A 2023 Quarter One update

I submitted a 90-day report last December to share my initial observations as City Manager, review what we were able to accomplish together, and provide a sense of direction. It has now been seven months and I continue to be honored and energized to serve the City Council and our community. We are a beautiful and diverse city full of innovation, activism, and a commitment to do better on every challenge that we face.

An important priority for me is to bring greater transparency to our City and help everyone better understand what we are working on together and how decisions are made. I hope to keep this practice of providing quarterly updates as a chance to reflect on what has gone well, what could be improved, and how the City can constantly improve.

Police Shooting of Arif Sayed Faisal

This has been a heavy beginning of the year. The shooting and death of Arif Sayed Faisal has weighed painfully on our community. I have worked closely with the Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Councilors to respond and to chart a path forward as a City. My deep hope is that we can be in this conversation together as a community. Police Commissioner Elow and I hosted a four-hour community meeting in January where we heard grief, shock, and a desire for answers and change.

The City Council held more than six hours of public meetings where we reviewed our police department’s training, policies, and practices. Following these discussions, the City Council proposed a set of recommended actions. It has been and will continue to be an active and engaged conversation across all of City government.

Together, we committed to a number of concrete changes including implementing body cameras, using alternative responses to emergency calls outside of the police department, evaluating additional less lethal options, delivering on a procedural justice dashboard, and strengthening the City’s mental health outreach to underserved communities. We have also hired an independent consultant to review our police department’s training, policies, and practices.

Further, after the District Attorney’s inquest is completed, we will have the independent consultant specifically review the shooting of Faisal to assess what department changes should be made. The full inquest report and the full consultant report will be made public and we will continue to be in dialogue with the Council and the community on updates.

Police responses to people in crisis is a national challenge. Even in the last month, there have been more names to add to a too long list: Najee Seabrooks in Paterson, NJ, Irvo Otieno in Petersburg, VA, and Raul De La Cruz in New York City. We are committed to confronting this national challenge in our local community and Commissioner Elow and her leadership team have been proactive, open, and collaborative throughout these months.

It's also important that we recognize that our police officers face complex, difficult, and dangerous situations where we ask them to make split second decisions weighing everyone’s safety, including their own. There are not simple answers, but there are shared commitments that we can agree on – urgency, empathy, thoughtful deliberation, transparency, and accountability. We must do better and we will do this work together to build a safer and better community.

City Manager Performance Review

The City Council and I have finalized a 2023 City Manager Performance Review Plan, which is a Council priority and a ballot measure that the community voted for in the last city election. I’m excited to move toward greater accountability and transparency in our form of government. We have laid out a calendar, performance rating categories, and 2023 goals for my evaluation which will be conducted in a Special Meeting of the City Council by December 20. This will include a self-assessment, measurement against the goals, feedback from each City Councilor, feedback from my direct reports and leadership team, and data from both a climate survey of City staff and the annual resident survey.

I see this as an important starting point and many of this year’s goals are meant to lay a foundation. For instance, I have goals focused on hiring key leadership positions, formalizing a management and organizational structure, and creating an equity and inclusion framework and targets. We have set initiative goals for universal pre-Kindergarten and police reform in recognition of their importance, but we are committed to accomplishing much more and I expect that future goals will be more expansive.

We also identified future changes we would like to make. First, is the need for more intentional and collaborative goal setting between the City and the Council. This summer, I will work with the Mayor, Vice Mayor, and City Councillors to develop a formal goal setting and strategy prioritization process that we will implement in January 2024 with the new Council term. This will help create greater focus across City government over the following two years and allow us to communicate more clearly with the community on our highest priorities.

There has also been interest from both the Council and the community for greater engagement with the budget process. However, while funding decisions are critical and reflective of our values, I believe that goal setting and strategy prioritization needs to happen first. The question is not just where we should put more resources, but what are our most important goals, what does success look like, and what do we need to do to get there? I am currently going through my first budget cycle and I’m looking forward to working with City leaders and the Council to reflect on how this went and think through how we can create greater transparency, engagement, and collaboration in the future.

Finally, the Council has frequently expressed their desire to see performance reviews implemented across the City. It’s only appropriate that I should go first! I’ve committed to conducting performance reviews for our senior leadership team in 2023 and preparing a plan for expanding to all non-union staff in 2024. The Chief People Officer position that I have created will be a critical leader in this work, and I hope to make an announcement soon.

Organizational Chart

I have talked previously about creating a clearer management and organizational structure for the City. I’m excited to share an updated organizational chart (also see the end of this update). In many ways, this is formalizing responsibilities that have existed in the City previously where the Deputy City Manager had responsibility for much of the day-to-day operations. I believe this will help create greater clarity internally and externally, and also support City leaders with more formal reporting relationships and accountability. I expect there may be additional updates over time and we will keep an updated version linked on the City webpage.

Financial Update