Mr. Williams noted that the Council had last discussed priorities on July 7.
Councilmember Wright had distributed a draft document based on the Colorado Springs format and based on the prior draft prepared by Councilmembers Seamens, Snipper and Clay.
Mr. Snipper said he would like to have a discussion about indicators. He said he felt strongly that the Council should focus on performance based indicators that tie into the way the budget is structured, rather than global indicators. He wanted a performance based budget, with indicators that tie to the function. For example, so many miles of roads to be paved, were they paved and how well?
Mr. Seamens said it is important to look at something that fits into the structure of the budget, at the department level. He suggested two or three indicators for each department to include priority things for the department and what is to be done in the coming year.
Mr. Williams said he did not want to get stuck in the weeds of the department level indicators. He said he wanted to start with the Council priorities and the overall view.
Mr. Robinson said he was interested in how the City interacts with jurisdictions outside our borders, how we do with Montgomery County and even Prince George’s County. How are we as a city doing, how our residents are doing, how are we relating to the outside world. He said he agreed with the three priorities and wanted the departments to think about what indicators would be helpful to the Council.
Mr. Wright said he agreed, but when trying to measure progress toward a goal it would be hard to specify only one department.
Mr. Williams said he did not want to get too hung up on departments. He said the Council needed to also think about community organizations and how the City partners with residents.
Mr. Snipper disagreed. He said performance measures would show if an activity was done and how well, rather than how we feel about it.
Ms. Clay asked the Council to focus on what it wanted to accomplish during the discussion.
Mr. Williams said he wanted the Council to develop priorities with a level of specificity so that the staff can come back to the Council with suggestions.
Mr. Wright suggested that the Council start with a focus on the three areas to get a common understanding of what they mean, and then discuss strategies and priority projects. He offered to pull together ideas and prepare a new draft.
Mr. Snipper agreed that the focus should be to refine the three priorities and develop a good sense of assumptions, and then to have the City Manager come back to the Council with a more concrete version.
Ms. Matthews said the key for her is to have a sense of the Council’s policy priorities and what success looks like.
Ms. Ludlow indicated that if the Council would agree on a desired outcome, it would be easier to identify what the staff should measure.
Mr. Seamens noted that some specific goals had been set out for the Recreation Department (at the meeting on July 30). He said he would like to do that for each department.
Ms. Clay commented on the sustainability assumptions on page 2 of the draft, related to the property tax rate and assessments. She noted the impact on affordable home ownership in the city.
The Council discussed the language of the three main priorities and agreed to make some changes in the language. The sustainability goal was revised to add community organizations and nonprofits as partners. The same change was made to the livable community goal. The livable community goal was revised to include language that the goal is a "vibrant, healthy and safe" community with "convenient transportation". Minor language changes were made to the engaged, responsive and service oriented goal as well.
Mr. Seamens asked how would the Council get from the priority document to budget formatting.
Mr. Wright suggested that identifying priority projects is the way to get to the budget, working with the City Manager on non-core service expenditures.
Mr. Seamens indicated that he wished to address core services as well, to have a higher vision but also have mainstream work that is goal driven also.
Ms. Ludlow stressed the importance of identification of what is success in the area of sustainability.
Ms. Matthews noted that the City can offer opportunities, but what residents do also has impacts. The plan needs to say how the City will facilitate that.
Mr. Robinson noted that for the City, going to 100% renewable energy would be good, but reducing the use of energy is good also. Leveraging what the City does, and working in partnership with others, can have a huge impact.
Ms. Matthews commented that it can be difficult always to know the cause and effect. For example, the outcome of the green building conference organized by the Housing and Community Development Department is not known. We won’t always be able to say one action caused another. She said that the resident survey will tell us how people feel about a project, but not why they feel it.
Mr. Seamens said he wanted some very specific indicators for budgetary purposes, which would be different from community indicators. He said, for example, the level of safety that people feel is not related to the budget.
Ms. Ludlow said the staff is evaluated on many things. She said the difference would be to have indicators that advance the Council’s goals.
Mr. Snipper stressed the importance of having indicators that the staff can feel it is able to accomplish.
Mr. Wright said he did not want to have too many indicators, because people will do what you measure. He said there need to be priorities.
The Council agreed to hold another discussion on September 15 to continue to talk about its priorities. Mr. Wright agreed to prepare a new draft based on Council comments.