February 6, 2021 Special Meeting of Mountain View City Council (Team-Building and Strategic Planning Retreat)

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Transcript

[00:01:26] Mayor Ellen Kamei: I'd like to call this meeting to order at 8.31 AM. This meeting is being conducted in accordance with state of California executive order N dash 29 dash 20, dated March 17, 2020. All members of the city council are participating in this meeting by video conference with no physical meeting location. As noted on the meeting agenda, members of the public may provide oral public comments online during the public comment period for an item by signing up at mountain view.gov backslash cc underscore speakers. Or by dialing, or by dialing by phone 669-9009128 and entering webinar ID 97544398251. And we'll move on to item number two, which is roll call. If you'll have the interim city clerk. Ms. Wonder Linen, Carl.

[00:02:30] Interim City Clerk Silvia Vonderlinden: Both a member Abby Koga.

[00:02:32] Councilmember Margaret Abe-Koga: Here.

[00:02:34] Interim City Clerk Silvia Vonderlinden: Council member Hicks.

[00:02:36] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Here.

[00:02:37] Interim City Clerk Silvia Vonderlinden: Calcium and reliever.

[00:02:39] Councilmember Sally Lieber: Here.

[00:02:39] Interim City Clerk Silvia Vonderlinden: Council member Meta Check.

[00:02:42] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: Here,

[00:02:43] Interim City Clerk Silvia Vonderlinden: council member, show alter.

[00:02:45] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Here,

[00:02:46] Interim City Clerk Silvia Vonderlinden: Vice Mayor Ramirez. Mayor Kameh.

[00:02:51] Mayor Ellen Kamei: Here.

[00:02:52] Interim City Clerk Silvia Vonderlinden: Thank you.

[00:02:53] Mayor Ellen Kamei: All right. Thank you. So we'll move on to item number three, which is all communications. This portion of the meeting is reserved for persons wishing to address the council on any matter not on the agenda. Speakers are allowed to speak on any topic for up to 3 minutes during this section. If there appears to be a large number of speakers, speaking time may reduce, may be reduced to no less than a minute and a half . State law prohibits the council from acting on items that are not on the agenda. Would any member of the public like to provide comment on an item that is not on the agenda? If so, please click the Blu-rays hand button in Zoom or press star 9 on your phone. Right, I see one hand. And Miss Bonderland, do you have the timer set to go for 3 minutes? All right. All right, Mr. Carney, go ahead.

[00:03:48] Bruce Karney: Good morning. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to you all, and I wish you the best of luck throughout your meeting this morning. The reason I'm phoning in, and I'll touch back in around 11 o'clock as well, is I just wanted to highlight what I perceive is the real urgency of addressing climate change issues in Mountain View. As all of you know, Mountain View has an excellent track record of leadership at the local level, the actions that Mountain View has taken over the past several years, including joining, actually starting Silicon Valley, clean energy, the early adoption of a strong reach code, have inspired other cities to do things that they would not have done without Mountain View's leadership. And yet, as we've seen through the 80 degree temperatures in January, just a few weeks ago, the dark orange skies of September 9th last year, the looming drought, climate has got to be a top priority in everyone's mind. The pace at which government moves is often perceived even by those involved in the process, as being slow, and yet climate change demands rapid. adoption of significantly changed behaviors, and all this being done in the midst of a pandemic and a recession. I don't envy you the task that lies before you, but I'm confident that you all have the background and the capabilities, uh, and the willingness to do what is necessary to make mountain view, um, the shining beacon that will lead other cities in our state and other states in our country toward a more sustainable future and in that endeavor. I absolutely offer my help, 100% of my commitment, and my applause for the things that I know that you'll be able to accomplish. Thank you.

[00:05:48] Mayor Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Anyone else wishing to give public comment? All right, I don't see any other hands raised. So we'll move on to item four, which is our city council retreat. So, um, I'd like to welcome everyone to our virtual counselor retreat. Um, this retreat has 2 parts with item 4. will be focused on team building and item 4.2. We'll be focused on strategic planning. For each item. The council will be joined by a facilitator, who will start with a brief presentation providing background information. Followed by a facilitated council discussion for each item. And so before each item, we will take public comment after the background information is presented. We will also have a break between items 4.one and 4.2. So I'm looking forward to a +and constructive retreat, and I will turn it over to, um, Mr. or to, sorry to Mr. Greg Larson, who will, with management partners, who will be starting, um, our team building section, but I think even before I turn it over to Greg, I'm going to turn it over to our city manager, Kimber McCarthy.

[00:07:09] City Manager Kimbra McCarthy: Thank you, Mayor. Good morning, council members. I just wanted to welcome you to our 1st and hopefully last virtual retreat. I know that usually we look forward to having these at one of our amazing city facilities. And so, um, we do have a great retreat for you planned, um, as the mayor said, it's going to start by, um, a facilitated discussion from Mr. Larson, taking us through the 1st couple hours on communication styles and team building and really focusing on the council. And, um, then the 2nd part of the retreat is going to be about our strategic planning efforts and really thinking about where Mountain Bee wants to head in the future. So our mission and our vision and thinking about our strategic priorities, which we call our major goals. And then we have several months worth of, um, other dialogue with the community and also with staff and of course with council. So, I'm looking forward to this morning and I will close there and then turn it over to Mr. Larson. Greg, you're on mute.

[00:08:23] Greg Larson: Sure, thank you. Thank you very much, mayor and city management for that introduction into the council, for dedicating your time to this important work you're doing in both halves of the uh workshop, and also to the residents of Mountain View, who cares so much about your continued excellent service to the community. Um, I am Greg Larson and the partner with management partners. I will be sharing my screen periodically here during the uh, presentation. I am a retired city manager of Los Gatos, and um, Malpitas, and deputy city manager of San Jose, and also worked as president of the United West Silicon Valley, and for the last 3 years, I've had the joy of working with city cities. In city councils in particular, throughout northern California, on team building, priority setting, and evaluation of stop, and I just feel it's more like mission now to help cities be as effective as possible, and that requires supporting the elected officials in their important work. And so at that, I am going to uh, quickly jump into the slide and 1st uh, we've already done uh, the opening comments from the mayor and manager. I did want to do the brief overview of the workshop that was identified by the mayor. But we've actually set 4 objectives for this retreat, to this morning's workshop, to strengthen city council communications and relationships, to understand city council roles and best practices, to provide direction on updating the city council rooms, and to start expectations for council, email management. And so you'll see each of these reflected in the agenda for this morning. And we have a workshop, a workshop outline that was previously distributed. The numbers that you'll receive, the course of this presentation, reflect the numbers on the disc, uh, discussion outline, that was previously disseminated. Opening comments are done and they'll soon be done with the workshop overview. The next section following public comment will be to celebrate recent accomplishments and to present to city council the results of the communication style assessment exercise that you each participated in along with the city manager and city attorney. Then we're going to get to the need of the workshop, which is the city council roles and responsibilities. To review the city council's assessment of their own self-governance, to review the city council norms, to identify if there's any changes needed to those as the council continues to involve them. Then we'll have a separate section on the city council email management discussion that was requested and do a quick wrap up in next steps. I will say this is a very aggressive agenda. Our goal is to be done by 1030 so that the mayor and council and public, have a break, prior to the 11 o'clock strategic planning session. So a little bit of my role is going to be a time keeper here throughout the workshop. And uh, I just uh, ask the councils indulgence if I, if you feel I'm pushing you ahead at times. With that, as the mayor indicated, we'd like to go back. to the comment section and to see if there's any public comment on this issue in particular, before we proceed with the rest of the program, and I will take away my screen sharing at this time just to make it easier for people to see each other and participate.

[00:12:15] Mayor Ellen Kamei: Great. Thank you so much, Mr. Larson. So um, would any member of the public like to provide comment on item 4.one? If so, please feel free to raise the blue hand button zoom or press star 9 on your phone. Oh. I don't see anyone's hand raise. Miss Vanderlanden, is anyone online? No? Okay. All right.

[00:12:39] Interim City Clerk Silvia Vonderlinden: I do not see America May.

[00:12:41] Mayor Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate the verbal acknowledgement as well. I could see your head in that honey. All right, so seeing no public comment, we'll turn it back over to you, Mr. Larson. Sorry, I will close public comment. and bring it back to you, Mr. Larson.

[00:12:57] Greg Larson: Thank you. Thank you. I just want to confirm after the doing in and out of the screen, my screen is visible now, to the council.

[00:13:10] Unknown Speaker: Yes.

[00:13:12] Greg Larson: Great, thank you. Um, moving ahead then. So just some ground rules. Um, obviously, I think you'll see later on that the city council appreciates and understands much of this already stylistically and through your past performance, but obviously listening to understand, seeking consensus, assuming good intent during the uh, course of the discussions. To always let me know if we're getting on track, and that we all try to stay focused, given the strict timeline we're under. This, these are commonly accepted ground rules, and it's basis on which we like to do our work with city councils. And it all comes from a basis of respect, which we'll be talking about later as well. We do have one other item. We often called it a parking lot in years past. We have updated it to a bike rack, and it's a simple time management tool, that I'll be using during the course of the day, and Christina Gilmore on your staff. We'll be assisting in recording items that come up and may require more time to discuss than we have this morning. And so at various points in time, I may identify this appears to be an issue that requires more in-depth discussion that should be separate and scheduled for a council meeting, a study session, or for staff work offline before it comes back to council, and we'll put it on the bike back at that point in time. So that concludes the workshop overview. What I'd like to do now is share with the council some interview results as we go into celebrating recent accomplishments of the city. And the way you'll see presented in all of the slides where I'm presenting interview results, is I present those items that were raised by most of the council, at the top of the list, and the items that were only raised by 2 council members at the bottom of the list, so it's a rough scaling of how often it came up. That is not a scaling of importance. It's really top of mind thoughts that came from council during the interviews. And it could be somebody thought of something that the others didn't, but they all would think it's more important. That's why we bring these notes back to the council for discussion because this is really your public opportunity to chart your for your future as a team. So let's jump into the accomplishments now that you know the framing of how all of your results will be presented. 1st and foremost, the council was unanimous in recognizing the city's excellent response to the COVID crisis. It was mentioned by every council member. And some of the specific attributes that came in, being mentioned by most council members, was the tenant support and eviction meritorium, that was provided as well as language support as part of that, and the homelessness response, particularly the safe parking program. It was just very much highlighted by the council. The council also recognized small businesses support, and the testing and vaccination center that was established in North County, with Mount Moody's leadership. There's also recognition from council members, that food distribution through your community service agency and other services, as well as communications, both with the public and the council, the real victories, as this pandemic has hit our rule. And Silicon Valley as well as part of that. But the city didn't just respond to COVID, which was an overwhelming response that was time consuming for council, and in particular, your staff, and scary and time consuming for your residents and businesses. But there was much else done by the city that the council recognized, in particular to affordable housing, projects moving ahead, the engagement of a new city manager a week before the pandemic started, I believe, um, and just that was a victory. It's one of your key roles, is to oversee your council appointees as we'll discuss later. There's also sustainability initiatives, that one of your public speakers mentioned, the uh, which codes, and the clean energy initiative, um, 2 new parks opened, and to be able to have accomplishments like that during the course, of a pandemic is significant. There was a long-standing school impact issue that's been resolved, and there was also mention of the comprehensive motor plan and how it targeted streets for particular uses and needs throughout the community. So I'm just gonna pause here and applaud the city and the council and the staff. Or get it in the community for getting so much done. Even in the face of the COVID crisis, um, many cities basically put their goals and strategies on hold, to get through the crisis, you were able to respond to the crisis and get a lot of other significant policy and physical work done in the city. But now I'd like to turn it over to the council. And really ask you. Can just kind of summarize some of your thoughts on what made all of these accomplishments possible and that really leads to the question of what makes cities successful. So, almost like a lightning run, I'm going to turn off my screen in a moment and ask each council member and then the manager and attorney to just share one or 2 quick thoughts on what they thought made these achievements possible in the last year. And not America, it's okay. I'd like to start with you as the mayor.

[00:19:18] Mayor Ellen Kamei: Thanks for putting me on this spot, Mr. I said. Always good to do before 9 AM. Um, no, well, I think as you list all those items, obviously, we, we, as a community as a city can't do anything without our incredible city staff. And so, um, you know, all of those accomplishments are collective. There are accomplishments. I think, um, you know, in tandem, it's it's our residents in our community that's really compassionate and caring and, you know, holds us to being as, uh, you know, making sure that we can do all those those things. So, um, I think those are my initial thoughts.

[00:19:57] Greg Larson: No, yeah. Benefit to get to put people on the spot, so I'll go to the vice mayor now, but I, I will call on each of you 1st at some point. So, uh, it won't always be in this, this order. Um, Mr. Vice Mayor. Would you like to add an item to the list?

[00:20:13] Vice Mayor Lucas Ramirez: Sure, but I don't have a whole lot to add because I think the mayor summarized it very well. I also they for most are city staff. Who, like, as as good as our direction may be. It's not going to happen unless we have the right people executing it. Uh, and I think that they've just done a remarkable job over the past year especially. Um, but I also think that, you know, we do have a very compassionate community that has stepped up in a really big way, and the mayor has the together MB, uh, background there, and, you know, a, a lot of the, um, you know, the support that was provided to, uh, you know, tenants and, uh, and small businesses came from, you know, someone throughout the contributions from, from members of the community. And I just don't think we would have been as successful if we didn't have that kind of support.

[00:21:06] Greg Larson: No, no, I'd like to go to the. I'll be cooking.

[00:21:14] Councilmember Margaret Abe-Koga: Thank you. Well, um, having had the honor of being mayor during COVID. Um, I think, um, I would, I, of course, definitely what's been said about staff, um, in the community, but, um, I think it was that we were able to, um, be flexible and move quickly. Um, which, and I really, um, think our new city man, well, not, not, not as new anymore, but having a city manager had just come in, but was just very open to that, understanding the urgency, and willing to, um, you know, to actually make government go faster. Um, and that attitude, I think, was um, permeated throughout our organization. Um, so I would attribute it to that as well as the partnership between council and the, you know, staff and the community, as well as like our regional, um, like the county and other regional entities.

[00:22:15] Greg Larson: Like, can I go to council member hips, who would then be followed by, uh, council member Mattachek?

[00:22:25] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Well, I don't know that I have a lot to add because I think that that it's been summarized well already. I would, um, say, You know, primarily, it's our residents who support us in in doing this kind of work. Oh, you know, I won't name any cities around us, but many cities around us, you know, can't go forward on some of these things because they don't have resident or voter support. And then again, staff, city manager, and to some degree, also what we're going to be talking about today. You know, we have to have a council that works well as a team in order to be able to accomplish these things. We can't be fighting all the time. So, um, I think the previous mayor and vice mayor, and previous mayor summarized it well.

[00:23:19] Greg Larson: Counseling member, manager, followed by 2 returning health members.

[00:23:24] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: Thanks. So, um, I would echo, uh, Some of the comments that have been made, I think that we have an outstanding city staff, led by our city manager, and, um, I do appreciate the flexibility that we have shown to be able to move much more quickly than, um, we normally do, I guess I'd say. But I also really, greatly appreciate, um, staff, not just responding to counsel, but staff proactively coming up with things that we should be doing them doing and bringing them to counsel. I would say that's probably a large chunk of the things that happened. And I greatly appreciate that. I'm very thankful to be part of this city with such an outstanding organization. Um, I think we also had a very collaborative council that worked very well together, and um, I'm hoping that goes forward. And then, as been mentioned, we have very engaged residents who also bring us ideas and it's great to hear their perspectives.

[00:24:29] Greg Larson: Thank you. Council member.

[00:24:34] Councilmember Sally Lieber: But just add to everything that's been said, the great partnership that we have with the community services agency. And I know that all the the council members who are here during the past year, um, really help to uh, strengthen and and leverage the partnership to, Deliver the benefit to, to the community. And, you know, city staff have put in just, I won't say tireless because I think they're very exhausted. But have put in um, an above and beyond effort.

[00:25:14] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Well, coming last, coming last. There's there's 3 things I'm going to say. One, I think that the city had an excellent financial foundation to be able to reach out and help people, and that was really an advantage that we had that, you know, built on past councils. And then in addition to that, um, particularly for affordable housing and for um, the reach codes that were mentioned, we have grassroots organizations in our community who are very supportive of that. And I think that made a big difference, but really, you know, it, I, I, I just don't think we can say enough about uh, the value of having uh, proactive and um, well-educated and hard-working staff.

[00:26:04] Greg Larson: Mayor and attorney, your manager and attorney? I don't know if you're just going to say thank you if you'd have other comments you'd like to add. Uh, Kimber?

[00:26:12] City Manager Kimbra McCarthy: Yeah, thank you, Mr. Larson. I would just say I'm very touched. It's been a long week and so I, I just feel very grateful to hear all of your comments. I know that staff does as well. Um, it's been a long year and uh, I would just say we have an amazing council. And if it wasn't for you all working in partnership with staff and having the sort of great relationship that we all have. none of this would have been possible. So, I'm very, very grateful for you all, um, for prior counsel too, I just feel like, um, we are very lucky to be able to work together. serve our community. We have an amazing community too, so I'm, I'm just very happy about everything we've done together and thank you for all of your very supportive comments. It goes a long way with me. I know and are the rest of our city staff. So thank you so much.

[00:27:11] Greg Larson: Mr. Jordan?

[00:27:13] City Attorney Krishan Chopra: Yes, thank you. I'd like to echo much of what Kimbra just mentioned and also thank the council. What struck me most, uh, over this period was how immediate and focused, the council's reaction and response was to the COVID crisis, but also, uh, and I'm speaking also as a resident myself of Mountain View, how there was, uh, it was never lost, uh, the focus on getting the day-to-day work done of the city. And that's so important and it is so impressive to me that, that once the immediate COVID crisis was addressed, There was an awareness that we have a lot of work to do as a city, you know, for our residents and, and that impressed me so much, and I appreciate the council's support in, in our efforts to be flexible on a staff level to address these new legal and other concerns that arose. And I also want to say I'm, I was very impressed. I joined the city in in 2019. And Kimbra joined right when when the crisis hit. And there was an immediate collaborative sense of teamwork and focus that arose with the city clerk as well at that time. And also, I want to mention the, the, valuable contributions of the city's department head team and staff that, all of them really rose to the occasion and really made me rise also. So I just appreciate that so much and and everything people said about city staff as well. But mostly the inspiration comes from the leadership of the council. So thank you.

[00:29:11] Greg Larson: Thank you for taking some time uh to go through that. I think it's an important discussion and recognition and I'm not surprised by what I've seen of the council's performance of watching council meetings and the assessment you did in your password, but the council had deep humility and really recognizing others. However, it's the tune that the council shows, that gets things done as a team for the community, and that the accomplishments themselves build relationships. So I wanted to share this slide briefly now because, Just for the public as much as anyone and that what I've seen in the city of Mountain View is that you have a strong ethic of teamwork and you just all spoke to that, and then your staff responded in terms of appreciation of the council's leadership and working together during tough times. Um, and I just wanted to confirm the slide is sharing. There it is. Oh, so that, um, we're not here in a curative state. We're here to try to get to the next level and that's really the nature of the work that we want to do together for the rest of this morning is how do we make the team of mountain even stronger so that the accomplishments and victories continue for the years ahead. So going to the 1st item on the agenda was the communication style assessment work that we've just completed over the last week. And so the public as well, the council individually, as well as the city manager and city attorney, completed a brief survey instrument that's based on research by others, that our family uses a lot with a number of our clients. But really looks at the communication styles of the elected and appointed leadership of the jurisdiction. And basically, the research has shown that there's 4 different dominant styles of communication, and none are better or worse than the other. And in fact, when you look at the styles, they each have strengths, such as direct being very decisive and maintains eye contact and action oriented. But each style also has some challenges, which could make it challenging for people in the other quadrants to have clear, concise communications with somebody in the direct box. And that exists for all 4 other styles. They each have strengths and challenges that can be managed. And I do want to highlight while the research is shown people generally have a preferred style that's their comfort zone. We all work in all 4 styles, as situationally appropriate, and particularly elected officials we found, given so much of the work, is about communications with the public, with each other, with regional agencies. We just see communications in a particular gift of elected officials in general, and it's why many of our, uh, clients have found this to be a helpful tool just to put what is one of their core responsibilities of communication into a context. So as I mentioned, we asked each council member, the city manager, the attorney, to fill out a simple survey that gets to the key elements of each individual's preferred communication style, knowing that they can work in the other boxes as well. And so what I'm going to share 1st is what came back as the primary communication style. I've included the council members at the top with your staff underneath. And what's I liked about when I saw this is it's fairly well balanced. Do you have uh, people, members who are primary speakers in each of the 4 boxes. And while this suggests that maybe spirited is your strongest box, a slightly different outcome comes when you include the secondary styles. Now draw your attention to the lower left box. Every single participant in this communication style assessment. Identified considerate as either their primary or secondary preferred communication style. In all the years of my using this tool, I've never had that outcome before, where every participant had primary or secondary in a single box. So what that really leads us to is a recognition that for this council as a whole. We consider it style is number one by far. And let this council listen, supporting, speak slowly, and even as every council member didn't take credit for the accomplishments of the past year. They gave credit to others, be it the community, the staff. The group working together, being responsive, the CSA. Um, that is all indicative of very much of this considerate uh, speaking style. And then coming in number 2 is the spirited. Uh, you know, which, I think has some nice offsetting balances to the considerate, in that, um, considerate, you look, look at one of the challenges, it avoids conflicts, keeps opinions to self. But when you look at spirited, it's persuasive and expresses opinions. Um, so you have a natural balance there across the diagonal of these communication style, which I think can make you a a stronger council. However, there are some challenges that come from both of these, uh, primary and secondary styles for the council as a whole, and be keeping opinions to sell for a voting conflict as well as part-time management. And generalizing can make it more challenging to move to decisions quickly and efficiently as we talk later about the length of council meetings. I think we might see some of this at play in that discourse. And then you have the other 2 who are essentially tied amongst the council, or direct and systematic. I will share going back once that it is not uncommon for the manager to be in the direct as a primary and for the attorney to be in the systematic. For their primary and I wasn't sure how it would turn out here, but this is more often than not, how it turns out for those participants. Uh in the assessment process. But I'd like to do now, just students, we have a touch of time, is ask the council. You know, I don't need responses from anybody, but anything new or eye-opening or surprising or that doesn't match what you expected from this exercise, and again, I'd like to keep this as a wiping round to preserve time for the later harder work we have to do. So any quick responses to the communication style exercise, if you have one, don't feel compelled to respond so I'll look for hands growing up, rather than calling on people for this item. Anything surprising? Council member of the COVID?

[00:36:52] Councilmember Margaret Abe-Koga: Um, so it's just that, like, my one and 2 are very close, and it's interesting to see that they're actually, some of them are kind of like the direct opposites of each other. So I'd like to think that means I'm in the happy media.

[00:37:11] Greg Larson: How about does it feel right for the council as a whole? Is this how you'd assess the body, with the considerate, the number one and spirited number two?

[00:37:26] Councilmember Sally Lieber: Yeah, I would say yes. One of the things um uh, having, you know, worked in government a lot and worked with different city councils. I think we've we've always had a tradition. I mean, literally going back decades of being considerate. And, um, uh, and civil to each other. And, and, and I really think that's very important. So I'm not surprised to see that, but it's good.

