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be “a headache to try to do.” She said this approach would have eaten up more of the reserve funds and left <br />a “mess” for someone else to clean up. She declared that this was not how she did business. She was trying <br />to make the process as up front and to garner council support for it as much as possible. She averred that <br />this process would help the City to align its resources with the community’s values. <br /> <br />Mr. Clark commended Ms. Jones for her remarks. He supported the five council goals and visions as a <br />basis on which to undertake the alignment process. He was not interested in delaying this process and <br />pointed out that one of the things the council had wanted was the opportunity to do more work and have <br />more discussions on priority setting. He recalled that one of the items they had held off on in the previous <br />budget session was an increase in police staffing. He was unwilling to wait another year to begin this and <br />another year after that to increase police staffing. <br /> <br />Mr. Clark related that he had spoken with Lou Sinniger, AFSCME Council Representative for Local 1724, <br />earlier in the day. He stressed that he was not interested in destabilizing staff morale or finding ways to <br />privatize or to find ways to do things “on the cheap.” He wanted to find more efficient and effective ways to <br />communicate and link outcomes to the work that was being done. He remarked that if the City was doing <br />two separate things in two separate departments to achieve the same goal, he would want to increase the <br />linkage and communication between the two. He predicted that this would not lead to an increase in City <br />staffing. <br /> <br />Mr. Zelenka approved of the linkage of the vision statements and, more importantly, the goals of the City <br />Council to the budget process. He was unclear how this could occur. Ms. Murdoch explained that each of <br />the goal areas had a cross-departmental team of staff people who were meeting to decide what key factors <br />most influenced the outcomes for safe communities, sustainable development, and the other goals. She said <br />they would also choose indicators that would then let the community know how well the City was doing in <br />achieving the goals. She stated that staff would bring a map of the goals and links for the Budget <br />Committee to review on November 19. She related that after this, the departments would undertake service <br />offers and would review what programs they currently offered, or what new programs they could think of <br />that would meet those factors, and ultimately those would describe levels of options including the current <br />level of service and a level that addressed the minimum and the exceptional levels of results. She explained <br />that staff would then determine which of the offers would give the best results according to the council goals <br />and would put together the best “grouping of packages” that delivered the best outcomes. This would be <br />forwarded to the Executive Management Team, which would look at the financial forecast in relation to the <br />recommendation and could make subsequent changes. <br /> <br />Mr. Zelenka expressed concern that the new process would preclude the ability to look back two years and <br />review the past budgets. Ms. Murdoch assured him that the City was required by law to do so and would be <br />doing so at a departmental level and at a fund level. <br /> <br />Mr. Zelenka recalled that when he had served on the Budget Committee years earlier there had been a shift <br />from a department-oriented budget to a service-oriented budget. He asked if this approach would create a <br />different way of looking at the budget services. Ms. Murdoch replied that the service budget would be <br />aligned around the goals and would demonstrate how the various services would be organized under the <br />vision statements. She said the financial summaries would remain in their current form. <br /> <br />In response to a follow-up question from Mr. Zelenka, Ms. Murdoch clarified that as part of the instructions <br />to the service teams there would be offers on the goals and the offers would be ranked ‘high,’ ‘medium,’ and <br /> <br /> <br />MINUTES—Eugene City Council October 31, 2007 Page 6 <br /> Work Session <br /> <br />