It’s only 25 minutes! It’s basically reports and updates on a variety of things of interest to the mayor and common council.
You can watch along here if you are so inclined. I only included the substantive parts of the meeting.
MAYOR’S UPDATES
Bloomberg’s Harvard Leadership Initiative
Mayor Satya Rhodes Conway has been participating in this during this year and will through next June. There have been a number of opportunities to having training beyond the training for the mayor. She says there are updates on two of them.
- They were accepted into the Innovation Track. They will be getting a staff team of 12 that will be trained in innovation techniques. They will be working on Transportation Demand Management. That is good but they have a great cross-departmental team that will have skills they can apply in their departments and city-wide going forward. They set up the team and an advisory group for them. The team has folks from Transportation, Finance, HR, Engineering, Metro, Public Health, Parking, Streets, Library and Planning. They have a bootcamp, people will come into town to do trainings with them next week and they will have on-going opportunities for on-line trainings. They will be working regularly on this issue over the next year or so. She doesn’t know when they will have updates but when they get them she will share. Adam Foust from the PCED Office is the project manager for the group.
- They also had the opportunity to apply for technical assistance from Bloomberg Associates, which is essentially when Mayor Bloomberg left office in New York he took his Commissioners, the equivalent of our Department Heads and moved a number of them into a consulting firm that mostly does pro bono work for cities around the world. As part of being in the leadership initiative we get the chance to apply to work with them for a short period of time. They put in 4 proposals, one on green infrastructure, one on anti-displacement work, one on Vision Zero and one on Climate Resilience. They may get one of them, they won’t get more than one and there is no guarantee they will get any. They would come here once or multiple times, we would pick a staff team to work with them and they would help us rapid cycle through some ideas and testing things and leave us with a plan to move forward. She is excited to bring additional knowledge in to the city and get staff exposed to some ideas from around the world. She will let them know if they get accepted.
PCED Director
They are in the hiring process and “I’m sure you read the news coverage on that” It is now sitting on her desk and they need to call references and they need to make some decisions.
Police Chief Hire
They have been having conversations with the Police and Fire Commission with respect to the hiring process for a new chief. They are quite diligently working through to understand what has been done in the past and what they want to do different in the future. The conversations have been around a very community engaged process and making sure we do a lot of outreach. They are talking about hiring a search firm, a national process and they are ready to support them. She says that her office, HR, whoever else in the city that can be useful to them that they just have to ask and we will support them in that process. Including she thinks they have funds budgeted that would allow them to hire a search firm. They will decide at some point what exactly their process will be and then it would be good if we can all support them in sharing that and helping people understand where they can engage. We all have our own opinions and should participate from that perspective as well. It will be really important to get the word out in the community and let people know how they can engage with that.
Questions from Alders
Tag Evers asks about Bloomberg Leadership Initiative – there are two parts to it? Mayor says there are multiple parts. Evers says she mentioned Transportation Demand Management and the team Adam is leading, are all these department representative going to be looking at Transportation Demand Managment? Mayor says yes, the Innovation track they ask you to pick a challenge and assemble a team around that and the team gets trained in the innovation methodologies and puts those to work to practice on the challenge you picked. They actually specifically recommend not having it be all staff that work on that issue anyway. They want you to have different perspectives. She says over 50 people were nominated for the group of 12. That is exciting because that means our Department and Division Heads have people they think are innovative and that they want to promote and give them professional development, but it was really hard to pick. When she was making those decisions she was thinking beyond Transportation Demand Management, but to pick people who are in a position to learn the techniques and spread them in their departments. Evers says that it seems the techniques are a constant that can be applied to other types of problems. Mayor says it comes out of work that Bloomberg did where they funded a bunch of cities to have Innovation or I-teams where they funded positions and the cities hired people. All the employees from the various cities went through a similar training, but longer and more rigorous and they were supported for a year or maybe more and what Bloomberg discovered that it was resource intensive and now they are trying to spread the methodology in a less resource intensive sort of way. Evers says that he glad they picked Transportation Demand Management first, he has a constituent that just got back from Singapore all excited about congestion pricing for the Isthmus. Evers says “It could pay for BRT he said”
Shiva Bidar asks about the time line for the PCED director. Next week? Or when? Mayor says its an excellent question and she’s not sure she has a good answer. She is sincerely hoping in the next week or two to make some decision. She says its hard to find hours in the day to call references where they might actually pick up the phone. That is part of the problem here.
