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01/23/1995 CITY COMMISSION SPECIAL MEETING Strategic Planning Session January 23, 1995 The City Commission of the City of Clearwater met in a strategic planning session at the Solid Waste Complex Conference Room, Monday, January 23, 1995 at 9:00 a.m., with the following members present: Rita Garvey Mayor/Commissioner Fred A. Thomas Vice-Mayor/Commissioner Richard Fitzgerald Commissioner Sue A. Berfield Commissioner Arthur X. Deegan, II Commissioner Also present: Elizabeth M. Deptula City Manager Kathy S. Rice Deputy City Manager William C. Baker Assistant City Manager (arrived 9:05 a.m.) Pamela K. Akin City Attorney Cynthia E. Goudeau City Clerk The Mayor called the meeting to order. The City Manager announced there was a need for a special closed meeting regarding union bargaining. Consensus of the Commission was to set this meeting for January 30, 1995, immediately after the regular Commission meeting. Ms. Deptula reviewed the meeting of January 12th stating the Planning Team completed planning to plan. She reviewed the next steps to be taken stating that today a values scan would be done. She pointed out at the last meeting decisions were not made regarding how to tell people about the strategic planning sessions and what is being done. She suggested a letter be sent to subgroups of the stakeholders telling them the Commission has embarked on this process and is asking for help. She distributed a draft letter. She stated her recommendation is to send out this letter and then a questionnaire would be sent to certain individuals a couple of weeks later. It was suggested the letter be specific that a questionnaire would be sent. A question was raised regarding whether or not the letter should be that specific as all recipients of the letter would not be receiving a questionnaire. It was agreed the letter should remain generic but state that input would be requested and may include a questionnaire, a town meeting, etc. Additional adjustments were made to the letter and it was agreed all strategic planning team members would sign the letter. Discussion ensued regarding to whom the letter should be sent. It was agreed the letter should be sent to the employee stakeholders with it being indicated that the process should be completed sometime during 1995. It was decided that the taxpayers and citizens would be notified of the process by use of the bulletin board on the city's cable channel 35. It was indicated this could also be played during City Commission recesses. Business people will be notified via the letter to Chamber individuals, their regional councils, the Downtown Clearwater Association and the Downtown Development Board. A question was raised regarding whether or not religious organizations should be added to the list of stakeholders. It was agreed this should be done. The City Manager reiterated the business stakeholders would be contacted through the Chamber and partnership members and there would be an attempt to identify other business people to notify. The public will be contacted through letters to each of the homeowners associations. The school system will not be asked to participate at this point. Letters would be sent to individuals in the health care community. It was agreed that in order to contact governmental agencies, the City Manager and Mayor of the surrounding jurisdictions will be sent a letter. It was pointed out that Belleair should be added to the list of surrounding municipalities. Fred Marquis, Pinellas County Administrator and agency directors of elected regional boards will also be sent a letter. A question was raised regarding whether or not the City's Advisory Boards should be requested to provide input. It was agreed a letter would be sent to the Chairperson of each Advisory Board. It was further determined that the following groups do not need to be contacted for input at this time: the next generation, vendors, customers, grantors, and regulators. Discussion ensued regarding whether or not lobbyists should be included and what that term entailed. Commissioner Thomas felt that individuals who are commonly at Commission and other Board meetings on behalf of others should be included in this group. It was the consensus of the Commission that the lobbyists group will be used as a focus group at a later time but will not receive a letter for now. There was consensus the media be included in the current group of contacts but religious groups would be contacted at a later date. A question was raised regarding how much property is owned by religious organizations throughout the entire City. Ms. Deptula indicated she will add this to the data being gathered by department directors at this time. Ms. Deptula reiterated the letter referenced will be sent out within the next few days and the questionnaire will follow in a couple of weeks. Further reviewing the last meeting, Ms. Deptula indicated the strategic planning team assessed their readiness to do strategic planning. Potential problem areas identified were the City's history of strategic planning, communication, reward for down board thinking, the organizational culture, and a willingness to take risk. Issues still open for determination throughout the process are: change in the format of the town meetings, how to publish the completed plan and to market it, how to encourage calculated risk taking, how to engender a proactive mind set with the homeowners associations and legislature. The City Manager also pointed out a memo had been distributed by Commission Thomas requesting that special events be included as a topic in the strategic planning process. The purpose of today's meeting is to do a value scan. Ms. Deptula indicated this will determine what is important to the organization and what its deep seated beliefs are. She stated this can be a sensitive issue