For the past few months we’ve been discussing on occasion the strategic planning which the Council will finally undertake this week. Here are links to the previous discussions and related articles –
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Being more responsive and innovative
It’s a good thing that Lake Forest heads for an all-day Strategic Planning Workshop on Friday, but judging from the preliminary workbook prepared by staff and consultants, the workshop may be less than enlightening. Mostly it is a rehash of previous strategic planning workshops, along with a hodge-podge of data points put into something labeled “Environmental Scan” that doesn’t relate to anything else in the report. The end product seems to be a “Table of proposed goals and strategies” that doesn’t look very different from what we already have.
Without going through the myriad of problems inherent in the existing workbook, here are some of the issues not mentioned.
PROCESS
At our last City Council meeting, several Council members were critical of the staff report on hiring a company to get back utility overcharges. The first question, of course, is why it took 25 years for the City to figure out that we might be losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in overpayments on our utility bills. Since we are allowed by law to only go back 3 years, that’s more than 20 years of losses down the drain. What were previous Councils and staff doing?
More important, the report suggested that 3 companies were relatively similar in their suitability, but upon questioning from the Council, especially Councilman Robinson, it was apparent that only one company was qualified. Grave errors were being made by the staff in evaluating the other companies, and even worse, the errors themselves could be traced to a poor RFP. What’s wrong with our system when bad RFPs and bad reports go to the Council for decisions?
I’m reminded of the terrible RFP for waste management services, done a few years ago. That RFP was so bad that almost no company applied, and of the two companies that did apply, one refused to respond to several of the issues that really couldn’t be adequately addressed.
Bad reports and bad RFPs were common in the previous regime, but having them surface now is disappointing. Equally disappointing is the failure of the staff to address forward planning issues. We’re going to hire a new Sheriff to address our parking problems, yet to date we have not a single KPI (key performance indicator) to guide us in knowing whether or not adding $150,000 to our budget will be worthwhile. We already hired an animal control officer and they’ve been working for several months, and we don’t have a single data point to know what this person is accomplishing and whether or not it’s worth the investment.
I could continue, but it’s too depressing.
There are serious problems in the way we do business. They are systemic, long standing, and probably not limited to Lake Forest. Yet in a discussion of strategic planning, and how we should precede in the next 5 years, with so much on our plate already, an omission of assessing, evaluating, and making changes to our basic processes is an untenable omission from the agenda.
PRIORITIES
We have limited funds. Right now our bank accounts are flush, but in the next 2 to 3 years we will spend most of this building the new Civic Center and updating our parks. Going forward, how do we spend our money? What are the priorities for a city? Most of us would say that the main priorities are (1) Public Safety and (2) Public works (e.g., streets, parks). But beyond that, with requests that we spend our money in a host of areas, how do we allocate our limited budget?
Let’s look at parks (as an example)
How many parks do we have compared to other cities? How happy are people with the parks we have? Are our parks serving the function they should and will they meet the needs of our changing demographics? What does it cost for us to maintain our parks in their current condition? What are our future costs?
If we had answers to all those questions, which we don’t, we could consider whether or not we should “Develop Normandale Park” or “Design and construct Whispering Hills Park”. These items appear in the strategic planning workbook for consideration, yet we haven’t done the homework to determine whether or not we should do this, and whether or not we can afford it.
What about our community services programs? We're spending about $3,00,000 and collecting less than $1,000,000. Is that sustainable? With so many agencies offering courses, why are we in the business of competing with these agencies, and especially if we do it at a major loss? Maybe there are some courses not taught elsewhere that we believe our City would benefit from, but no one really knows.
Leaving aside these broad issues, tomorrow we’ll look at more mundane concerns not addressed in the workbook.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr. Jim Gardner is on the City Council for Lake Forest. You can check him out on LinkedIn and/or Facebook and you can share your thoughts about the City at Lake Forest Town Square on Facebook. His comments are not meant to reflect official City Policy.
Dr. Gardner has office hours every Tuesday from 4 pm to 6 pm at the City Hall. In addition, he holds a mini town meeting every quarter. The next meeting will be on Dec 2 at 2 pm at the El Toro Public Library.