[00:37:51] Greg Larson: Great, I don't see any other hands growing up and there's no action required on this. It's mostly for your information, and because I think it informs a lot of the work we're going to be doing later on. Um, I will use this as an opportunity because a couple people did just do thumbs up that they thought it made sense. And since we won't be taking decisive actions today in terms of, they'll be providing directions to your staff at various points during the morning, um, and as a time management tool. I may at various points, do what we call cheap consensus, which is comes up, means you love it. Come sideways means you can live with it. It's fine. It's okay. Thumbs down is we need to spend a little more time talking about the issue. And it's just a way to get the cheap consensus, so I can gauge where the council is in terms of closing out that item, we're moving ahead. And since this is a simple one, I'd like to use it. Is the council okay moving ahead from the communication style assessment or is there more to discuss? You see all thumbs up? Good. Thank you. Let me go back to sharing the screen for the next item. So now we're going to get to item 5 on the discussion outline, which is discussion of city council rules and relationships. And this is another one I'll share with you that, uh, with all the cities I've worked with that have far more challenging, um, council dynamics and not, uh, based on my assessment. Um, we have to spend a lot of time on rules and relationships. But I'll share with you that from the interview. Um, there's a lot of consensus among this council and you well recognize the roles of the council as a body as individuals and the mayor in particular. And so the public listening knows, one of the questions I asked each council member in the interviews in advance is, what did they think? of the primary roles of the council as a body, individual council members, and the mayor? And here are those results. Again, in roughly descending order by each category. But it, uh, is a reflection of the seasoning of this council, that even your 2 news council members have prior terms on the council, so they're not really new to governance. Um, you know, public role, and this is a very seasoned council that these interviews, results showed. As a full council member, you all recognize, you have, key role as a body as policy makers, um, 2nd for community engagement and communicating with the public and being accountable and accessible to them. Because of the turnover in your, uh, direct council appointees since 2019, this council had high recognition of, uh, the higher direction and oversight of those appointees being important. Well, one thing I often don't hear is the recognition of the quasi-judicial role, the council plays on land use issues that were appealed up to you, and I really appreciated that this council recognized that, and the work you'll be doing later this morning and afternoon, and setting city priorities and vision, and financial oversight, obviously being a, a key key role. And there was no divergence from the console. This was all in alignment of of what the council thought was the full council's role. Similarly, as individual council members, you recognize you have a direct responsibility to be accessible and accountable to your public, coming out of the stylistics discussion that we just had as well as the long-standing norms of disability, and individual recognition of being civil and collegial to each other, being part of that team. Is is your responsibility individually. To recognize that you only have one vote. That it's a 7 headed hydra in some cities, but not here. I need to come up with a better uh metaphor than Hydra for a city that's performing well like Mountain View, but it's respecting the majority. Um, but with that, maintaining your independence. I often don't hear this as much in other cities. I think um, there's this was several council members who really said, you know, we have to be there as individually elected officials with our own thoughts and experiences, a couple members, even mentioned how it's the diverse range of experience that makes the council stronger, and having that present in the meetings is important. And then also the regional representation role you play was mentioned by a couple. And I do want to highlight the being prepared. Um, that comes up in almost every city, as a clear recognition, the council agenda packets, of voluminous, um, public comment is rising dramatically over the last 5 years. There's just so much more to read and study and consider, but it takes a lot of work being a council member, and you acknowledge that collectively. And last for the mail, obviously chairs the council meeting. Yeah, that was the number one mentioned by everybody, but also the record that recognition of the spokesperson representative role, um, the ceremonial functions that come with being there for that year. Um, a couple council members mentioned that I verified the staff, that the mayor and vice mayor together, working with staff and the department ads, city manager and city attorney, city clerk, set the council agenda, and then also that the mayor in Mountain View is a separate role of making the council appointments to committees and regional bodies. I will share with you in other cities, this often becomes a discussion slide, because there isn't consensus amongst the council on what the rules are and how the people perform. My read from the interviews with this council is there's wide ranging acceptance of this. So I, again, I'm going to look for the exception rather than around the screen, commenting. Is there anybody surprised by these results or field or something listening that needs to be added? And we'll really just look for exceptions in terms of raised hands. I don't see any raised hands. So, This is a relief to me because this is hard work to do when we canceled want alignment here, and I knew we only had 2 hours, so it's been good, uh, a couple items that were able to move quickly on to keep us on track for the morning. So, well, we're now getting 2 is, we'll share with you, we're about 20 minutes ahead of schedule, um, which is where we needed to be to get to the, uh, 1030 stop time. So that's, that's good. Now we're to item 6. Now we get to the meat of the work. Um, for this morning in terms of, you clearly have a strong, well functioning council that has a history of working well together. Um, how do we make it even better? That's kind of the challenge that's going to be coming before us. And while most of the discussion in the next slide is, are easy ones. We're then going to get to harder ones. about where can the council make itself even better. Um, and that's kind of the task we have for the rest of the morning. So, 1st that's working well, again, this is a reflection back to you of what the council told me. So these are not my thoughts from watching a couple of your council meetings. It's what you all thought. And I will say it was hard for a lot of council members because whenever there's new council members joining. It's a new council in total because all the relationships and roles change and and you have too many council members who've come back from prior service. So it's hard to evaluate the current council, then I interviewed you, you really only have one meeting. So you didn't have a lot of data to evaluate how this council is going to work together. So you had to draw on past experience and past projections, but it creates the framework of the discussion we're going to have the day. First, what's working well? What was already mentioned upfront by a couple of council members. This city is long tradition of civility, civility and collegiality. And I heard, I think it was council member, sure Walters speak. It was. I was wondering if she'd looked ahead in my slide somehow, but uh, it was, this is a long tradition for the city, and you recognize your ability to work out differences and seek compromise. Getting to consensus. Can take time and is challenging and takes an ability to be considerate and flexible, which you've all highlighted as strengths. But I'm gonna emphasize the time issue. I, I will tell you some cities where it's a clear 52 or 14 vote, they sometimes just move to voting quickly without seeking consensus. And yet, as a former staff and to both councils as well as individual elected officials, I will just share, to the extent you have council or consensus among the elected leadership, particularly on the big issues, the time intensive issues, the vision, emission, schools and strategies for the city, it lets the organization move that much faster. And so to the extent you complemented your staff and being quick and responsive. I think that really comes from a lot of the consensus that's occurred previously at the council level. But it just lets your staff be that much more fast and nimble in responding to the issues you and the community care about. I wanted to highlight this 3rd bullet. Uh, this is where Mountain View is a bit different in your opening comments about what made the accomplishments possible. We're all of you acknowledge staff's role in work in that. You all brought up here. Uh, respectful and appreciative of staff. There's just a high appreciation of staff and a recognition of the council staff role. Several of you also mentioned concern about burnout, and I will tell you some of my staff discussions, that is an issue, especially in Mountain View, but in many cities right now, when you have the day-to-day job. Compounded by having to do it remotely or digitally, and then respond to the longest lasting crisis, any city has had in modern times. Most a fire and earthquake, you know, it's kind of done with, you know, in a week or two. This is going to take a year and a half at best before it's done with. And so, I do think the council members who raise the concern about pulling out, it's, it's a very valid concern, and it's where, I'm happy this council is taking time to improve their teamwork, because when they could use your for staff, to avoid burnout, to the extent the council is clear, and together in their direction. Um, some other strikes were mentioned. You know, this gets more human characteristics, recognition that it's a smart and thoughtful council policy focused, and also engaged with the community and caring. So it's not a hard-core rationality, but it's a, it's a rationality and thoughtfulness that's balanced by engagement and caring, which is a real good strength. And that's what came from you in your interviews with me. Um, about what you thought this council is doing well. And I think all of this lays a foundation for what could be improved, which is where we're going to spend the rest of most of our time this morning. I've taken all of your feedback and I was able to bucket it into 3 areas of possible improvement that I'd like us to work through this morning and the goal here will be to get some council consensus on what you think is possible as this new council to embrace and focus on for the next year as you build your working relationships to get through the pandemic and aggressive policy agenda ahead. So those 3 areas of possible improvement. Almost every council member raised meeting length, meeting exhaustion, workload, as an issue. As you'll see later, you all have differing solutions to it, but it was widely recognized that when you have meetings that go till 230 in the morning, you're doing a disservice to the issue. Because you're dealing with it so late, you're doing a disservice to yourselves, in your disservice to the community, that may want to participate or would be involved in that issue. And it came up in many different ways from each of you. By the meeting length and management is, is a big area for possible improvement. A 2nd one is just respect. Uh, it goes back to the ground rules from today. I think it goes back to the city's traditional civility and collegiality. How do you take that respect and extend it to all parties in the governance process? To each other, to the public and to yourselves even, to be respectful to yourself? Um, then the last area, um, a member of kind of process improvements came up that council members wanted to have considered and discussed. So I'm now going to walk through each of these 3 areas. And because of my concern about time, I was going to ask you to hold your comments till we've gone through all 3. But I think we now have time there where we can take a little pause after each of the slides and have the council digest and provide some direction on each of those. So let's jump into the 1st one. Meeting lengthened management. As I said, there were 3 big issues that came up from the council for areas of improvement. These 1st 2 issues had 3 buckets to them as well. So it's almost a 3 by 3 matrix here. Um, the 1st one is for council members. Lots of feedback from council members that we have to stay at the policy level. And a big part of keeping the meetings efficient and effective is to not dive down into staff rules, not to deal with information or details that could be handled offline or followed up in an email, a phone call, um, and just getting data that could be addressed in advance. To really stay, what are the core policy issues between the council that differentiate where you are and to stay at the top? This was mentioned by a majority of council as something that has to be done. Most council members also mentioned being succinct and avoiding repetition. That, if something's been raised by another council member, rather than being a paragraph on that whole issue that's already been discussed, you can simply say, I agree with that, uh, and move on, and your role as public officials, to let your public know where you are, as well as your council members. But being sustained in avoiding repetition. And then a couple council members also recognize that doing opportunities that are particularly anticipated to go late or long, that council members should use their report out times, um, for the broadest and most important issues that affect all of the council or staff for the community, not individualized items for that council member. So those were the 3 items that came up that you all told me you wished you or your colleagues would do more of as individual council members. You also had specific recommendations for the mayor's role. Um, and I don't think it was so much for, uh, plenty that mayor committed because she had chaired one meeting at least one time, but it's just to manage the meeting late. The mayor has to play an aggressive role managing the meetings. That's what, um, in this case she has been appointed to do. And part of that is managing the public comment to make sure you're doing your role of garnering public comment and providing that opportunity for the public to speak, but to make sure it's being done in the most efficient, effective way possible. So the public and the council aren't staying till 2 in the morning to have their opportunity to speak and to recognize there's a balancing app to do there. Um, some discussion by setting both item and speaker expectations, and this came from different council members, but as we get to an agenda item, saying, you know, here's how much time I think we have for this, if you want a target being done by midnight. I'm just setting that expectation. I modeled that at the start of this, where I said, our goal is to be done by 11 or 1030, which is an almost, uh, by 1030, so that we all know we're working on a clock to getting there, and to do that periodic time check back with you, so you know where we are. But then it's also for individual speakers. Yeah, staff presenters, outside presenters, applicant presenters, appellant presenters, um, and even uh, public speakers. And then, a role that some councils like the mayor to play, others don't, and maybe a discussion point here. Is really for the mayor to have their antenna up looking for one. In this case, she sees an evolving consensus or at least clear majority to then move to action and to be the one to pull the trigger that. It appears like we're moving to consensus or a majority on this issue can be moved to action and to empowering your mayor to take that role rather than letting it go on longer than necessary. So that's what came up for the mayor. And then for city stock, as has been raised in prior council workshops, uh, for stockholded need notes from 2 prior council team weather workshops, and this came up in those as well, particularly the 1st one is to limit presentations and question responses. Um, when it came up from most other council, as one way to reduce meeting length and to include its management. Um, and it's presentations up front. Um, I'll share from my experience and best practice working with a lot of cities. The stock presentation is often really just to frame the issue for the public. To make it clear what staff's recommendation is on why. And then also to provide any new information that wasn't in the staff report. And that's kind of, if the staff presentation is limited to those 3 roles, it can shrink them from being 20 minutes to 7 minutes. And if that's the purpose of a stock report. Um, question responses are the same and this came up in a couple different ways through the interviews, just keeping them short and high level, and also to use the question responses as a chance if it's getting into details or issues that aren't really the policy issue before the council. To shorten the response, and if somebody ask, uh, you know, about a sidewalk grinding, uh, criteria for the city. And you're talking about a street repaving budget. Laying out the 37 sidewalks that are going to be paved in the next year and which approaches are being used for each one is probably going to a level of detail not needed. Um, but just to say there is a prioritization process, and that was not an example given by a council member. I'm using it from another city I worked with um as an example. So um. Let's say, yeah, we can clearly send back to council what our policies and priorities and how we target which streets are served. And this is really the budget appropriation to do that work. Um, and that's the focus. So, this was a big one mentioned by council, which is why I'm spending more time on it. Uh, also some use of visual tools as much as possible and to step back from the discourse and here's where I'm not role modeling, but a couple council members said, and that's reading the sides to the council. Um, but I'm also trying to, uh, focus and give some color behind them, so I'm sharing back to you what you shared with me. And then uh it wasn't a big issue. It doesn't seem to be a real problem in Mountain View, but it was mentioned a couple times, so I included it on the side, which is stash roll is to present the recommendation, and that's kind of the handoff to the council. And let the council then do their job, which is deciding whether to go with the recommendation or to take a different path, which is the council's job, and, and I know your manager, you know, shared with me that she clearly tries to avoid stop ever being viewed as an ape council member, because that's not billable, and I think that's shared by council as well. So. Anyway, mayor, I'm going to stop here and just look for some council feedback on the slide, things that comfortable pursuing, and um, Maybe here, I might call on, on the past, uh, the past mayors first. So can I see the council members who've served as mayor previously? Sure, I thought it was most of you. Okay, let's go with um council member Matt Truck since you're highest up on my screen. Could you comment on the mailbox? Is that all achievable, do you think, for this city to increase the mayor's authority in those areas?

[01:01:29] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: Absolutely. Um, I do feel like um, those are my expectations of the mayor. I'm not sure I mentioned all those when we spoke, but I agree with the summary here. I think it's very doable.

[01:01:43] Greg Larson: Come from a believer?

[01:01:46] Councilmember Sally Lieber: No, I, I really agree with Counselor, I, I would say too that, um, the mayor is really responsible within the meetings for receiving the public in a, in a respectful way. And so I obviously just had one meeting, but I was really particularly pleased how our mayor was doing that. And um, really setting that tone, I think, is critical.

[01:02:16] Greg Larson: Can't you remember, Aubrey Koger? the most fun recent one who's been in the mayor's share or last year. Um, is what was hardest about the you as mayor to implement this, that might be advisory to mayor commit?

[01:02:31] Councilmember Margaret Abe-Koga: Um, I would say some of this has been evolving. Um, managing the public comment, um, item has been, it's changing as you mentioned that it's, you know, the numbers have been increasing. You know, we've been grappling with. how do we balance that with, um, the time that each member gets, and then, um, trying to, you know, share, share those reasons and the expectations. Um, and maybe I think we have to maybe try to do more of that. Um, because I'm not sure that, um, you know, it, it, It's all making sense as to why we have to maybe shorten the time on each speaker if we have more of them. Um, so I think the managing the public, um, comment piece is probably the most challenging at this time. But the other items, I think, I think all of them are doable. I think, yeah, some some of them are a work in progress, though.

[01:03:42] Greg Larson: Council member, Sheryl Walter? And then I'll be going to the mayor and vice mayor.

[01:03:47] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Yeah, I know, um, in 2015, 16, when we were going through the rent control effort. We had just, um, you know, there were several meetings where we had a couple of hours of, um, public comment, um, and, you know, there would be like 80 or 90 speakers. And so managing that was, you know, I mean, that that, that really, in situations like that, that just kind of takes over the meeting. And I don't think there's much we can do about it. That just tells us that it's a very, very important issue to our community. But what I wanted to mention was guiding the council to action. I think one of the things that's kind of different, a mayor, in a sense, runs the meeting and is the closest thing to a facilitator we have, but it's not quite a facilitator. But one of the jobs of a facilitator is to say, oh, I hear consensus when you hear, um, uh, people saying the same thing and to kind of summarize what the, that consensus is. And I think that sometimes that can be used as a tool to shorten the discussion. And I don't think we've used that very much and recently and, um, I'm wondering if that would be something we would be, you know, will, the mayor would be willing to do from time to time, is just to say, oh, I think everybody's saying this and, um, and then we can, uh, we can vote and, um, move on.

[01:05:14] Greg Larson: And it's why I went through the order of presenters, the 3rd pass mirrors 1st because I believe both the mayor and vice mayor, it's your 1st time in these roles, and just the question now comes to you, based on the experience of the past mayors, they'd all like you to play this role this year for the mayor and next year for the vice fair, presumably. Um, are you comfortable with that? Are you willing to be that manager of the council, and I, I think uh, one member talked about, uh, well, the mayor is kind of the captain of the team. And so I think this really reflects that uh being the captain of of the team. So I'm going to go to UNEX. Is there any challenge with this or parts of it you'd like more clarity from your colleagues on?

[01:06:03] Mayor Ellen Kamei: Well, I, I, I don't think any clarity is necessary. I mean, I think the, you know, the most challenging thing that I saw last year and I think will continue into 2021 is being on the virtual platform. And having meetings, um, and doing everything in the mayor box in a original setting. So I think to, you know, just, um, you know, systematically like that, that is a little bit different, you know, some, um, The technology aspect for some of the public who's engaging, you know, I think sometimes takes a couple minutes for them to to unmute or, you know, so I think that, um, you know, everything can be done in in this box. And I think myself and I don't want to speak too much for the vice there. I think, you know, we had one meeting and we're, you know, I think we'll try to achieve these goals. I think it, you know, um, but I think part of it is just the, the, you know, also understanding that, um, we all, we all have varying levels of fluency in both language and also in the technology components, and that, you know, it's not regular, you know, city council meetings, it's, it's, um, within the virtual space, it's, and how are we, I think, um, able to do all of this, you know, you, you have to look for hands, but sometimes you physically raising their hands. They're raising it in the Zoom box. You know, I think that those things add, you know, some other layers. And so, um, You know, I think that we also, you know, yes, the mayor, the vice mayor can take on these, but I think that also needs to be, um, you know, an element of, of understanding of all the moving pieces and that each moving can be different. Our technology, I'm sure, when you watched our meeting the other week, was challenging.

[01:08:03] Greg Larson: The technology makes it really hard and I was doing a counciling retreat like this for a council in the Bay Area, on March 17th, which you may remember was the 1st day of the stay at home order statewide. So that morning we had to go from what was going to be a live in person retreat to a Zoom retreat, and nobody had used Zoom before. So it was a, was a challenge. At least now we have a year's experience all of us on the public. Um, vice mayor. One of the rules of vice mayor is to advise and support the mayor being successful. You willing to play that role to help the mayor be strong in each of these areas?

[01:08:43] Vice Mayor Lucas Ramirez: Uh, I, I don't know if I would give, I, I, I don't know if that would be my definition of sort of the responsibility of vice mayor, uh, you know, but like it, I feel like, you know, to the extent I can be supportive and helpful, I am happy to be, you know, I'm, you know, we're all part of the same team, but, uh, you know, I'm, I'm decidedly sort of number 2, right? So if, if the mayor, uh, interested in, you know, involving the vice mayor, which personally, I think America may has done a very good job of doing. I appreciate it. I like the opportunity, but, uh, one of the things, uh, uh, I'll speak from a place of ignorance because I've never served as mayor, but I think we also, we should also should afford each mayor, the latitude to serve, you know, using a style that they're comfortable with. You know, some of us, you know, like I, I don't know how I, I would share meetings, but you know, I, I, I feel intuitively that I'm going to be kind of like a, you know, I, I, I, you know, an iron fist and an iron glove kind of guy. Uh, just because I, I'm, I feel like sometimes the meetings can go wrong because there, there are a lot of public speakers, but other folks may not feel comfortable, uh, running the meetings that way, and, and I think it's important for each mayor to serve using a style that is really authentic to them.

[01:10:11] Greg Larson: And council member hips, any thoughts about this? Do you think uh the mayor playing this role would be helpful to accelerating the council meeting?

[01:10:21] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So I, I generally agree with what's uh, being said. I, uh, the uh, line item that I'm focusing on the most is the set item and seeker expectations. I'm hoping, although I generally agree with what's being said, I'm hoping that we don't abbreviate the discussion among council members so much that we're not really discussing the policy that we're trying to make. I feel like, um, we've largely gone down to meetings every other week, whereas a couple of years ago we were having them sometimes twice a week, we have more speakers and we have longer presentations. And I feel like by the time we get to policy making, um, it's often late at night, and I really don't want to short circuit that too much. Um, and the place that I'm, I'm going to throw something out here that's, I don't know where in this agenda it goes, but I was talking with school board members. And they said that the superintendent has a kind of a separate update. I I think he's been doing it since the advent of COVID. And I'm wondering whether that's something we might do. We have an excellent presentation at the beginning of each of our meetings by the city manager. But I'm wondering if that could be managed separately in some ways. And so that, uh, The superintendent holds his on a separate evening, which I don't think I'm not imagining us doing. But I'm wondering if we could have a set time, whether it's 20 minutes or 30 minutes when, um, so that, because I've seen members of the public come in, when they want to speak on something else and kind of drop off as at our last meeting, the presentations went on for a very, very long time.

[01:12:20] Greg Larson: Thank you, Council member Hicks. Wondering if there's a tool we could use to abbreviate the present the speaker's presentations a little. And I think when you get the process improvements, That's where that fits. That's a great idea that didn't come up through the interview, so I've added that to discuss through process improvements when we get there in 2 sides. So that's a great idea. Thank you. Um, So, mayor, what I'm hearing is, the council is generally comfortable with you, um, being assertive in these roles, which gives you direction as a new mayor, um, to to play that role within your own style and approach, to governance, um, to manage the public comment, to set items and speaker expectations, and to guide the council to action as soon as you, since the council is ready for action. Um, and the set item and speaker expectations. apologize if that was unclear. I blended a couple different thoughts I got from council together there and it's. For both staff and outside speaker expectations, making sure they know publicly, not just stop telling them you'll have 10 minutes to state your appeal or 5 minutes or whatever's determined. It's important for that to be said publicly as well. So there's a public accountability to the time limit, not just a private accountability to the time limit is what we've seen in cities. And then some cities do try to set a time expectation for items, and it may be something the mayor vice mayor and stop to, when they review the agenda saying, gee, this item 20 minutes, this item 30, this item 50, and and know where that takes you, to a 2 o'clock or 12 o'clock point, and staff knows this. I actually do that for this session. I had each item mapped out for time, not that those are strict, but it lets me know if we're running ahead or behind, so I can inform you where we need to be. And it's just a pretty simple tool, to manage time of public meetings knowing there's variables beyond your control, in terms of public comment, and council discourse that's needed, to get to a decision. And those are unknowns. Um, you do your best guess. Let's move to council members and I'll just be asking, um, again, it's a little bit of a time management. This is what your colleagues have asked of each of you. Um, are you comfortable with that? Are you each comfortable and these is 3 tools you can individually apply to make council meetings more efficient and effective. I see a lot of head nodding. I mean, ask for thumbs up or thumbs sideways or thumbs down, so I can get a sense that there's items we need to talk about. Okay, I'm seeing all thumbs up or thumb sideways, so mayor?

[01:15:30] Mayor Ellen Kamei: I see some people with raised hands, Greg. So I wasn't sure.

[01:15:34] Greg Larson: I do, yeah. I'm sorry. I don't see them.

[01:15:38] Mayor Ellen Kamei: Yes, I was trying to find a way to alert you. And then I just wanted to go.

[01:15:42] Greg Larson: I now see them. Perfect.

[01:15:43] Mayor Ellen Kamei: And I wanted to give some feedback on like the timing of the agenda. You know, I've been my experience last year and into this year, there's definitely time allocations and our best guesses. Um, and I just want to publicly say, as you were saying, um, you know, we do try to do those things. So do you see the hands?

[01:16:07] Greg Larson: Yes, I do. Vice Mayor Ramirez?

[01:16:13] Vice Mayor Lucas Ramirez: Thank you, uh, so I, I want to, uh, the slides are all, a little messed up. There we go. Um, so I, it's high level. I'm generally comfortable with this. I think the one point I want to respond to because I I do feel it's more of an art than a science is stay at the policy level. I think most of the time it's, it's unambiguous, but sometimes we are presented with questions where it feels like, you know, we're being asked to micromanage or weigh in, you know, on operations more than perhaps we're equipped to, and the, the example that stands out is when we were talking about expanding the safe parking program, um, uh, at the, both Evelyn and Shoreline. And, you know, there were questions about what types of, you know, how should we utilize the additional spaces, should they be for, you know, uh, was it auxiliary vehicles or people, you know, sleeping in them? And I don't feel like I need. I don't I don't think I'm equipped to make that decision. I feel like that's something that we can safely let, you know, the program operator figure out based on the input they're receiving from the folks being served. And so, uh, you know, I don't, I don't think it's easy to, uh, to provide unambiguous direction on what is policy low and and what is operations. You know, clearly we might have differing opinions about this, but, um, you know, to the trarist extent possible. I think if if staff can help us stay in the policy level by, you know, teaming up questions that are clearly at the policy level. Uh, and you know, providing, you know, the staff or program operators, you know, the, the latitude that they need to succeed. I feel that that would help the council as well.

