- Roll Call
- Flag Salute
- Agenda Approval
- Minutes: February 2nd Study Session
- Minutes: February 2nd Regular Meeting
- Staff Reports
- Business: Ordinance 1278, Regulation of Private Alarm Systems, First Reading
- Business: Ordnance 1279, Fire Inspections, Second Reading
- Business: Ordinance 1280, Dogs in Public Areas, First Reading
- Business: Discussion of Annexation Option (Stebner)
- Claims and Payroll
- General Public Comment
- Mayor's Time
- Council Time
- Meeting Adjourned
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Council Meeting: February 17, 2008
The council meeting tonight will include a discussion lead by Council Member Stebner on options for annexation. Be sure to attend and give your input on the issue. Everyone gets two minutes at the end of the meeting (after Stebner and the council have their discussion, unless the council is willing to waive their rules and allow the public to participate while they deliberate).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
These articles were taken from the Municipal Research and Services Center of Washington:
very interesting reads...
Was I Elected To Do What the People Want or to Govern Well?
February 2007
Carl H. Neu, Jr.
President of Neu and Company and
Director of the Center for the Future of Local Governance™
The Challenge
Every public official, especially when newly-elected mayors and council members are sworn in, to later be sworn at on occasion, confronts this question. The answer really is yes to both parts of the question, but the latter, to govern well, is the primary obligation.
All elected officials operate in two simultaneous realities: the here and now (the world of “what people want”) and the future (exercising wisdom, judgment and courage to be stewards of the quality of the community’s future).
Let’s start with “to do what the people want.” Jim Miller, Executive Director of the League of Minnesota Cities and a highly-respected former city manager, professes that this sentiment is appealing. It also is problematic. How does any public official really know “what the people want” as compared to the true desires and long-term best interests of the larger community or entire city? Public opinion and wants are often diffuse and frequently transitory, sometimes even selfish and myopic. How does one balance them with what “other people” want and what the entire community may desire?
The reality is that deciding and responding to what the people want boils down to the inevitable necessity to make difficult choices among conflicting wants and desires. It also requires choosing between short-term wants and long-term priorities and responsible leadership decisions about, in our world of limited resources, what is more essential to the entire community especially in the long view.
This leads us to the second part of the question “to govern well.” Management and general service delivery within our cities have improved greatly! But, what about governance? Most councils, regardless of the good intentions of each member, routinely just continue to perform out of tradition in the same ways councils have for decades; same room/seating arrangements, same procedures, same mindsets, same council-staff interaction protocols, same methods for citizen input, same decision-making techniques, same focus on the “here and now” agendas evident at typical council meetings, same focus on immediate issues brought to council members’ attention. Some councils, however, actively are seeking and practicing better ways to govern.
A Better Way to Govern
Great “world-class” councils, and each of their members, focus on three pathways to extraordinary performance as governing bodies: perspective, process, and performance results.
Perspective. World-Class councils see themselves existing to:
Think about and plan for the future for their cities,
Establish vision and well-defined strategic priorities,
Prescribe end/results to be achieved,
Ensure/empower management and employee performance to produce those results,
Sustain relationships with citizens that instill confidence in council’s trustee/leadership,
Demonstrate a sense of stewardship for the city’s future and provide the leadership to ensure that actions taken today will produce the future desired for tomorrow.
Process. Governance is more than individuals having the courage, traits, and desire to lead. Governance emerges in every city through engaging in processes and collaborative relationships that enable the council to function as a group (team) in providing the leadership required to make a better city for tomorrow (focusing on the future) and today (outstanding operational performance and service delivery).
Performance Results. Results which truly produce citizen satisfaction and position the city for continuous performance excellence, a better future, and a more business-like manner for dealing with the challenges it faces.
Strategic Leadership: What is it; Why do it?
Communities are future seeking. But first, they must be able to imagine and decide what they want the future to be. Secondly, they must decide how they are going to make this desired future become a reality. Strategic leadership is a process that brings people together to think about the future, create a vision, and invent ways to make this future happen through determination, community teamwork, and disciplined actions. It is the primary function of leadership – making things happen that would not happen otherwise and preventing things from happening that might occur ordinarily. It is getting people to work together to achieve common goals and aspirations; to transform visions into reality.
A strategic plan is a document recording what people think – a broad blueprint for positive change that defines a vision and key outcomes that must occur to attain this vision. Other implementation efforts and plans such as the comprehensive land use plan, financial plans, and development and redevelopment plans are policy and decision making tools that assist the community, council, and administration in achieving the vision.
A strategic leadership perspective and plan will challenge and stretch the community’s imagination in defining what is possible and test its will to commit to a great and exciting, rather than “good enough” future. The strategic plan will forge and sustain the critical partnerships and relationships that will translate the strategic plan a reality.
