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HomeMy WebLinkAbout03/02/1991 Meeting e e e M I NUT E S Eugene City Council Strategic Planning Process McNutt Room--City Hall March 2, 1991 8:30 a.m. PRESENT: Mayor Jeff Miller; Ruth Bascom, Bobby Green, Debra Ehrman, Shawn Boles, Paul Nicholson, Kaye Robinette, Randy MacDonald, Roger Rutan The special work session of March 2, 1991, of Eugene City Council was called to order by facilitator Sharon Thorne. I. WORK SESSION: STRATEGIC PLANNING PROCESS facilitator Sharon Thorne indicated that this work session will allow the council an opportunity to review and give input into the design of the stra- tegic planning process. She reviewed the agenda for this work session. The list of agenda items included: group introductions; presentation of the proposed strategic planning process design; council discussion; comments from the Budget Committee, Citizen Involvement Committee (CIC), and Planning Com- mission chairs; and adjournment. Barbara Bellamy, City Manager's Office, said that the purpose of this work session is to allow council an opportunity to review and give input into the design of the strategic planning process. After the council has selected an option among the three that will be presented, staff is requesting that coun- cil give further direction about alternative approaches to citizen involve- ment. Ms. Bellamy introduced the team of consultants which the City has contracted to help design this process. The team consists of Project Manager Terry Moore, representing ECO Northwest; Jim Creighton, Creighton & Associates; and Sharon Thorne, facilitator. Mr. Moore said that the role of the consultant team in this process will be to assist the council and City staff in designing and implementing a strate- gic planning process. Once the council has selected an option, the consul- tant team will come back to the council with more detailed information about the design process. Mr. Creighton distributed copies of a document highlighting the possible strategic planning options. He noted that the process which the council MINUTES--Eugene City Council Strategic Planning Process March 2, 1991 Page 1 e chooses will be tailored to fit Eugene's specific needs for public involve- ment. Mr. Creighton described three possible design approaches for this process and highlighted the benefits and drawbacks of each. The Levels of Service Ap- proach is much like a home budget in which the council asks the community to make decisions about the level or amount of each service it wants the City to provide. This approach is beneficial in that it forces trade-offs; however, it also requires heavy staff involvement and it is often difficult to define the levels of service. Mr. Creighton said that the second approach, the Goals Approach, begins with a vision about what kind of community Eugene citizens want. It asks the community to agree on goals and objectives for the future and then ensures that City programs are tailored to achieve those objectives. This approach has worked well for many cities and involves a broad sector of the community; a drawback to this approach is that it is often difficult to get from goals to action. e Mr. Creighton said that the final approach, the Strategic Planning Approach, allows the City to generate and compare a list of alternative strategies for how the City could resolve its strategic issues. And, through an extensive public process, asks the community to chose the best alternative. This type of approach encourages the community to deal with the "whole" problem and discourages it from adopting piecemeal solutions to the problem. Mr. Creighton emphasized that any three of the solutions could work for Eu- gene and encouraged the council to select the most appropriate alternative for this community. Mr. Creighton provided an overview of the levels of public involvement which could be used in any of these processes. Types of possible public involve- ment include: public workshops, polls/focus groups, neighborhood advisory groups, newspaper inserts/mail-in coupons, discussion groups, and advisory votes. Ms. Bellamy walked through the proposed guidelines for the strategic planning process and reviewed the following process outcomes: 1. Service level and financing decisions about services at risk due to insufficient funding. 2. Broad public/support for those decisions. Mr. Rutan voiced concern with the phrase "services at risk" in the first outcome, indicating that use of this phrase might narrow or provoke unwanted community debate about what services are really at risk. Mr. Boles agreed. Ms. Bellamy noted that the phrase "services at risk" was included to contrast those services in which revenues are not sufficient to support service goals, such as those supported by the General Fund and the Room Tax Fund, from those services which have adequate revenue streams, such as the Airport Fund. e MINUTES--Eugene City Council Strategic Planning Process March 2, 1991 Page 2 e e e After discussion, the council agreed to remove the phrase "at risk due to insufficient funding" from the first outcome. Mr. Nicholson emphasized the importance of communicating with the community without hysteria. The community will not benefit if it feels it is being presented with a crisis. The council agreed to reword the second outcome to read: "broad public sup- port for those decisions through education and participation without hyster- i a. " Mr. MacDonald encouraged the council to consider imaginative, interactive approaches to this