[01:18:09] Greg Larson: Okay Um, and let's see, council member, not a track, and then show Walter.

[01:18:15] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: Thank you Um so I just want to comment on the 3rd bullet there. Um, I believe I brought this up during our discussion. And a couple years ago, we decided that, um, it's typically during item 8. The only things we would bring up are our attendance at regional board meetings, and if there was any information from that regional board, meaning that the rest of the council members should know. And I believe there's a policy that says that we do have to, um, report out on items where city funds have been expended. And I think this has made a huge difference in the amount of time we spend on item 8. Um, and so I would like to continue with that practice. And if we could going forward. Thank you.

[01:19:13] Greg Larson: And maybe we can put on the bike rock, um, Christina to share with counsel that prior policy direction. Other, uh, council members, your welcome.

[01:19:25] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Yeah, I was going to follow up on what Lisa said. I kind of agree with you, Lisa, except that, I think that sometimes we go to meetings that we want to share the information with our fellow council members, but by the time item 8 comes around, we're all exhausted and everybody wants to go home, so it's a horrible time to do it. So I'd be interested in just another process for sharing that information.

[01:19:55] Greg Larson: If there's console concurrence to that, we could look at, um, looking at, you know, taking what the prior direction was, that comes from your matter truck raised, um, and I can look to see if other cities have set up an offline process for doing that, that's not public. Um, because there's a public sharing piece to that as well, to see if there's further refinements of the past direction from council that might be warranted to look at in the future. Um, and there's no action or direction needed from counsel on that. Um, I see one lost hand being based council member Hicks.

[01:20:36] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Well, I was just going to support council member Sher Walter's recommendation. Maybe you were putting that in your notes anyway. Thanks.

[01:20:48] Greg Larson: Okay, um, then for city staff, um, this has come up before limiting presentations as well as question responses, because sometimes the question response is, if something's getting into out of policy and into detail, the question response can take it even further into detail, instead of elevating it back to the policy level. And by doing that, it makes no shorter response as well. That's an art for staff. It's not a science as well. Um, I, believe most of these are probably acceptable to the council based on the feedback I received. Um, I do want to move the agenda ahead, so I'll just look for hands raised. If council members have concerns or comments they want to make about any of the city staff items. Otherwise we'll view it as collective direction to staff. Um, they're right at a system, the meeting manager. I don't see any hands raised. So, whoops, but I did jump off the slide. So let's move on. I think we have general consensus, this, and what I know on the bike rock, um, regarding, uh, the, uh, reporting out on broad issues in particular. Respect for all. Again, this says 3 buckets, as I mentioned, I'm going to go through all 3 buckets, more quickly than I did before, because I think they're all fairly self evident, and they play the strengths of this council, and this city. So hopefully they'll be able to, for the public, you know, listen, uh, avoid responding in ways that could be perceived negatively by the public and treat all speakers the same. I do know how that's challenging. I understand from several people. Well, Mountain View may get more than it shares, speakers from outside of the city, who choose Mountain View as a place to speak, but the viewing public and the participating public may not know that. Um, and it, it can come across uh, differential, to, to various uh, participants. For each other, probably the only concern I've heard raised from many council members, they came in 2 different ways of, well, everybody wanting to keep the civility and collegiality of past years, but kind of a lingering or an undercurrent and concern about growing factions and divisiveness that we're certainly seeing nationally. and statewide and I'll tell you we're seeing it in many, many cities. And it would be great if Mountain View can avoid becoming one of those cities, that gets very politically divisive and factionalized because it will hurt your productivity as a council. Um, it just slows everything down. And an item will take 4 meetings instead of 2 and staff won't be clear of the direction of where they're supposed to go. It just, it slades everything down and I'll show this, is raised by a majority of council. An undercurrent of concern about these 1st 2 items. And then a couple council members brought up as has been brought up in prior retreats, just, The legal obligation of each council member to personally commit to adhering to closed session confidentiality, but it is a violation of the law to share anything out of closed session, but the council is not permitted to be shared outside of closed session, and the attorney can certainly weigh in with the separate training on that for council. But, um, I've worked with too many clients who've based problems in violation of that, uh, that I, I just wanted to highlight what a couple council members raise. The one that was unique here. What was being respectful for yourself and your own experience and opinions, you know, the couple council members mentioned, it wasn't a majority, but a couple council members said, you know, we all come in with our own thoughts and experience and that's his strength. But we need to be able to save what those are and just share them and to, um, be direct and, you know, as the council is trying to find a path forward on a decision, that's hard with, with shifting going on. It's easier if people kind of have taken the feedback and their experience in education. to express where they're going. And then the last one's a bit of a standalone and uh outer here because she said it uh, already during this workshop, and they're just asking for patients from her colleagues, for yourselves and each other, as there's technology challenges and changing public dynamics, that you all have to be patient with each other and with the system and process. So, um, That kind of summarizes what you all told me that I put in this bucket of respect for all. It's all individual behavior. It's not really cancel action needed. Are there any points on the screen, the council members are either unclear or problematic. that they're uncomfortable with. I'll look for hands raised on the screen or with the icon. In case you member sure Walter, you will be getting these slides. No. Um, I see. No, I don't, no, I see one man, cancel member lever.

[01:26:32] Councilmember Sally Lieber: Yes. Thank you, mayor. Um, in terms of the public and, um, having a kind of meeting where, um, uh, people from the public who are at the top of our org chart are, um, wanting to feel effective. I think one of the issues is, um, when people come into the meeting, um, are a very complex issue that the city's been dealing with for quite a while, it's hard to get into the information stream. And so if there was some way, at some point, I don't know what that pathway would be to say, um, if you're looking to get into the stream of discussion on housing or on the uh, sustainability initiatives. Here's a rundown of the um, the past information. And I don't know if that would just be, uh, you know, pointing people to the, uh, items that are on the website, but sort of, um, I, I think if people don't feel like they have a, uh, an on-ramp, then it can deteriorate for them quickly.

[01:27:52] Greg Larson: And I, if I could, uh, paraphrase back, I heard, kind of 2 places when new council members coming into an issue that's been long-standing, as well as members of the public. Trying to get engaged in the issue and understanding the history of it. as they want to add their voice to the public discourse. It sounds like both are relevant issues.

[01:28:15] Councilmember Sally Lieber: I'm specifically uh, calling out the ability of the public to to get into the, the discussion. And I think I kind of felt that just on our last, um, on our last item that we discussed, I don't know how many members of the public are watching this, but I would expect that some people wouldn't be clued in on what's item 8. And um, things like that. So, um, I think that offering it on ramp or making things really clear is, um, helpful to crawling frustration.

[01:28:56] Greg Larson: That sounds like an item for the, uh, uh, bike rock for maybe the manager and I to discuss uh, approaches that have been used by other jurisdictions. Um, sounds like it's a staff level uh, engagement. Okay. Um, I see no other hands up for this item. Um, can we take better as general counsel consensus that you're individually willing to, to pursue these in your behavior and counsel and strengthen the team? Maybe we'll just go to cheap consensus again? Okay, nice mail, you're good? Okay, great. Thumbs up all the way around. Good. We have one last item for this section of the program. Um, and then we're gonna get to norms, and this is possible process improvements, and we have one added one from council member hicks. I will say the only ones that were mentioned by a majority of council in the interviews, and I already have shared this with your manager, who's strengthening the goal setting process, and there was no concern about the goal setting meeting when it's happened. There was more concern about living to the goal setting for the next year and not letting 10 other goals come on top of the 10 adopted goals that maybe push out some of the 10 goals. You know, and and to create some reliability and facility to the process, that will go a long ways to helping your staff with the workload issues we talked about earlier. Um, and I'll just, I'm going to separately share with your manager kind of when we've done priority setting with cities. We share best practices for living to your priorities, and I'd I'd just like to share that with your manager to see what's appropriate for um Mountain View, and then it could be uh, weaved into your next full setting process. Coming out of that, though, is the 2nd issue that a majority of council raised, is, We're just trying to do too much, y- we as you, the city you were telling me you were trying to do too much. Um, and that's why the agendas are so weighty and full, and it almost goes back to the mayor, vice mayor, staff. Agenda setting, load balancing, and workload balancing for the council to make sure you're being your most productive and collegial and collaborative selves on not having to get to more friction filled types of decision making structures. Um, so those were 2 that were brought up by a majority of council. Others were raised, uh, just, Being more aggressive using the consent calendar. I will share one idea that I hadn't seen before, that may be worthy of exploration, is it? Sometimes you don't want things on the consent calendar because they get buried and it's a good news story. Oh, yeah, approval of a construction contract for a new library. Could be a consent calendar item because there's probably no discourse about it if there's no appeal. However, that's a moment to celebrate that you're achieving something great. So the idea is, could there be items of note? So, you know, you have the consent calendar, you have items of note, which is really consent calendar, but we want people to know this is big stuff, and then you have the lady agenda. I have to look at. Um, a practice that a couple council members said that I've totally seen today is raising hands and being called on, not, uh, jumping in, and that also, and then let's the mayor make sure everybody's spoken once before somebody speaks a 2nd time. That's just a great, uh, practice of civility and collegiality. One item that came up from a couple council members was, when asking questions of staff, making sure it's a fact-based question, not a, not a commentary, question, and to separate the, the fact base from the discourse, and, and to keep that clear. And then it's always an issue for most councils to get questions to staff in advance by email or phone. Um, I heard different feedback from counseling this that I'll share with your manager on best ways to do that. Um, but I will tell you, it also goes to the shorter meetings. To the extent, your staff is not blindsided at council meetings, they can be more professional and clear in their responses to give you the information you need to make the decisions you want to make. Um, and that's, that's critically important. So, these are possible process improvements. I think unless the council's concerned about any of them, it really becomes direction to your staff, to work with the mayor on vice mail, on pursuing some of these for possible implementation over the next 6 months. Um with with the council. So I'm looking for Andrews. I see one from council member leader.

[01:34:16] Councilmember Sally Lieber: So I think if we can put further definition into the, um, limiting substantive council agenda items. I like the phrasing of rebalancing. Um, but I'm concerned about shifting the policy role to staff. And then I think the the consent calendar, I've noticed the the growth of the consent calendar. And I think it sort of becomes a thing where people are pulling items from the consent calendar because they really shouldn't have been on consent in the 1st place. And, um, maybe one thing that might help with, um, the agenda is, um, to really have more of a timed, uh, agenda. Or um, tentative times. Um, And to the, you know, greatest extent that that can be semi-accurate. I know it really depends on how many people, how much public input there is. Um, but if we have an ex, uh, expectation of, of time, and maybe that's already going on, um, in the background, and I haven't noticed on the agenda, the couple of agendas that I've participated in. But I think having an expectation like that would help.

[01:35:39] Greg Larson: Great, I'll go to the other council members who have followed up, I think, council member Hixson's next and then another check.

[01:35:49] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Yes, and Greg, tell me if I'm if I'm raising this in the right time slot. Um, so, maybe this is where I can say something about, uh, the way I've seen presentations abbreviated and, um, Uh, I was, I've gotten feedback from members of the public that some of them, um, really like and appreciate the COVID updates and want to, you know, want to observe those and and participate in them. And others come to our meetings for a particular agenda item that they're very interested in. Um, and so that made me wonder if we could more strictly, and then the agenda items get pushed off as our presentations are long. That made me wonder we could divide those into 2 separate, more, maybe more closely timed items. Just to give an example. Uh, let's say our council meeting, we're starting at 5.30. If it could start with a, and I don't know, the city manager can say how long they generally are, but a COVID update from whatever it is, 5 to 515, 5 to 530, that's kind of scheduled. And then the full council meeting starts after that, say, at 6. Um, and then council members, I have to say when I turn off my moving video, I'm in the room and I'm listening. But it would mean that we could be fully present and fully engaged for the items that we're making policy over. So, and that's, in some ways, the way, it's a little different than what the school board is doing because they have a full 2nd day for that kind of COVID and reopening and so forth discussion. But, yeah, I'm trying to figure out how we could make the presentations work more for everybody in some way. Thank you.

[01:37:50] Greg Larson: And, let's see, I believe I said it was council member, Matt, check next, followed by Sherwelter.

[01:37:56] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: Thank you. I just want to make a couple of comments here. On the last bullet. I like that we have the ability to send in questions. Um, I know I have a hard time reading all the questions and responses before the council meeting, um, because they come in, um, later than they used to in the past. And so I'm wondering if we can look at an improvement where maybe the deadline for council members to send in the questions is earlier, which would give staff more time, um, and we could maybe get them back earlier than we currently get them. Um, I do um, agree with the comment about the consent calendar. They're growing. And I do think often items are pulled because we do want to comment on them. And so maybe they don't belong on the consent calendar. So I like the idea about the items of note. Um, kind of uh, categorization. Thanks.

[01:38:58] Greg Larson: And let's see. We have council members, show that connect.

[01:39:03] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Yeah, hi, um, I'd like to say ditto to uh, Lisa's comments, particularly about the items of notes. I think that note I think that's a really good idea. And I also wanted to mention that at the water district, um, on the agendas, um, they had time certain marked for just a few items. Usually it would be like, you know, maybe, Not even one, an agenda, but when there was something that we knew, there were going to be a lot of people talking on, we would say, okay, this is going to start at an existing, at a specific time. And then they would basically stop, whatever else was happening to get to that time certain. So people in the public could, um, uh, you know, could take part and could know when they could, you know, would be able to take our part. And, um, uh, I think that a, um, judicious use of that might, you know, might be valuable from time to time.

[01:40:01] Greg Larson: Um. Let's see, I'm going to go to. Uh, customer member, is your hand up again or is that called? Okay. We're going to get a vice mayor Ramirez and then I'd like to call him the city manager for a couple reflections. Nice there.

[01:40:20] Vice Mayor Lucas Ramirez: Thank you. Um, so I, uh, I, I hear what, what everyone's saying, and I think there are some interesting ideas that we can pilot. Um, the time certain thing, I think is challenging. One of the things that fundamentally, I think we have to hold ourselves accountable for the length of a discussion, right? And and, you know, there are some things we can do maybe with public comment management. There might be some things we can do with reducing, uh, you know, the presentations from staff, but I think, you know, really, it's, it's incumbent upon us to do the best that we can to, you know, either come to consensus and vote on the matter or agree that we don't have, you know, consensus and it might be a 4 to 3 split, but we vote and we move on. Um, the, the challenges I have with something like interrupting an item is, you, you, lose the momentum that you have from a discussion, it comes back and it doesn't, it's just like we, we, San Jose does this with some degree of regularity and I, I don't think it actually leads to better decision making. And then, I think more importantly, I, I, I, want to be respectful of the staff who are participating for a particular item, right? And you might interrupt something that, you know, is not as controversial, but could take some time to deliberate. You know, for an item that might take 3 hours and then you have the staff who are waiting for the conclusion of the 1st item sitting around. Uh, and, and it just, it doesn't, I, I think, I would rather start with what can we do as individual council members to, be as, uh, you know, productive in our comments and, and, you know, exercise restraint, um, before we, you know, put in place some pretty significant structural changes that I think could end up, being counterproductive and dis disrupting the flow of, of our discussion. Um, the other thing, um, we, we, you know, I, you might have this somewhere else and so I, I don't want to. I don't want to be too this jump, but I do have some pretty strong feelings about. I think council reliever had mentioned this uh, staff sort of uh, anticipating where a council might be on a policy issue. Um, you know, if the council has made a decision. Uh, that's, but totally get, you know, you, you are exercising the will of the council, but there are occasions where I think, uh, you know, staff will, you know, engage a stakeholder group or an applicant and, you know, anticipate where a council might be in a policy question without actually asking the council. And I think that leads to some challenges. So, I, you know, we had talked about that. I don't know if that's somewhere else in the agenda. I can talk about it here if that's helpful or sit on it for later.

[01:43:09] Greg Larson: Before going to the manager. Um, thank you for both of those, uh, feedback, council member, uh, I don't have the issue about staff meeting on an issue prior to cancel action because it wasn't raised by enough council members and it didn't kind of fit the buckets. So I think that is an item you need to put on the bike. Or substantive discussion with staff and I will follow up with your comments on that. In terms of the time, certain, um, I, I've been in systems that usually and don't use it and there's strengths and weaknesses like the artist so much, and, uh, what I think works best is not to make it a public request, but to make it a manager, mayor, or vice mayor, vice mayor, manager, decision, that agenda setting, when it might really be used. to have it, but not to make it common. But, uh, Kimla, Ms. McCarthy.

[01:44:08] City Manager Kimbra McCarthy: Thank you, Greg. Um, so just some thoughts, real quick, high level thoughts on some of the process improvements. So, um, I spoke with the department head team last week and we talked about uh, presentations and the length and how things are going and we just, um, really discussed how we will be really focused on that 7 minute mark, 7 minutes or less. Um, there may be sometimes, especially if it's a very, um, I guess, difficult or um, a more complex policy issue where the presentation may go a couple minutes longer than than 7 minutes just to make sure that we are explaining it as well. But we are definitely going to, um, really be focused on shorter, concise, um, really to the point using visuals and presentations. So that is something, certainly that we will be working on and you'll see that started on Tuesday. Um, in terms of study sessions. I, I think you all probably have realized over these last several months that we've tried to also limit the number of questions to counsel because I know that was um, something that was talked about before and really trying to keep it at, um, the high level policy questions that counsel needs to answer and not give you all, you know, multiple questions, but really trying to keep it at like 3 or less questions um, related to your policy decisions. Um, I would note that for the time certain, I think the challenge we're going to have is we just don't know about the length of public comment or how many folks are going to show up. So that's something I think that we might have to modulate during the meeting itself, obviously, as we see how many folks are in public common and want to talk. But we do actually, in agenda review, discuss how long an item might take, just at least in terms of the presentation. And um, how long we might think council, you know, questions and comments and public comment might be. And um, you know, with just this new environment this past year, it's been harder to predict. I think than being in person, when you know how long an item might go. Um, I think the last meeting we had was more of an anomaly just because of the presentations and how the flow went, um, with, uh, the discussion about fencing. And then we also had a lot of technical problems that we hadn't had before. So I think I wouldn't want to use what happened last Tuesday as kind of the benchmark, um, because it, it really that, that was an anomaly. It was strange, but just a lot of things, it was like, things happened during that meeting that, um, tech technologically that we hadn't experienced before. So, um, I think that we can definitely make things more crisp. We'll, we'll continue to talk about the um, timing of items in a gender review and continue to discuss that with the department heads and with the mayor and vice mayor. And, um, really just try and dill down, drill down to this more efficient, you know, process and getting you all through your items and giving you the ability to talk about your policy decisions. So I think all that is good and that's possible and we'll work on it. I would say, though, that for consent. I'm hearing kind of 2 things. So I'm hearing both that we want to use the consent calendar more. Um, and, you know, we really are trying to do that for administrative or operational items. But I'm also hearing that some council members may want to pull things off consent. Um, So we'll really try and focus the consent items for those routine operational administrative items. Um, so that's what we are focused on now and obviously, um, you know, a council member may want to pull something to comment on it or questions, but we'll, we'll still focus consent, um, the way that we have been trying to.

[01:48:18] Greg Larson: So I have to step into my time management role as well here and uh move the council on so you get a little break before strategic planning and are able to get re-energized before that. So, I was planning to go through all of that and then...

[01:48:34] Mayor Ellen Kamei: Sorry, Mr. Larson.

[01:48:37] Greg Larson: Yes, and you hear when that.

[01:48:39] Mayor Ellen Kamei: And I, you know, I think we can, we can have a little bit of flexibility and if we have to, I don't want to, um, stop the conversation. if colleagues want to continue on this item if that's okay with you.

[01:48:51] Greg Larson: Okay. Of course, you're with us. Council member, I'll be closer.

[01:48:59] Councilmember Margaret Abe-Koga: Thank you. Like I said, as I was listening to everyone, um, my feeling on these items is that, um, to be very little, um, contradictory, to, um, you know, we don't want long meetings, but we don't want to add things to consent calendar. Um, I just don't think, you know, as I just from my experience, it's possible to do all this, frankly. And I think it's not, I agree. I think is, um, vice mayor said it, a lot of it has to do with our own, um, right? Our own constraint. Um, I think we can try to tweak the process here and there, but it really comes down to when, you know, and I think it's connected. If we want to be at the policy level, then we should be able to let things go and go on consent more often. Like if you look at the consent calendar. It's usually, you know, contracts, um, that we're proving, um, you know, does, if we're designing, uh, something, it's, it's come to us 3 times. I don't think we need to like, make it another action item. It's, you know, we've talked about it several times. Um, I guess I've always felt that if you want to comment on something on consent, you know, you don't have to pull the item, and we've done this, we've been doing this where you can just talk to it, and that to me, I think does speed it up rather than making it a separate, you know, action items, or new business, or old business, however you want to, um, put it. So, um, I think we just, yeah, I just want to be realistic, and I don't know if we are being realistic, to be honest, um, by looking at this list and listening to the comments. I will say like, um, yeah, the time certain. Um, you know, we do, we, when we go through agenda setting, we try to approximate how much time each item is going to take. Um, you know, honestly, this last year we missed the mark. We had no idea how many people were going to show up to the meeting. So it's just not, um, you know, we do our best. I think we've done this for a while, but it's been just a lot more unpredictable. The issues we have are just a lot meatier. And, um, yeah, I think, you know, so it's really gonna be incumbent on us as to how much we're willing to let go. My thoughts.

[01:51:31] Greg Larson: Thanks. And I actually think, uh, become some member of the manager's comments, kind of feed exactly to where I thought this discussion would end up, which is you've basically empowered the mayor to be a stronger captain manager of the meetings on your be app. That's kind of point one. Second, I think all of you have collectively realized. You have individual responsibility here to participate in the public discourse and making the meetings efficient and effective, and you've heard from your colleagues, what they would like, um, that to be represented as, and 3rd you have a number of items to explore or maybe even try. And that's working with your stock primarily on the process improvements, and I think there's probably primarily go to the mayor manager meeting, or vetting in terms of the agenda setting process. And I think that's about as far as you can go on this discussion is empowering your mayor. Each of you taking your considerate style and trying to be responsive to your council colleagues for what they're asking for. And third, being willing to try some new approaches, this next year as long as we're in pandemic, and stuck with the Zoom format, to see if there's some ways to help, cancel discourse occur before midnight or one AM. Um, and so it can be a peak performance for each of you. And with that. Well, I think that's about as far as we can take it because there isn't one more item that the council has an opportunity to embed some of this discussion if they wish. And that was uh, item 7 on the agenda to assess the city council norms. And uh, the norms, if the public doesn't know, it's actually a one page document, that's called how we work together, that was 1st dropped in, I believe, in 2015, and it's been reevaluated by the council a couple times, and it uh, comes under these uh, 9, or 10 categories. Of discussion and there's more detail in the one pager on each of these, but this gives you the flavor of it. And I just wanted to share back to the council um 2 things. One, in your interviews, you all said, it's good we have them. But most of you also said, I don't know how much we're using in the following. So it was kind of the flip side. So I really wanted to turn this discussion into some best practices we've seen in other cities, and we think it really comes into 3 buckets, and the 1st one you already have. That's why the check marks there. They exist, and they have life, and they have longevity. been around for over 5 years. They're probably part of this tradition of stability and collegiality that exists. in Mountain View that you've all commented on. So good points there. That's probably priority number one. Cody number 2 is, with a couple of exceptions, they've generally been reviewed annually. Often, I think, at this team building workshop. So I would count this as the annual review where you got them in advance. They've been publicly disseminated. They're being talked about in public, they just raises their awareness. So, I'd give you a check mark for generally doing that 1st piece of the commitment bucket. But there's another opportunity that not many cities do, but my sense is, given your history of having worms. It may be relevant as well for you, and that's to just do your commitment as an individual. leading into this council retreat or coming out of it, you each get it, and it, you just sign a review, I've read and reviewed the norms to refresh my understanding of them, and it just goes to the clerk, and it's, you're all, you know, ethical, political, actors and actresses, and that's the statement of, you, you're committing, you're recommitting to them, not only as a collective, but individually. And that's a practice that has worked in the city I managed and some other cities. Then the 3rd bucket is where I feel there may be some opportunities as well. You know, just make them visible. The public will hold you accountable to them. As you know, and that's, and you'll hold yourself more accountable to them, they're visible, have it as a big chart in the council chambers, if there's room for it. Print it in the council agenda packages, the lost page or the 3rd page after all the evil stuff. Just make them visible and your public will help you remember them. Um, the other one is, the last one is a little bit more challenging. Some cities do it. A few cities do it. But as you are relatively strong counsel, I wanted to throw it out. If they're a council member or stock person or even a member of the public feels somebody's not living up to the rooms. What's the recourse? First recourses, obviously, to do that direct discussion. Some cities have looked at the mail vicemail. Having uh, a safe place to go to say, to raise a concern, and then it's them in that role, raising it to the council member that, you know, we heard this concern, we just wanted you to know about it, and it creates that, um, so that's kind of my sense of your norms. What I wanted to tea up here for discussion. Is, are there any possible changes and also to get a thumbs up on recommitting to the document today of how we work together. Um, and the direction on possible changes could be any of those items I'd listed as possible additions to your process at the bottom of the prior side. So, maybe 1st we are in the interest of time, if I can go to the 2nd question, we'll just see if the council is willing to recommit collectively to how we work together. As a statement of of how the council wants to be. And I see. Most council members can't remember legal or you can. yeah. Okay, so everybody recommit to those. But now let's talk about changes to work on over the next 6 months before we reconvene or reconvene in a year. Um, are there changes to the having work together, you'd like either process or substance? Now kind of go back to the slide. Just because it helps. Uh, keep one hand up, cancel memory matter check.

