Lavender Bird Shares Reflections on Brazil Street Response

The situation on Brazil Street is complicated and sensitive. With it still unfolding, I kept my initial comments brief and restrained to avoid politicizing an already traumatic situation. But I understand the desire for mayoral candidates to weigh in and share thoughts as an example of how we would handle a similar situation in the future.

I was involved in the early response on Brazil Street while still a member of the leadership team at City Hall. The moment we were made aware of the situation, we called on all resources available to respond. I was personally in communication with each affected family, available to them 24-hours a day, until my last day of work at the end of June. The residents of Brazil Street deserve our best and it is critical that our city leadership, including the Mayor’s office and our Board of Aldermen, work together to see this through. We must continue strategic and thoughtful solutions to find the best resolution for our residents.

Understandably, this continues to be a traumatic experience for the residents of Brazil Street and for our community. It is my expectation, not only as a mayoral candidate, but as a resident of this city, that we hold our leadership to the highest standard of operation in our response, through a process that is thorough, deliberate, and void of political pressures.

Emergency and crisis response can be one of the toughest tests of leadership. Leaders must prioritize the safety of residents, respond to the media, inform the public, manage emotions, minimize financial risk, follow protocol and policy, remain steady, be available, learn and adapt, and ensure our residents know we are working on their behalf.

While facts are still being discovered in this specific situation, we can already begin to learn and improve for the future. With strong leadership and strategic management, and by leveraging available resources, these are a few improvements I would make immediately:

• Create a culture across all city departments where employees know how to spot a potential or current major issue and know how to bring it up the chain of command.
• Establish a coordinated Emergency Management Response Team with clarified roles and responsibilities. While we have dedicated professionals leading each individual department, the lack of a coordinated response costs valuable time in an actual crisis.
• Designate one staff member to serve as a Public Information Officer, handling all internal and external communications through the crisis. Prioritizing communication ensures consistent and accurate information shared among all stakeholders.
• Create a clear understanding of roles and responsibilities between our city leadership and our elected officials. We count on members of the Board of Aldermen to be advocates for their constituents and we need to work together to solve problems.
• Put in place policies, created with community input and approved by our Board of Aldermen, that define our financial response in the case of emergencies. This must include flexibility to support residents in the immediate time of the crisis, deliberate use of insurance policies to minimize financial risk, and protocols to responsibly guide what is often an emotional response.
• Maximize our recently purchased emergency notification system to communicate strategically with residents. We also need a translation service that can be on-call in the case of a crisis.
• Put together a clear and transparent plan for proactive replacement of aging city infrastructure, within the financial resources available, to minimize the possibility of this happening again.
• Review our response after every crisis and learn from it. The only way we can improve is to hold ourselves accountable, own our challenges, ask stakeholders and those impacted for feedback, adapt response policies and procedures, train staff as needed, and better prepare for the next time.

As your next Mayor, while we hope to avoid anything like this happening again, I will ensure that we are well-prepared to respond and I will bring strong, well-informed, and steady leadership to any emergency or crisis situation.