City Council Meeting February 18, 2014

0:00:14this is the meaning of the El Cerrito city council please join us as a council member um venicini leads the pledge of allegiance to the flag or observation of a moment of silence I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation

0:00:37under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all are there any counsel or staff Communications yes thank you I'll just make one announcement and that is that the El Cerrito Recreation Department is proud to announce the Dynamo golf scramble which will be held at the Mira Vista

0:01:00Country Club on Monday April 28th this is a a chance to play golf at our wonderful Club up in the hills for a great cause and that is to raise money for the David Hunter Memorial Scholarship fund which provides funding to um participants in our Recreation programs who are participating on a

0:01:20sliding sliding scale in terms of payment so you can register online or you can also go to the community center or dial the phone number which will reach some of our Recreation Department staff at 510-559-7000 and we hope to see you all out there on Monday April 28th thanks so

0:01:39much okay great no I have uh several uh the first thing is that I want to announce that I attended the um Elks Lodge dinner uh honoring the um uh uh police officer of the year our police officer of the year was um that Fong Fong Wong Wong excuse me and um there was a very large attendance and

0:02:16it was a very nice evening the next thing I want to do is um mention Earth Day um and as you all know this year is not the same as any other year in that we have a really bad drought and um so um the decision was made to concentrate on that as the area of in the main area of

0:02:41interest and focal point and in fact change Earth Day to Earth season and by having a number of events and this is not necessarily exactly what's going to happen but I hope it will give you a flavor of what will happen I'm just going to read through this fast we're going to do earth hour

0:03:01um show the movie Chasing eyes uh we're gonna have a home Energy Efficiency Workshop residential solar energy Workshop Earth Day itself on April the 26th that uh the drought resistant home Workshop Bike To Work Day which actually we do have a date for it's May 8th and the

0:03:25hillside Natural Area Festival which is um looks like it probably will be on May 17th and the Aulani Greenway Celebration Day on May 31st those are the uh that's sort of a preliminary uh idea of some of the things that are going to be done um but it's going to be a focus on the

0:03:51drought and how people can best um live their life in terms of that and um then the I also installed the officers of the El Cerrito Chamber of Commerce on January 14th and the new president is Mark fagoney um first vice president Nancy McCarthy who's the vice president at

0:04:23Mechanics Bank the second vice president is Marty kaliski who has a auto shop near here and the treasurer is still to be determined and the secretary is our very own Dwayne Dalman um and then I also attended let's see the um a ceremony on Saturday uh for a tree planting that was

0:04:56sponsored by um the urban forestry council and in and um it was a really exciting event actually and the weather was was pleasant and um the planting area in El Cerrito was um around Avila Street if you know where that is uh it's on the west side of San Pablo Avenue

0:05:28and um but several streets were done and also um Carlson Boulevard there were a number of trees planted uh there were a number of sites planting trees that day throughout the Bay Area at 20 sites to be exact and they planned to plant over 1700 trees um in that day so that's a lot of trees

0:05:55and that that's in the Bay Area in southern San Joaquin Valley and um Stephen pray did a really good job of coordinating that along with the El Cerrito tree committee so it was it was a really um Pleasant event and a lot of work got done and um I asked the question of why are we

0:06:19planting trees when it's there's a drought and the answer that I was given is that in fact it's the right time to do it because the trees are so good at um handling drought conditions and producing the taking get reducing the carbon that we're trying to get rid of they're the

0:06:42the plant of any plant that can do the most so it is in fact yes apparently the right time to be planting trees and um so that was that event and let's see and that that's the end of my announcements so we'll move on to the next item on the agenda after we see if there's any staff

0:07:07reports okay none okay so now we will move on to item number three on our agenda which is oral Communications from the public are there any we have three speakers mayor okay first is Kiev Smith good evening my name is Kiev Smith of El Cerrito and I I'm speaking today on

0:07:33because I have a concern and where I live uh I live on Cypress Avenue and uh I've I've grown up on that street and um I've experienced the problem ever since I was you know Young and the problem is pretty much uh cars racing down the street and uh the Cypress Avenue if if for those who

0:07:57don't know where it is this uh the same street where Saint Peter Church is and also one side of uh stage Elementary School and so um definitely I think about the children and also just like people who cross the streets on a day-to-day basis and if I could share a short story with you like

0:08:18I have my own personal experience uh in regards to cars racing down the street it was one night one morning early morning I had gotten out of my bed and I was about to uh leave my leave my bedroom but then I heard like a uh like loud collisions and uh so I was going as

0:08:38I was going to my window to look outside to see what had happened um a car slow Road directly in front of my window and I so I looked outside and there was no one in the car and then I looked like further down the street and there was another car in my neighbor's driveway and then

0:08:57it was a it was a man like in the middle of the street and so he he was coming so fast down that street that he hit a parked car and and based on how fast he was going that parked car went on to my neighbor's driveway and then like went onto my property and slow Road and

0:09:15stopped in front of my house and his car ended up on my neighbor's property and he was in the street and then I later found out that he was intoxicated so is is definitely a concern to my side so what I'm pretty much coming here is to just like request speed bumps on that

0:09:32street now I think it would be definitely practical for that area so that's all I want to say thank you the next speaker is fauna moslin land and I'm very sorry if I watched your name good evening my name is line and I'm the resident of El Cerrito City and I am concerned about the heavy

0:10:02traffic on Ashbury Avenue that my doctor alerted me that I am going to have an asthma and he asked me that where I live and I explained the whole condition of the street and the traffic and then his concerned that that is not good for health situation because this street is between Fairmont Avenue

0:10:37and the Stockton is very crowded um I am aware of we are living on this street that the high school is located um we are accepting the traffic related to high school and activity that actually is non-stop even at night even Saturday even Sunday it always crowded but we the residents

0:11:13of these few blocks on Ashbury we are accepting all the annoyance that we have because of the high school large amount of garbage that me and my partner always go on the street and collect all the garbage and the amount of noise we accept that because we are living on

0:11:39this street but we expect the city also respect our situation that we are paying such a high property tax that at least they consider that we already ping or share for suffering or being close to high school and high school belong to all the residents of El Cerrito

0:12:06some part of this problem should be on the shoulder of the adjacent Street next to us that diverts some of this traffic if they can make those one-way Street like the way they do it in Berkeley that we get a little bit break in this situation because this High School is really big

0:12:33but we as a residents we really haven't got that much from the city they didn't make a small park for us for something something replaced all these problems that we are going through and that's all I can say that is my request that my health is in trouble and I

0:12:58thought one night I went out and I talked to all the neighbors and they are also concerned and they have their difficulties with the situation of high school but as I mentioned that we accept the high school because there is no other way around it but instead why

0:13:19don't you give us some break at least we don't have this heavy traffic and believe it or not I cannot even open the window of my house because it's so much pollution and it's health hazard for me right now I've been living in El Cerrito since 1989. I you never see me here if

0:13:42you could um wrap up please because your time is out that's all I want to say thank you for your comment Al Miller please good evening mayor Abelson City Council Members I'm Al Miller from [address removed] I'm here this evening to speak about the new priorities campaign

0:14:04our new priorities campaign continues to work to move our tax dollars for military spending to much needed domestic spending along the following priorities invest our tax dollars in people communities infrastructure education and the environment to create jobs end the war in Afghanistan and

0:14:26start no new Wars cut the Pentagon budget to meet our domestic needs tax the rich the banks the oil companies and all giant corporations so they just pay their fair share in July of 2012 the Australia city council passed the resolution in support of the new priorities campaign

