Well, good morning, everybody.

Before we get into the heavy lifting of um strategic planning, visioning, uh I want to share something with you that I I heard many years ago, and I find it helpful.

And you know, I I don't know about a lot of things about how cities work.

You know, I haven't worked for a city, I've been doing this a long time, but my craft is facilitation, not knowing how a city operates.

But I have learned a few things through the years, because I'm old, about how you build a sense of community.

And we talked about that a little bit yesterday.

Everybody cares about that.

I hear it all the time.

And one of the things I've I've come to believe with all my heart is that building community, whether your city is, you know, growing rapidly or just growing kind of average, is really not, it's not a program.

It's really not a program, it's all about leadership.

And we said yesterday, everything rises or falls with leadership.

And there's a book that that I wish I'd have written this book, or at least the title.

It it's it is uh uh leadership is language.

It's a really good book, but this doesn't come from that book, but it's true.

What leaders say matter?

What you say, what you say, what you say, it matters.

And so I want to share something with you.

Um it's not original with me, but it's five phrases that are the most powerful phrases you can say as a leader that build community, and we can use our hand to remember what they are.

The first one is or going into sending order number five is how can I help you?

That's a really important phrase for a leader to know.

As you're talking with people, talking with each other, how can I help you?

And then just fold your your their thumb down, and the next one is got in a contraction, but I'm glad you're here.

That's really important words to say as a leader.

I'm glad you're here.

It's welcoming.

The third one, I bet you can get three words.

What are they?

I love you.

I'm sorry, I'll stop.

You may not have to say it with words, but you gotta say it with your life.

Whenever I started this work, I moved from being a full-time pastor, I'd always had one foot in leadership development and one in strategic training, planning, one foot in ministry, and so I just kind of swapped.

And I I 15 years ago, I resigned from my church, um, became a chaplain for the fire department, unpaid, and started spending all my time doing leadership development.

So I always say about myself, I used to get paid to be good, now I'm just good for nothing.

So there you go.

But I realize I gotta find a way to express for myself, this won't for anybody else's for me, what my life is about.

And and I took some stuff from here and there, and I came up with a mission statement for my life that I use in every setting.

Uh and here it is.

My purpose is to enlarge the lives of others through encouragement, love, and truth.

And those words are in the right order.

So if you come at it with truth first, you may know a lot, but people don't care what how much you know unless they know how much you care, right?

So you can't really lead with truth no matter how convinced you are that you know something.

And to your point, if you lead with love, that's a little icky for us.

Like that's a little bit too much too fast.

But I found this out.

Not being not using flattery, but concern, nobody cares, you know, that you give them encouragement.

Nobody resents encouragement.

Everybody needs encouragement.

I've never heard anybody say, I get too much encouragement.

You know, I don't want to, I mean, that's just not happening, you know.

I mean, police in Davenport aren't pulling people over and saying, hey, I just want you to know.

I watched that right-hand turn, it was the best one I've ever seen.

Way to go.

We're not doing that, right?

Nobody gets too much encouragement.

But people need courage put into them.

We all do because courage leaks.

We've all, you know, we we try this, we do hard jobs, you do hard jobs, and your courage, it drops.

And we need people to put courage back into us.

And here's what I found.

If you'll focus on encouraging people, not flattering them, but finding ways that you you give put courage back into them.

Over time, you know what'll happen?

A relationship will develop.

A friendship will develop.

And it's not unlike love.

So for me, those words are important.

To enlarge the lives of others through encouragement, love, and truth.

So that's why I don't make for saying when I know someone I work with them.

I love you.

I mean, I don't love you like I love my wife, but come on, man.

I love you.

I care about you.

It's okay to say that.

Here's number two.

Two words.

You know what?

Can you think of what they are?

Thank you.

Thank you.

That's right.

That's right.

You get the A.

That leads us to the last one.

And it's the most important one of all.

Anyone know what it is?

Is it just one word you said?

It's one word.

Respect.

No, that's a good one.

But that's not it.

Ready for it?

We.

People don't start feeling like they believe until long after they feel like they belong.

And if you want to build a community that's growing in concentric circles, you gotta remember those five phrases.

How can I help you?

I'm glad that you're here.

I'm glad you're here.

I love you.

Even if you don't say it with words, communicate.

By the way, this is not a leadership hack.

I don't I don't want really big on leadership hacks.

Because leadership hacks sound to me like tricks, right?

Like, oh, here's a trick I got.

You learn tricks in the trade.

I do that as a facilitator.

But but leadership should not be submitted, subjected to hacks.

It should be genuine.

It should be it should be real.

It may be practices is what I like the word.

Thank you.

And we and if you'll use those words and if you'll teach the people that you connect with and work with those words, they you will see in concentric circles, community with unity developing.

Because we always want to feel like we belong.

Alright, so that's that's the message.

All right, now here's what I got.

We've got if I'm remembering right, four of you are new on the council.

Is that right?

Did I get that right?

Who who are you?

Let raise your hand if you're new.

One, two, okay.

Not the mayor.

One, your number one, who's the next one?

Two, three, four.

All right.

So you're group one, your group two, your group three, your group four.

Okay, now what we're doing is we're gonna divide up into um four groups.

We'll have three groups that have three people, and two one group that has two people, and that two will be with the mayor and somebody else.

So who has been besides the four, who have been on the council the um the shortest amount of time besides the four and the mayor that we just came up with.