This Strategic Plan is a compass – a dynamic and continuous process about how a community sees, thinks about, and creates, through decisive leadership and management commitment and actions, the future it desires. It defines the long-term “big picture” framework within which all policy, fiscal, administrative, and tactical decisions need to occur. It focuses the governing body on defining Ends and Results to be achieved and the management team on the Means necessary to achieve those Ends and Results.
One Community’s Example: Governing with a Strategic Management Plan
The Town Council of Pinetop-Lakeside, Arizona, in addressing its obligation to serve by governing well, in 2005 created and adopted a Strategic Management Plan.(SMP) that boldly focuses on the community’s future and pursues excellence in providing leadership and management.
In late January, 2007, the SMP was updated to fiscal years 2007-08 and 2008-09. It is the Town’s plan to update and report upon results achieved in a Strategic Management Plan Progress Report (A Report Card to the Citizens of Pinetop-Lakeside).
The contents of the SMP and accompanying Report Card are specific to a given community and its particular circumstances. These governance tools, however, are universally applicable to every community that governs, manages and serves well for the benefit of the whole community in response to “was I elected to do what the people want or to govern well?” The answer truly is: “I was elected to do what the people want to the degree I can in a fair, equitable and responsible manner and I was elected to govern well – to ensure my community seeks, achieves and sustains a truly fulfilling future in which people take pride and satisfaction.”
read on....
How We Created Real Change in Bremerton
September 2008
Cary Bozeman
Mayor, City of Bremerton
When we came to Bremerton six years, ago the city had been in an economic downturn for the past twenty years. We had the lowest per-capita family income of the top fifty largest cities in the state, 60% of our school children qualified for the federal lunch program, and 60% of our homes were renter occupied. The city administration had financial challenges and the citizens were not in a happy mood. It was clear that real change had to occur and we needed to adopt some principles that would lead us to economic and social revitalization. Six years later, I am happy to report that we have turned things around with over 500 million dollars of outside investment in our downtown, our schools have passed three straight levies, the value of our real estate has gone up by 35%, and the city now has healthy reserves in all our accounts. We have brought real change to this community based on the following beliefs.
First, we had to become a smarter organization and focus in on the most important priority which was the revitalization of our downtown which had literally died when all the retail moved out of town to the Silverdale Mall. Our strategy was to consult with some really smart people on this issue, hire people who knew how to work with the private sector, and learn as much as we could about how to access the funding opportunities with the State and Federal Government. We hired a very smart person to be our Director of Economic Development who had worked in the private sector and we hired a lobbyist to work on our behalf in Olympia who had great knowledge of the funding opportunities at the State. In six months we had become much more informed on the issues of revitalization, had good smart people in place and understood what our number one priority was. We were ready to bring real change to our City.
Second, we began to believe and understand that we if we made good choices we would make real progress. If we continued to make bad choices we would go backwards. In other words we would be a product of our own choices and anything could be possible if we got smarter, better informed, had good people, and made the right choices. We did not have to remain in the same place we were two years ago and we believed that real change could and would occur. The challenge would be getting people out of their comfort zones and willing to take risk. There are always winners and losers on the side of change and some people feel safer with the status quo. We had to convince our people that we could be better and to uplift our standards at all levels even to the point of growing bigger and brighter hanging baskets in our downtown. We had to adopt a company philosophy that we could be better if we were willing to do things differently, improve our decision making, be better informed, and not be afraid to reach for higher standards. We also had to be willing to really listen to others and to each other and be able to give and receive honest feedback. We don’t improve unless we understand how others feel about us and we are strong enough to listen and have real dialogue on the important issues.
Third and most important, we had a vision of where we wanted to go by turning our downtown from a once retail center, into a new urban lifestyle center where people live and work and enjoy a diversity of art, music, food, and quality access to our wonderful waterfront. We created a six year revitalization plan that brought discipline to our vision and identified the redevelopment partners we would require in order to bring this change to our downtown. These partnerships were critical to our success and were built out of professional negotiation and trust building. Everyone had to win for it to work. Last but not least, we had to have leaders who believed in our goal and were passionate about getting the job done. We all had to believe we could leave it better than we found it and so far we have done that.
Thanks for taking the time to read these articles, I do hope it helps.
We are not alone in these tough economic times.
Karen, if it is too long feel free to send it to the free Ruston Blog.
ANNEXATION on my brain,
Anyway it's all the same.
Annexation is the only game,
Anyway it's all insane.
Why not have a high representative of the City of Tacoma attend a Ruston Council meeting and explain to them the meaning of NO thanks.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, not ever.
Post a Comment