0:14:47principles for the last several years the El Cerrito Democratic Club has coordinated local participation in the campaign's events scheduled to coincide with April 15th our tax day the 2014 action event is also coordinated as part of the international Global day of action on military

0:15:08spending on April 14th of 2014 which is a Monday ecdc is again coordinating distribution of informational material at both the El Cerrito Plaza and Del Norte BART stations on the Monday April 14th this material is designed to inform the public of the gross difference between

0:15:31the U.S defense spending and that of the rest of the world and between the U.S defense spending and the U.S domestic spending so they can all decide for themselves whether this meets their priorities we will have shifts from 6 30 to 7 30 and 7 30 to 8 30 a.m at both stations

0:15:53individuals can sign up to help by contacting me Al Miller at Amil sonic.net or 510-526-4874 that's Al Miller at Amil sonic.net or 510-526-4874 thank you thank you and that's is that the last speaker that Mr Mill is the last speaker okay thank you uh with that we'll move on to

0:16:28item number four on the agenda which is presentations and I think this is presentation good to Great is when we've all been anxiously awaiting and um so I would like to turn it over to Scott Hannon our city manager sure thank you mayor members of the council we are very happy to be here we have a

0:16:52Karen and I have a presentation for you tonight um related to something that the staff has taken on over 2013 and I think I've alluded to it a number of times uh sort of in passing um during the year to some of the things we're working on because um we thought it was such a good use of

0:17:14our time and efforts we wanted to share it with the council and ultimately the city um so what we want to talk a little bit about is how the staff spent their time on this and what it means for us um I will say in my time here this is probably a first homework we've assigned

0:17:33uh we try not to do too many reading assignments particularly books but um it was really embraced by the staff about 25 people plus or minus participated regularly and as you recall one of the goals one of the primary goals for the city council was exemplary service and I

0:17:51think this was an effort to really focus on that over the course of our year so to talk moving into the presentation um a lot of people know good to Great they've been a New York Times bestsellers there have been three books uh good to great great by choice and

0:18:09build to last they're written by Jim Collins who I apologize to the bear fans is a Stanford educator like we couldn't do anything about that and researcher a lot of his background is about data and data-driven Analysis and that's something we're trying to put a renewed emphasis on this

0:18:27year as you know we both participate in icma the international City County management association and during the 2012 conference we were at the keynote address which was um Jim Collins talking about a lot of the principles from Great by choice and you know typically for me and

0:18:49probably others when you go to conferences you you hope to Come Away with one or two things that you can really take home and make it worthwhile and um my light bulb sort of went off um on this as something that maybe we could do here as a as a framework of trying to do things even better than we

0:19:07already do related to that was um Collins worked with icma to put together a framework that works for local government and although his Focus was a private sector um he's also been spending more time working on the nonprofit sectors and and government and he came up with 12

0:19:26questions for leadership teams and it's essentially 12 questions in a particular sequence that we followed over the course of the Year building on each other so as this says our staff accepted the challenge we met typically once a month it was more than that uh at the end of

0:19:48the year uh where I essentially assign different people as you'll see to lead the sessions so I didn't want a situation where I was just doing all the talking and we didn't want we wanted to be a very participatory and not just certain people talking at certain other people

0:20:06it also allowed for staff to as you'll see reflect their different styles from how Police Department did it to how the recreation department did it and every month it seemed like the bar got pushed a little higher to be a little more creative and a little more interesting

0:20:21as you'll see again it was led by the staff and it was very interactive and we tried to build I had sort of built a version similar to this that every month we would review what we did and and try to incorporate it it is part of the reason we chose these books I mean they're relatively easy

0:20:41reads as some of you if you've uh tried to dive into some of the management books they're pretty dense and we tried to make it something that people would Embrace and take home and you know uh and actually want to read and not be forced to read it's also very practical

0:20:57we thought it was applicable and translatable to what we do and over the course of the year we've heard some of the terms become more and more regular you'll hear our staff talk about productive paranoia about facing the brutal facts about getting the right people on the bus and being data driven

0:21:16so if we go to the next slide we picked out this one quote which is obviously you can read but greatness is not a function of circumstance greatness is largely a matter of conscious choice and discipline what I think we what I think I'm here mostly to tell you is based on this

0:21:36process your staff the staff that represents the people in El Cerrito really want to do great things and be part of a great organization and that's what we aspire to be and with the ultimate goal of building and continue to build a great City and a great place so with that

0:21:54um I'm going to turn it over to Karen and we want to talk a little bit about is what we touched on each month and what the takeaways were and then uh come back to me and we could talk about if there are any questions or observations for the council thanks Scott

0:22:10um as Scott indicated I'm Karen Pincus assistant city manager and what I wanted to do is try to briefly sum up for you each month and I know that this is somewhat lengthy so I'll try to be as brief as possible but to try to get the concepts behind what we learned and what

0:22:25we're building into the organization how we tied it directly to our strategic plan and what that means for us for the future so as Scott indicated each month was that each question was taken by a different member of staff and it was a lot of fun to be able to um you know some people who may not

0:22:43necessarily have been the type of person to get up and and lead a presentation or and some who are really skilled at it so it was like Scott said really great to see the different styles so police chief Sylvia Moyer was month when and the question was do we want to build a great

0:22:57organization and are we willing to do what it takes and those pictures there there's a little bit of background that actually is a theme throughout all of the months that I just want to share with with everyone um this is the race to the South Pole of um a Munson and Scott were the two

0:23:13explorers that were essentially setting off to try to get to the South Pole first in 1911.

0:23:19um they had comparable experiences and they started within days of each other one of them made it and one of them didn't so what separated them it's an analogy for the questions that go through the entire series of books so a Munson um the Norwegian which is on the right

0:23:36he was successful um he prepared he built a foundation he trained his body he apprenticed with Eskimos and learned about their culture in similar conditions what they ate how they survived that they used dogs to move um all of their gear what they wore Etc and he trained for every possible

0:23:55situation for what he might encounter so he prepared for the worst he built in buffers and he was able to take advantage of conditions when they were favorable in contrast Scott did not prepare in the same way he chose ponies instead of dogs and then he actually

0:24:11um put a bet on what they called at the time motor sludges which were I guess the precursors of cars and both of them failed miserably in those really harsh conditions um he didn't chart a course with any room for contingencies or emergencies and you know an example that Collins

0:24:28used in the book was Scott brought one thermometer to sort of gauge the temperature and altitude and it broke and then he had no thermometer for the rest of his trip whereas a Munson brought four thermometers I mean that's just an example of preparing and um and

0:24:44being able to take into account a buffer for a bad event so a Munson arrived at the South Pole on December 15 1911 he returned to home base on January 25th exactly as he planned Scott arrived at the South Pole a month later to find a letter from amundsen and the Norwegian flag

0:25:02um Scott's team scald stall on the way back sometime in mid-march and eight months later his team was found frozen to death so a little bit dramatic but it actually does sort of reflect that they achieved dramatically different outcomes not because they faced different

0:25:19circumstances but because they approached those outcomes in different ways so it's a bit of a Baseline for as we go forward so in building a great organization and are we willing to do what it takes this triangle is a um isn't um shows that the successful companies that

0:25:36were outlined in those books displayed those behaviors and ensured their success fanatic discipline productive paranoia and empirical creativity which manifests themselves into what we call level five ambition and we're going to get into that in a little bit fanatic

0:25:50discipline basically is as it says consistency with values and goals and performance standards and methods that is unbending and Relentless in our Focus productive paranoia is being hyper Vigilant attuned to threats channeling fear and worrying into action by preparing contingency plans buffers