[01:58:26] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Um, I think your last point on this line is an interesting one. And I think it might be worth considering. Um, having either the mayor or the vice mayor play a role in helping us to move up to this commitment and to address any issues that might come up. I'd like to consider that one. Thank you.

[01:58:57] Greg Larson: Any other country member comments? I see a country member, Lieber, and then show Walter.

[01:59:06] Councilmember Sally Lieber: Thank you. Um, I think that one thing that can come up um, frequently, um, when you're serving on a council or in another role in government is, um, a defensive posture. And a lot of times the, there's a lot of incoming, um, feedback from the community or from interest groups. And, um, it can be hard to not just, um, react with a defensive posture. But every action has an equal and opposite reaction. And I think sometimes the, um, the defensive postures really fuel, um, more reaction, and, and so it's important to, um, try to receive people well, um, uh, even if they're from a different city or, or they're coming forward with, um, maybe not the full information or, um, A lot of different scenarios like that. I think that resisting the defensiveness is really important to being productive.

[02:00:28] Greg Larson: Next man's council member, should we go through a fellow by Albert Cove?

[02:00:34] Councilmember Pat Showalter: I was just going to put in a plug for posting them in the council chambers when we get back there. I think that's a great idea. And then the other thing is, I don't know if this is, um, there's a link to this document on the website, on the sort of city council page, but we might want to think about adding that too.

[02:00:57] Greg Larson: Come to remember, I'll be okay.

[02:01:00] Councilmember Margaret Abe-Koga: Oh, thank you. I agree. I think posting it would be great. Um, I appreciate Counselor Metachek's comment about, um, a role for mayor and vice mayor and I was actually thinking, um, in the context of, um, you know, what do we do when, um, maybe someone isn't following the norms? I mean, we've had a few, you know, very few, but a few cases. And when it's annually, sometimes, you know, a whole year seems like a long time, um, to go. So is there a way to like address an issue that might come up? Um, and it could be for the mayor, vice mayor, I know last year before COVID hit, we had talked about doing a check-in, midway, and we just never got to that. Um, but maybe that's something that we could, you know, think about. I know the city managers suggested it that we do it halfway, you know, a 6 month check in.

[02:01:57] Greg Larson: Thanks. So in the interest of telling me, I'd like to just reflect back what I'm hearing from the council is some interest in more process improvements. And not so much changes to the language, and I think what I could do is work with, uh, your manager to bring back something to the mayor and vice mayor, as part of the agenda review, and then it will be a city decision, whether that's something that goes to council for action, or is simply just such a stop implementation level. Um, and then it gives you time to evaluate that as an approach before you revisit the, uh, norms next year. Um and to decide if further changes are needed then. Um, I did think council member Lieber's comment about defensiveness. I did try to reflect back in the individual commitment for council members to treat the public with respect, um, and it's hard, um, as the divisiveness of the public discourse as reason at every level of government. It's hard to be the passive listener. But that is part of our role as public official. Um, with that, I don't see any further hands up. I think it's primarily direction to be in your staff. To follow up on some process improvements, given, again, we've already achieved the biggest part of you have norms, and you review them almost annually, and you're recommitting to that, and we'll set up the process to look at that lower level, and improvements, and they're intrigued that several council members suggesting a role for the mayor vice mayor. I think that does create a safety valve for the council to to know that we're always living to these standards. So, with that, we had one last item we wanted to discuss, and it's, uh, I can get the slide to work. Um. Is the uh expectations for city council, email management. Basically, the system had changed over the last couple of years, and I really want to just reflect back, that I heard from council, and then your staff will have a chance to present some comments, and then I think it's, it's probably in the staff's hands at that point, if council is in concurrence. Um, in terms of what the council told me. Um, you know, high expectations where a majority of the council felt each council member chooses how to manage their email. That's part of the job of being uh, a council member. Um, we're all getting too much email now, so we don't deal with that in both personal and professional and civic roles. Um, plus the demand that several council members shared that the public expects emails to get the council. The moment they hit send. They expect council members to have read it. I mean, that's not reality, but it is the public's expectation you give an instantaneous communications. But again, just wide recognition from council, about wanting to avoid burdening staff and making this a bureaucratic process that is involving a dozen staff people and maybe that's not necessary. So that was the real cool feedback from counseling my interviews. Put the room mixed opinion, then one of the prior system or the current system was better, and not everybody had experience with both, so it's not like I could do a survey plus I wouldn't want to do that sort of voting through an interview anyway. That's not the purpose of them. Um, uh, there were concerns raised about just always making sure constituent matters are tracked and reported. So there's less cycle of time following up on those. But also, uh, this was one council member in my own experience. Just recognizing that agenda communications are part of the public record as well. So how does that get uh worked into the clerks dynamic? So that was the feedback from council that I shared with your staff, and I wanted to just in the interest of time rather than ask for feedback on that. Just take that as the feedback I got from cancel the show with your staff and go right to the staff response, which was, um, I'll just put all 3 up and turn it over to Ms. McCarthy.

[02:06:22] City Manager Kimbra McCarthy: Thank you. So, um, we hear you and this is something that I think the staff, we've been trying to work through this over the last several months as well. Um, as the volume of emails that have come in has has been significant, especially those requiring staff follow-up. Um, so the current process has been in place for quite some time and, um, what we're going to do that I think would be much more effective and efficient for both all, all of you, all of council and staff is in the, um, email, you're going to get them directly now. So right now they're filtered through the clerk's office. And so we're changing how there's no delay. No different categories, whether it's policy, FYI, operational, no filter. Now, what this will mean, though, is that there are some emails that come through to that city, um, that council email, that, that our spam, that our, you know, vendor solicitations, that are things that aren't necessarily for council. Um, so just know that you probably will be getting a lot more emails, uh, could be up to 50 a day. Um, that's what I've been told. So, um, I see a couple council members faces. Um, so that is that is the difference. But that way you will get them real time. Um, then staff in the city manager's office can identify those emails which do require a staff response. Um, and so staff will make sure that those emails get to the appropriate department head and staff to be able to follow up on those matters. The one thing that I did want to ask and and seek some sort of consensus on is how you all would like to see those responses. Because right now there's so many emails flying back and forth where staffs also following up from the original response. Sometimes a resident or a person will then respond back, and then there's the email that goes back. So there's a couple options. We can make sure that council will automatically receive the response from staff so that you know the loop has been closed. Or what we can do and that's real time. So the email again comes to you immediately. Or what we can do with all of the staff responses, we can batch just the responses together. So you're getting all of those pretty much kind of at the same time and whether they're weekly or bi-weekly. I think we could figure that out. But you wouldn't get those responses real time. So those are 2 options. And so I would like to know counsel's preference as to whether you would like those responses real time or whether you would like the staff responses batched. And then lastly, I will say, we do have, excuse me, ask MB. So a lot of the things that are coming directly to council are items that require follow-up from particularly often public works or community development, things that could be going through our system, basically, our case management system, but aren't. So oftentimes staff will enter those into the system when they come into you and then still respond. So uh, we are trying to get the word out and make sure that the community knows to keep using, ask MV. But obviously there are some things they want to send directly to council. So I did just want to note that, that we do have that system that we use and has been in place for many, many years. Um, but we will try and make this process more efficient. So the feedback is to that 3rd bullet that, that I'd love to hear your, all of your thoughts just on this proposed process and then how you would like to know about staff closing the loop.

[02:10:07] Mayor Ellen Kamei: So, uh, we have Vice Meal, Ramirez has raised his hand. Followed by half number hips.

[02:10:16] Vice Mayor Lucas Ramirez: Uh, I've got a couple of quick questions for the city manager. I recall hearing that bashing emails actually is more time consuming for staff, and the staff burden is an important consideration for me. Uh, so is it? You know, I, I, I'm, I'm comfortable with whatever direction, you know, my colleagues provide, but is it easier for staff to do it, real time, or is it easier to batch them? And then, uh, regarding asking me, this is also something I've been very interested in. Um, I haven't sent an email to, you know, city dot clerk and who knows how long, but can we, can we sort of tee up an auto response that says if you have, you know, a constituent concern, use SMD so we can sort of direct people to the correct location. Um, or uh, is that something that we can, we can try introducing to see if it helps properly? You know, um, I guess redirect, uh, constituent correspondence.

[02:11:18] City Manager Kimbra McCarthy: Thank you, vice mayor Ramirez. I think to your latter suggestion, that's, that's excellent. If, um, everyone is amenable to that. It's definitely a way to make sure that everyone knows about asking being where to go to. Okay, I'm seeing a lot of thumbs up. We can definitely do that at all. I'll work with our interim city clerk on that. So that's great. In terms of batching emails being more time consuming. It really was also just trying to be considered of your email inboxes. So if you're going to start getting a lot more emails up to, you know, 50 day plus the emails that come from me or staff just on general updates. Um, You know, I think we have the one person, um, the one staff person who's going to help build all of the emails going out, so they should also get the responses. So I wouldn't necessarily say it's it's going to take time too, I guess, PDF them. Um, but it would give you all one email as opposed to, Maybe many emails, depending on how many emails it came through from from council. Responses. So, um, maybe we can hear what your colleagues think and then go from there.

[02:12:28] Mayor Ellen Kamei: And we have quite a few hands rights. Uh, 1st up is council member hooks, followed by Mount Truck member. Oops, Council member, Hicks, and Linko? Oh no. Yes. Counselor.

[02:12:41] Councilmember Alison Hicks: No, no. I, Put it down because I'm ready to speak. Um, so just briefly, I don't mind at all getting the unbatched, the individual and immediate, um, emails from everyone. Uh, whether it's uh, the public or um, or the staff responses, that, that's, uh, I may be the only one, but that's very easy for me to, uh, sort through an address. Um, I also find that if I choose to answer a particular member of the public, It's easier to do that if I get them that way. So that, so it even saves me time. It seems like maybe it saves everyone time. Um, the other thing that I don't fully understand, uh, my lack of technical expertise. I get things, uh, 2 buckets. One is labeled focused and one is labeled um, I forget, unpocused. It's like something else, but lower priority. And this may be what you're talking about, the vendors and so forth, and the 1000000 webinars I could go to. Um, that used to come in my unfocused, and they're now coming in my focus, and that's the one that actually, I preferred to have the, the unfocused one more full of vendors and so forth. Um, you know, I can go and read it if I want to, the webinars that I'm now invited to, but they do clutter up my, um, my focused box and make me maybe miss things. So that's the one that I would prefer, um, that I would prefer it the way it had been in the past. And that's all I have to say, thanks.

[02:14:35] Mayor Ellen Kamei: Don't remember a movie truck.

[02:14:37] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: Thank you. So I strongly prefer them in the emails to be sent to us in real time. Um, and not only, um, do I then feel like I'm like up on the latest input, but it's easier to respond to. And the way I use my email system, I can file them in the appropriate categories. When they're batched. I can't necessarily file them. And I feel like we've had lots of different processes since I've been on council. And, um, now we're batching them by topic. But in the past, we didn't. They were just all batched together. So I, and it made it hard to respond when it's in a PDF. Um, especially much previously, which, um, the email address was redacted. So then we had to contact staff to get the email address. So, I'd say, send them to us real time. We can choose if we want to respond. It makes it easy, I think, to manage the emails, and I prefer stabs responses individually as well for that same reason. Not only am I looking to close the loop, but I, I like to educate myself on what's going on in the city by reading staff's responses. Thanks.

[02:15:58] Mayor Ellen Kamei: I'm eating a lot of headmobs, a pretty clear consensus, uh, news manager, and we do have a hand-up, and we can't even believe it.

[02:16:13] Councilmember Sally Lieber: Uh, I was just gonna agree a 1000% with everything that Council member Hicks and Mattachek said, Real time is king, and there's absolutely nothing worse than batching and turning emails into PDFs.

[02:16:28] Mayor Ellen Kamei: Um, so I think we've got it. In the interest of time then. It's clear there's a used to count the majority, if not consensus on your recommendations, with some additional suggestions. Oh, Ms. McCarthy, so I think is that sufficient clarity for you?

[02:16:47] City Manager Kimbra McCarthy: Yep, sounds like it. So we can move on?

[02:16:50] Greg Larson: And uh thank you for the additional time, Mayor. We have used it, but we're now to the end. Um, we will prepare a workshop summary, just some of what we've discussed, which will include the slides and the discussion today, that you've provided and where there was consensus or ideas brought forward. Um, I don't think we have time to do the final question, which is one takeaway from today's workshop, from each of you, because I think you need a break before you start strategic planning, but as an alternative, I'll be providing to the city manager as soon as this call zoom is over, a evaluation link, that I'd ask you all to complete today. A couple quick questions, and it's just so myself and our phone can continue to improve, and how we support city councils and the important work, you do. So, um, with that, I'll turn it over to the city manager for any other comments and believe my portion of the workshop is done.

[02:18:00] City Manager Kimbra McCarthy: Thank you, Mr. Larson. No, I don't really have any other comments. I'll turn it over to the mayor other than, thank you all. This has been very productive and very helpful uh, for me as I as I work with you and work on all of these um, improvements and so thank you very much too. Mr. Larson, really appreciate it, and I'll turn it over to the mayor.

[02:18:21] Mayor Ellen Kamei: Great. Thank you both. Uh, thanks. Thank you, Mr. Larson, for leading us through our 1st and hopefully final. Um, cancel team building session. We really appreciate it. And I'm assuming too that along with your summary. You will include the parking lot items that we were not able to get to. And I think that would be really helpful for perhaps the half, you know, the 6 month check-in that some of my colleagues mentioned earlier. So I think that that would be very helpful. All right. Thank you very much. And thank you to staff and my colleagues for powering through. So we are a little bit behind. Um, But I know that we all need a bit of a transition break before we get to item 4.2. So, um, if possible, our, our, is 1110 gonna be possible for folks to go abide and okay, I'm seeing nodding heads. So, um, if possible, Miss Vanderlinden, can we put something up to let folks know that we'll be resuming at 1110?

[02:18:30] (archive recording) Interim City Clerk Silvia Vonderlinden: We will certainly do our best mayor committee. Yes, and we will pause the meeting for the break.

[02:18:34] (archive recording) Mayor Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Great. Thank you very much. See everyone at 1110. Thank you.

[02:18:38] (archive recording) Unknown Speaker: Thank you kindly.

[02:21:57] (archive recording) Mayor Ellen Kamei: Great. Great. Thank you so much. Okay, welcome back, everyone. We will be going into our 2nd portion of the meeting. Today's strategic planning workshop is one of many planned events in a collaborative process that will engage the public, city council, and city staff in the creation of a vision and strategic plan to guide the city for the next 3 to 5 years. Sorry?

[02:22:28] (archive recording) Unknown Speaker: Okay. into our 2nd portion meeting. Okay, I meet and I'm gonna mute.

[02:41:18] Mayor Ellen Kamei: Please visit the city's website at mountain view.gov backslash strategic roadmap for more information and frequent updates. The purpose of today's workshop is for the city council to discuss our vision, mission statement and strategic priorities. We will not be proposing or discussing projects today. We will begin this workshop with a brief presentation by our facilitators from civic makers, after which I will invite public comment. At this time, I'd like to invite our consultants from civic makers, Lawrence Gradeska and Christal Blackford to introduce themselves and their firm, and to provide a brief overview for today.

[02:42:00] Lawrence Grudeska: Hello, thank you, Mayor Canay. Appreciates the introduction and really honored to be here. Um, let me see if uh, Christelle is with us yet. Christelle, are you there? Um, Mary Al, can you just make sure that she is with us? We were just in a little bit of a prep for this portion of the meeting with the city manager and assistant city manager. So, uh, again, my name is Lawrence Grudeska. I am the one of the co-founders and the CEO of Civic Makers. We are a strategic planning and management consulting firm based in San Francisco, and really honored to be here, and to be a part of this process today at the retreat, really appreciated Mr. Larson's, uh, effective kind of facilitation of a really important conversation about how the council can work together more effectively themselves and collaboratively, and excited to take that conversation into its next step of the idea of a new strategic roadmap, that kind of expands from beyond just the councils work together, but also to really incorporate the input and collaboration of staff as well as the community. And we'll be talking about that and how that will work in the strategic planning roadmap process in a moment. I'll start by sharing my screen and um, we'll get into that presentation. And here we go. All right, and let me go into present mode. All right, can everyone see my presentation full screen? Zoom success?

[02:43:47] Unknown Speaker: It's still loading.

[02:43:48] Lawrence Grudeska: There we go. All right. We'll take the small wins. Every, every little, uh, thing that goes right with, with our new technological, uh, context is good.

[02:44:01] Unknown Speaker: Is that quite full screen lines, just FYI?

[02:44:03] Lawrence Grudeska: No, it's not. Okay. Yeah, I think we'll have to make that work for right now. Okay, so our agenda for today is, again, the introduction's an overview of the process and telling you all how we're going to proceed with this, uh, a really, uh, hopefully, um, deep and uh, stakeholder driven process to develop a strategic roadmap for the city of Mountain View. We'll have some public comment after that and then we'll dive into the dialogue. And we have a lot to cover, just like Mr. Allerson said, it's an aggressive timeline. So looking forward to you all helping us stay on track. Um, as mentioned, we're civic makers, I won't talk too much about us other to say that, um, we have done this type of strategic planning and alignment work with a number of cities across the Bay Area. You'll be seeing an example briefly from the city of Hayward. that went through the same process. So we're very excited to bring our approach to you, which is, again, very focused on gathering the right voices at the right time to make sure that everyone's in alignment and moving forward in the lockset fashion. And also providing opportunities for discussion and um, improvement along the way. Why do we need a strategic roadmap? A strategic plan conveys a clear direction forward for the organization, and really towards the end of facilitating more effective decision making, and promoting accountability to all levels. And of course, making sure that in that sense of accountability, what we say we're going to do, what we commit ourselves to, a strategic roadmap actually gets done and we have an opportunity to hold ourselves accountable and look back and say, how did we do? It's a fundamental leadership and management tool for organizations. It enables leaders, both you elected officials, council members and staff to establish an aligned vision and a set of goals that everyone will work toward, and it conveys council's direction to the public. So to instill the confidence in the future of the city, we're very excited about some of the community engagement efforts that we have planned to inform this roadmap. It helps the council and staff match resources with established priorities, which we'll talk about a bit more in depth. It creates clear strategies to pursue cheap goals, especially in this moment of just real struggle to, as Glenn said, address the public health and emergency response crisis of a generation, being clear about the strategies we're pursuing and whether or not they're being effective, a roadmap really helps with that. It defines essential outcomes and performance expectations, and I think really importantly, and a real hope for us is that it helps employees see themselves in that part of creating the city's future. So with that, the goals that we've been talking to, um, Kimbra and Audrey about as far as this process are alignment on a vision for the city of Mountain View, refining the city's mission statement and council major goals or strategic priorities. and getting staff and council agreement on prioritized projects that are feasible within staff resources that would move forward, those major goals or priority areas. Making sure they're validating what we're putting forward with staff and community input, and also integrating with the two-year work plan and budget planning and approval process. So kind of establishing a planning cadence over the course of the next year, 2 years and beyond. Want to touch briefly on what we've heard from staff so far in our discovery process. A couple what we call glow points. Staff are incredibly devoted to ensuring they fulfill their commitments and making sure that they, not only offering quality services, but meeting their core operational obligations, and I know I heard that in this morning, and I'm really glad to see council's recognitions of staff efforts. Staff really see MountainView as a unique place with a unique identity and particularly strong progressive values that they're proud of. Um, and staff are already appreciative of this process and this opportunity to take a step back and talk about how staff and city council can work together to meet the needs of the community, um, and, um, staff, uh, hear your appreciation for their work. And that's a great place to start this process off from. Some of the pain points, uh, we heard this again this morning too, but just to, to reiterate, staff has been doing a great work at maintaining those service levels, but they're stressed really thin and working beyond their capacity, it's leading to some burnout issues that could, um, potentially affect staff retention. Um, The extensive special projects, sometimes can compete with core service obligations, and so that's a perfect area for us to talk about in our planning process in the coming months. Staff has also managed a challenge to manage your current workload while responding to this crisis. That's no surprise to anybody. And because of that, staff's going to need some time to get back to the normal service levels, after the crisis has been abated to the extent that we feel that return to normal is here, whatever that looks like. And then finally, staff really feels that they would love to be involved with finalizing these strategic projects to make sure that they're at the right side, the right fit, and they're feasible given staff capacity and resources. So, um, how will this process differ? Um, I want to, um, Kimra, I have a couple thoughts here, and I wanted to make sure that I think that we had taken a note that you had mentioned a couple things here too. Is that still on your mind? Okay, great. So let me just share a couple thoughts here. Um, You know, this process is going to be a little bit different. You have your major goals process, it's a two-year process that aligns with the budget. Um, this strategic roadmap process should, um, not only include that priority setting and budget planning, but also, uh, go broader, go bigger to establish a longer term vision, and, uh, like I mentioned, a cadence so that you can return to that over time. So it's an umbrella over your goals planning and budget planning process. It also will go deeper and more finite into yearly objectives. Um, and really need to integrate with the core staff, um, obligations that are there that might not fit into the strategic strategic plan. Uh, strategic roadmap, um, is really meant to capture those areas that the organization feels that needs to focus on to move forward those visions. Maybe gaps are critical priorities that everyone's identified that we're not just quite there yet. Of course, there's this whole set of priorities. Um, and, um, uh, ongoing, um, services that the city offer that won't be captured in our strategic plan. And for that, we oftentimes will use the iceberg analogy. Our strategic priority at the top, but of course, there's this huge body work below. So negotiating how those 2 fit together is really important. Um, and all turned over to Kimber at this point because I know she had something to share.

[02:51:06] City Manager Kimbra McCarthy: Thank you so much, Florence. So mayor council members. I'm glad that we're just kicking this process off now. I think this is going to be a great time for us to really set what we see as the vision for the city and really think about where we're headed and what is important to us, not only with council, but also with staff in the community. So I'm not sure that the, all of the processes maybe and prior years have involved this much level of check-in and community feedback. So, we really thought that with the way things are now with COVID and the opportunity for us to really think about what the workload is and what all of the projects are and the priorities, it would give us a great chance to really just do this now and start on this really important project and help pave the way for where we're headed for the future. Um, I think the other piece is just the, the alignment and making sure that we're hearing feedback from everyone is also something that we heard a lot from, from council and from the community. So I'm really hoping that this is a process that will allow us to all come together and everyone's on the same page and um, really excited about starting this and we do have, um, I would just note, we do have a web page that has been created for the strategic roadmap, um, that we can also share. And we will also have a lot of opportunities for check-in that I know will be detailing, um, not only for council, but for the public. So I will just stop there and say, I think that this process is going to be excellent for us to go through and I will turn it back over to you, Lawrence. Thank you.

[02:52:48] Lawrence Grudeska: Thank you, camera. And I'm going to introduce my colleague, Chris Bell Blackford. She's one of the partners of civic makers and these are communication efforts. So she's going to pop through, um, uh, high level overview of the process, the timeline, and share some of our community engagement approach. Thank you for sale.

