City Council Priorities for 2023

By Lenore Herskovitz

On January 28, 2023 City Council held their Annual Planning Meeting to establish their strategic goals and priorities for the upcoming year. Two facilitators from Point b(e) Strategies assisted in this process. Their completed report is provided in the PDF at the end of this piece. The last part of the facilitators’ document requests that each councilor set up a rank order of goals based on his/her perception of the needs of their communities. Once the goals were ranked, the final compilation would be presented to the public. The individual rankings were  done through Survey Monkey and the results were unavailable to the public. However, through several CORA requests and phone calls I was able to obtain the City’s final report. An email from staff directed me to a new website with instructions to click on each goal to show tasks and status (see https://lakewood.clearpointstrategy.com/)

OBSERVATIONS FROM CITY WEBSITE GOALS

Re: Secure, Inclusive, and Affordable Neighborhoods

Task: Add inclusionary zoning to an upcoming Housing Policy Commission agenda and then follow-up with a study session.

FACT: Last spring this topic was scheduled for discussion by the Development Dialogue Committee. The day before the meeting, the majority of City Council members voted to disband the committee claiming it was redundant because the Housing Policy Commission would be working on this. To this date, inclusionary zoning has been ignored while the Commission spent the past year focused on the recently passed Short Term Rental policy.

Re: Effective, Accountable, Transparent, and Data Informed Government

Task: The City Manager will provide a quarterly update regarding City Council goals.

Status: Completed

Although the website says this task is completed, several councilors that I spoke to were unaware of any update. These quarterly reports should be specific about progress, delays or stagnation regarding the priorities and need to be made public.

Task: Continue efforts to improve accessibility of the website and meeting notes.

Status: In progress

It should be noted that in spite of the request to consolidate websites to minimize confusion, the City chose to create a new site to post this report on priorities. Without assistance from staff no one would even know this exists. This new site does provide a history of goals from previous years. There is a pattern of completion when it comes to commissioning studies but less success when it comes to implementing the results. Visible, measurable changes often only reach the status of “in progress”. If City Council is persistent maybe that can change.