0:26:09reserves and margins of safety and then empirical creativity is um my favorite data-driven analysis and making sure that when we're faced with uncertainty that we use data and evidence as opposed to what we think is right or conventional wisdom so these concepts are more deeply explored in the

0:26:30following months as you'll see so the takeaway is month one what we learned um what what what um all of the presentations had in common as well as sort of preparing um and reading the books and kind of talking about the foundations behind them is that each presentation had an

0:26:46interactive component to it so we broke up into groups or we did different activities to try to explore the concept further and so uh each month we had these takeaways and that came directly from what the staff talked about so what we learned is that Steph is prepared to do what it takes

0:27:02and that being great requires planning up front um yes our paranoia needs to be more productive and again we'll explore that in a little bit being data driven and maintaining our discipline amidst the craziness so the next month was led by fire chief Lance Maples and the question is do we

0:27:21have the right people on the bus and in the key seats you all should have a bus at your table so I just want to point out that that was a gift from the fire chief he bought them for all of us and for you um to demonstrate that we that's the else real bus um on his own done on his own time yes

0:27:39great companies didn't figure out where to drive the bus and then get people to take it there instead they got the right people on the bus first and then they decided where to drive it so as you can see by these quotes from Jim Collins it's first who then what so

0:27:58if you have the wrong people it doesn't matter you're not going to become great because great vision without great people is irrelevant and the who questions must come before the what questions before Vision strategy tactics goals and any organizational structure

0:28:13so getting the right people on the bus in the first place meaning hiring the right people for our organization is incredibly important but also making sure that they're in the right seats on the bus do they fit into the right part of the organization based on their

0:28:26talent level and what they're able to provide and then we have to address the wrong people on the bus strong performers are intrinsically motivated by performance they don't need anyone to motivate them but there are some people on the bus that just can't they just can't do that so those people

0:28:43don't belong on the bus it drives down the overall organization's performance and morale and plus it's unfair to the person who might need to get off the bus because the longer we let them languish in the wrong seat on the wrong bus we're taking time away from that person to be

0:28:58able to find a better place for them to flourish and those are really hard things that we have to face when we discussed this as groups um we recognize that people are not our most important asset the right people are our most important asset and getting the right people on and off the bus or

0:29:16in the wrong different seats is a lot harder in the public sector we have a civil service um uh uh program we have um very prescribed steps that we can take that we must take in order to get people off any bus as you know as the council is full aware and so it's again

0:29:38coming back to the discipline that we have to be able to have to make sure that the right people are doing the right things in the right seats so for the most part though we all agreed as a group that we have mostly the right people in the right seats and you know

0:29:52one of the things that has struck me from this is that particularly since Scott's been here he's built a team of people that has had the talent to move us forward and you know I don't think that it's an accident that over time we've been able to do all of the Innovative and creative things we

0:30:07have done it's because we've gotten the right people on the bus to do it so what are the brutal facts and even our city attorneys got in on this um and so just to sort of explain um the pictures there this is an episode of Seinfeld that discusses brutal facts George Costanza on the right there

0:30:29decided that every decision he's ever made was wrong and that his life is the exact opposite of what it should be so he tells us to Jerry at the cafe who convinces him that if every Instinct you have is wrong then the opposite would have to be right so then he resolves to

0:30:42start doing the complete opposite of what he would do normally so he ordered the opposite of his normal lunch at the cafe and he introduced himself to a beautiful woman who happened to have the exact same order and said my name is George I'm unemployed and I live with my

0:30:55parents and to his surprise she's impressed and she agrees to go out on a date with him so the lesson here is sometimes we're afraid afraid to face the brutal facts but if we do we can find that we actually might be more successful than if we ignored them or didn't acknowledge

0:31:10them so the truth can set us free so some of the key points um that good decisions require an honest confrontation of the brutal facts facts are better than dreams we need to be able to identify and make decisions based on what the facts are at hand and we have to have the courage to see what

0:31:29those facts are and what's real um we need to create a climate where truth is heard there is a difference between allowing employees to have their say and giving them the real opportunity to be heard so we want to encourage people to be honest we want to um that well we want to encourage people to

0:31:47be honest but it also requires the leadership to have the humility to say that maybe we don't have all the answers we have to be able to ask questions to get those answers and when people actually give us feedback that we take it seriously and we don't take it personally

0:32:02um so conducting knee briefs the no blame autopsies um kind of a debrief on a situation where you know there are there is no blame that's assigned to anybody that we're very candid about what happened and that we can really pick apart what we did right and wrong and that we have

0:32:18the ability to allow people to raise red flags that's a red flag mechanism so if people are going along and they see a red flag that they feel comfortable to be able to say to anyone in the organization I think that this is a problem so um and routinely um oh the companies

0:32:33that face just as much adversity as comparison companies but face the realities of their situation head on again is comparable to the South Pole um story Collins had a quote that said there is a sense of exhilaration that comes in facing head-on the hard truths

0:32:48and saying we'll never give up we will never capitulate it might take a long time but we will prevail so we retain faith that we will prevail in the end so that we're confronting the facts of our reality just like George Costanza so what we learned in order to be great

0:33:05we do need to face and accept the brutal facts and sometimes we struggle with that as a city not only what the brutal facts are but actually doing something about them when we when we name them so we need to plan for them and face them head on and cultivate the culture where

0:33:19people can be honest with us so month four was housing program manager Hildy Mile and operations and environmental services division manager garsh Schultz they tag teamed on this one and we talked about the Hedgehog so what is our Hedgehog what can we be best at with an economic

0:33:40engine and for which we have unbounded passion so this was a concept that's something that we spent a lot of time on and I believe that we'll be spending more time on so the Hedgehog concept shows that it helps an organization obtain Clarity piercing Clarity is how to best achieve long-term

0:33:59results and it is made up of the three circles that you see there Circle one is what are we passionate about it's understanding what our organization stands for like its core values and its core purpose and why it exists Circle two is what can we be the best at so

0:34:14what can the city of El Cerrito be the best in the world at what do we contribute to the people we serve better than any other organization Circle 3 is the resource engine so what drives the city's resource engine this includes time money of course that are the actual resources and form taxes

0:34:32and fees and our brand brand would be con some somewhere along the lines of what Goodwill we have built up with our community what our supporters feel about us so the Hedgehog concept is in the middle there where the three circles intersect and figuring out the Hedgehog concept

0:34:47isn't always simple particularly for the private sector companies that he outlined in the book it requires discipline thought in refining the concept over time to make sure we know it's right now um Jim Collins one of the things that I appreciate the most about

0:35:01Jim Collins he's spoken at icme actually twice he really does grasp the concept of government especially City management and he recognizes that in the public sector a lot of these Concepts don't fit very neatly and the Hedgehog concept is really difficult and it's not the same

0:35:19in the private sector so as a city for example we have kind of our core purpose that's been set out for us what we exist for what we provide as a baseline um we're responsible for that and it can't be provided by anyone else no one there's no private sector equivalent to

0:35:35the police department or the fire department or getting a building permit so we're it so how do we adapt it in a way that we're comfortable with that's not just fulfilling our mission statement so we begin with the passion we refine that with an assessment of what we can best

0:35:49contribute to our community and then we tie our resources directly with those other circles so a great a great social sector organization needs to have the discipline to attract and channel resources directly to the center of those three circles and say no thank you

0:36:04to the resources that drive away from the center of the three circles and that is also a recurring theme that we have explored so what we learned um that there's no clear Hedgehog concept that we were able to truly obviously identify and it's different than the mission that we have identified