problem, rather than relying on old solutions. Mr. Robinette noted that some segments of the community are not convinced that a funding problem actually exists. Before asking the community to se- lect an option, it will be necessary to educate them on the existence and the extent of the problem. He said that community education is an integral com- ponent of the process and suggested that it be included as one of the out- comes. Mr. Boles hoped that the council would be developing a process that could be replicated in the future to deal further with this problem or to deal with other problems. He suggested that the council state this explicitly as a third outcome. The council agreed on the need to include this as a third outcome, worded as follows: 3. Provide a replicable model for an on going strategic planning process. Ms. Bellamy reviewed the following list of key criteria for the process de- sign: 1. Produces information needed to define and quantify the problem: current services at risk due to insufficient funding; 2. Informs the public of the problem; 3. Produces public preferences for future service mix, levels, and funding; 4. Offers a variety of levels for public involvement; 5. Is flexible; 6. Examines future service options, including new ways of doing busi- ness; 7. Produces strategies for FY93 by October; and 8. Produces an implementation plan. The council discussed the list of key criteria. It agreed that in order to be consistent with changes previously made to the design process, the por- tions of the phrase in Criterion 1 that deals with "services at risk" should MINUTES--Eugene City Council Strategic Planning Process March 2, 1991 Page 3 e e e be deleted. Also, in order to adopt a more positive stancer the criterion should refer to "opportunities" as well as "problems." Criterion 1 was re- worded as follows: Produces information needed to define and quantify the problem and opportunities. The council also discussed the n~d to add an additional criterion which speaks to the need to prioritize City funds to meet the parameters laid out by Ballot Measure 5. It agreed on the following wording for Criterion 9: 9. Design strategies for funding priorities. For efficiency's sake, Mr. Green encouraged the council to reuse many of the City's existing processes for public involvement. Mr. Nicholson encouraged the council to identify new sources of funding to pay for existing service needs. The council discussed the time line which is being anticipated for this pro- cess. It also discussed to what extent the public should be asked to approve this plan and timing of that vote. Ms. Bellamy said that staff initially hoped that the process would be con- cluded by October in order to put some alternatives before the community for a vote in November. She noted that the consultants have indicated that it would be unrealistic to expect the process to move more quickly than that because of the amount of time that is required to educate and involve the community. Mayor Miller questioned whether it was realistic to expect the process to be completed by October. Mr. Robinette encouraged the council not to adopt a time line for this process that would preclude a November vote, if possible. Because the design of the strategic process allows for extensive public par- ticipation and input, the council generally agreed that it would not ask citizens to vote on alternative scenarios until the process had been complet- ed. Recognizing that the council is in the process of developing its long-term budgeting strategies, the council discussed how it should deal with short- term financing needs that are not currently allocated for in the budget, but in which timing is critical. It acknowledged the need to keep as much money as possible in the budget to await as-yet-unidentified impacts of Ballot Measure 5, Ms. Bascom encouraged the council not to neglect entirely interim funding requests, such as affordable housing, that require immediate council action, and that would be substantially beneficial to the community over the long term. Mr. Boles stressed that the annual community attitudes survey could provide a good tool to test the community's reaction to certain issues, including is- sues of a budgetary nature. MINUTES--Eugene City Council Strategic Planning Process March 2, 1991 Page 4 e At 10 a.m., the council recessed for ten minutes. Ms. Thorne said that staff has recommended that the council choose the Stra- tegic Planning Approach for this process. The council agreed that this would be the most appropriate approach for the City to take at this time. In order to maximize public acceptance of the alternative scenarios, Mr. MacDonald emphasized the importance of involving a large cross section of the public in scenario development. Mr. Creighton agreed that it would be impor- tant to capture all the major philosophies that exist within the community in the first round of creating scenarios, so that citizens would not feel ex- cluded from the process. He noted that there may be a need for more than one round of scenario development--conceptual scenarios in the first round and more-detailed scenarios in subsequent rounds. He also noted that it is like- ly that some scenarios would foreclose the ability to chose other options in the future. Ms. Bellamy walked through the various phases of the planning process and asked for council feedback into the process design. She highlighted the activities involved in each planning phase and the degree and types of public involvement which are