Bidar also asks about the PFC process. Is there a good way for the council as a group to get communications about the decisions they make. She isn’t sure if they communicate directly with the mayor. She says that having been on the PFC its an insulated group and the agendas don’t say anything. It’s been like that since she was on the PFC. As they decide how with the council learn about those things so they can help get the word out. Mayor says its an excellent question and she doesn’t know the answer now, but she’s asked Cam to be going to those meetings as much as he can, so he can share information and she will ask him to ask the chair fo the PFC to keep in mind that they need to be communicating with the council as well. Bidar says at the time they decided “good stuff” but at the time nobody knew, so nobody came to any of the meetings to provide input. The mayor says she is hopeful they are going to lean into a more inclusive engagement process but yes, there is no way you can help if you don’t know what is happen. The mayor says that she will try to make sure they get more information sooner. She has been encouraging them to do the work they need to do, but to lay out what the process is so everyone has some shared understanding and expectations.
UPDATE ON SURVEILLANCE EQUIPMENT AND DATE MANAGMENT POLICIES WORKGROUP
No update
UPDATE ON COUNCIL COMMUNICATION TOOLS AND PROCESSES
Alder Grant Foster asks when they can get some feedback on some specific issues. They are continuing with the work, they are following a lean process improvement methodology. They are working on identifying current state before they jump too solutions. They have gotten a lot of support from the PIOs (Public Informaiton Officers) at the city to pull together all the different kinds of communications that are happening today. They are completing the inventory as the first step and then they are looking at an updated blog tool – that was a “significant pain points” identified in the survey. They would like some guidance at an upcoming meeting and they should be able to share out some information. They would like to do it November 19th if there is room on the agenda.
UPDATE ON WORKGROUP TO REVIEW APPLICABLE APMs
Alder Barbara Harrington McKinney says that they have had a breakdown in communication for the scheduling of the first meeting and the meeting has been rescheduled with one of the members by phone. They will set the agenda and the work plan and until they have that meeting they are not able to do that. They will request and extension on the time. They were supposed to complete it by December and they will not be ready.
Shiva Bidar says the request for extension of time is on the agenda tonight for introduction.
UPDATE FROM COMMON COUNCIL CHIEF OF STAFF
Kwasi Obeng, the Chief of Staff for the Common Council says the survey they all gave him good feedback on will go out on Friday.
He participated in the neighborhood conference on Saturday, there were a lot of alders present which was great to see. A lot of conversations around neighborhood associations and how they can participate and engage the city effectively, especially with alders. The process of getting on committees – there were a lot of misconceptions about alders selecting people on committees. He explains that the should reach out to alders and make sure that the committees align with their interests, but the appointments are from the mayor, but she gets recommendations from alders. He says that he had to talk about what TFOGS is working on, because there was conversation about community engagement and how to engage residents outside the context of neighborhood associations came out quite frequently.
Barbara Harrington McKinney says there was great concern about how appointments for committees board and commissions – the process, the follow up and the loop and how that happens. There was accountability questions in terms of applying for an appointment and getting feedback. There was a lot of questions about that process. They will discuss it at the leadership meeting. Two people at their table said they applied and got no feedback but a year later the position was still open. Also educating and preparing people who will serve on the committees and commissions.
Obeng says that there are 5 fellows here from the American Council for Young Political Leaders will be visiting the council meeting tonight.
CLOSING/WRAPPING UP
MPD Policy and Procedure Ad Hoc Report
At the next meeting or two they will be receiving the final report of the MPD Policy and Procedures Ad Hoc Committee and they are the lead committee on that. They should all keep in mind that the entire body of work will come before them on the 19th or in December depending upon what happens at the committees.
McKinney asks about the process for that report. Bidar says they have introduced it and everyone should read it and we will be accepting the report. It’s a time to ask clarifying questions or intent of the recommendations, discuss next steps after they accept them. All of that is part of what they need to do. It is going to EOC, PSRC and then to CCEC. It’s a voluminous great report, so we should be prepared to have read it.
2021 Budget
Grant Foster says a future agenda item should be 2021 budget. He would love to have a kick off conversation here in January to give us more time to think about how we want to engage on that process for next year.
And they adjourn.