[02:53:05] Christal Blackford: Alright, thank you, Lawrence. Glad to be here everyone. excited for this process. So we'll dive into walking you through the timeline and process here. I'll have you advance the slides there, Lawrence. Um, and I, this won't be a surprise to counsel. I think you've seen this before. This describes our high-level approach to strategic planning and you'll see that this, what's maybe unique about this is that we really integrate internal and external stakeholder engagement throughout the entire process through continual touchpoints. From the discovery all the way through defining the mission and vision, defining priorities and projects, then validating the roadmap, and then getting into the implementation. How do we measure success through metrics and enablement? And finally how do we roll it out and monitor success? The next slide describes are some definitions, and I also just, I think you've all seen some of this, but I want to just, um, get back to it to make sure we're on the same page for the rest of the day. So, um, I think that also just to note that these might evolve a little bit. We might shift and use slightly different, unique terms to Mountain View, but at this point, these are the terms that we're using. So strategic roadmap is what our end goal is, the plan that we're putting together. The vision is a clear, specific, compelling picture of what you want the city to look like in 3 to 5 years. The mission is, um, oop, Lawrence, we can see your, You're slack. I think you're on full full computer display. The mission is the defining purpose of an organization at its most fundamental level. Priorities is what you have been referring to as major goals. They're closely aligned, but there's a little bit of a difference that we'll get into as we proceed today. But really the top areas of focus that organize that vision. And then projects nest under the priorities, and those are the main activities that help us achieve each of those priorities. And then finally, uh, year one objectives are kind of like the specific sub outcomes for each of those projects, what we start with, and um, there'll be objectives for not only year one, but year one, two, three, et cetera. And then metrics is how we keep track of our progress. And we'll come back to these throughout the day. Here is an example for your reference, you saw this, uh, council member saw this already, but you can, um, I just wanted to refresh that this is an example from Hayward, and this is a potential kind of end product that would be like the the high level organization of this strategic roadmap. And of course, there's a lot more detail that goes along with it. And the next slide shows that level of detail where we have. Uh, this is one of their, the city of Hayward's priorities, uh, preserve, protect, and produce housing, and you'll see here the list of projects as in bold, number 123 on the side. Underneath there, you have, um, the year one and 23 objectives, uh, with specific lead departments and support departments listed there. And then the timeline is uh, what's filled in with different colors to indicate um, the organizations that are the parts of the organization that are leading that. Um, but this sort of shows you a little bit of a high level work plan, um, that starts to roll up into that overall list of priorities in vision. Here, I'm gonna go into our specific timeline for this project. Um, and just want to note that there is a lot of deep staff involvement throughout this process. We focus this particular slide on the council and community touch points. Um, but there's staff process periling us all throughout. So, um, we've already done our discovery, kickoff and planning, and today, here we are at the top of February with our retreat. Uh, and we'll be doing, um, council can set item to on status of the current council major work goals and plan on the 23rd of this month. Um, this month we're also doing community focus groups and uh, community meetings. Um, which will spill into the 1st week of March. Um, in March 16th, we'll be bringing council and staff together, um, to review the draft vision, mission and priorities. And this brings together what we're going to hear from all of you today. And what we're going to hear from the community and what we're already hearing from staff. So looking at the data collected on vision and priorities and mission to date, that will be the focus of the March 16th discussion to really get to refining and developing a draft mission and priorities. So I want to, um, Just state that we're not going to get into any finalization today. This is for us to begin to understand the council's perspective, and then we're going to take that in the community in a staff perspective and integrate that. So we're not drafting anything or agreeing on anything today. Uh, moving into April, uh, the 27th, we have um, council providing direction on the prioritized project list, so once we have that draft vision, mission, and priorities, we'll start to work on our project list. That's those specific things that work towards each priority. Um, and we should have a draft strategic roadmap with the project list by the end of April. Going into May, we'll be doing our 2nd round of community engagement with a survey, community wide survey to validate that draft strategic plan. Um, then we'll be revising our roadmap and in June going to uh, plan adoption and rollout. So we're moving quickly here. We have a lot to do, but we've already done a lot. So I think we're, we're doing, we're on track. And the next slide just goes into a little bit more detail about the community process. So, um, This is a really high level of what we're going to be doing with community. Last month we worked really closely with staff to develop an engagement and communications plan. We've just begun to, uh, roll out promotion with that web page, which is linked here or, The URL is there at the bottom right of the page. Uh, we have a press release out and uh, have started some social media and we're going to continue to promote through emails and newsletter. Um, and this 1st phase of engagement, which you can see spanning February and March. is really going to be focused on input on the vision and priorities, and we're doing that through a series of small focus groups. that top box, Spanish Mandarin and small business focus groups, and we'll be doing a series of public meetings as well. And then once we get to May, which, as I've said on the last slide, by then, we'll have a draft strategic roadmap, will be then sharing that draft with a community through a citywide survey and gathering feedback. And I just want to make a note to counsel that we would love feedback and comments on this because this, I know, has shifted a little bit since last time we spoke. Um, but we want you to, if you have any thoughts, just jot them down and we're going to actually return to a brief discussion of this at the end after we go through our vision and mission. Uh activities. I'll turn it back to Lawrence.

[03:00:31] Lawrence Grudeska: Thank you, Crystal. Um, we're now going to pause for public comment on, um, that introduction and, uh, may I? Um, I'll turn it back to you.

[03:00:42] Mayor Ellen Kamei: Great, thank you. So if I could ask for your help and maybe this would be a good time to stop the screen sharing, um, so that we can have the timer. Thank you so much. And so, um, as today's focus is on the vision, mission and strategic priorities for our community, I encourage comments that focus on these elements. The council will not recommend or discuss projects to accomplish strategic priorities until the March 16th. Joint city council staff workshop. This allows time for civic makers to engage with the public, for city council and staff, in the visioning and strategic prioritization process, and for the city council to consider input from those engagements in our decisions about projects. This meeting, since we started at 1110, we're going, this meeting is now scheduled to go to 140 PM. And we're going to have many items that we'll discuss in the workshop. So for we have about 32 attendees that I see, not sure about the colin numbers on the line. So, um, If a member of the public would like to provide public comment on item 4.2, please click the Blu-rays hand button in Zoom or press star 9 on the phone. I see 4 hands. So, um, Ms. Vonderlanden, can we do, okay, the hands are now increasingly increasing. Can we, can we do at 2 minutes, please?

[03:02:17] Interim City Clerk Silvia Vonderlinden: Certainly Mayor can make?

[03:02:19] Mayor Ellen Kamei: Okay. Thank you very much. And, um, you know, if folks would like to introduce themselves before they give their public comment, we would encourage that too. I know that it's hard to do in this original space, but would appreciate that. So I will start with our 1st speaker. Let's see So I am no longer the house. Can I ask for? Thank you very much. Okay. And Ms. Andrew Lennon, do we have the timer ready to go for 2 minutes? Wonderful. Okay, Janet, work good? Please feel free to unmute. Thank you

[03:03:06] Janet Workman: Um. Uh, my name is Janet Workman. I'm a Mountain View resident and I'm just, I would like to offer some comments on behalf of Mountain View Housing Justice Coalition. At 1st I just want to say that we appreciate the city's commitment to equity and racial justice and we command the city on, on all the efforts it's made to foster inclusion in the community. Um, the immediate challenge for the city, of course, is recovery from the pandemic. Um, which has both exposed and exacerbated, um, our long-standing inequities. And this challenge makes it more crucial than ever to address gentrification. Um, which is a problem that is threatening the diversity of our community. Our region has extreme income, inequality. And that is perpetuating and deepening the injustices, which are rooted in historic patterns of discrimination. Um, So at the same time that we that we welcome newcomers to the city, we have to make intentional efforts. To preserve not only racial and cultural diversity, but also economic diversity. Um, We have to work much harder. at keeping Mountain View home for people across the economic spectrum. Um, for all uh, workers for retail, restaurant and service workers for daycare, healthcare workers, teachers and public employees. Um, and all of the city's goals related to inclusivity environment. Thank you.

[03:05:06] Interim City Clerk Silvia Vonderlinden: Your time is up.

[03:05:07] Janet Workman: Thank you so much.

[03:05:07] Mayor Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Shani Kleinhouse.

[03:05:19] Shani Kleinhaus: Good afternoon. Mayor Kamein and council members, this is Sunny Kleinhouse, from Santa Clara Valley, Audubon Society. Mountain View is one of the only cities that considers nature and biodiversity in wildlife, in the sustainability framework, and it made a big difference. There are not a lot of other cities where you see a breeding colony, uh, of, um, building boring owls, an Ingrid colony, and more than 10 species of butterflies fluttering along city streets in North Bay show. And so I really think you should celebrate that. I think that it's a great success of the city. I also hope that, um, as you go ahead with your visioning process, you include nature and biodiversity, um, and the urban forest in your vision, and uh, people who represent that in your uh, focus groups. Thank you.

[03:06:19] Mayor Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Bruce Senglin?

[03:06:28] Bruce England: Good morning, mayor and council members. See what I can get into 2 minutes. I'm speaking for both Mountain View Coalition for Sustainable Planning in a new group in Mountain View called Green Spaces MV. And, um, For green spaces, we just, uh, are interested in seeing an increase in, in green space of all kinds, so tree canopy, native, drop tolerant, pollinator friendly planting, and that sort of thing. And development of programs that increase the amount of community involvement and collaboration with the city. So our letter goes into more detail. Well, but I'll skip all of that. For mound good coalition for sustainable planning. We've been talking a lot about processes that will improve our interactions. Uh, for our group and other community groups as well. Um, we would like to see an increase in advisory body input. We feel that it's not, um, there's just not enough of it and would be great if minutes for the advisory body meetings could be reviewed by council at their meetings rather than just leaving it to, you know, if it happens, it happens. Um, we'd like to see an earlier delivery of the packets, the meeting packets, even if they're partially delivered and then filled in later. Um, an improvement on community input options, they're good right now, but they could be better. Um, and management at meeting times, as you know, your meetings can go to one or 2 in the morning, and that's just too long. But we also don't want to have fewer meetings. Um, so I know that's going to be a challenge, but whatever you can do would be great. Uh, relaxation of the brown act requirements, it's, you're fairly conservative on how you implement that. We'd like to see more feedback directly to people who comment at meetings where it's allowed by the Brown app. Um, uh, advancing the CIP projects. There are a whole lot of them and they all need to be done. And improvements to pedestrian and bicycle network throughout our city. And that's it. Thank you.

[03:08:25] Mayor Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Robert Cox.

[03:08:35] Robert Cox: Hi, can you hear me?

[03:08:37] Mayor Ellen Kamei: Yes, hello,

[03:08:38] Robert Cox: okay. Mayor May, Vice Mayor Ramirez, and members of city council. I'm Robert Cox, a 23, a 25 year Mountain View resident, a member of the steering committee of Livable Mountain View. I'm here to advocate for livability as a key Mountain View goal. To support the goal, I would like the council to follow through on the 5 guidelines adopted by the previous council for revisions of the downtown precise plan. Preserve historical buildings in district H, determine what guidelines should be adopted. So new buildings fit in with the old, promote ground floor retail, preserve and enhance pedestrian walkways, and restrict office development so that does not replace all existing uses. I would also like to advocate for taking up the Moffat precise plan, to create a new attractive and vibrant Moffat area, which is an integrated extension of our downtown. Central, all this is a redesigned Transitarian Plaza design, which should be decided by a competitive process. Thank you for the opportunity to comment on your goal setting. The key point is livability should be a key mountain view goal. Thank you, I yield my time.

[03:09:47] Mayor Ellen Kamei: Thank you. And move on to Louise Katz.

[03:09:58] Louise Katz: Thank you. Yes, Louise Katz, multi-decade resident. Um, I appreciate the opportunity to address the council and mayor. I wanted to also add, for speaking for Liverpool Mountain View steering committee, that one of the priorities should definitely be livability. It's the element that crosses all economic and ethnic lines. It's why people choose to live in Mountain View, why they choose to visit, spend money. The whole issue that we would like to also include as part of the priorities to consider is the need to have our historic downtown and public spaces sustained when everything reopens. This includes, especially, the plaza design for the transit center. This is was part of the transit plan that went from 2015 to 2018. This is nothing new for livable Mountain View has created. We learned when we were trying to advocate for a competitive design program, that it could not start unless there was funding through the priorities given by the council. I urge you to look at the master plan. Summary, page 14, and it indicates that it requires an in-depth design process beyond that conducted for the master, for the transit center master plan. We would very much appreciate it if the council takes a vigorous effort, makes a vigorous effort to have a world-class design, and that it be the legacy for this council. Thank you.

[03:11:42] Mayor Ellen Kamei: Great. Thank you. B. Hansen. Please unmute.

[03:11:52] Bee Hanson: Hi, uh, be handsome for uh, Mountain View, Mobile Home Alliance. Um, I am, um, I'm pleased that, uh, the council is going to be working on affordable housing, but I'm also alarmed that the rates for rentals in Santiago Villa and Sahara mobile home parks are now going down. Our landlord is now a major California water baron. And the financial shortfall, he is now experiencing is very likely to boomerang on his most vulnerable residence. As he tries to maintain his investments in the central valley, and probably the Chicago Board of Trade. I just want to remind you that Mountain View is probably the only city in California that has rent control for apartment drawers, but not local home residents. So while you're doing your good work on affordable housing. I hope you won't forget that mobile home parks are the only naturally affordable housing in Mountain View. And even after years of battling to stabilize our rents, we still need your help in getting mobile home runs under control. Thank you. I yield my time.

[03:13:02] Mayor Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Robin Lynn, please unmute.

[03:13:12] Robin Lin: Hey there, thank you so much for your time. And this is just such an awesome form. Um, really appreciate uh, you uh, doing this. Um, I am a resident of Mountain View. Um, and I hope I have more than 54 seconds. Okay. Uh, yeah, I've been trying to think of, I mean, I find that Mountain View is an amazing place to live. I've lived in the Bay area my whole life and Mountain View is really amazing and I've been trying to think of why it's such a great place to live. And I think it's really because, um, we are trying to balance, um, so many things, right? Like, uh, livability, growth, um, you know, jobs, um, everything and, you know, contrast it with some of the cities that border our, our town and, um, some cities are just not, you know, just, you know, their immaculate parks, but, um, good luck trying to live there. And so I think the beauty of mountain view is that we are trying to do the hard thing of balancing so many different competing interests in the interests of making this a great and inclusive place to live. And I hope that as the city council tries to continue, and staff tries to continue thinking about how to continue making Mountain View a great place to live. We really think about as we grow, that every resident deserves the same access to the same city amenities that it provides, no matter what their housing looks like, what their economic situation is, whatever. Everybody deserves access to the same park space, um, within walking distance, the same, um, transportation options, they should always feel like they have dignity when they take their kids to a park, that the park is, you know, the same as any other park in Mountain View. Um, I hope that we can continue trying to figure out how to make ground view a great place to live because it is a great place. Thank you so much.

[03:15:10] Mayor Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Isaac Taylor. Okay, so Isaac, you have an older version of Zoom, so we need to promote you to a panelist so you're able to speak. So when that happens, please unmute.

[03:15:32] Isaac Taylor: Hi, this is Isaac Taylor, can you hear me?

[03:15:34] Mayor Ellen Kamei: Yes, yeah, yeah.

[03:15:36] Isaac Taylor: Okay, great. Um, so I live with my wife and 2 children in Monteloma, uh, one of the many neighborhoods here in Mountain View isolated from the city center in the abundant green space on the other side of the train tracks and on the other side of the 101. I encourage the mayor, city council, staff and consultants working on the strategic planning to put the needs of the families and residents, the people of Mountain View 1st as we work through the challenges here. Um, not to put the businesses first. Of course, COVID is the great challenge of our time, but I think we still have to grapple more effectively with the pre-existing challenge of balancing continuous pressure for corporate real estate development, with the historical lack of new residential development, and managed recreational open space. I see this as a tax equity issue because the people of Mountain View pay taxes, but the largest businesses here in the city basically don't. Um, and as I recall, our recent 30 year plan. Um, filled up all of the job growth that we expected over 3 decades in only a few years, whereas we've yet to add the houses we need and the parks we need to ensure this city remains a wonderful, equitable place to live and raise children, not just to work. Um, lastly, um, Madam Mayor, if I still have time, do I?

[03:17:05] Mayor Ellen Kamei: City click.

[03:17:08] Interim City Clerk Silvia Vonderlinden: But look at 35 seconds left.

[03:17:10] Isaac Taylor: Great last. Lastly, of course, COVID makes life really hard and Zoom sort of, you know, sucks for everyone. Pardon my French, but it also creates a really rare opportunity for the city staff and council to interact more with the community. Um, through this, you know, low cost sort of digital teleportation. Let's take full advantage of that and try to increase engagement, communication and vigorous democratic planning because it's actually easier for us to come to these meetings. Thank you.

[03:17:41] Interim City Clerk Silvia Vonderlinden: Your time is up.

[03:17:42] Isaac Taylor: Thank you so much. Thanks.

[03:17:49] Mayor Ellen Kamei: The Charlotte.

[03:17:52] Dashiel Leeds: Hello, my name is Dasher Leeds. I am the conservation assistant for the Sierra Club Limmer Pater chapter. I'd like to thank America May and the city council for bedtime. We hope that Mountain View continues to highly prioritize sustainability, social and environmental justice, and we support efforts to expand biodiversity within the city, into the end. We're really looking forward to working with the city to implement green corridors. I'd also like to celebrate the city, um, for passing your electric reach code. Uh, that really is an amazing policy, and I think it's really had a ripple effect in the reach codes of other cities. And we're seeing climate action pick up. And I think the opportunities for climate action are going to be rapidly accelerating. And so I think there may be space for the city to accelerate its own planning processes as well around that. So we really hope you continue to prioritize climate action and taking action that will rapidly decarbonize your building and transportation sectors. Thank you very much.

[03:18:51] Mayor Ellen Kamei: Great, thank you. Bruce Carney.

[03:18:57] Bruce Karney: Thank you very much. Um, I'm not going to speak about my favorite topic. I'm going to talk a little bit about strategic planning, which is something I had experience with during my career at HP. When I think about private industry and government, the thing, the industry that a city government reminds me of the most is the hospitality industry. And I'll use the example of a cruise ship. If you're running a cruise ship, the vast majority of the employees of the cruise ship line are taking care of the passengers. They're preparing the meals, they're washing the linen. Um, they're answering questions from guests, they're entertaining them. They're running the power plant, et cetera, and very few of the members of the crew are looking out into the far future to make sure that they're not going to steer the ship into a storm or figuring out what to do if a storm suddenly appears or if a COVID outbreak takes place on the ship. In private industry, particularly at HP, there were employees and departments that were dedicated to the R and D function. They did not have day-to-day responsibilities for taking care of the guests, they were really focused explicitly on the future. And teeing up this presentation. Lawrence and Christal, talked about the staff's perception that they're being stretched too thin between their ordinary daily duties and new projects being imposed on them. So I'd like to suggest that the city think about the separation between what I would call the R&D function and the operational functions of government. This is certainly a challenge. I don't know of other cities that have, you know, created that kind of separation, but may address both the short term feeling of overwork and also the need to really plan for a future that's very different from the recent past or even the present. Those, I hope, are helpful thoughts, and I look forward to your progress in being a participant in the upcoming workshops.

[03:21:03] Mayor Ellen Kamei: Oh, clear. Jessica Chohan.

[03:21:13] Jessica Chauhan: Hi there. Can you hear me?

[03:21:15] Mayor Ellen Kamei: Yes.

[03:21:17] Jessica Chauhan: Okay. Um, hi, um, my name is Jessica Chauhan. I'm a 7 year resident and I work full time in Mountain View. I have a toddler, um, and I live in a multigenerational family here. Thank you for spending your Saturday kicking off this important planning exercise. I'm really appreciative of this forum. Um, I ask you to consider addressing 2 topics in your strategic plan. Number one is the environment in green space, including having an aggressive plan on making quality of life and health and wellness improvements in our community. Uh, these will serve currents and future residents, and we must work harder to invest in equal and adequate access to open park space, enhance park facilities, uh, reduction in light pollution and other environmental initiatives, which will help combat climate change, and enhance our day-to-day lives in one year term. This will also help ensure our community can continue to develop community strength. Mountain View strength is in its diversity, and parks are where we can build this community strength. Number two, I ask you to consider transportation. Which goes hand in hand with housing and job accessibility. Our transportation challenges are not locally solvable issues, but must be addressed through regional cooperation and leadership from Mountain View. Our roads and infrastructure are increasingly strained as Mountain View has grown, and quality of life and accessibility to seniors is degrading as the population increases. We can increase access to affordable housing as well, by improving our local and regional transportation infrastructure, in addition to building locally. Thank you for your time.

[03:22:47] Mayor Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Mazamim, dash Tara. Please unmute.

[03:22:56] Nazanin Dashtara: Hello, city council. Mayor, vice mayor, thank you for this forum. Um, I would like to through, through level Mountain View, add that, um, you know, kind of going along with the strategic planning, especially Soon, hopefully post COVID, um, integrating our diversity. There's such a priority and a competitive design by professionals who offer portfolios and ideas to make the space, the gateway that we talk about and integrating our city, um, you know, from from area to area. Uh, I've heard other, um, the public address this multiple times. Uh, and then we talk about it, but we've never had it and we need to give it a chance. And, um, I also want to stress that this would be the legacy of this council to adequately fund a plan for the people of Mountain View, and integrate their access better, and let the transit center be a place of connectivity, and not of disconnectivity, so that we need to design, and input from community and stakeholders. Um, as our strategic plan for the city, for the future. Um, and uh, and that's basically our legacy and also find a way to have more input from the city from the people and the stakeholders. Thank you very much.

[03:24:27] Mayor Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Bruce Nagel.

[03:24:35] Bruce Nagel: Can you hear me now?

[03:24:36] Mayor Ellen Kamei: Yes, we hear you.

[03:24:38] Bruce Nagel: Uh, thank you for the opportunity to speak at this, uh, occasion. It is good to see that you're really looking to get input from the uh, people in the city in order to move this forward. Um, so, Mountain View has been a leader in sustainability, and we need to keep working on on moving that forward. As a leader that, that, when a policy comes out that's aggressive, if we support that, it tends to encourage others to do that as well. And we see that with other cities as well. I mean, one of the interesting things that's happened is the folks in Mellow Park have come up with some very aggressive plans. For example, they want to reduce the gasoline consumption to zero. By 2030, which means that they have a program that is measurable, that is actionable, that you can actually see what's going on with this, and will have a big effect on things. So I'm hoping that Mountain View will continue to. Emphasize sustainability, look to become a leader in this, and address the programs in a way that make them easy to understand. And and perhaps easy to implement because each of the cities lean on each other for, uh, you know, for being able to move forward. And I know that Mountain, uh, Middle Park, for example, looked at some of the plans that Mountain View has come together and developing their plans. Thank you for your time.

[03:26:03] Mayor Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Alexander Brown.

[03:26:09] Alexander Brown: Good morning. Morning. Okay. Thank you for being so transparent about the process here. As a member of many community organizations, I'd like to encourage civic makers to leverage the existing engagement of so many mountain view residents in their outreach. I'd personally love to host a presentation and feedback session in our Mountain View mobile home alliance meetings. Most of you know how to get to me. Uh, and also encourage using the advisory boards as sources of expertise and direction for what is needed and feasible in their respective domains. Uh, I look forward to working with all of you at the craft division for the best mountain view that we can imagine. And I'll save all the granular topic discussions for the many later outreach meetings. Thanks.

[03:26:50] Mayor Ellen Kamei: Thank you. April Webster.

[03:26:55] April Webster: Hello, um... In terms of 2 of the goals, um, uh, 1st of all, transportation, I think um, that the high-level goal that, um, council has is a very good one, but I would, um, ask in terms of implementation, um, that uh, 3 different things be considered 1st in terms of the alignment and integration of plans, um, look to, working on the bike plan and the PED plan as a unified active transportation plan, developing the ATP and vision plan together so that they can form each other. And then also thinking more holistically at multimodal shift and stressing integration of these different modes of transportation. Um, in terms of project implementation. I think the city is really good at creating and approving the plans, ranking, prioritizing. But, um, I'd like to see a bit more on the implementation side in terms of, I guess, explicitly articulating target dates and reporting out requirements. And then um, finally on transportation, green streets. So Mountain View has done a really good job of, um, considering and starting to implement complete streets, um, but I think it would be good to start in the process of integrating green and sustainability elements to that. Um, and I think the Sierra Club and Save the Bay are starting efforts on this front, um, might be good to look to them. And then the 2nd general sort of high level, uh, goal would be housing, and I would just urge council to continue to emphasize, um, you know, providing working towards providing affordable housing and more dense development, um, just echoing what Janet said in terms of countering, gentrification, and increasing diversity, equity, and just richness of our community. Um, I think many of the people who work in the service industry, in our communities, the ones who basically keep our economy running, they run our grocery stores, deliver our groceries, our Amazon packages. They really can't afford to live in our community, and I think it's critical that we provide housing for them so we don't lose.