being proposed. The process is divided into four basic phases. e Phase I: Phase II: Phase III: Phase IV: Planning the process Where are we? Where do we want to go? How do we get there? Ms. Bellamy noted that the City's long-range plans embody the community goals for the future; it may be necessary to alter the long-range plans after this strategic planning process has been implemented so that it becomes consistent with the City's vision. Ms. Bellamy said that the environmental scan analysis anticipated as part of Phase II of the program would look at how external trends, such as demograph- ic and population changes, would impact the City in the future. Responding to a question from Mr. Boles, Ms. Bellamy said that part of the environmental scan would include an evaluation of the current and anticipated physical resource needs and an examination of carrying capacity. Regarding community involvement, Mr. Moore emphasized the importance of being clear about which decisions are to be made by the council and which decisions are to be made by the community. By design, this process allows the City to provide the community with certain information and then asks the community to identify any gaps that might exist. Mr. Boles emphasized the importance of the data-gathering process, noting that the scope of the entire process will be limited by the City's ability to gather sufficient and accurate information. e MINUTES--Eugene City Council Strategic Planning Process March 2, 1991 Page 5 e e e The council discussed appropriate methods for public involvement. Ms. Ehrman expressed support for communicating information about the nature of the stra- tegic process in one large meeting rather than spending time at a number of smaller meetings. Mr. Robinette noted that the benefit of.a large open forum discussion is that it allows participants a chance to hear the wide variety of viewpoints that are being expressed on the same topic. Mr. Boles noted that the CIC has already devised an extensive public involve- ment process and urged the council to tailor that process to its own needs for this project. Mr. MacDonald commented that the surveys which have been conducted in the community previously can provide helpful, applicable information to this process. Mr. MacDonald commented that public hearings are often beneficial for commu- nity residents because they provide citizens with a chance to advocate for their cause. Mayor Miller suggested that the council might make use of less formal types of public hearings with an opportunity for dialogue. Ms. Ehrman suggested that the council make use of the public access channel to keep the community informed about this process. The council agreed on the need to have a broad citizen participa- tion/education process. The citizen involvement process could expand on those methods already outlined by the CIC, as well as include innovative methods such as less-formal public hearings. The council supported the con- cept of one large meeting to present information to identified community leadership groups to allow them an opportunity to evaluate and provide input into the strategic planning process. Ms. Thorne asked for input on this process from members of the Budget Commit- tee, CIC, and Planning Commission. Kappy Eaton, Budget Committee Chair, encouraged the council that when speak- ing to the League of Women Voters, to be very clear about what type of infor- mation is being requested regarding the design. She spoke about the impor- tance of public involvement throughout the entire process and spoke in sup- port of the suggestion for innovative approaches to conducting public hear- ings. She asked the council to be aware of opportunities in the near future for a local option for some new revenues and to maintain a time line that would be flexible enough to include a November election in order to take advantage of this opportunity. Anne Morrow, CIC Chair, remarked that the overall goal of this strategic process is to obtain broad public support for the plan's implementation. She said that the CIC would be willing to work with the council to determine the most effective types of public involvement, particularly some of the innova- tive methods which have been mentioned. When speaking to commissions, com- mittees, and neighborhood organizations, Ms. Morrow concurred on the need to MINUTES--Eugene City Council Strategic Planning Process March 2, 1991 Page 6 be clear about the type of direction being asked and emphasized the impor- e tance of distinguishing between council and "other" decisions. Ken Tollenaar, Planning Commission Chair, said that the Planning Commission will want to be actively involved in this process. He noted that an impor- tant relationship exists between land use planning and the City's financial planning. He commented that the City may want to reconsider some of its basic land use assumptions and policies. In particular, it may want to re- consider those basic policies that create financial obligations, such as aggressive annexation policies and speculative development. Ms. Bellamy asked council to be thinking of a name for this process. At council's request, staff agreed to come back to the council at the next Wednesday work session with a list of possible naming options from which the council could choose. e The meeting adjourned at 11:45 a.m. Respectfully submitted, :~~,j'~f'~ Micheal Gleason City Manager (Recorded by Traci Northman) mncc 030291-SPP e MINUTES--Eugene City Council Strategic Planning Process March 2, 1991 Page 7