0:36:22in our mission statement in the Strategic plan but the group was in general agreement that the mission and goal of providing exemplary service is some kind of the closest we came to a hedgehog concept for the city and for the city organization but we did agree that this

0:36:38is something that we need to do a deeper dive into so perhaps another way to come up with a hedgehog is on different levels by department or by division because the mission that is a little bit more specific and clear and how we can be the best at it not just compared to

0:36:52what the residents expect of us but maybe to other cities and then about Focus passion for our love for service does exist we've got a lot of awesome talented passionate people here but are we focused enough in that passion are we trying to be too many things to too many people so it's

0:37:10more complex than just finding one specific Hedgehog concept as opposed to a private sector company that you know makes a widget or has a certain service so we need to make sure that we're focusing on our priorities as a city what is our 20-mile March and are we

0:37:28hitting it this was my month um so back to Mr amason and Mr Scott amundsen and Mr Scott so a Munson was consistent in his quest to the South Pole he logged about 15 to 20 miles per day when the weather was bad they still pushed on to fulfill the 15 to 20 miles but when it was good they held back and

0:37:48only did the 15 to 20 miles so in this way they can serve their energy they can serve their supplies they replenish themselves with consistent work but then consistent rest so during the journey he didn't know if he was ahead or behind Mr Scott he just kept going and was

0:38:03consistent and he ended up making the goal in contrast Mr Scott would sometimes drive his team to exhaustion on good days and sit in there tense and complain about the weather on bad days the inconsistency is what set them back even though they faced the same exact

0:38:18set of circumstances that the first team did their inconsistency is one of the things that was really hard on them and led to their demise so there's there's some discomfort besides the winter picture there and we need to make sure that we're doing high performance in difficult times but that

0:38:35we're holding back in good times if we have to so key attributes of the 20 mile March and keeping calm and carrying on and making sure that we have the fanatic discipline um to impose those constraints if necessary we don't want to compare ourselves to others and how we're doing

0:38:52but we don't want to do too much in good times and let ourselves off the hook in bad times we also want to make sure we don't let emotion influence our decisions hence the keep calm one size does not fit all there's no all-purpose 20 mile March and we found that I think a little bit in our

0:39:07discussions about the city again kind of like the Hedgehog maybe we have several 20-mile marches going on but it's also tailored to different conditions it could be Financial it could be political so what our marches may not be set our course may not set be set directly by us in the organization

0:39:24different outside influences can definitely impact our 20 mile mark the tortoise versus the hair a great example of what a 20 mile March is slow and steady wins the race so we have to be consistent and good intentions don't count and we have to continue even if we

0:39:40don't feel like it um the squirrel I think that Scott's referred to this on other times that's our friend from the movie Up what's his name I don't remember the dogs dog the dog who um gets distracted by a squirrel and from time to time we feel like that dog where um there are things that

0:40:00happen and everything is a priority and we have to race it and Chase it and see if it's a real squirrel or if it's just a fake squirrel there's a lot of things that are out of our control the economy our finances customers what they are res what our residents ask us questions

0:40:15about disasters earthquakes politics technology all of these things might not necessarily be in our control that's why a 20 mile March provides a tangible Focus to keep us moving forward despite any chaos and anything that can come at us so we have to try to not be tempted

0:40:30by opportunity or distractions and stick to the plan no exceptions and then the last picture is how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time so no matter how difficult the conditions 20 mile marching allows you to continue to make progress there will always be things

0:40:44that sort of want will try to make us take our eyes off the ball so our response ability is to be respectful and responsive but we have to be able to identify those priorities and be nimble enough to move but also have the ability to keep going so what we talked about is we have a

0:41:01great map for our 20 mile March which is our strategic plan but we do recognize that sometimes we do tend to chase lower priorities and so we need to make sure that what we're doing is within what we set out as a community and as an organization within our strategic plan

0:41:17and if it doesn't fit we shouldn't do it um often we focus on the short term as opposed to seeing that long term like okay so do we keep going do we stop and we have to make sure that we're prepared and consistent because that's what's going to take us through the new normal

0:41:35okay month six was by former public works director Jerry Bradshaw where do we place where should we place our big bets based on empirical validation which is known as in the book Jim Collins describes as bullets to cannonballs oh this is Jerry Jerry does animation

0:41:57um so bullets to cannonballs you fire bullets before you fire a cannonball bullets are a low-cost low-risk low distraction test or experiment then you use those to empirically validate what will actually work then based on that data you concentrate resources to fire a

0:42:15cannonball and then you get a larger turn there is a difference between calibrated and uncalibrated cannonballs a calibrated Cannonball has confirmation based on actual experience which is empirical validation and that the big bet will prove successful an un calibrated Cannonball means

0:42:35placing a big bet without the data failure to fire cannonballs once calibrated can does not lead to Greatness it leads to mediocrity so we don't choose between firing bullets and cannonballs we fire the bullets first then we fire The Cannonball and we engage directly with the rev the

0:42:52evidence again we don't rely on opinion whim or conventional wisdom a little bit of a Moneyball concept there the analytical skills matter but validating the data matters more and Jim Collins said the difficult task is to marry Relentless discipline with creativity

0:43:06neither letting discipline inhibit creativity or letting creativity erode discipline so what we learned is we do collect a lot of data we've got a lot of data out there we just need to figure out how to use it and use it well and with diff how effective we um we are able to move that into how we

0:43:25work um we need to be mindful of not of firing just enough bullets and not be afraid to fire the Cannonball when ready sometimes we can be risk averse and so we don't want to make sure that we're only firing bullets and we don't actually fire a cannonball and that we

0:43:40want to make sure that we're improving our reporting to better advised stakeholders and as Scott brought up um measure a the streets measure is a great example of firing bullets to cannonballs bullets then cannonballs when we went out and asked residents over several

0:43:57different surveys and lots of different meetings over time what is your priority if we went to the ballot what would you want us to try to fix and streets kept coming up number one over and over and over so okay we fired a few bullets we kept asking and then we fired the

0:44:11calibrated Cannonball which was measure a which passed by 70 almost 70 percent so and now we went from as far as our streets we went from almost worst to almost first so that's a we uh we were pretty proud of that and we need to make sure that we're we're using that as an

0:44:30example of how we can um move forward so the director of fun Chris Jones um uh covered this question what are the core values and core purpose on which we want to build this Enterprise for 100 years so our vision framework it consists of our core ideology our core

0:44:50values and our core purpose it defines the enduring character of an organization and it remains consistent over time the past Cycles past Trends even past leaders so our values are organizations guiding principles they have that importance to the organization our core purpose is our reason for being

0:45:08and what we show our passion for so again being the director of fun um we played Jeopardy so core values for 400 it was um it was really fun Chris had a Jeopardy game that we put up on the screen with the Jeopardy music and everything and we were able to answer a series of

0:45:28questions about what all of our values were what they meant and how they integrated different questions so it was really engaging and a lot of fun and a great way for us to kind of um you know re remind ourselves of exactly how what our values are and as you see

0:45:45these are the values that are directly from the Strategic plan not in any order except alphabetical and ethics and integrity fiscal responsibility inclusiveness Innovation and creativity professional excellence responsiveness and transparency and open communication

0:45:59our core purpose has sort of worked out for us we know what why our organization exists and what we're supposed to do but we're also fortunate that we've done the work of setting out our core values these through our strategic planning process so these values are what we as a

0:46:13community have decided are our core and they don't change with practices or policies or or procedures these will stand the test of time and are the foundation of what we do so what we learned is that you know as staff talked about it um after our after our rousing round of