[03:29:04] Mayor Ellen Kamei: Thank you, 10 is up. Jim Zellarski.

[03:29:11] Jim Zellarski: Thank you very much for listening today. I appreciate you taking your Saturday. Uh, I, I recently retired and having spent a long time in, uh, business and a lot of my business was in the state of Washington, uh, over 35 years, I saw the city of Bellevue, go from something that looked like an exerb to something that has, um, 30 story buildings, and it's a busy place, and it's not a good place to live anymore. I can't see how that doesn't happen in Mountain View if we don't focus on that not happening. Uh, counterpoint might be the borough of Manhattan that has twice, uh, 10 times as many 10 acre parks, although it has only twice the area. Because it was planned that way and we thought about it. I hardly agree with the people that talked about making this somebody's full jip time job and making somebody's job accountability. We do a good job as a city looking at particular projects and planning for those projects and making sure those projects think about things like sustainability and green space. But we also have to think about what is the city going to look like 20 years from now? And how do we take care of housing for everyone? What's transportation going to look like? And unless that's somebody's full-time job, it becomes very difficult to do that and juggle that with what else everything has going on. Green space is important. The other thing that COVID does that is not going to go away in 6 months or a year, is it makes it possible for somebody to do their job at Google while living in Vermont. And we have to say, do people, are people going to want to live here? And what is that going to do to the quality of life in this city if people decide, no, it's too busy. There's not enough places for my children, and this is not the kind of place I want to raise my family. Thank you so much for your time.

[03:31:00] Mayor Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Salim, Dummer, DG.

[03:31:07] Salim Damerdji: Um, I'm Salim North and Mountain View. I hope the council prioritizes housing in particular. It falls squarely on the city's plate, so you can make the biggest impact on housing and it's also a nexus of so many other issues, uh, like the environment, social justice and local economy. So, uh, in particular with the environment, transit all into development is an investment in transit, help get people into multi-mobile transit, uh, in building jobs, reduces ball, that it's causing the fire, but, but, in terms of social justice. There's a history of racial covenants in the area, uh, in Rothstein's corner of law, uh, Rothstein points out that Mountain View officials, in particular turned down a racially integrated workforce. Um, uh, housing for the workforce for a local factory. Uh, so this really does fall on our plate. We have a unique obligation to make sure that we continue to unfinished work with desegregation. And that means making the city open to everybody. So we need to have more homes, particularly when Berkeley researchers have found that single family zoning is correlated with segregation. Um, and then, uh, finally, in terms of like the asks, I think we need to nail the North Bay Shore plan, uh, it's a lot of affordable housing that we can get access to. So I hope we can do this efficiently. There's the R3 zoning update. Um, that we can also get right. I hope that we up zone our one areas too. So that way, you know, we have 4 plexes, the way, um, cities like uh, Sacramento have done. And finally, I hope we lead on the housing element. These are 4 great opportunities to make the town more inclusive. Um, and one last thing, when the next housing element cycle ends, I'm gonna be 35. Most of my friends will be married, they'll be looking for a home to settle down in. And this next housing element cycle basically decides how likely it is for us to be able to settle down in a town that we know well, like Mountain View. Um, so for me, this is very personal. I hope we get housing done right. Thank you.

[03:33:07] Mayor Ellen Kamei: Thank you. Mary, daddy, you?

[03:33:14] Mary Dadio: Hi, uh, Mary Dadio here. City council has pocused on sustainability and reducing our carbon footprint for a number of years, and there have been some great achievements, such as creation of silicon Valley clean energy and adoption of electric reach code more recently. Um, because climate change is such a large complex issue, um, which needs continued focus. I'd like to ask that you include climate action as a focus of the city. Transportation especially needs more focus with all the new housing. Um, Car-based transportation alone cannot continue to work for us. We need to make it easy for people to switch to other forms of transportation, but if those alternatives aren't there, then people can't switch and we'll just be living with gridlock. Um, similarly, expanding tree canopy, uh, green space and creating green networks is also very important to improve, um, sustainability, uh, dress climate change and just for quality of life. Thank you.

[03:34:19] Mayor Ellen Kamei: Great, thank you. That's all the public comment that I have. So I'd like to turn it back over to Mr. Grdeska and Miss Blackford to to keep things going class. And I know that we, um, had the goal of of trying to complete everything by about 140. So just wanted to put that time check in there as well. Thank you.

[03:34:48] Lawrence Grudeska: Fantastic. Thank you, Mayor Kameh. Um, Let me share my screen here again. Thank you for all that public comment. We've definitely taken notes and uh, Also encourage you to, I'll keep showing up for the other opportunities we have, um, but we've noted what you've shared and greatly appreciate it. This is a wonderful way to kick off the planning process with so much thoughtful feedback from the public. With that, we are going to get into the council dialogue portion of the planning segment of this retreat. We do have a pretty extensive agenda here to get through vision, emission statement, and collecting input on potential priorities. Uh, so we're going to move quickly and um, uh, I want to run through some ground rules before we get started. Uh, realize that we are in an era where, um, we're all a little, uh, tired of Zoom meetings, hoping that, um, this quick pace will keep us engaged, um, and we can all be here now for the important conversations that we have in the next, um, hour and a half or so. One speaker at a time, that's a lot easier on Zoom. But when you do speak, hoping that you can step up to voice your thoughts and then step back to allow time for other people to speak to, to be additive, not repetitive, and we have some exercises to help us be efficient in that way, listen actively and seek to understand your council members and keep an open mind. And we're going to really push you to pursue areas of agreement. Consensus means I can live with it. Um, and uh, I heard uh, Mr. uh, Larson talk about consensus, and it sounds like you all are uh, well versed in that process. So that's great to know. Finally help us keep things on time. I wanted to note that really our intention for today, as we've mentioned a couple times, is to capture the intent of your feedback. We're not going to be wordsmithing. We not going to be approving anything. This is the start of our planning process. We are considering this our official kickoff to gather feedback from council members as to a new vision statement and mission statement and revising the major goals or strategic priorities for the organization. We're also going to listening to staff and community and coming back in mid-March and synthesizing all of that when there'll be more of a time to do some deeper conversation and start to improve things so we can move forward. So we're going to be really pushing to make sure we understand your feedback on what we present so that we understand your intentions and can, as best as possible, integrate that with what we hear from the other stakeholders in this process. Uh, and I also want to, again, emphasize, and it's the members of the public that had certain projects that came up. We will note those but this is not a moment for us to talk about strategic projects yet. We have asked for your input. Council members on potential projects, but that's just to get a head start, because we do need to move to projects very quickly to get aligned with the upcoming budget process. But we are using our time today to grant ourselves really in the strategic fundamentals in the longer term aspects of our roadmap. With that, I want to roll right into, um, our visioning session. Do we visit our definition for vision? A vision is a clear and compelling picture of what the city will look like in 3 to 5 years. We asked each of the council members to share their thoughts on what they see here and feel for the city of Mountain View in the next 3 to 5 years. When we say city, we mean the holistic perspective or conception of a city. Um, the place, the community, the people, um, what life and culture and um, the day-to-day it looks like feels like and uh, and what it sounds like in the next 3 to 5 years. So wanted to share what we heard from you all, and then share a draft vision statement and get your feedback on that. So, what do you see? You see a lot of the same things that the community just shared with us. Green space, parks, tree line corridors, a lot of real strong alignment around that from council members. A lot of talk about a downtown that's vibrant and quaint, thoughtfully preserved historic buildings, a really a hub, a bustling hub for economic in the, um, economic and business hubs, um, and amenities for for residents to get what they need to, their business done in downtown. A safe and strong transportation network throughout the entire city connected to downtown, bike and projectory spaces, public transit and transportation solutions such as road diets, some of the tactics we've seen come up in the pandemic response. A lot of talk of diverse housing types, um, and a bustling diverse community, um, inhabiting them. Uh, and a couple council members shared that they, in 3 to 5 years, hope that there's a really a strong sense that we're on the road to recovery from the pandemic. Um, along with that, uh, lower on the, um, sort of the, the, the ranking here, but still shared, uh, clean air and streets, strong schools, uh, and a few thoughts on architecture and developments, um, from varied architecture, some transformation of of current infrastructure and NFS that uh, might be put to better use down the road, uh, in duration of ecology and public art and murals. So that's what we see. That's what you all see when you think about the mountain view of your of your dreams in the next 3 to 5 years. What do you hear? I, as an avid bird watcher, love to see that there was 4 of you all that said, you want to hear birds? And I can't think of anything that's more indicative of peace and happiness and joy than the chirping of birds and wildlife. Uh, along with that laughter, children playing, uh, again, these are what we, what that you all, um, what the future should look like, what you want it to look like sound like. Additionally, people talking, signs of happiness, compassionate, caring community, music and theater, that idea of a hubbub, of well-utilized public space and quiet areas to escape in downtown. Um, and then also hearing just fewer cars and less Caltrain because of electrification and um, uh, road decongestion. So it's all beautiful stuff and I personally agree with it. Um, and it resonates with me. And then what do you feel? and this is one of my favorite parts of a visioning exercise. You know, what's the felt sense of the future for you so that we can orient ourselves towards that. Um, safe, hopeful, um, a sense of progress. Those were shared by multiple council members. In addition, relax, renewed, proactive in making progress, pragmatic, but happy about the growth that's happening instead of sort of overwhelmed or questioning the growth. A sense of belonging, community, secure, self-actualization, which I thought was beautiful. Um, and meaningful participation, healthy and sheltered. So with that, um, we put together a draft vision, and I'm just gonna, uh, go back to the next slide. This vision statement is intended to really be evocative of those felt, um, uh, senses and and emotional states for for that future vision. It's on the longer side than what you might be normally used to as far as a vision statement. And this vision statement is the emotional and and, uh, kind of sensual, if you will, grounding of what that future looks like, that we can always come back to as a way to ground our work. And that could that work could be a goal. That could be a strategic project that could be, um, you know, my my work day. So we put together this vision. I'm going to read through it to you, uh, and then we're going to walk you through an exercise to to let us know what parts really resonate and what parts, um, might be uh, some questions or you want to talk through. To be efficient with our time, we're going to focus on the areas that feel like they're a little unclear or there might be a little less alignment. Um, but just want to let you know what's coming up ahead. So I'll read through this and then we'll pause and talk about the specific, uh, feedback mechanisms that we're looking to do on the Zoom call. Um, so with that, here is, and I will say again, this is a synthesis of your feedback or input on vision for the city of Mountain View. We'll be doing the same for department heads next week, and we'll also be doing the same with community. So it'll be really lovely to see how those 3 different visions align, and can come together in one really citywide, community wide vision. With that, enough uh, enough preamble. Uh, so, a draft vision by 2025. The diverse inhabitants of Mountain View are brimming with hope for brighter days ahead. Despite varied challenges, the city has maintained its push for good growth that meets the needs of residents centered around the quaint yet vibrant downtown. The hubbub of a well utilized public space, as residents get their business done, is balanced by quiet areas amongst a variety of beautiful architectural styles and thoughtfully preserved historic buildings. The neighborhood surrounding downtown are dotted with open green space and connected by a safe, strong network of transit options. The reduction of vehicle trips has resulted in more pedestrian and bicycle traffic, as well as the noticeable return of the sounds of a happy, healthy city. Birds and wildlife, relaxed conversations, children's laughter. These signs of a connected community are anchored in a wide range of housing types that provide security and shelter for all residents, no matter their socioeconomic status. Continuing on, this is the 2nd and final slide of our vision. Draft vision. The success of the city's housing efforts has resulted in a strong sense of progress and equity, which in turn has created a fertile environment for a thriving economy. Local, small businesses offer a wide range of services, and these enterprises are increasingly housed in creative dynamic, mixed use, info redevelopment of transformed strip malls and office buildings. This vibrant place in the economy have fostered a renewed sense of shared culture and purpose. The results of the city government's proactive efforts, uh, the results of the city's city government's proactive efforts inspire residents, workers, and visitors to more meaningfully participate in civic life. There's a broad recognition of the compassionate caring community that is mountain view. Okay, take it in. Breathe it in. See how that feels. Try it on for size. This is not going to be perfect. The intention of this draft vision is really to just, um, get your feedback. This is going to be a very innoitive process starting now. Um, and uh, just know that there's going to be many opportunities to to really shape this into something that everyone is comfortable with. Uh, with that. Here's how we're going to do our feedback. We're going to use a little known feature of Zoom. It's Zoom's annotation tool, and these are the steps to get there. We're going to play around with this right now. Um, what you need to do is if you look at the top of your Zoom window, you will see the the little green boxer that says, excuse me, you are viewing Lawrence Kredeska's screen. Right next to that, there'll be a view options, drop down menu. You want to click on that dropdown menu and select annotation. So I'm going to stop there and let all council members, um, make sure that they can pull up. Once you select the annotation. You should see that annotation bar that is there. Um, If you have not been able to get that annotation bar up, please raise your hand. Does that mean that we have our 1st step here? Yes. Success. Okay, so with that, we're gonna click on format, and when you click on format, you'll see a... We already see some meditation from the vice mayor. That what we're asking me to do, is racking ask me to select the format, uh, icon, and then, um, select these 2 color tiles, green and red, and highlight, just try that out right now. What we're going to be asking you to do is highlight parts of the of the draft vision that you are in agreement with or in disagreement with. So right now on this screen, I want each of you to select one of those color tiles and try to just draw on the screen. And if you're having any problems at all, I see one, see some, Great. And I will also do this as well. And what we're looking for you to do. I'm going to highlight the the title side. And that's what we're, that's what we're going to look for you to do, is highlight the parts on the vision that either using green, are in agreement with, or red, um, want to talk about. Is that clear to all the council members? Does the council members not able to to do that annotation underlining? Okay, I'm not seeing anything. So, um, with that, let's move to the next slide. I get to, as um, the facilitator here, clear all of our drawings and start fresh, and I'm going to move to our next slide. So, I'm going to give you all, um, a couple minutes to, on this slide to go through with the annotation tools that we just used and underline in green, the, um, the phrases or sentences that you love, stick to underlining, if you could, instead of circling. Um, and then, uh, in red, unreline the areas that you'd like to talk through. Um, so if you could all, we'll take a couple minutes to do this. Um, it might take a little while to get through both paragraphs, but we want to make sure that, um, you'll have a chance to, um, uh, really use this as a way to guide our our conversation. This is where I need some, uh, Jeopardy music. Or, uh, maybe some some smooth jazz. elevator music to. Classical music, some people use classical music to focus. All right, I'm looking on the green we're seeing. Alright. There's anything that's, um, Doesn't, um, align with you or feels like it's not um, part of your vision. Would love to see that those red annotation as well. Great. All right. When, um, when you've had enough time to, to add, well, I'm just gonna wake up, so I see people still adding, adding red, uh, annotations, so. Children's laughter, double underlined. As a new father, I appreciate that. Someone's getting creative and. Writing some words. And we will have, uh, too wordy. Okay, we will have time to get this have a discussion around this feedback. Okay, anything else? Are people feeling complete? Um, if you need more time, um, um, okay, if you feel like you're done, please give a thumbs up or raise your hand. All right, thumbs up, thumbs up. Thumbs up, thumbs up. Uh, okay. Great. I'm seeing thumbs up from everyone. So, um, Marielle, if you could just take a screenshot of that, if you haven't already. Um, I do want to give a shout out to our 3rd civic members team, civic makers team member, Mary L. Olentino's, uh, with us and taking notes and supporting us from behind the scenes. All right, I'm going to clear our annotations. And move on to our next slide. So please do the same on this slide. And I'll provide a random banter to distract you. Very glad to see the, the overlap and then, um, Um, alignment around a lot of the, the draft vision so far. And I know there's probably things that are missing for you, so we will have a chance to talk about that too.

[03:52:41] Unknown Speaker: It is hard to disagree with any of this.

[03:52:43] Lawrence Grodeska: Um, and that's true. I'll talk more about that in a moment. All right, and if you are feeling complete, um, with your feedback on the side, if you can give me a thumbs up. Mm-hmm. Mhm, mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Thank you. Almost there. A couple more. All right, we've not.

[03:53:33] Unknown Speaker: Sorry, I'm not sure you can see the handout from the vice mayor.

[03:53:38] Lawrence Grodeska: Great, thank you. Yeah, nice mayor. Do you have a question?

[03:53:43] Vice Mayor Lucas Ramirez: Thank you. Yeah, so, and you may, you may get to this later, and my apologies, if I'm participating this, but I, um, I'm struggling with, uh, understanding how we would utilize the, the vision statement. Uh, this is something I shared with uh, the city manager in our conversations leading up to this. Um, there's a lot of nice stuff here, but it's not clear to me how it's applicable to our policy making or our, you know, how it changes operations.

[03:54:18] Lawrence Grudeska: Yeah, I appreciate that. And um, let me just make sure that, uh, I'll come back to that before we get into the discussion, so thank you for that clarifying question. Has everyone had a chance to share their feedback on this slide? Looks like everyone's done. Okay, fantastic. So, Marielle, if you could capture that screenshot. And then if you could share it with me in our in our chat so that I can reference it in our conversation, that would be great. Um, okay, and I'm going to clear our screen and um, Okay. So let me, um, just walk back and get us on. Um, sure, this is the slide to stop on. So, um, The, the way that we approach strategic planning is that, um, to be able to understand what's the most important thing for us to do right now, we need to have, um, our end goal in mind. We need to know where we're going and we need to know, uh, um, that there's agreement and alignment on what that destination is. Um, walking backwards from that. Um, we start to extract more specificity around the the specific, um, areas that we think are necessary to achieve that vision. So I think you can probably already see that, um, in this vision statement, there's a lot of representation around of the city council's current major goals, of community housing, um, environments, uh, mobility transportation and environment quality of life. Um, so, the 1st layer of abstraction from vision becomes a strategic priorities. Um, and then from there, those strategic priorities get um, um, mapped into specific projects that we think are the most critical to, again, work our way towards that vision. Um, what's important with the vision is that, um, and I think the reason why, um, city manager McCarthy really wanted to take this opportunity, um, as the 1st part in this strategic roommat process is that making sure that this vision is, um, representative of all the important stakeholders in this process. Um, we heard from public during public comment that people should be first. Obviously, there's obligations that, um, city staff have to, um, California regulations or other, you know, uh, necessities as part of their their, um, public service duties. And then the council has its own vision for individually and as a governing body. So this visioning process aligns us around that direction. It also gives us a process to understand, and this touches a little bit what Mr. Larson was talking about, just where our alignment and overlap is and remind us of that we do have a lot of shared vision, even if we can get caught in some of the prioritization around what's most important to do when, the vision is a grounding, and the fact that ultimately, we all want most of the same thing, which is a beautiful community that supports a diverse set of residence to live happy fulfilling lives with and meaningful employment that meets their needs. Um, So, uh, it's a little bit of a, it's the most high-level thing that we will do, um, and it can be difficult to get there. But our goal, as consultants in the process will be developing with you, is to make sure that there's a direct line of sight at that yearly objective level, in the Hayward example, that Chrisell, share with you right up to the vision, so that we can always know that each thing that we are doing, uh, is in service of getting to that final destination or that 3 to 5 year destination. Is that helpful?

[03:58:19] Vice Mayor Lucas Ramirez: Yes, and I guess as a quick follow-up, I think it was in the presentation. Um, maybe helping us better understand the accountability mechanisms that we use to make sure we're actually making progress to achieving the vision. That's, that's, I think the one thing that I'm not totally clear on.

[03:58:36] Lawrence Grudeska: Yeah. We will get to that. Um, there is a moment in this process down the road where we will talk about what we call an organizational cadence that is a regular rhythm by which we um, revisit our success in achieving the, the, objectives we lay out for ourselves and revisiting what's most important. And that'll happen on different intervals. It might be quarterly for staff, it might be bianually, annually, for council and staff. It might be every 2 years for priority areas. It might be longer for vision admission, but part of this process will be to map out not only the timeline for those checkpoints, but also the metrics by which we are holding ourselves accountable too. So we will get there. Um, uh, just know that right now we are starting the very bottom floor to make sure that we're all in alignment. With that, um, I want to go uh, into a conversation about, um, what we heard that, um, Um, was, and again, we're going to focus on sort of the, the areas that, um, were a little, Oh, I'm still an annotation tool. That what's happening here. Okay. We're going to focus on the areas in the vision that, um, Folks just kind of highlighted and read that wanted to talk through. The 1st one, right up at the top was that someone unrelated, underlined by 2025. Um, what I'm going to do right now as far as process is just ask council members to um, uh, speak to anything that was underlined. Um, we have about, um, Let's see, 25 minutes. Um, Excuse me, no, we don't. Um, We probably only have about 15 minutes for this conversation. So we're going to need to move quickly. But I want to make sure that we understand what these comments of disagreement were. They want to want to speak to why 2025 was underlined. Uh, Um, Sorry, I can't see names here. Here we go. Uh, Council member, Manachak.

[04:00:44] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: Thanks, um, I just felt like, um, for me, a vision is uh, long term, and I didn't want to imply that it kind of ends in 2025. Um, Yeah, that's the main reason I underlined it.

[04:01:00] Lawrence Grudeska: Perfect. Thank you. Anything to add to that, Councilman reliever?

[04:01:04] Councilmember Sally Lieber: Um, yeah, I also underlined that um, Because I really feel like people are, are, in our community are suffering right now. Um, with a lot of uncertainty, a lot of economic challenges, we have a massive level of um, displacement. And I think that it could be seen as really insensitive to people to say that in 3 to 4 years, um, everything's going to be great and there's going to be birds singing and and, um, everybody's going to be happy. Because, um, the lasting impact, uh, I think of COVID and of some of the mental health challenges that are out there in the community and the economic damage, is going to be a lot. And, and I think that visions should be, um, for at least 10 years, um, 3 to 4 years is, um, I think doesn't, past the, the um, uh, test for whether something is real or not.

[04:02:12] Lawrence Grudeska: Great. I appreciate that. And, you know, All of this will be part of what we developed together, the timing, and that relates to, um, some of what Vice Mayor Ramirez just, uh, asked about, um, what we call this, whether a major goal, strategic priority. So all this feedback is incredibly useful as we put together, and adopt a street roadmap framework that works best for all of you. And I really appreciate the timing on that. Um, Council member Hicks, and then we'll move on to the next, um, red.

[04:02:45] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So I didn't underline this, but I did think about it. And the way I'm thinking about timing is that, I think we're in an unusual place, I know we are because we're in the pandemic, where some, well, I should back up and say, I really love this vision, it's much more than I expected, uh, to be in agreement with, and I think it's partly because of my background as a city planner. It sees the city as a physical place, which sometimes I feel we get lost in the bureaucratic weeds, which I expected to as a council member, but we lose that, you know, physically, where are we going? Yet when I talk to residents, that's what we talk about all the time, as you could see from public comment. It's the physical city. So basically, I love it. The time and no, I have a question about. So maybe I should have underlined it because I see us in an unusual place where because of the pandemic, we may be, or I think, we'll be reevaluating a tremendous number of things, from, you know, people buying things online and small businesses going out of business, and then what council member Lieber brought up of, uh, you know, people have just more displacement than before housing situations. So I do have a question. The question that the other council members brought up. Maybe we even need 2 elements of time. Um, I'll leave it at that. But Jeff, I really like it.

[04:04:16] Lawrence Grudeska: Yeah, great. Thank you. And again, I would just reiterate what I would try to express earlier is that, you know, a vision, you know, really should be in a much longer time frame. Some of this is just structured to get your feedback, including some dates. Um, and then, uh, the priorities become shorter timelines and then projects is shorter. So, um, we will get into that, that, um, that the cadence. just want to call it that. Council member Abikova.

[04:04:44] Councilmember Margaret Abe-Koga: Thank you. I really appreciate this exercise. I just had a question. Um, I'm wondering, um, that we actually did a visioning process and have a vision for our general plan, the update we did been a while now, but, um, how does this mesh with something like that?

