TO: HONORABLE MAYOR AND MEMBERS OF THE CITY COUNCIL
FROM: Justin Clifton, City Manager
PREPARED BY: Kristen Crane, Assistant City Manager
SUBJECT:
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City Council Priorities
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RECOMMENDATION
recommendation
Review, discuss, and refine City Council priorities reviewed and established at the July 31, 2024 workshop.
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PRIOR ACTION/VOTE
None.
CITY COUNCIL GOAL
Maintain a high performing organization that values fiscal sustainability, transparency, accountability and organizational efficiency.
BACKGROUND
City Council has numerous priorities competing for limited time and resources. Reviewing and refining priorities periodically helps to ensure that the work of staff is aligned with the most important projects and programs that the City Council wants to complete. Without clear priorities, resources may be inadvertently spent on lower-priority programs/projects. Similarly, a lack of clear priorities and/or frequently shifting priorities contributes to organizational thrash, negatively impacts productivity, and confuses stakeholders and residents.
The July 31, 2024, workshop focused on reviewing and refining the City’s top priorities as well as a recommended framework for prioritizing the projects. Particularly as staff works to develop the recommended operating budget for Fiscal Years 2025/26 and 2026/27 and the ten-year Capital Improvement Program, it is important to regularly review and refine the priority list for several reasons, including:
• Status of revenues, which may create the need to rebalance resource allocation and account for reduced operational capacity;
• Review a comprehensive list of strategies that are competing for limited staff time and financial resources;
• Review project status to see which items have been completed or which timelines may need to be adjusted, which is important for level-setting City Council expectations; and
• Review new initiatives that are proposed by Council or arise based on other circumstances following the previous workshop to determine how they fit within the existing list of priorities.
A tier structure was developed for prioritization with the goal of having a comprehensive archive of all City Council priorities, while also maintaining a way to differentiate the most important priorities from the rest. This framework utilizes three tiers:
• Tier 1: Solidified as top priorities by City Council that are fully programmed with strategies, workplans, and dedicated resources.
• Tier 2: Identified priorities by City Council that are partially programmed with conceptual strategies but where additional workplans and/or resource dedication are necessary.
• Tier 3: Unprogrammed projects/programs not yet prioritized by City Council pending development of strategies, workplans and dedicated resources.
Within each tier, all projects/programs are divided into large or small projects to roughly estimate the effort they will take to complete.
The additional advantage of a tiered system for organizing priorities is that it provides a foundation for elevating and lowering priorities over time. In simple terms, most new ideas introduced by individual Council Members, members of the public, or staff, would be placed on Tier 3 pending consideration by City Council. The City Council would then elevate select ideas from Tier 3 to Tier 2 during prioritization workshops or through other formal consideration by City Council. Lastly, a select few priorities from Tier 2 would move to Tier 1 as broad strategies are expanded to include workplans and resource allocation.
The Tier 1, 2, and 3 lists are included as Attachment 1. Updates on the projects have been provided to reflect what has been accomplished since the July workshop and to capture the upcoming anticipated milestones between now and June 30, 2026 (end of the next full fiscal year).
Considering the fact that Tier 1 includes numerous projects, many of which are large undertakings, the rate of progress is incremental during the six-month period since the last workshop. Additionally, the Tier 3 list captures a series of projects recently introduced by the City Council that were not foreseen in July and require staff time.
Advancing all projects listed in Tier 1 simultaneously requires deferring progress on items included on Tiers 2 and 3. Even then, the significant number of items on Tier 1 means staff will only make incremental progress on each priority. Making more rapid progress on select projects/programs likely means accepting less progress on others. This dynamic results from a number of factors, including:
• The vast majority of staff time is dedicated to providing direct services. There are only a handful of select staff members with the skillset and role to advance complex projects/programs.
• Even staff members whose roles include advancing large projects/programs dedicate the vast majority of their time to day-to-day work, leaving fairly limited resources for new initiatives.
• Staff have substantial administrative priorities beyond the priorities of City Council. These are significant undertakings, core to each department’s responsibilities, which often require significant amounts of staff time, and impact staff’s ability to work on special Council priority projects. A list of administrative priorities has been provided for context as Attachment 3.
• New projects/programs compete for scarce resources against efforts to improve existing programs and services.
• While the list of City Council priorities is comprehensive, it is not exhaustive. The list does not include a large number of smaller projects that nevertheless need to be completed.
• Declining revenue limits available funding for CIP projects and for operational support needed to pursue new projects/programs.
• The exercise of setting priorities highlights tradeoffs, i.e., making more progress on the most important priorities requires delaying progress on lower priorities.
• Advancing projects/programs is a dynamic process. Timing is greatly impacted by revenue leveraging, mandates, regulations, staff capacity and more.
Another factor for consideration in reviewing the tier lists is that, in the coming weeks, staff will present the findings and recommendations from both the Parks and Recreation and Trails master plans, which are long-range planning tools, developed based on extensive community outreach. Staff shares this to raise awareness of the value of leaving capacity for both financial resources and staff time should the City Council wish to pursue any of those recommendations in the upcoming two fiscal years.
The table provided in Attachment 2 lists each current priority project and program under the relevant City Council goal to show how the priorities further the City Council’s broader goals.
At the workshop, staff will provide an overview of the Council priority lists, focused on the larger projects between Tiers 1 and 2, as well as an overview of new projects that have been identified since the July workshop. Staff will also review highlights from the departmental administrative priority list (Attachment 2) to add context to the full portfolio of work the City needs to complete in the next two fiscal years in terms of staff time and expense. Staff will also seek feedback from City Council on moving any project/programs between the tiered lists and the removal of any existing projects/programs or the addition of anything new.
FISCAL IMPACT
While there is no immediate direct fiscal impact associated with the recommended action, there is a cost for each project, such as a monetary cost and staff resources. Both are limited and inadequate to complete all of the priority projects at once. The City Council priority-setting workshop is an important tool for Council to provide direction input as the operating budgets for Fiscal Years 2025/2026 and 2026/2027 are developed, as well as the ten-year Capital Improvement Program.
ATTACHMENTS
1. City Council Priorities Tiers 1, 2, and 3
2. Tier 1, 2, and 3 Priorities Organized by City Council Goals
3. List of Administrative Priorities