0:46:32Jeopardy um that our core values are consistent and that we as a staff truly believe in those values and we live those values our organization is totally value driven it's it's through everything we do our core purpose drives us and soon in 2017 we'll actually have lasted for 100 years

0:46:52um we've made conscious the city the city council the community has made conscious decisions over over the especially getting through these past few years of tough Economic Times to protect our services to protect our employees this is a valued decision this is based on our core values and we have

0:47:10as a city and as an organization have not been willing to sacrifice one value for another um interim community development director Melanie Mintz went over the question what is our 15 to 25 Year big hairy audacious goal known as the beehag um bhag is a bold big bold goal a bold

0:47:33mission to stimulate progress it's not just any goal and it's not just a set of goals but it's a huge daunting challenge that an organization can all get behind and generate excitement so you can see the guidelines there of what a b hag is it has to be clear compelling get people's juices flowing

0:47:48something that we might not necessarily ordinarily consider doing it has to outlive leadership so it's something that we can it's not just about leadership or my leadership or any of the department heads leadership it's it's something that the organization can get behind it's successive and it's

0:48:06consistent with all of our core ideologies so it engages people it grabs them in the gut and it's one of those things that people get it right away with little to no explanation so it's a it's a goal looking to the Future and we compared this a little bit to the

0:48:20Hedgehog concept so the little bit of the difference of the Hedgehog meaning that the Hedgehog somewhat requires a bit of a look back or a B hag is totally looking forward but there is a direct connection a hedgehog is the concept that fuels what does what we decide our

0:48:35b-hag is and great beehags just like the Hedgehog concept belongs in the center of those three circles so what we learned it's again with the Hedgehog it's difficult to identify one big hairy audacious cool for an entire organization so we've considered talking

0:48:53about maybe what we do on the department level or division level but we want to also make sure that they're measurable and data driven as we've discussed in the previous months month nine was another tag team effort from Finance director Elisa Malik's a day and human resources manager zakari

0:49:11beshears what could kill us and how can we protect our flanks which Dives deep into productive paranoia or as I like to say expect the worst and you won't be disappointed so productive paranoia and black swans a Black Swan event is a low probability disruption it's something that no one

0:49:31can maybe foresee um an example some of the examples that we came up with that we've faced as a city in over the years prop 13. the Erath shifts of the 90s the dissolving of our Redevelopment agency the Great Recession I mean these require dramatic responses so if we use our the question

0:49:49is how do we use our paranoia productively to build those buffers so we can prepare for the next Black Swan event so we we need to manage and mitigate our risks there's three categories of risk the death line which is more applicable to um private companies but that's

0:50:06essentially the point where the Enterprise is severely damaged or dies um asymmetric where the downside dwarfs the upside and then uncontrollable that it just cannot be controlled or managed so productive paranoia allows us to be prudent in how we approach and manage

0:50:22these types of risks so we can respond if we make him and make informed Decisions by zooming out and zooming in so if we sense danger we can zoom out and sort of look at the big picture consider how the threat is approaching and call for a change in plans if necessary then we can zoom in

0:50:38and focus our energies on exactly what those objectives need to be and this doesn't mean that we abandon our fanatic discipline or our 20 mile March but that we may have to be more intensely focused on the threat that we're facing so in our case considering um many of the previous black swans we

0:50:54might ask ourselves so how much time before the risk profile changes so tailoring that to our city perhaps how much revenue can we keep local that we can that we won't get taken away by the state for example so what we learned is we've talked a lot about paranoia

0:51:12um I I personally tend to be very paranoid um and it's not always that productive so we need to optimize our paranoia on what we can control and that the Black Swan events have happened and they're going to happen again and we need to make sure we prepare for the inevitable

0:51:27next one um it's related to the 20 mile March and that we build those contingencies to prepare and don't let up if we perceive danger so there's a delicate balance my favorite month um month 10 interim Public Works director of ed Ortiz what should we stop doing and increase our discipline and

0:51:47focus so we talked about instead of a to-do list starting a stop doing list because the ever expanding to-do list really works um and particularly as a city you know we have talked about doing more with less doing less with less doing more with less with more I don't know so um

0:52:08having that to-do list and continually adding things on is not something that we can do so what the great companies that he studied made use of both stopped doing in to-do lists so that you have the discipline to get rid of some of the extra stuff have the courage to channel

0:52:21resources to those areas and have the guts to make huge investments in those areas so the fanatic discipline talking about rinsing the cottage cheese um Dave Scott he's the example of a man named Dave Scott who's a world-class triathlete he believed that a low-fat

0:52:37high carb diet would give him an extra Edge in his in his training so despite the fact that he was training and burning 5000 calories a day he still would literally rinse his cottage cheese to get the extra fat off so the point of that is the fanatic discipline that

0:52:51we've already discussed it means sticking to the plan with no shortcuts and what we need to understand is sometimes that requires that we need to stop doing things do we have the discipline not just to do the right things but also stop doing the wrong things so the reason this I said this was my

0:53:10favorite month was um and again you know this is month ten so we've been talking a lot about the concepts and you know we've really been you know internalizing the vocabulary and kind of getting into it and so Yvette's um uh exercise was okay she handed out um slices little pieces of

0:53:26paper and said write something we should stop doing and we all put them up on the wall and it was really wonderful because again try as we were trying to create the culture where we can be honest people were really honest and no I'm not going to share with you the things we're going to stop doing

0:53:43because we're sort of still um looking at that list and thinking about it very seriously but I'll tell you it included programs it included procedures it included maybe doing things more effectively maybe using technology to do things differently um some sacred cows on there that we've

0:54:00talked about in the past and it was really not just where people willing to dig into some of the things that we could stop doing or do different but there was some very honest compelling conversations happening and so um we recognized that saying no is very difficult but there were definitely

0:54:20things that we all felt we should stop doing some are internal some are external but what we're going to do with that information that we came up with as a group is funnel that into our budget preparation and our budget process which is coming very soon month 11 how can we increase our return

0:54:38on luck kind of like return on investment but return on returning on luck events this was community outreach specialist Suzanne Airline and so a luck event has three components it's a significant aspect that occurs independent of the actors in the organization it has a potentially

0:54:57significant consequence good or bad and that it has an element of unpredictability a little bit like the Black Swan but it could be good it could be a good luck event we could get a windfall we you know the assessor could decide to up the property values higher

0:55:11than we budgeted something like that so luck events do happen so the concepts that we've learned directly contribute to creating the return on luck which is how we react to the luck event so if we meet bad luck we can manage it if we meet good luck we won't squander it

0:55:31again this relates directly back to 20 mile March and fanatic discipline but good luck doesn't make an organization great luck is not a good strategy we can't we have to rely on facts but we also have to rely on how we react to things that happen to us both good and

0:55:47bad so we can use good luck to our advantage but we can't blame bad luck for our failures and that um The Matrix that you see on the screen shows you the difference between great and poor the difference between bad and good luck and how those intersect to create a high

0:56:03return on luck so what we talked about as a group is generally we're pretty good about understanding that luck is not our factor of success and we've had good and bad luck happen to us so it's not a prime factor but we do um we think we do a pretty good job in taking advantage of these opportunities

0:56:22and not going too far if it's a good luck event and not freaking out too badly if it's a bad luck event and lastly Scott and I did a tag team for um month 12.