[04:05:04] Lawrence Grudeska: Yeah, that's a great question. And, um, you know, I think that um, that's one of the things that we would want to integrate in this. process here in the next month and a half . Um, you know, so we have been talking to staff about that. I ideally they're not too far apart. Um, but obviously the, the, the goal of that document, that playing document is very different than the strategic roadmap. So very open to thoughts about that, especially for those parts of the organization that really rely on the general plan. I know the general plan doesn't direct that they work for everybody, but I certainly hope as part of this process, and we have been talking about it, staff has mentioned that all the important planning documents, you know, are considered as far as integration here, um, both not only, uh, timing of the process of planning, but also the the end of vision, if you will. So thank you for bringing that up.

[04:05:57] Councilmember Margaret Abe-Koga: If I could, um...

[04:05:59] Lawrence Grudeska: Last comment that we do need to move on because we are definitely, I need to keep moving. Please go ahead.

[04:06:04] Councilmember Margaret Abe-Koga: So, um, I agreed with everything here, and but that was kind of the disconnect for me because the one area I see different was, if I remember correctly, in the general plan update. It was about having village centers throughout the city connected together. And this one, to me, read as the downtown is the center, and then... So.

[04:06:26] Lawrence Grudeska: Right, that's a, yeah, I really appreciate that. That's very helpful feedback. Um, Thank you. thank you all. Um, and I guess, um, so there's 2 more, um, sort of red on the lines here. Despite very challenges, um, did anyone have any quick comments on that, was like one person underline that? Uh, council member, not a check?

[04:06:47] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: Yeah, I underlined that. Somehow I felt like, um, I wanted this to all be positive. Even though we have some challenges, I just felt like I wanted a really positive vision.

[04:06:58] Lawrence Grudeska: Okay, great. Thank you for that quick feedback. Um, how about quaint, um, as a, um, adjective of downtown. Council member show author? Saw your hand first. Do you need help with the mutes?

[04:07:23] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Yeah, I'm reaching the unmute.

[04:07:25] Lawrence Grudeska: Yeah. Uh, we can hear you now.

[04:07:29] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Oh, good. Okay, I was just gonna say, Quint is one of those words that has both +and negative connotations. Um, sometimes it is, uh, is viewed as sort of historical or, um, uh, some homey. Sometimes it's viewed as old-fashioned and not up to snuff and, um, uh, just uh, kind of unsophisticated. And so I think that, um, I would rather we had, you know, we talked about a vibrant downtown. And also, I just think that there's too many words here for this. I was thinking that kind of getting to the point a little more. Um, but, but, but that's it. It's the quaint has both negative and positive connotations and I think, um, So it's not as clear.

[04:08:17] Lawrence Grudeska: Great. Thank you. How's my hicks?

[04:08:22] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So I would totally agree that Quaint has some, some, maybe some bad connotations. Um, and, and the other thing about the downtown is I really see with our, the, uh, what we, called the grades separation, but the underpass under the train station and the electrification, that, and what some of the members of the public talked about, that our downtown can be both sides of the train station. Now and actually if we're doing, you know, transitoriented development, it should be. You know, we shouldn't just completely overlook the other half of the area that's touching our main transportation center. So, I don't, so, but I do, I think maybe use the word quaint because you wanted to embody the historic nature of some of our downtown, which I do think is important. And so, yet, on the other hand, and I don't think that the other, the Moffat half of our downtown, I don't think has to be, or I hope it doesn't become, um, some sort of fake historic, you know, I think it should be modern, reflect what it is. So I want to get into wordsmithing, but I think there could be a better word. I would like to, uh, you know, make sure that we, that the vision encompasses that the historic, small historic center of our downtown remain historic, but we're open to other things for what I think is the rest of a bigger and growing downtown.

[04:09:52] Lawrence Grudeska: Great, thank you. And the quaint and use, it was feedback from someone. So that's why I was included, but we will get to the intention behind your feedback noted, and then we will get to that wordsmithing down the road. Okay, I'm going to move on to our next slide here, and there was a number of underlines around the word renewed in that final paragraph here. Um, anyone that we haven't heard from want to share their thoughts, um, to start. Mayor vice mayor? No?

[04:10:29] Mayor Ellen Kamei: Sure, sure. Um, I I underlined uh, renewed. So, um, you know, I would hope that our community is a vibrant place, an economy, and I think perhaps the renewed might have come there after the, um, you know, navigating the pandemic, but I don't know if it would be renewed, would be the word choice that I would use. Um, and I think rather, um, kind of similar to the to the comments, earlier colleagues, you know, were really trying to create a place and have more of a place making community feel. Um, and I worry that the renewed might not be, um, inclusive.

[04:11:12] Lawrence Grudeska: Thank you for sharing that. Um, there's a few other folks that also underline that word. Anyone, um, want to share their perspective on that word? Or that that, um, that sentence. Or did the mayor's comments capture most of it?

[04:11:31] Mayor Ellen Kamei: And that was in response to the, the, uh, well, the bouncing back from the pandemic.

[04:11:36] Lawrence Grudeska: So, um, definitely. Yeah, we can find a better way to talk about that. Oh, great. Um, there was, in the last sentence, um, there was, uh, someone that underlined participate in civic life, and then, uh, I read, and then someone underlined, underlined the last sentence, um, broad recognition of a capacity of care community, um, in yellow. Does anyone want to speak to the participate in civic life? Um, first? Yeah, not a member, a chat. I'm sorry, not a check. Not a check. Great. you.

[04:12:11] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: Um, no worries. For me, what, um, I felt like was sort of missing in that statement. I feel like the result of everything we do enables residents, workers, and visitors to have a great quality of life. rather than meaningfully participate in civic life. So I'm shooting for more, a great quality of life..

[04:12:41] Lawrence Grudeska: Uh, appreciate that. And how about that last sentence that someone had underlined in yellow, Councilman and the neighbor?

[04:12:48] Councilmember Sally Lieber: It was me.

[04:12:49] Lawrence Grudeska: Yeah, for sure.

[04:12:50] Councilmember Sally Lieber: Um, I, I think that it's, it's always better to demonstrate it than to um, proclaim it. And, um, again, going back to where people are at, we've had an unprecedented level of, um, uh, untimely death in our community and in our area. And an unprecedented level of displacement. And so, I hate to be the voice of Doom and Gloom. But um, that's kind of where I go naturally. Um, especially during these times, and, and I think that people, when they're displaced from an apartment building and it's torn down, and their children are separated from their school and they have to move, um, to very distant places. It's, or they're threatened with it. Um, they don't really know where to put that. They don't put it specifically, maybe in the area that it comes from. But it's the community overall. Um, and a lot of people are feeling feeling threatened in their situations right now. And, um, That's my comments.

[04:14:02] Lawrence Grudeska: Great. Thank you. I appreciate that. So what I like to do is a lightning round of anything that's missing, and then we move on to the mission. Um, so, um, 30 seconds here so that we can just really capture, um, what else you'd like to see in the vision and then, uh, like I said, we need to move on to mission. So, Counselor Hicks, do you want to start?

[04:14:23] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Many members of the community mention green corridors as opposed to, I forget how it reads, just green spaces dotted around is maybe how you said it. Um, so that might be included. Um, and other members of the, somebody from public texted me and asked whether any of their comments will be included in any way in the vision statement or somewhere else. So I have that question as well.

[04:14:51] Lawrence Grudeska: Yeah, and just to emphasize, um, we will be doing a community exercise to also get their direct feedback, um, about the vision, um, their vision for the city of Mount View. So we'll, we'll, we are taking notes of the comments during this meeting and all council meetings is part of the engagement for the process, but we'll also be through focus groups in the open meetings um in the end of this month and beginning of March asking directly for for that feedback. So, um, they'll they'll be heard. Uh, Vice Mayor Ramirez.

[04:15:22] Vice Mayor Lucas Ramirez: Thank you. So, I want to respond to something that counts member Metachek said, I do agree with her that, uh, quality of life is, uh, a key outcome of all of our work, but I do think that participation in civic life or shared governance, something along those lines is an important value as well. So, I don't necessarily want to supplant one with the other, but see both of them. I think prominently incorporated into the into the vision.

[04:15:51] Lawrence Grudeska: Fantastic. Thank you. Uh, Council member, Iokoga.

[04:15:58] Councilmember Margaret Abe-Koga: Thank you. Um, yes, one thing I, I've always valued with our city is innovation. I think that's what's made us successful and I was kind of surprised. I was trying to remember what I wrote down, but that that didn't, that word didn't show up. Um, and I think it really is key to a lot of, you know, what we do in our success and not just like the businesses, but even in terms of our work, our government work. So, I would like to include that somewhere.

[04:16:29] Lawrence Grudeska: Got it. Thank you. Do I know that? Uh, council member, show Walter.

[04:16:37] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Yeah, it might be on the 1st page, but on this page, I don't see anything related to the city being seen as a leader in sustainability, and that we're, you know, we're doing our best to protect our part of the planet.

[04:16:52] Lawrence Grudeska: Right. Thank you. Uh, Mayor, anything to add from your perspective?

[04:16:59] Mayor Ellen Kamei: Sorry, it was missing. No?

[04:17:01] Lawrence Grudeska: Great. Okay, um, Counselor Matachek, one more thought.

[04:17:07] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: But do you want us to wait if we agree with other council members?

[04:17:10] Lawrence Grudeska: So, so you have, like, 2 or 3 minutes? If you have somebody to share, sure. And uh, That would be great.

[04:17:19] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: I agree about sustainability. Um, I also will agree with the comment about the village centers, the council member Abi Koka stated, and then uh, quality life and livability.

[04:17:30] Lawrence Grudeska: Okay, great. Thank you. Yeah, appreciate it. All those thoughts and we will do our best to incorporate those and take note of those all important editions. With that, we're going to move on to the next segment here, which is about our, the organization's mission statement. So I'm going to pass it over to Criselle.

[04:17:53] Cristelle Blackford: Thank you. And I will do a quick time check that we're about 13 minutes behind schedule. So I'm gonna do this as quickly as we can so we can jump into hearing from all of you. Um, so, return to our definition here. A mission is the defining purpose of an organization at its most fundamental level. So I just want to emphasize that this is, this part is really focused on the organization. It's internally focused. The purpose being the reason that the city exists is what we're trying to get at together together here. So your current mission statement. Is the city of Mountain View provides quality services and facilities that meet the needs of a caring and diverse community in a financially responsible manner. We shared with you some example mission statements from other cities and asked what you liked and disliked, and here's what we heard. The number, uh, indicates that there were council people who echoed the same sentiment. So what you liked, several of you thought that you liked the particular mission statements that were succinct, the ones that were focused on residents and what the city does for the community. Many of you also liked the upbeat and vibrant nature of some of the mission statements we shared. Universally supported values and aspirational or some other things that came up and what you liked, what you disliked about the ones we shared. Some of them were too broad and vague and lacked detail. 3 of you agreed on that. Um, some of you also shared that, uh, they were potentially, uh, their sole focus on city operations seemed limiting, not useful in guiding actual work, focus on safety, and not reflective of place. Um, and then we gave you essentially like a Mad Libs exercise and asked you to share your answers to the following questions, which helped us draft, uh, some draft missions that we'll share with you today. So here's what we heard. What does the city, when we asked you, what does the city do? You filled in the blank with, many of you provides high quality core services, promotes and maintains diverse community, maintains and develops infrastructure, promotes public safety, increases housing options, good stewards of the land, and there also were some of you have mentioned transportation, public works, parks, and rec. Then we asked, what does the city help? Primarily. We had 5 of you saved residents. Um, and there are some specifics here, non-citizen and citizen, non-voting, and voting alike, so that inclusivity peace. Um, Businesses in the city came up equal rate to residents, and then also workers and visitors. And then we asked you, what does the city help? Them do. Um, Or why? Sorry, why does the city help them? So in response to the Y, you had a healthy community requires diversity, because residents are what make up the city. Residents invest in their community. Great quality of life for residents, again, thriving businesses, land use planning, and shared needs. And finally, We asked about the outcome. So what is the result of the city's work? We have livable, attractive city? Business friendly community and economic vitality, diversity and inclusivity, and then safety, well maintained infrastructure, public parks, trails, public squares, and environmental sustainability. All right. Oh, and and we also asked you to share some adjectives to describe the city's purpose. So we got high quality. Uh, advocate for the community. Comprehensive service and challenging. So then we took your Mad Libs responses. And we put together some possible mission statements. Uh, so I'm gonna read through these 4 and then I'm gonna give you the instruction for how we're gonna get your thoughts and feedback on each of these. Um, and again, we want to capture the intent here. We're not wordsmithing. So, number one, in service of equity, sustainability, and community. Number two, ensuring opportunity for all. Number three. We create the conditions for an inclusive, prosperous and beautiful place for all. And for, provide for the opportunity, equity, and happiness of all residents. So let you absorb those briefly, and then, um, I'm going to explain our feedback process here. Next slide. Next slide. And we'll show these each in turn. So as we go through each of these, The 1st one is there at the top in red. Um, So we're going to do this in an analog way. I'm going to have you all hold up fingers here to vote. Um, so one finger would be strongly disagree. 2 is disagree. 3 is neutral. For as I agree, and 5 as I strongly agree. And that is your, specifically rating your agreement with the statement. This mission accurately captures the purpose of the government of the city of Mountain View. So this describes why the city government exists. Um, okay, so, Let me just pause and ask if anybody has any clarifications on our process there, we're going to capture feedback and then we're going to briefly discuss areas of strong disagreement or disagreement. Okay, so let's start with this 1st one. And I'll ask you to just hold your hands up until I ask you to stop. Um, or until I ask you to put them down so we can make sure we record whatever everyone's got. Um, so, uh, go ahead and give your vote on this particular mission and service of equity, sustainability and community. All right. So, Lawrence is taking down your votes. We have Ramirez 5, Hicks 4. Abicoga 5, Matachek 3. Come May 4. Labor 5. Show Walter 5. Got it. Alright, great. Thank you. Okay, now, Lawrence, let's go to the next one. We'll just go up through all of these and then we'll take a pause. So ensuring opportunity for all, go ahead and give us your votes on that. Okay. We have a range here. I got show alter 3, not a track 5. Lever 5, Hicks, one, Abby Koga, 5, Ramirez, 5, Kame 5. Got it. Great. All right. And now we will move to the next one. All right, this one is we create the conditions for an inclusive, prosperous, and beautiful place for all. Just keep your hands up while we record these. Kame 3 Ramirez 5. Abby Coda 4, Hicks 4. Labor, Did I get yours? I can't quite see your hand. counts on their neighbor. Three.

[04:26:13] Cristelle Blackford: And that a check 3 and show all 3 one. All right, great. And then the last one here? Is? Oh, that's right. Thanks, Lawrence. I know you're multitasking there. provided for the opportunity, equity, and happiness of all residents. All right, we have Kame 2 Ramirez 4. Abby Coda. And uh, Castleman Weaver. Uh Council member Liever, have 4 or five?

[04:27:04] Councilmember Sally Lieber: Four,

[04:27:05] Cristelle Blackford: four. Great, okay. Okay, and we've got Hicks one, Matachek 2, short Walter 2. Got it. All right, great.

[04:27:12] Mayor Ellen Kamei: Sorry, I was a four.

[04:27:14] Cristelle Blackford: Oh, yeah, four.

[04:27:15] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: I'm so forward to as well, I mean.

[04:27:19] Cristelle Blackford: Okay, good night. Or, and that a check for. Not a check four. Great. Okay. Okay, so, um, we're gonna do some quick. Uh, calculation here. I'm just gonna look at which one's got the most agreement and disagreement. And then, yeah, we're gonna just look at, so this, um, Overall slide here. Um, I'm just gonna say what the overall agreement was on the 1st one and since the 1st one has a lot of agreement. We've got mostly 4s and 5s with 13 from MetoChek. I don't know if we have any specific comments on that one. Um, yes, Council member, member Hicks.

[04:28:14] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Yeah, I'd say this was generally my preferred one. I think one of the reasons I like the balance of sustainability, community and equity. I just should say I have an aversion to the word opportunity. It sounds, I much prefer equity. Opportunity to me sounds very competitive. It sounds like we're going to throw all the residents into some kind of equal opportunity competition and some of them just may not measure up. And my, my ethic is more to, you know, things for all, whether it's housing or park space or whatever. So that's why I prefer one over, number one over the ones with the word opportunity, Anna.

[04:28:58] Cristelle Blackford: Great, let's helpful. you. And it counts my believer. Go ahead.

[04:29:04] Councilmember Sally Lieber: Well, it's it's really hard to vote against happiness. But, um, I actually, I can't imagine, um, uh, where this is all going in, in terms of a statement, I, I think that, uh, just plain one that we've had, um, you know, if there can be maybe a couple words put in there or something, I like the, the number one. But, um, I'm a little bit uncomfortable with this because for people that are facing, um, losing their home because they haven't been able to pay their rent. This could be our let them eat cake moment. The fact that we're going through this process and, um, Paying money for it. So just a little bit uncomfortable.

[04:29:51] Cristelle Blackford: Okay, thank you for sharing that. We've captured that. Um, I want to move. So, The comment that we had from council member Hicks, addressed both one and 2 and I know number the number 2 ensuring opportunity for all, you had some concerns with and you had the lowest rating on that. The rest of the folks, you folks had 5s and show Walter won three. Um, so don't know if there's any other specific comments on number two. If not, we'll move to the 3rd one. We create the conditions for an inclusive, prosperous and beautiful place for all. And that has a mix with show Walter having the lowest rating at number at a one. Uh, show alter. Go ahead.

[04:30:34] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Yeah, I, I, uh, kind of like cancel my reliever. I just very sort of uncomfortable with this. I'm the only engineer in the group and I think that really puts me at a disadvantage for this kind of exercise in the 1st place. But, um, I, I just, uh, I don't see where we're going and, um, the idea that we're creating a beautiful place for all. I mean, I'm certainly not against that. I think it's a good idea, but, um, uh, I just don't know where we're going with that. It makes me uncomfortable. So I feel like we create the conditions for an inclusive and prosperous, um, community is that's something I really feel strongly about. And then maybe a separate one is is, um, You know, we, we design a beautiful city. We design and maintain. Um, you know, uh, our property beautifully or something along those lines, but this is just, uh, it's, uh, it doesn't grab me properly.

[04:31:44] Cristelle Blackford: That's really helpful feedback and just to, um, respond to both of those, your comments about kind of, you know, whether this leading us. Um, you know, we just to, like, and to go back to the definition, like, we're really trying to capture kind of like the, the reason for being of the city, um, in terms of the operational side of the city. Why does the city government exist? So I think that's helpful that if you think it's not, you know, that's out of our purview is maybe what I hear you saying or it seems inappropriate, um, to talk about something as broad as happiness and opportunity. Um, it's like where you want to focus a little bit more specifically on where does the city have leverage to influence?

[04:32:29] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Yeah, I think we can help create opportunity. Um, I definitely think we can do that and we should. And we can help and create beauty. But I really think that our, you know, our reason for being is honestly core services. And, um,

[04:32:49] Christal Blackford: Okay, that's helpful. And I, there's a couple other hands raised. So we have, um, council member Mattachek. Don't you go ahead and then Libra and Ramirez.

[04:32:58] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Um, I, I kind of like the starting point of our existing mission. Maybe it needs a few tweaks, but I kind of like it better than any of these. Um, but specifically on number three. Um, I also was not, um, real crazy about the word beautiful. Um, maybe it's sustainable. Um, but, um, you know, we can do our best to create uh, situations, but we can't ensure or guarantee everyone who either lives here or visits here or works here is going to experience the same thing. And so I think we do our best to create conditions. Um, but it kind of ends there. Thanks.

[04:33:49] Christal Blackford: Thank you. Um, and I'll go to council member Lieber.

[04:33:54] Councilmember Sally Lieber: Um, well, I love the beauty and the happiness and everything, and I can't remember if, uh, what country or maybe it was just Santa Monica that said that their purpose is happiness for all, and, um, I think that's really, really beautiful, but, um, I think also we have to balance it with, This is uh, I'm pretty sure the 1st year that we're going to be in a deficit. And we're going to be in a deficit for all of the years that this plan is going to take place. So I think kind of something that I'm sensitive to throughout this process, and not just in the statement is, kind of we have to look at, um, what's a great version of, of, you know, just 3 flavors of ice cream? And maybe not an entire rainbow of ice cream, but, um, Something that reflects that we can see where people are at right now.

[04:34:52] Christal Blackford: Yeah, thank you. That's a good analogy. We can't have all the flavors of ice cream all the time. And vice mayor, please. Go ahead.

[04:35:04] Vice Mayor Lucas Ramirez: Thank you. So, I want to focus on something that council member show Walter said. When I went into this exercise. I had a very, uh, practical or functional view, I guess, of what a mission statement should be, uh, I agree. Fundamentally, we provide core and essential services, like public safety and public works, and you know, really basic things that are expected of any city. And I really wasn't comfortable with pursuing a mission statement that didn't really reflect that reality. But one thing that, um, really resonated with me was a remark that, uh, Bruce Carney made and that sort of thinking about 2 different components of the city. One is, the operations that provide, you know, yield the core services that are expected by our residents. And then there's, I think what he called sort of a, uh, an R and D component. I feel like all of these are fairly appropriately categorized in that 2nd part of what a city does. The things that we do, you know, beyond just provide for the public works, right, maintaining infrastructure, sort of the, the, maybe the major thematic goals that we're going to talk about later on, the, the nice things that are not necessarily expected, you know, by, uh, as a regular operational component of a municipality, but instead, you know, community goals or council goals that help make this a really desirable place to live. Honestly, I think all of these are functionally equivalent. I don't think any one of these will change our policy making or the expectations of the community in any way. So I don't really, they're all fine. Um, I think what would be more interesting is making sure that the mission statement reflects the key thing that a city does, which is provide those essential services, and if we want to include some of the broader community goals. Any of these, I think, will be fine, unless you can persuade me that any one of these words will yield a different policy outcome.

[04:37:18] Christal Blackford: Yeah, I appreciate that. I think that thinking about the purpose in terms of those the what we what we provide, so those core services, in service of the outcomes that we're looking to support. So, you know, I think the idea here is that if we agree on, The mission as that driving force behind what your focus is internally, it's, it's beyond, it's sort of like make, we all agree that the core services are there and then what is the, those are in service of what? Um, and so that I think those are some of the words that are on the page. Um, But we, yeah, so we'll definitely continue this conversation. Let's go to council member Hicks. Um, and then we'll do a final, final round on that number 4 if anyone has any additional feedback.

[04:38:04] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So I just wanted to engage a little bit on the, this idea of core services because maybe it's my background is a city planner, but I would never, if I'm thinking of, you know, like when, I, my husband and I were looking for a place to live, it had to be generally in this area. Or when I'm thinking about whether to stay in a community. We don't talk about core services. I mean, of course I need my garbage taken out. I'm not going to move to a city with piles of garbage on the street. Eventually, I do notice the core services. But to me, it's more what council member, Patrick was talking about. It's things like if this, if we had, if it was safe here, you know, relatively good police force, and the garbage was picked up, but there were no street trees, um, or, or a few parks, or I could name any other, any number of other physical, no, you know, no streets that were walkable. I wouldn't move here. You know, I wouldn't move here unless I was desperate and the housing was super cheap. Um, I see the core thing the city does is land and making a livable place that we want to be in. I also have always chosen to live in cities that are um, somewhat mixed income. Um, and so equity is an important, an important value for me as well. But, um, I, I don't, I don't see those core services as the only thing or the most important thing the city does. In fact, honestly, I'd be willing to suffer through some marginal provision of services if everything else was wonderful. And well, I'll leave it there.

[04:40:00] Christal Blackford: Thank you, Castle Remember, Hickson. Um, at this, I see uh, Vice Mayor Ramirez responding and was that Mayor Kameh waving?

[04:40:10] Mayor Ellen Kamei: Yeah, Miss Blackford, I, you know, I, there's so many hands and I think I just, you know, we're at 110. I know we're trying to end at 140. So I'd love for city manager McCarthy maybe to provide some overall context to what the view from the city was in terms of, you know, these mission statements, if she could interject, please, I think that'd be helpful.