and there is a need to be totally honest or the wrong tone will be set for the strategic planning process. She stated there is a need to reconcile the different values of the team members; the values of the organization as a whole need to be determined through the strategic planning team's perception and information from the organization; the organization's operational philosophy needs to be determined; the organizational culture needs to be identified, and stakeholders' values need to be determined. Commissioner Thomas suggested the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights be the starting point for establishing values. The City Manager indicated the team will get into philosophical discussions and will need to explore actions and behaviors. The City Manager indicated the values scan will indicate whether or not the top management walks the talk, in other words, does its values match its actions. She stated culture is to an organization what personality is to an individual and again stated we need to determine if the stated values match behavior. She distributed a case study regarding Action Company and Multi Company and asked the strategic planning team members indicate the assumptions they thought were a part of these companies' cultures. The Action Company was seen as a very unstructured, informal, risk taking company while the Multi Company was seen as very structured and more conservative. Commissioner Thomas felt that as one of the companies was a European company and the laws were different, that accounted for the differences in their underlying assumptions. Commissioner Deegan stated he would not put too much stock in European versus American as he has been in companies that have the varying attitudes throughout the company. Regarding the assumptions about human nature in the City's organization, Ms. Rice indicated that when she first started working here, she noticed many attitudes were: keep your head down, do not take risks, cover yourself, the organization owes an individual a living, was rule driven, and status is everything. Mayor Garvey pointed out that when awards are given to staff members, there is always a listing of when they started and promotions. She questioned why. She stated she was told that the individuals liked to know from where they started. Commissioner Fitzgerald expressed concerns that it sounds as if they are saying something is wrong with listing a person's starting date, promotions, etc. He stated that allows a sense of belonging which is not all bad. Commissioner Thomas stated he felt the City was a pension and security driven work force with a strict structure. The Mayor stated this is the same thing for organizations such as GTE and Honeywell. Commissioner Thomas agreed this was true for Fortune 500 companies but smaller companies do not have this same attitude. The City Attorney stated she has only been here four months but sees a perception that people will only make as much effort as required. She stated this is an untrue assumption. She stated she came from Tampa's government which is similar to the picture painted by Ms. Rice. Commissioner Berfield expressed concerns there is a majority of the citizens who do not think City employees give an eight hour day and think they are lazier than most workers and have a cushy job. She stated this is an assumption regarding government workers. Mr. Baker indicated the City has always had to fight with the lazy government worker perception. He stated Clearwater has more and more employees who recognize they have good jobs and are adequately paid. He stated the City of Clearwater is not like either the Multi Company or Action Company but is somewhere in between. He stated a City of Clearwater employee is not prevented from standing out. Commissioner Thomas stated that as a outsider, he had a totally different perception of city employees. He stated he has found them to be better, with a higher level of competency than he thought. He stated there is a problem with perception versus reality. Commissioner Fitzgerald questioned how to change the perception. Commissioner Thomas indicated some of this perception comes from the first line that interfaces with the public. He cited the example of when the post office increased its postal rate, they did not print enough 3 cent stamps and the Downtown Clearwater Post Office closed because they could not meet the demand. Commissioner Deegan stated that his assumptions for Clearwater were that people needed security, they resist taxation, and do not care to get involved. He felt change is taking place in the city government from previous administrations where the attitude was do not speak unless spoken to, etc. He said there is now a different feeling and willingness to speak up. Commissioner Thomas stated he would hate it as an employee if he had to work under the perception that people will disrespect your work no matter what you do. He stated that is a terrible thing and must be done away with. Mayor Garvey stated she felt that in working with city employees, she had found alot of honesty, truth, cooperation, and hard work. She did not believe the general public thinks that city employees are not hard working. She stated decisions are made slowly and carefully after much staff work. She stated the City of Clearwater has a strong organization and a good management team. She felt the City should be allowed to use its assets. The City Manager stated she appreciated the comments but she questioned the response from the level below the strategic planning team. Mayor Garvey stated she felt that was why it was important to get department directors and employee input from the beginning of the process. Mr. Baker pointed out that the City of Clearwater has employees working all over town and it only takes one or two "bad eggs" to spoil everything. He cited an example