0:56:36are we becoming a level five leadership team so these are the different levels of leadership that Jim Collins outlines in his books and as you can see it's a hierarchy of leadership that starts at the bottom is highly capable individuals goes all the way up to the level five

0:56:52executive level five um embody a level five leader embodies a paradoxical combination of personal humility plus professional will so they're ambitious to be sure but they their ambition is geared toward the organization first and foremost and not for themselves so it's it's that you

0:57:14know kind of what seems to be competing values but the level five Executives do have those values so the potential for level five leadership leaders exist all around us and at all levels of the organization we just need to know what to look for and how to help people move

0:57:30up the hierarchy um we know that here in our organization we have a lot of people who have the potential to be level five leaders if they're not level five leaders already so what we learned um again people at all levels of the organization can be leaders so this

0:57:49could be someone that works the front counter this could be the city manager we all have the ability to move up the hierarchy of leadership but not everyone is expected to be at level five we need to be cognizant of people's levels and where they're at um and we want to make sure that we

0:58:06create an environment you can progress up our current management team for example includes people who a lot of people who've been promoted from within and we work really hard to identify that potential of all of our staff and then make the adjustments to put them in the

0:58:21right seats on the bus so at this point I'm going to turn it back over to the city manager to talk about the overall lessons so how we pulled it all together on on the last day um as as a surprise the staff were told to bring tablets laptops phones that there would

0:58:42be a test but it would be an anonymous test and what we tried to do was to recap sort of how everyone felt and responded and how they thought we we actually fit in and we created uh a survey which we we uh essentially did on SurveyMonkey instantaneously and got the answers

0:59:03right back and the purpose was um to not give folks a lot of time to think about it you have in many cases a yes or no and people are like well mostly yes most it's like what's Your Gut say yes yes or no um so we really wanted to have an honest discussion after going through this for

0:59:18over a year about how we're doing as a team so with that and some of the things uh there were there were many questions just to highlight a few and Karen's already alluded to this a bit is while in many respects were disciplined in many respects we faced the brutal

0:59:36facts and while we collect a lot of data and use data we we certainly have room to improve and um interestingly as it relates to the brutal facts as you can see in the chart on the left the majority of folks felt that we're not fully facing the brutal facts and

0:59:52whether those those are Personnel or budgetary or Calpers or whatever those things are we need to really zero in and and accept them and move on we talked already about a stop doing list and I think that's something we're gonna you may see in the budget process that we

1:00:11may put out there as things to consider doing doing less of or when we say stop doing there may be a different way to do it and one of the discussions that we've had are around managing expectations that we've we've done it a certain way here for a long time so there's this

1:00:24expectation but maybe that's no longer in step with generally how cities provide services or how we should be providing service um and so you you don't know what you don't know I think overall everyone felt that we're certainly on our way so in closing we gave somewhat of a

1:00:43softball question which was essentially are you willing to do what it takes and 100 of the people said yes um and not entirely surprising but I think it just re-emphasizes your staff's commitment our staff City staff's commitment to really wanting to raise the bar here and what struck me a little

1:01:06bit in going through this and then prepping for tonight and I look back on next month it'll be 13 years here and I look at council member Freeman and councilmember Abelson who were on the council when I got here you would probably agree that we were in if you would describe sort of the mood

1:01:23around here it was more survival mode and to be talking about being great um is really a really a paradigm shift around here and that's something we're really really proud of to be discussing and why we wanted to come to you and just share this is the bar your staff wants it's to

1:01:40be the best test and that's why we're doing this I will say it it's not meant to be one size fits all we're not going to take every principle in the book but rather we're going to pick a handful now and that's what we're going to focus on going forward and and again just to once

1:01:56again for the people who are typically sitting in the back of the room um and the people you see around we really do have great people on the bus and we're going to continue to get better and you'll hopefully we'll be seeing these in combination as more of a package with your strategic plan and as

1:02:13we put the budget together this year so uh with that if you have any comments or questions we'd be happy to take them Rebecca thank you um thank you so much for the presentation while you were all speaking and as I read through the presentation before the meeting the sorts of things

1:02:32that I was writing down was what a great process you all have been going through to come up with a common understanding of success and a Common Language and I heard that from Karen a number of times and I think that's so important because I everybody has a different way of

1:02:46speaking about these things and I think that can just waste time and do going through this process you all have a way of talking about how how you're evaluating one another and how you're evaluating evaluating yourself and your staff and also I like that you have now

1:03:00a way to analyze missteps or mistakes so that you can learn from we as a group can all learn from these things and and get better I can't wait to see what comes up in the on the stop doing list that was a good little um good little plug to stay tuned for the budget process

1:03:17um a question for you are you finding anything different after having gone through this process differences is in interactions with one another or differences in how decisions are being made is there has anything I know obviously the budget will be sort of the first step where we start to implement

1:03:33um I think we always have been trying to implement good to great but now we have a way of talking about it so is there anything that's changed now I think you already alluded to it I mean there's a Common Language there's I think it makes it easier to address um someone when you say are you really

1:03:48facing the brutal fact or is that really consistent with our 20-mile March or um you know let's talk it you know does your gut tell you that they're in the right seat a lot of the terminology has really helped um I think a number of times Karen talked about data-driven analysis we're

1:04:06trying to link this back to the Strategic plan and then um as you know we're we're embarking on sort of an expanded Community engagement in terms of budgeting so trying to pull um I guess a more formal way of using our data to help you make decisions this year is what we're trying to do and that

1:04:25that comes a fair amount out of this thank you yeah um I just had a couple comments and thanks for the presentation and I do think that the language is really helpful you know even in uh uh four and a half five years that I was gone so many of our managers are different now

1:04:45um not so much with well Public Safety is actually one of them but um so I think we're fortunate that we do have so many of the right people which has been a lot of our our staff is from within and that's just sort of remarkable because even our prior managers had the

1:05:03foresight to hire some of these people so they definitely had that that kind of insight um so when you get to a point where you're talking about brutal facts and and stop doing how how there's some things that come to my mind how do you address that so that one

1:05:22Department doesn't feel cannibalized by the other how how do they address that so that that's one question I have and then the second question is some of our data collection is is um rather straightforward so you can look at crime statistics and you can look at how many house fires we've had

1:05:40and you can see that some of the ordinances that we've put in place have maybe decreased the the number of you know apartment fires we have or or whatever but how does data collection work and say maybe Environmental Services or even park and rec and and do any of our managers do that

1:05:57now um I'll start and Karen please jump in I I think uh at the risk of oversimplifying it the cannibalizing is stopped by the department heads largely it goes back to we spend for those of you who know I think um like for instance You Know Chief Moyers out of town right now but I think I

1:06:24think she went through at least five in separate interviews here multiple times with multiple people um trying to make sure we had the right person in the right seat and the reason I say that is we we try to cultivate people who understand that there's a greater good here

1:06:40um and I'm sure Captain Regan is back there I'm sure he'll he could nod on her behalf if we don't have after school programs in El Cerrito in Recreation that's going to make his job a lot tougher and understanding that by feeding on each other we're not going to

1:06:58have the city everybody wants we're just not I mean we could peel it back and have police and fire and less programs and but I think when we talk about our trust ratings our favorability ratings which is something we're going to talk about the next meeting um I think it's because of the package

1:07:15of of services and I think our folks know um we're better as a whole that's not to say it doesn't happen it's not to say we don't fight amongst ourselves a bit before we come in here but um I think I think you could say more so here than most places um everyone knows that it's it's best to

1:07:35try to keep the whole whole place floating um in regard to the data collection police and fire probably collect more than um everyone else but um we we collect all transactions that hit at the rec department at the counter we so I mean there is a lot of data it's

1:07:58what I think we struggle with is having the time to use it properly because we are pretty thin um like a lot of places you know we for instance there are cities who have people who do organizational stuff so we Karen and I and the department heads and everybody who did this wouldn't do this

