Strategic Planning Tuesday Night

Last year we held a Strategic Planning workshop that was not merely boring, it was unproductive and wasted a lot of time and energy (Click Here) Because that workshop accomplished nothing, we have to start once again from scratch to produce a 5-year plan. I’ve changed the format of both the meeting and the materials, and I hope that our next effort is more successful.

The meeting is scheduled for Tuesday night, Feb 27, at 6:30 pm, at the City Hall. The meeting will be broadcast live on Facebook and people will be given the opportunity to comment and ask questions.

You can view the meeting agenda on the city’s website (Click Here).

We are in much better shape now to conduct the workshop than we were 5 months ago, thanks largely to the enormous gains we’ve made in the past few months. We are well on our way to re-shape the way that government works, and that is a key to furthering making plans and achieving goals. Some of the positive changes we’ve made include –

• New campaign finance legislation to reduce the impact of special interests that often work against good planning.
• Creation of an Ethic Committee to insure that our officials act in the best interests of the people and do what they promised to do.
• Creation of a Traffic and Parking Commission that will deal adequately with two of our major problems.
• Aggressively promoting ribbon cuttings so that our businesses thrive and we create more jobs and increase our sales tax revenue.
• Creating Mayor’s Councils for HOAs and Businesses so that we are more able to move nimbly.
• Creating a new mobile app that will open up communication between residents and the city.
• Creation of a City Manager Report so that we can more effectively manage our many projects.
• Creation of a Legal Issues report so that we can more effectively manage our legal projects.
• Reliance on ad hoc committees for complex issues (e.g., relations with SVUSD, business development)
• Better KPIs as well as the creation of a KPI dashboard

With these changes we are better positioned to manage the next 5 years. That being said, there are several challenges we face –

• Police Contract – Keeps increasing at 5% per year or more, threatening to gobble up more and more of our operating budget (It is now nearly 40%). Along with 13 other cities we commissioned a study of how to decrease the costs of the OCSD police contract without compromising the quality of service. That report will come back to us in July and hopefully we can make a dent in the costs. Depending on the complexity of the report and recommendations, I may ask for an ad hoc Public Safety Committee to spend some time on this issue.
• Recession – Every so often the macro-economy goes into recession. We are overdue, and in the next 5 years we must anticipate a slowdown. This can impact property tax revenues as well as sales tax revenues, as well as development fees. Most of our expenses remain constant, so a recession that cuts revenues has a big impact on our balance sheet.
• Maintaining the New Amenities – For many years Lake Forest had one of the worst records in terms of amenities for our residents. We had no civic center, senior center, sports park, dog park, performing arts center, etc. Our maintenance operating budget was meager because we provided so little. A few years ago we built the sports park, and maintaining the park is costing more than they anticipated at the time. Now we are building a $70 million civic center, more dog parks, upgrades to our city parks, etc. Our new maintenance costs are going to soar even if our projections are correct. What happens if they aren’t correct?
• Increased Expectations – Our residents are expecting better services from the City. To some extent, better services can be provided as we improve our management process, but there is a limit to how much more we can squeeze. At what point must we adjust our expectations?

Coming up with the right plan will be difficult but I believe we are up to the task.

See you Tuesday.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Jim Gardner is on the City Council for Lake Forest where he serves as Mayor. 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 Twitter handle is @DrJimGardner. 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 town hall meeting every quarter. The next meeting will be May 17 at 7 pm at the Lake 1 Clubhouse (Ridge Route).