[04:40:35] City Manager Kimbra McCarthy: Um, thank you, mayor. Yeah, so the mission really is just kind of that guiding statement that talks about what the city does. You all have that. Um, and I think today wasn't really supposed to be intended to really focus on all of the words because we really were trying to just get the feel for what you all thought. And some of these words came from uh, when civic makers spoke to all of you. And so I think it was really just trying to evoke, um, really the intent behind the words and how it would be put together for the overworking mission of what the organization does for our residents and businesses and everyone here. So I think we definitely have some time to get through this and we'll also hear from the community and staff so that we can come up with something. Um, but I definitely hear the concerns and um, I think that we have enough to, to move on and work on this over the next few months if, if that, um, is okay with everyone.

[04:41:38] Christal Blackford: Yeah, and I'll just add that, um, you know, the feedback you're giving exactly is exactly the kind of feedback we want to hear at this point where the very beginning of this process. Um, I think there's also an interesting piece of this conversation is that the mission, oftentimes for organizations, is much more focused on an operational execution, um, to make sure that there is that line of sight for every single staff member to make sure that the policy direction is being implemented, um, in the spirit of why it was passed. So, um, it may be that that city council, um, and not all city councils will do a mission in their strategic planning process. It's something that staff has identified that they want to do and to at least revisit the mission that as it currently exists. We may tweak that one. We may go more hog on something that's totally different. But hearing the feedback you shared today is exactly what we needed to, um, you know, put into the hopper, as it were, of all the input that we're going to get to get to the next point, which is, um, mid-March when we, we got to start to get more specific. So I think, um, you know, we're good right now and we should move on to our last segment here, which is the strategic priorities. We are available. I know some of you have already emailed me. If you have additional thoughts after this meeting, please feel free. Um, my um, my inbox is always open. So, uh, would that will move on to uh, our final section here. And that is on strategic priorities. Um, the strategic priorities, as I mentioned, are what falls out of the vision statement. What are the primary areas of focus that the organization feels like it needs to do to actualize that longer term vision? The top areas of focus to achieve the vision, as this definition says. This maps pretty closely to your current major goals. I think that there is an interest from staff and I look forward to this conversation with you all too, to potentially reframe how we talk about this in a final roadmap. Don't want to get into that today, but we do want to revisit the substance of the current goals, major goals, and see if there's anything that you want to share right now to go into that hopper as far as what the revision to the goal slash strategy priorities will be. So we asked you for your feedback. I know that there was a little bit of confusion around some of the ranking we did. Um, and, uh, In the end, that was helpful for us to sort of, um, make you all choose, uh, which specific, um, goal here you thought is extremely important. So what we're seeing here is a spread of where, where, um, green being the most important and red being the least important as ranked by evil. Um, the, the, the, the 1st goal of, of, uh, community for all, uh, continues to be the, the, seemingly the most important to you all. Um, and transportation, I think is the one that where there's, there's the most kind of question. Um, I will say that overall, um, All council members said that each of the current goals is very important. We're going to share on the next 2 slides, some potential additions, removals, or changes, but overall, the what we heard from you is that the current major goals are still really important priorities and that they've been discussed over a long period of time, and, you know, that they've all landed on some agreement around. So I think that's important context for us as we share these next 2 slides about some of the ways we can change them. And so we're gonna share those 2 slides, um, and then just get some some conversation or some feedback from, from you all about what the other council members have shared, and, um, so that we can incorporate that into the next round of of revision of the strategic priority areas that are major goals. Okay, uh, the 1st, um, uh, slide here we have is, um, some suggestions that council members had on adding primary areas or goals and removing priorities. These were all shared individually once. So there wasn't really any consensus around these. So I think that's also important to note. Um, there was no sort of um, big, uh, unanimous, let's add this new priority. And these were all just individual suggestions. One potential priority to add is emergency preparedness and response. Another is a more internal facing priority around enhancing the effectiveness and efficiency of city operations in order to provide essential services, potentially adding a priority around economic development, and then someone said maybe health and well-being. Um, a few suggestions around removing priorities, um, the environmental sustainability goal. Someone felt that we're achieving that, uh, similarly to the transportation related goal that some of the aggressive CIP uh, program work, um, helping that helping you all to meet that goal. And then, um, there is also a sense from one person that, um, that one council member, that has a goal, um, much has already been done. Um, and then finally, changes. There were 2 council members. They both suggested that quality of life and environmental sustainability could be split into 2 separate goals, because while related, there's not always direct overlap, which can be kind of confusing sometimes for planning in the strategic direction that the council lays out year over year. And then, um, someone else suggested the train's transportation goal to include less important from the pandemic, I might suggest that this might be more at the project level rather than necessarily revising the whole, um, goal, but nonetheless wanted to share. And then, uh, someone else noted there is overlap between the community and housing goals. So, um, with that, um, wanted to take probably, maybe 10 minutes here, tops to just hear any feedback from from you, uh, after seeing what other council members shared, about potential revisions to, uh, the, the major goals or strategic priority areas. Again, we're not making any decisions today. We'll be doing the community engagement and staff conversation to get thoughts from them as well. Um, but this is, um, you know, this is an important time to hear your feedback. So I saw Council member Labor's hand first. Once you do, go around and hear from everybody. Um, and so Councilman reliever, start with you.

[04:48:24] Councilmember Sally Lieber: Thanks. Um, well, I think that, um, I hope it's an isolated viewpoint that we should take housing or sustainability out of our major goals because I think we're just getting getting started there. Um, and I do think it's going to be important in the next stages to really flesh out what we're talking about when we talk about core services. Um, and, uh, I think that things like, um, uh, tree cover and, um, the sustainability initiatives are our core services. Um, so I'm not just looking at core services as garbage and sweeping the streets and filling a pothole. It's, it's really protecting us against, um, the future, uh, bad things that can happen through climate collapse, and, uh, the future bad things that can happen if we don't have essential workers here because we don't have the housing. Um, so I think as we go into the next steps, really fleshing out. What do we think is essential? And this exercise for me where we prioritize things was a bit difficult because the community item and the housing item had a lot of overlap. And so I think that housing might have suffered through that. And it was really hard to, um, assign a full .5, you know, 5 points to only one thing. And I think that gave the other thing short shrift. And I think that we need to look at continuing our work in areas where we already have depth is really important.

[04:50:08] Lawrence Grudeska: Great. Thank you. Um, Vice Mayor Ramirez. How about you go next?

[04:50:16] Vice Mayor Lucas Ramirez: Thank you. So, uh, I think the 2 overriding considerations for me, 1st is, we have a very solid work plan, uh, that I don't think we're quite close to achieving. And so I'm, I'm reluctant to do a lot of new work that I think, you know, at best will delay our existing work plan and result in another 2 years of really struggling to get a lot of our goals completed. Um, you know, so, so, I guess another way of thinking about that is the existing work plan, it's pretty nicely under the existing goals, and it's hard for me to want to deviate from that substantially, unless we do something difficult, like say, we're no longer going to pursue some of the existing items in our work plan. Uh, and I think the other thing is, you know, I'll be probably, Myopically focused on this. But having goals that are meaningful and achievable. is really important to me. It's nice to say, you know, improve the affordability of housing or something very high level and broad. I don't think that's a meaningful goal. Because all of us at the conclusion of the 2 year cycle will say, you know, we'll have different opinions about whether we've achieved or how much progress we've made on that goal. So if we change one thing, I think it's, you know, define goals that include metrics, you know, that we can measure and say and and have, you know, something close to unanimity, right? Uh, but at the conclusion of the 2 year cycle, we've been able to achieve, you know, a good amount of the school, we've made no progress. And we might need to course correct. Uh, so those are my quick thought.

[04:52:02] Lawrence Grudeska: Great. Thank you for, um, you know, the, no, like, comment on the goals, but the sort of how the goals are framed. I think that's a, you know, good perspective that as well. Uh, council member, Mattachuk.

[04:52:13] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: Thank you Um, I have a question and then I also have some comments. And the question is, And in the examples from other cities that were shared, they often had 6 priorities.

[04:52:28] Lawrence Grudeska: Probably weren't. best recommendations, you know, we would recommend you have no more than 4 to 5. Um, but, uh, you know, getting a consensus and and uh, sometimes, you know, it becomes a, uh, And that's where I think the conversation around core services and capacity becomes really, really important. So, um, I don't want to get too far down that conversation or make that decision right now, but there is a real need to make sure that this strategic roadmap is as focused as it can be and as realistic as it can be. So, um, limiting the core focus area, i.e. strategic priorities or major goals becomes one leverage point to be able to do that. We'll just use the ice cream analogy again. You can't have all the flavors all the time. Um, so, um, thank you for that observation and, um, it's something that, uh, you know, it comes up in every planning process. So, uh, city manager McCarthy, do you want to speak to that as well?

[04:53:25] City Manager Kimbra McCarthy: Yes, thank you. I would just say, one of the things that we have right now in our work plan. So we have the overworking goals, which are written more like really long sentences, um, with a lot of adjectives in them and almost like, um, not necessarily projects, but you might want to think about more pithy, uh, one to 2 cents words for the goals because we have, if you recall, in the work plan. So we have the 4 major goals and then there's this 5th category, which is kind of a catchall of tons of projects that don't necessarily fit neatly in the other four. And so I do think you could potentially have maybe five. There's probably a lot of items in there that might be under like a government for all category or government operations or just something like that because it's general work that doesn't necessarily fit in those items. So I just kind of wanted to throw that out for you, not for us to decide today. But I think that's generally where, um, a lot of organizations kind of think about their strategic priorities in those. Sorry, my lights went off. They've been going on and off all day. Um, just so that it's not necessarily long sentences that you have to think about, but rather maybe counsel could consider just the top priorities in those buckets. And then it's all the projects and initiatives that fall under them. So just another way of looking at it.

[04:54:49] Lawrence Grudeska: Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that.

[04:54:51] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: So since I've been on council. So my comments, since I've been on cancel, we started with 3 goals and then we expanded to four. So I was a little bit nervous about going to more than that because I appreciate focus. and getting things done. Um, but I have been, um, a little bit concerned that the something that's really important to me, and I think many members of the community is the quality of life and the livability of our city. And having that combined with sustainability, I feel like it's not getting as much attention as it should. And so I would absolutely like to see that broken out separately. Um, and the other one that I didn't think about um, when I was providing my input before this session. Um, I guess because I was thinking it was probably a given, but maybe it needs to be um, uh, priority and that is recovery from COVID. And it might not be, you know, a 10 year type of thing. Hopefully we can recover much more quickly than that. But it is a huge priority to help our residents and our small businesses recover from COVID. Thanks.

[04:56:05] Lawrence Grudeska: Yeah, yeah. Uh, Council member Hicks.

[04:56:11] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So, I have to say, I, I struggle with this part of the exercise, and, um, the, and some of the comments previous council members have made, uh, embody kind of the reasons I struggle. Um, I see, well, I see these almost more as aspirations. Um, you know, these for so-called goals. You know, the 1st one, although you summarized it as community, I usually focus on the words in that sentence of vulnerable populations. So, um, I, or the one, you know, where we're providing housing or where we're addressing sustainability. I honestly don't think within my lifetime, we're going to complete any of them or transportation. I, you know, so I'm hesitant to throw any of them under the bus. They don't seem to be, um, I imagine, and it would be a, maybe a fun exercise to look at what, uh, you know, 50 years ago, what were the goals of the city council or were we even making them in that same way? I imagine they were something like, actually, I just read the book on the history of Mountain View. 75 years ago. It'd be something like, build our 1st library. Then we'd build it, and we'd be done. And we would, nobody would say, no, we have to keep that on the list. Whereas they seem to have changed into something very different. Um, and so although I, and that's where I struggle, because I don't want to get rid of aspirations. I don't think we've finished sustainability addressing climate change. Um, But I also struggle with them then as, like, we were asked to put 3 under each one and, and it seems like that's not, not maybe the best way to organize work. I'll give one example is the, uh, addressing the needs of vulnerable communities, which is the 1st goal and then, uh, the other goal is housing needs. And honestly, when I talk to people from so-called vulnerable communities, most of their needs are housing needs. So then I'm thinking, can I put 3 housing needs under vulnerable communities in 3 under housing as well? Um, And so to me, it seems and that's what I did. So, it seems like maybe not. Maybe not the best way of, um, tackling what we're tackling what we're trying to achieve. We're not naming the main things we want to get done. Um, and then, and then figuring out how to do them. I realize that putting only 3 under each category is in part, maybe to make sure certain segments of the staff are not overloaded. But if we really think we need that much for my example being housing, that much housing, maybe we need to hire more staff in that area. And then lastly, before I talk too much, I'll say, I agree with council member Mattachek said about when I talk to the community, much of what the community wants are livability related goals and I think overlapping that with sustainability, which I think are things more like, I'm thinking of cutting our carbon footprint. I think those are really 2 distinct things. Thank you.

[04:59:33] Lawrence Grudeska: Appreciate that. Thank you, the feedback on the formats and intersectionality of goals and, um, you know, and specific content. So, um, duly noted. Council member, Avicoca.

[04:59:46] Councilmember Margaret Abe-Koga: Thank you. Yeah, actually, Counselor Hicks, uh, mentioned what a lot of what I was thinking. I've been through this exercise, I think, probably 6 times, and it's evolved over time, and I struggle between, um, you know, the original, when we did this earlier on, um, it was like more specific goals that we could achieve within a year or 2 years time versus now, the last, the 6, at least 6 years or at least, yeah, since I've been back. It's been pretty much the same, you know, housing, transportation, sainability, then we've added that 4th one in the last 4 years, but, um, their big goal goals are topic areas, um, that we, you know, are not going to be able to ever achieve in 2 years. So how do we like, and but then there's this hesitation to drop one of those, um, to add something else. But there, like, there are things I think that are more timely, like, at this moment in time, and yet we, and, you know, example would be like health and wellness, those last, last year, we added youth, mental health, you know, we talked about tobacco smoke, um, banning tobacco smoke, but because they don't fit in our 4 goal areas, it's been hard to incorporate them into our work. So how do we do that? How do we be more nimble and flexible to be more timely on issues that come up? Um, but then not lose these, you know, bigger overarching areas that we know we just need to continue to work on. Um, so do we need to like within transportation, get more granular or sustainability, like do we just, you know, work on one area, just say building decarbonization, um, just so that we can actually have, you know, measurable achievements in the 2 year time frame?

[05:01:40] Lawrence Grudeska: Right. Thank you. Also very helpful. Um, Counselor, show Walter, do you have anything to share?

[05:01:48] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Yeah, a couple things. Um, 1st of all, I'd like to, I think we do need to add response to COVID. I mean, when I look back at what the council has done in the last 2 years or the last year and a half . That's, that's most of what has been done and that's appropriate. That's what we need to do. So I think it's crazy not to have that on the list. Um, so I'd like to have that added um, as, you know, as, I don't know, know what the exact word score would be, but basically response to COVID. And um, and then I think that we have a policy decision to make here about whether or not we want these goals to be aspirational subject areas like housing, increasing housing, transportation and sustainability, which we all know will be working on for the rest of our lives. Or we want to say, you know, like in the next 2 years, we want to increase the housing supply by X number of units. And, you know, or sustainability. We want to reduce our, uh, a community carpet food print by, you know, X number of tons. I mean, what, you know, I think we have a policy decision that we really should be sort of discreetly discussing here about what we want to do to go forward. Um, And I just want to add in the, in the discussion of climate protection and sustainability, we do need to remember that we are Shoreline City and we need to also be pushing forward on sea level rights protection. And I know we, that's in the works. We have that public works is redoing our report on that that came out in late in 2012, but that is something we will have to do as well as the reducing our GHD emissions. Thank you.

[05:03:36] Lawrence Grudeska: Okay, thank you. I think we haven't heard from Mayor Kane, and that will be our last, um, on this this section, we will wrap up.

[05:03:45] Mayor Ellen Kamei: Great, thanks. Um, so a couple different thoughts. One in terms of the, um, prioritization of the priorities. I mean, I think a council member discussed this earlier on in their comments and I think, you know, these are the priorities because you would hope that they are all of equal importance. So I also found it difficult when we were doing this survey on, you know, having to pick and choose what was number one. The 4 goals out of 4 goals because those are the most important things that we're doing. So, um, you know, that was just the sentiment that I had and I think it added those in the comments of this survey. Um, and so, and one of the things I've been reflecting on is we have 4 goals that are, um, quite lengthy. And I think it's lengthy because we're trying to squeeze everything we can into them to make sure we kind of make the most of what the priority goal is. And I wonder if it might be kind of the flex a bit to speak to the flexibility that some of my colleagues have mentioned. Would it make more sense to kind of, to have the goals be a little bit more broad? You know, community for all. And then the goals can go and the projects can go under, you know, community for all. Perhaps it could be, you know, we're talking about recovery. So maybe we can have a goal that's about Community vitality, you know, and we could put sustainability under there. We could put recovery efforts under there. I think there are ways where if we kind of shorten the language of our 4 calls to be a little bit more of like an umbrella term, that we would be able to find more ways to kind of fit the different projects or take on things that come up. Um, you know, mid-year, um, like happened in uh, 2020. Um, and so that would be, okay, the comments that I have.

[05:05:40] Lawrence Grudeska: Great, thanks. Thank you all. So we do need to move on because we are about 4 minutes before when we wanted to wrap up here, so we will do a quick kind of reflection. Um, I do want to thank you all for that very thoughtful feedback. I think both the feedback on the potential structure, revising some of the way that the goals are structured right now is is incredibly helpful and and, um, I look forward to bringing that already to staff and getting their inputs on that because I think, um, You suggest a couple of ways that could just bring a lot of clarity to, uh, a new roadmap, um, to, to, Yeah, want to make sure that everyone's working together and moving in the right direction together. Um, so thank you for that. Um, what we'd like to do now is just do a quick reflection period and Crystal will elit us in that.

[05:06:27] Christal Blackford: Thank you, Lawrence. And let me move the next slide for you. There we go. Yeah, so we we had 15 minutes for this wrap up, but at this point, we only have 4, so we'll do what we can. But we just wanted to really quickly just ask you to do a lightning round on any, um, aha moments that you had. Key takeaways. What was most sort of eye-opening for you in this process? That you want to kind of carry forward? We can start with Abi Koga council members since you had your hand up from the last round. Unless you don't want to start

[05:07:06] Councilmember Margaret Abe-Koga: I'm sorry, I never lowered it. But, um, I just actually look forward to the community staff engagement. as I was reflecting on years past week, probably haven't done a thorough, um, process there. So this is a great opportunity to do that. Thanks.

[05:07:26] Christal Blackford: Thank you, and council member Hicks.

[05:07:31] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Okay, well, that's way too close, council member of the code to what I was going to say. Like, I'm just repeating it. I think one of the most refreshing things for me was to hear all the comments from the members of the public and I look forward to continue to hear that because, um, and maybe this is self-centered to me. Many of the things that they wanted for the community are the same with the things that I want. So I was very happy to hear that. I also liked hearing feedback from the other council members through the vision statement that you all compiled. Um, and I could say more, but we were encouraged to stay short. So thank you.

[05:08:12] Christal Blackford: Thank you, and Vice Mayor Ramirez. Go ahead.

[05:08:16] Vice Mayor Lucas Ramirez: Thank you. I think the takeaway for me is, uh, I'm a little surprised by, I think, 2 schools of thought, uh, about how to approach this. You know, I'm pretty strongly in team. Let's very clearly define our goals, make them measurable and then report back to the community 2 years later. Here's the progress that we've made. But there's, you know, a competing school of flat that I think is equally valid in, you know, aspirational thematic goals and, you know, you're not necessarily looking for, you know, at the end of the cycle. We've completed 60%, you know? Um, and I think those are very fundamentally different ways of approaching this, and I'm hopeful uh, that, you know, we could have a robust conversation about which direction we want to go, uh, that we want to utilize.

[05:09:06] Christal Blackford: Great. Thank you so much. And I'll just say quickly that I do think that there is a weight that we blend those that we've done before. So, next discussion, we can get into that. Um, and uh, council member Lieber.

[05:09:23] Councilmember Sally Lieber: Well, I think it's really heartening to me to hear the support on council and also the community for really fully fleshing out what we've already bitten off in terms of the sustainability and housing and other objectives. And I think it was Alex Brown, who mentioned in this process, if we can leverage uh, the community uh, organizations that we have and the community efforts that are out there. Uh, I think over the years, we've developed a very sophisticated, um, country of community advocates, and really, um, utilizing that as a part of the process. Thank you.

[05:10:04] Christal Blackford: Thank you so much. And mayor Kameh.

[05:10:08] Mayor Ellen Kamei: Thank you. So, um, one of the things that, um, I appreciated was that civic makers had a timeline, um, of outreach to, um, our multilingual community, and that there was already thought and there, I think that that's, um, really important and pretty critical. And another piece of feedback that I'd like to give is when the city was taking feedback on police relations, we had an anonymous way for people to provide that feedback. And I think that as we're going forward with the strategic planning process. We're going to, it sounds like city makers will have a very robust way to do that and there's going to be quite a bit of communication. But for those who may want to provide feedback, you know, anonymously, I think that it would also be nice to have that. And I know that we have the website. Um, that the city has created and I think as much as possible, um, being able to to share that as a resource and perhaps take feedback from the website could also be another way um, for people to feel comfortable. Thank you

[05:11:18] Christal Blackford: Thank you, Mayor Command. We will be adding a virtual comment card that is contact information optional. So there will be that anonymous method. Council member, Metachek.

[05:11:32] Councilmember Lisa Matichak: Thanks. Um, I guess, um, I do want to talk a little bit about uh, input from the community. What's really important to me is to, um, make sure we have this ability into resident input. Um, I know there have been online tools used in the past, and I've had my concerns about those because um, there is no way to verify that it's residents that are providing input. And while input from others is also important. I do want to make sure I have that visibility into the people who live here, what are their thoughts? Thanks.

[05:12:19] Christal Blackford: Thank you. We do have some fields on our virtual comment card that address those concerns. Thank you for that. Does anyone else have any closing comments, reflections? Uh, council member, show, show alter. ahead.

[05:12:35] Councilmember Pat Showalter: Yeah, I guess one of the things that has struck me this time and the previous times I've taken part in this. It has, is how there really is a shared vision of what's important on this council and in our community. You know, nobody's really argued very hard that any of the objectives we have aren't appropriate. Uh, everybody feels that they matter. And I think that's really a good, you know, that that cohesiveness is really important. And, um, I also am really pleased to see that we're going to have a rigorous public participation process. And I think that, um, uh, we need to get the scheduling for the focus groups and the workshops that are going to be occurring, it sounds like in the next the next 3 or 4 weeks, um, out to the public so they can plan to um, participate ASAP.

[05:13:29] Christal Blackford: Yes, thank you. We are on it. And we're also very excited to have this opportunity to do this community engagement. Any, um, any other reflections? I think we. Alrighty. All right, then we'll move on to um, thank you for sharing your reflections on the community engagement at that stage as well. Lawrence, do you want to just close us out?

[05:13:54] Lawrence Grudeska: Yeah, um, just really briefly, thank you again for this, um, honest and and, uh, you know, uh, focus conversation about our strategic roadmap process. Um, I know that uh, all the staff we've been working with are really eager to get this underway and to finally have this official kickoff with all of you. Um, It means that we're going to be able to move really quickly, and we're going to ask a lot of you in this process, a lot of staff in a lot of community, but that's going to, uh, the word that some of you use being robust is really what we're trying to do and just make sure that this is stakeholder driven, and it, as much as possible, uh, incorporates that stakeholder feedback and speaks to that stakeholder input so that, um, there's broad alignment as possible. Um, that's, that's why we're here, and uh, it's really an honor to be here, and we look so forward to uh, continue to work with you. Um, so with that, I don't know, Kimber, if you, uh, Senator McCarthy, if you have any closing thoughts, or we'll just pass it back to Mayor, come eh? Great. Thank you for your time this morning. We'll stick around and listen to the public comments in case there's anything else that we can incorporate into this our notes from this day.

[05:15:07] Mayor Ellen Kamei: Great. Thank you. So I couldn't see, um, so I I'm assuming city management McCarthy didn't have any closing comments. All right. So we actually took public comment 3 times outline. We took it under item 3 and then before each of the discussion items, so there isn't any more public comment at least for today. And so, actually, we're just going to adjourn the meeting is what I have next on our agenda. So this meeting is adjourned at 145 PM. I want to thank all of my colleagues for sticking in for a really long day and for the public who joined us. Really appreciate it, and we will see you all um, the ninth, right?

[05:15:46] Unknown Speaker: No.

[05:15:47] Mayor Ellen Kamei: Uh, uh, Right, bye.

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