1:08:16you'd have a staff people who would just do organizational development just like you have management analysts that spend time churning over data we have to make that a priority with with who we have and we have to fit it in I think going back to the police department you know we we've talked

1:08:34about um if using a position that was historically an assistant to the chief to now focus on being data driven those are the kind of things we're trying to do if that gets to your question yep thank you and if I could just add that sort of the the overarching thing that

1:08:52governs all of this is that strategic plan and I thought it was really compelling when we were going through this process um that what the community was telling us and what you guys were telling us really there wasn't a lot that would hardly anything that was really

1:09:07surprising I mean there was some refining fine points as to some of the things that we had started sort of identified as a staff and as you know a council working with you but there we felt like it was very consistent and very clear that we were able to articulate together what our values were

1:09:25and what the plan was and so when we talk a little bit about stop doing one of the things that we have been very cognizant of especially over the last year and will be going forward is okay what are you doing where are you spending your time and does that where

1:09:38does that fit in the Strategic plan so if it's not if we can't fit it in we need to we need to figure that out either we make it fit or we toss it so that is a big road map for us that that's our starting point as to what the stop doing list is but also like Scott

1:09:55said it's not even just necessarily stopping doing it's doing different thank you Mark yeah yeah uh thanks very much for the presentation and thanks to our leadership and all the staff for all the commitment that was put into this process over the course of the year I'm

1:10:15very impressed with the seriousness with which you all approached it and uh setting us on a road a very positive Road as a result of it to me the challenge is taking Concepts that were originally developed for for-profit companies and translating them to city government and I don't think that that

1:10:39work has really been done I don't really didn't see a good definition of what will make El Cerrito great versus Albany or Richmond or to go to an extreme Hercules so I think we need to work on that collectively and indeed if Mr Collins work I did a bit of research on it today

1:11:00and he chose 11 companies that he featured in his first work and uh one of them went bankrupt two others required massive government bailouts and another company is Philip Morris which is killing people all over the world so that made me pretty skeptical so I'm not

1:11:20a super believer in his work but I'm a super believer in our staff and a real fan of the commitment that you all made and the leadership that you have um if you look at our city and I talk to a lot of people I'll say uh you know I'm on the city council and I said I didn't

1:11:39know that who else is on there they don't know the names and I said that's a good thing because it means we're not screwing up that the city is very well run most people don't know that Scott's the city manager if he was committing fraud or giving contracts to relatives

1:11:56or all the other bad things that happen in a lot of our neighbors then they would know Scott's name so to me that's the personal humility part of executive leadership and it's for elected officials as well as for our city staff you all do a fantastic job and you're

1:12:13never concerned about taking credit for it or pumping yourselves up and to me that's a sign of of greatness or burgeoning greatness so I really appreciate the the level of commitment that you made and the feeling that we can do more r b even better Servants of the citizens of El Cerrito than we are

1:12:36so I appreciate that and hope that that process continues whether or not we continue using Mr Collins framework and and I want to Echo many of the sentiments that have gone before me um I think staff development is incredibly important and that you guys have taken a homegrown

1:12:57development approach to to that is invaluable um the honesty and team culture and the team building that you guys experienced through this 12-month Journey it only benefits El Cerrito and and to that end I really want to thank you for taking the time uh to do it and and showing the

1:13:18leadership and the and the um the willingness to do a self-evaluation on this level uh is is really um tremendous and it and it's fantastic and and it helps us going forward I do have um a couple of questions um they were touched on before but I want to make sure that we we that are

1:13:44potentially we get a a timeline for when we might get the answer um so I'm not certain that there is an answer tonight uh month four the Hedgehog principle in month eight the B hag concept um the the Lessons Learned you came back and provided us said oh it's going to be

1:14:03by department and uh council member Bridges question was you know touched on the departmental issues my concern is how do we make sure that all the Departments are continuing to push these concepts for the Hedgehog what do we do well and the beehag what is a a goal that we want our department

1:14:25to move forward with and then and this touches on council member Friedman's concept or concern these are Concepts that typically are done at a corporate level and we're trying to apply them at the at the department level and and so I want to make sure that we are not losing

1:14:42sight of that um of of pushing those things forward at the department level because you know we that I do believe the concepts um you know still are good Concepts uh if if not necessarily directly applicable to a government organization so I that's more of a comment and I'm

1:15:03not asking for a question an answer tonight but I certainly would love to and maybe it'll come out through the budget process um how with the beehags and the and the um Hedgehog principles are on a department basis uh but truly my Thanks goes out to to both of you for your leadership and the

1:15:21staff for uh embarking on such an aggressive self-evaluation I would just say I thank you and I I don't think we don't necessarily have an answer today but I I think merging sort of what you just said with the comments of councilmember Friedman and I alluded to

1:15:39earlier nothing I mean I don't think we'd ever find a text or a guide that fits everything and I think what we are now sort of sifting through is what are the key things that are most applicable to us um he did do an addendum for the social sectors which makes it a little bit more

1:15:57um focused for us but really picking out what are the key Concepts and then making sure when we do our budget or do our goals as they relate to the Strategic plan we want to have sort of those reach goals whatever that is I mean so you have you know not just we're going to do more

1:16:16Community engagement we're going to do more of this or more of that or we're going to continue but rather maybe whether it's a department level or a city level you know it could be open a new library by 2017. that could be that's certainly a b hag goal um for um the fire department it could be

1:16:35looking at your response times and saying we want to find a way to get out of the station 15 seconds faster I I don't know I'm looking at the chief but so but that's something we're going to work for 20 seconds faster um so I think that's what we're trying to get at is when we think about our goal

1:16:52setting and think about we're doing are they is it empirical and is it is it a reach and is it clear do you want do you understand when we talk about sort of these some of these goals that our goal at the end of the year is to come back to you and say we set a goal of x

1:17:05and we did X and so whether you call it a b hacker you call it these things or not is sort of secondary okay um the uh I actually read I think two of the books um and one of them I just sat down and read as I was on an airplane flight back east and read the whole thing that that

1:17:26you know it really was a quick read but I got really excited then I actually was exposed at the other end of the journey to somebody who had also read the books which gave me an interesting opportunity to talk about it without with a person who's not who has no

1:17:47personal relationships with any of the people involved here so it was very objective you might say and I've also had an opportunity with that person to then sort of you might say Implement some of it and um in another in a setting that's not our city and the thing that I have from

1:18:08that and from this and um from the time that's gone on in between is that I think the greatest benefit of this is to have a common language that can be used I particularly like the fact that it happens to be a bus since I'm a bus rider but uh thank you for whoever

1:18:30did that I don't I guess it was the author that um the um because it really um simplifies things makes the dis you know the whole the basic concept of having the right people on the bus and having them in the right seats uh is just really such a basic concept but I think it goes one step further

1:18:54because it says that it may not be where you are now you know it may be in some other way and what I like that I've seen that was done here about the same time so I have to think it might have been related is that the seats were moved around on our bus and um I think that that was a really good

1:19:16thing from where I sit and I think that it gives us the opportunity to try out all these new ways of doing things and working to get to bed together better um and it may be that you know some of it's not going to work but I personally am expecting that a lot more will go

1:19:40right than will go wrong and I guess that's the bullets um you know and we're we're trying new things that um I think my first my personal frustration in um being on the city council over the time that I have been is when I would look back and say nothing is happening you know it was it

1:20:02was like not very much that I wanted to happen had actually happened compared to when I uh decided I wanted to be on the city council and why I wanted to be on the city council in this last year a lot has happened that I'm really excited about um and we still don't know you know if

