harris thought doing more with less has become a mantra throughout the country, but it is important to remember the "do more with less increase" concept. Regarding the focus area comparison worksheet, Butcher-Younghans thought the things on the left are categories, and some of the things on the right are subsets of those categories. Tyra-Lukens thought the next exercise has to be to go back to the experts and come up with a third list of what our interpretation should be in order to determine the strategic focus areas we will build the Strategic Plan around. We will determine what will guide us for the next 3-20 years, but right now we are only working with focus areas. B. PROCESS AND TIME LINE Swaggert said we are in the process of assessing where we are now. The internal assessment is not done. We need to do a personnel audit as part of the CITY COUNCIL WORKSHOP MINUTES June 16, 1998 Page S process. We expect to spend another four-five months in this process to develop the information to work from. The next step is strategy development where we will look at the strategic service areas. Harris thought transportation could be held up as a model for how to begin to think about it. Swaggert thought the internal assessment will determine who are the players, and out of that should come how we want to align ourselves and what resources are needed in which areas. This would include day-to-day operations, as well as strategic issues. We will need to look at the commission's charter and mission statements to determine what type of organizations outside of Staff we need to support the City's business. Enger said they talked at the Staff meeting last night about handbooks that explain the process of strategic planning. One such handbook said governmental agencies might have an over-all vision, but might not be able to pare down to one mission statement because there are so many service areas in government. We might want to write mini-mission statements in all of the service areas. We need to finish up with the focus areas so we can go on to develop the strategic service areas. Thorfinmon said we need to determine the goals so we can measure the success. What we hope to accomplish is that each of the strategic service areas could then have a mini action plan. Swaggert noted we need to get to where we can write quantifiable and attainable goals. Enger said we need to get the focus areas completely identified. He thought the HTSSB might be a good model for us because they have members from different boards who work together on projects. We need to have a discussion that is cross functional. Harris said the focus has shifted internally to Staff, and the question is how do you organize to facilitate that. Enger thought finalizing the focus areas will suggest how we might organize groups internally to look at the issues. Lambert expressed concern about not understanding what this is all about. He was not sure he could see this process even getting to the answers. He could understand that we will be a different kind of city in five years, and we need to determine how our jobs and responsibilities will change because of the changes in the City. Harris said much of what the Parks Department does will continue. She could see some cross-cutting relationship that needs Lambert's input, but it will be less tenable to just plan for Parks and Recreation. Dietz said there were things said in the past that indicated we are heading towards certain things. He thought we need to streamline the process and CITY COUNCIL WORKSHOP MDWTES June 16, 1998 Page 6 combine some processes. He thought it might be time to start dealing with specifics. Thorfinnson noted we started this process two years ago in order to analyze whether changes were needed in the boards and commissions. We don't know what the outcome of all this will be, and we could go through the process and decide we don't make any changes. There is no preconceived notion of what will come out of this. Harris said we will witness a marked shift in demographics and will need to deal with an aging population and people's expectations for that. Case was frustrated with the fact there is detail out there in the day to day operations of the City that we haven't looked at, but he got the sense that this is the time when we are going to look at the specifics. We now take the vision and goals together with what the City is doing and develop our strategic plan of action. He thought it doesn't always make sense now when we allocate funds, and this will give a rationale for why we spend dollars here or there. Harris noted this has been a long process up to now and she could see that there would be a difference between the pragmatic and the conceptual viewpoints. Enger thought Dietz and Lambert could go ahead and work with what will be needed. Dietz thought they would need some kind of format for that. Thorfinnson thought we could help by defining what our expectations are. XIH. ADJOURNMENT Mayor Harris adjourned the meeting at 6:40 p.m. APPROVED MINUTES EDEN PRAIRIE, CITY COUNCIL TUESDAY, JUNE 16, 1998 7:30 PM, CITY CENTER Council Chamber 8080 Mitchell Road CITY COUNCIL: Mayor Jean Harris, Sherry Butcher-Younghans, Ronald Case, Ross Thorfinnson, Jr., and Nancy Tyra-Lukens CITY COUNCIL STAFF: City Manager Carl J. Jullie, Assistant City Manager Chris Enger, Director of Parks, Recreation & Natural Resources Bob Lambert, Director of Public Works Eugene Dietz, City Attorney Roger Pauly, and Council Recorder Jan Nelson PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE ROLL CALL Mayor Harris called the meeting to order at 7:30 p.m. Councilmember Butcher-Younghans was absent. I. APPROVAL OF AGENDA AND OTHER ITEMS OF BUSINESS Jullie said item V.A. should be deleted because the official notice for the project was determined to be invalid due to a publication error in the Eden Prairie News. It will be rescheduled for the July 7, 1998 Council meeting. Case asked if the neighborhood will be renotified. Jullie said they will be. MOTION: Tyra-Lukens moved, seconded by Thorfmnson, to approve the Agenda as published and amended. Motion carried 4-0. H. OPEN PODIUM III. MINUTES A. CITY COUNCIL MEETING HELD TUESDAY, JUNE 2, 1998 MOTION: Case moved, seconded by Tyra-Lukens, to approve as published the minutes of the City Council meeting held Tuesday, June 2, 1998. Motion carried 4-0.