of a TV station following Tampa work crews and only televising the ones that were not working. Commissioner Thomas agreed with Commissioner Deegan that things have changed in the management and the employees were more free to speak out. The City Manager indicated the team needed to think about organizational culture, who the heros are, the rights and rituals, etc. She indicated one of the heros is Tony Shoemaker, a former City Manager, that many employees still speak about in positive terms. She stated regarding rights and rituals, longevity in the organization is rewarded and there may need to be some change in that. She stated there used to be company picnics, baseball teams, but that no longer exists. She also stated there was a network and there are war stories, storytellers and structures. The meeting recessed from 10:40 a.m. to 10:50 a.m. The City Manager distributed a personal values worksheet and asked the team members to complete it. The worksheet included the following values: getting along with colleagues, earning/maintaining a professional reputation, preserving the environment, achieving business goals, respecting diverse points of view, having leisure time for family or fun, achieving material wealth, contributing to society, accomplishing personal goals, helping others to empower themselves. Each of these values was ranked on a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 was the most important and 10 the least but the team members. The results were posted on a board. Contributing to society was ranked fairly high among the team members and material wealth was rated relatively low. It was pointed out that empowering others and professional reputation had widespread rankings. Ms. Rice thought it was interesting that meeting business goals was not ranked that highly. It was pointed out there was a wide span of ranking for getting along and yet accepting diverse views had been ranked fairly high by all team members. Commissioner Thomas stated he felt there were strong common issues among the team. The City Manager indicated after the discussions are finished, the team members may want to re-rank their items. She stated it is important to know how others feel. A personal values statement worksheet was handed out and each team member completed it. The results of that worksheet provided rankings for the following values: political, aesthetic, social, theoretical, and economic. All team members, upon completing the worksheet and scoring the results, ranked social either 1 or 2. The City Manager stated this sheet reflects at least what the team members think they are. An organizational norms opinionaire was distributed. This is to find out what the team members think the organizational culture is. She stated the team will then get input from the employees to see if the profiles match. Concerns were expressed the Commission does not have contact with many of the rank and file employees. It was stated this is the team members' impression of the organization. The results of this exercise was to have a ranking for 10 scales, organizational/personnel pride, performance/excellence, team work/communication, leadership/supervision, profitability/cost effectiveness, colleague/associate relations, customer/client relations, innovativeness/creativity, training/development, and candor/openness. Percentage scores were developed by each team member and then plotted on a graph. The Mayor indicated she had only one scale that went into the negative side and that was openness and candor. Commissioner Deegan stated he had organizational/personnel pride, performance/excellence, team work/communication and candor/openness in the negative. Mr. Baker questioned how deep into the negative side Commissioner Deegan's profile went. Commissioner Deegan indicated it was 50% for the performance value. The City Manager questioned if Commissioner Deegan would know a reason for that assumption. Commissioner Deegan stated it was his contacts with the unions, that they do not support differences in work. Mr. Baker indicated all of his values were on the positive side of the graph. He stated he tended to discount the selfish elements in the work force. Commissioner Thomas indicated he had a negative indicator for all the values except one was at zero. He stated he felt that may be because he is considered a conduit for the negativity in the organization. Commissioner Fitzgerald indicated all of his values were positive with the exception of candor/openness. Commissioner Berfield indicated she had negative indicators for organizational/personnel pride and performance/excellence. She had innovativeness/creativity at zero and the others were in the positive range. The City Manager stated she had some in the positive sums and some in negative. Commissioner Deegan questioned if any were above 50%. The City Manager, Deputy City Manager and Assistant City Manager indicated they all had greater than 50% rankings for colleagues/associate relations. The City Manager questioned if the team felt there would be a benefit to asking department heads and division heads to do the organizational norms opinionaire. It was indicated it was felt this would be a benefit. Commissioner Thomas questioned whether or not this should be administered all the way through the organization. The City Manager indicated that when they do the employee satisfaction questionnaire, that some of this information will be forthcoming. It was recommended that the organizational norms opinionaire not be done for the rank and file until the contracts are settled. The City Manager indicated that at the next meeting a values scan of the stakeholders will be done and then the team will begin writing mission statements. She stated also at the next meeting, the questionnaire to be sent out to the stakeholders will be refined. The meeting adjourned at 12:20 p.m.