1:20:24all these things are going to happen all the stuff that is being proposed on San Pablo Avenue we still don't know but you know what we're actually trying and that's that's a big step forward I see people that are invigorated on our staff I think that's a good thing and I um

1:20:44I'm very excited about the work that everyone has done and I'm looking forward to there being some successes and then just one last thing I want to say is that I started noticing right away in our agendas that we were seeing references to the strategic planning you

1:21:05know things were being um so this is where it connects to that and that felt so right it really did and it was like gee why weren't we doing this all along but you know what we're doing it now and we're moving forward and I think this is a regardless of the financial

1:21:25situation we may or may not find ourselves in I think this is a great time uh to be part of the city of El Cerrito and to see the progress that that we're all making as a team together so I really want to um thank Scott and Karen for bringing this back and implementing it in terms of the 12 steps

1:21:52and taking people through the process and and the process I'm not I'm not even exactly sure how it went up how it came about but the process of saying maybe this person is not in the right seat on the bus maybe they're the person we need to go to that level five but they're in

1:22:12a different seat and I find that really exciting and um I'm you know I so I I think I'll just leave it at that and say that I look forward to um working on getting to level five that's too thank you so with that is there a Next Step that you want to talk about now Scott or just

1:22:37let it uh send it okay with that um are there any public speakers I have no speakers okay with that after that um great presentation um we will move on to the um the adoption of the consent calendar items 5A through 5D I'd like to pull 5A since I wasn't at the meeting I don't

1:23:04like 30 minutes on move items five b c and d second okay there's the motion uh in a second all in favor please say aye aye opposed abstentions ascensions I'm sorry okay um okay so that passed unanimously and then try to me okay second okay all in favor please say aye aye aye

1:23:35abstain okay so the motion carried uh with one abstention by council member Bridges and with that we will move on to item number seven there being no public hearings and um this is the city council acting as the Redevelopment eight successor agency and the item is to review an authorized and

1:24:06give authorization to submit the draft reorganize obligations payment schedule 1415a which is December July through December of 2014.

1:24:20these successor agency's fiscal year 2014-15 administrative budget and a repayment schedule for housing loans is there a staff report good evening mayor Abelson and council members I'm Lori Trevino of a financial analyst back again with our every six months need to review the obligations payment

1:24:50schedule for the successor agency and then each year we also review A administrative budget and for the first time we'll um the there is a repayment schedule for housing loans that were made from these Redevelopment agencies Loma housing fund to the agency for State takeaway payments in the past and

1:25:13the successor agency um is permitted to repay those loans to the city's housing fund starting this year so um included in your with your report is the current recognized obligation payment schedule we have included all of the items that have potential for reimbursement in

1:25:35the current period so that we have the maximum flexibility based on how much funding will be available recognizing that it's possible that the Department of Finance will reject some of these items which they have done in the past [Music] um excuse me I'm getting over a cold

1:25:59[Applause] I think I'm okay thank you um let's see um the administrative budget is going to be included Within These City's overall budget for fiscal year 1415 but the successor agency is required to approve its approve it separately the way that it works is the city

1:26:28has those expenses within its within the general fund and then the successor agency reimburses the city the 250 000 administrative allowance regardless of what those expenses actually are um the dissolution act has a rather complicated formula for calculating the

1:26:50way that the loans for um to the housing fund are repaid and you will notice that we did a sort of a sample repayment schedule that we put in as an exhibit to the resolution the dissolution act requires that the oversight board approve a repayment schedule um in order for it to be on the Rocks we

1:27:18calculated it based um the in the best way that we could based on what information we had and after your packet was already delivered to you the Department of Finance sent us their um methodology for calculating that payment and so you have you should have um a purple sheet which has

1:27:40um a different table on the bottom of Exhibit C um basically the the Department's interpretation of the statute is that the calculation is for a future year and so while I I did my calculations assuming that it was taxes we that it would be based on the amount of money

1:28:04that was available in the current year they do it based on the amount of money that was available last year and take half of it for this year so so it's a much lower payment into the housing fund than was on the original schedule that you received um excuse me um but the the statute is not

1:28:27particularly clear unfortunately did you have a question I I do in looking at the new table uh there is uh there would be let's see if I understand it in year 1617 a we could go as high as half of 957 a thousand which would be uh 478 but we capped out at 250 and I'm just curious

1:28:55why we cap out at 250.

1:29:00it was really just meant this is meant to show a sample of of how the loan might be repaid over a reasonable period of time um every dollar that goes to the housing fund out of the any money that's left for the residual does not go to the taxing entities that would otherwise

1:29:18receive it so in a sense for every dollar that is repaid to the housing fund the city loses 22 cents it to the general fund in that particular year so that there's a little bit of a um a question there you know about a balancing act to make great thank you anybody have any any specific questions

1:29:48about any of the items on the rops or the repayment of the housing loan uh just a clarifying question thank you um on the Rob schedule I understand from some Communications I had with Scott that the gray rows are items that have been previously rejected and I'm sorry

1:30:07I'm looking at the rops table 14-15 the detailed statement yes uh the gray items are items that have been previously rejected by dof and so they're repeated in other parts of the table but the gray rows have a zero request that's right and and to be the spreadsheet actually

1:30:28it looks gray on your sheet but it's red um on the screen and they have no a note to please not put anything on those lines they're not saying that you can't request the item again but um they really are trying to dissuade people from doing that I think um so it was just it made more sense to

1:30:51me to try to to just restate it on another line okay thank you Mark um no no others I'll move from the revised resolution on the purple sheets the successor agency resolution do I need to read it out I guess not hang on council's catching up to you if you could just read out the title sure

1:31:21resolution of the El Cerrito Redevelopment agency successor agency authorizing submittal of the draft recognized obligation payment schedule 14-15a as required under the dissolution act approving its fiscal year 2014-15 administrative budget and authorizing submittal of a repayment

1:31:42schedule for low and moderate income housing funds pursuant to health and safety code section 34171 second there's been a motion uh in a second is there any further discussion are there any public comments no speaker slips okay are we ready to vote all in favor please say aye aye aye any

1:32:07opposition any abstention motion carries unanimously thank you uh with that we will move on to item eight council local and Regional liaison assignment reports are there any yeah I have some there's just two um I just wanted to mention at uh WIC Tech I think I didn't mention this last

1:32:32time that I was um re-elected um as the wet uh WIC attack CCTA rep which is a two-year term and I was also um re-elected chair and um just to specify why I was re-elected chair because it's longer term than normal is that we have a new executive director and um they felt that it should be there

1:33:01should be some somebody who had already been there for more than five minutes and the right person was on the bus and the right person [Laughter] so anyway the um Tom butt was actually the one who suggested that um anyway so the other thing I want to mention is

1:33:20that I attended the mayor's conference and it was a rather light mayor's conference I guess you could say right it was there as well yes okay and um there was a presentation by Tom barnage uh who's the columnist for the Contra Costa times and he was exploring get this 23 reasons why newspaper

1:33:45columnists are like elected officials however he only came he only came up with eight of them and let's see I think I wrote them down so I can give you a flavor I think I think I wrote him in this one but I don't know I wrote down on the agenda that's at home sorry oh

1:34:02darn yeah anyway it was um anyway um it was an attempt at making us feel sympathetic towards uh columnist I guess more than others yes so that was um that was that meeting it was held in the city of San Pablo and um with that there being no other uh assign reports then we will adjourn

1:34:32the meeting until Tuesday no March the 4th at 7 pm in in city council chambers thank you all for coming