I got two of them.

Uh, three of them.

Okay, well, that won't work then.

All right, so let's do this.

Ben, we're gonna put you weren't one of the four, were you?

No.

No, we're gonna put you and the mayor, y'all are gonna be a group.

Okay.

All right, so then let's see.

We're gonna do you be one, two.

You're new.

You're new.

You were one of those.

Three, four, one, two.

All right.

So here's what we're gonna do.

I want my ones right here.

I want my twos where Jade is right here, or my threes here, and there's a two, probably over here.

Yeah, been you over here.

All right, so so what worked out.

We'll have one one, two, three, four.

You need this when you get there, I'll tell you what you're doing.

Okay, so here's what I want you to do.

This is the hard work.

As a group of three and two in one case, what I want you to do is come up with as a group, your five top strategic priorities.

All right, Mark, come up here and put it here, and I promise police force this won't hurt your screen.

I've done a lot of things wrong, but I've never hurt a screen.

Just put it up there, don't like put it too hard.

There you go.

Alright, let's give them our attention.

Walk us through it, Mark.

So we bowled out our five priorities to fix infrastructure.

We thought that was very important that we get our streets and sewers and all those things where we want to do.

We want to have grow economy.

We want it smart growth.

We want to grow our economy that everyone is being lifted up.

We want to attract new talent.

We want to be a community where people say, hey, this is a great place to live.

I want to move my business here.

I want to move my family here so that we can be in a great place.

Prioritize public safety.

This is not just uh police and fire, but it's making sure that our communities are safe, making sure that we're taking care of our homeless, making sure that when people come to our community, they feel a sense of of calm and peace when they when they arrive here.

And then we want to create world class destinations.

We want people to think when they think of data port, think of oh, yeah, this is where that is at, or this is where we can do this at.

Um and so I think we're uh on the pathway of getting there, but I think there's more work to be done.

All right, good job.

Give them a hand.

Yeah.

All right.

This group, if you will come and put yours right beside it, and um, are you the presenter?

Yes, yes.

Okay, he's the writer and the presenter.

He's the brain trust.

He's the man with the plan for Dabbingport.

Here we go.

Okay, here we go.

That's all right, of course.

Well, we're on the same page as far as infrastructure, invest in infrastructure, uh create community, grow tax base, increase affordable housing.

Try to get in there and expand development.

So I think we're sort of on the same page with a number of things here.

Ah, yeah.

All right, good job.

Give them a hand.

Now let's let's let's see if we can work through this before we we take a short break.

What's on there in both groups?

And I'm just gonna write nouns here.

One I see is infrastructure, right?

Okay, tax base.

What's another one?

Like growth economics.

I mean, I don't know how you yeah.

So so really grow the economy and grow the tax base.

Those are essentially the same, correct?

But by the way, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I'm not beyond it.

So if you feel like I am, call time and say, wait, that's not right.

You won't hurt my feelings.

I've got eight grandchildren and and one on the way, so you know, like it's okay.

Yes, like what would the other group distinguish the difference between expand development and grow tax space?

Yeah, that's that's a good question.

Grow tax base, I thought was the increased population.

Okay.

Oh, how it's a rooftops.

To me.

Okay.

Okay.

And grow tax base to me is your attract new talent.

That's my opinion.

Well, it's and those like we talked last night that are coming here to spend money here.

So we're expanding the taxes that we're bringing in, whether it's local option sales tax or hotel.

Yep, all of the above.

So when you said expand development, let me make sure I'm getting this clear.

Were you thinking of economic development?

Yes.

Okay.

So can we put that as one of them?

Because you've got this grow economy is economic development.

Yes, right?

Okay.

Now, what we're gonna do, just so as a as a reminder, is once we kind of get set on these five or six if we have two mayor priorities, then we'll take a short break, then we'll come back and we're gonna go deeper with each one of these so that you start giving the staff some more definition of what you and we'll actually bring staff in to help you with that part as we're writing objectives or milestones.

All right, so we got two infrastructure, economic development.

What else is common?

Uh I mean that I don't know if attract new talent slash create community is kind of aligned.

I I would I think they kind of feel aligned, but public safety stretch.

Can't create community.

Okay, I was kind of connecting the world class destinations with create community.

Okay.

Is that not right?

Okay, I think create community fits better with safety.

Yeah, Jason.

Would you say community fits better with public safety?

It's making so you got actually three.

Create world class destinations, attract new talent, and create community.

Can all be would it would it be?

Would it be encompassing enough if we said safe community?

Volunteer US.

And then you can write your your subjectives fall under that.

I think we want to, I think we want to tell you what we meant by create communities.

Okay, yeah.

Uh sense of belonging in Davenport.

It's that we, when we think about Davenport, everybody sees it as we, our city.

Um we trust our government, we're involved, we're a part of this city.

When somebody asks us about Davenport, our city is, you know, in insert the positive adjective.

Yeah.

Yep.

That was our thought.

So that's like that's an aspiration, right?

Yeah, it is.

We do all the other.

It's the big picture.

We'll have that.

Yeah.

Okay.

One fails, the all fail.

It's catalytic, certainly.

Catalytic.

Because you get that, other things happen.

Right.

So I'll call this group one, group two.

Group one, are you good with with putting that in there?

And does any of yours kind of fit with that?

I think if you create community, then you're gonna attract new talent, right?

And it's kind of the that we, right?

I want to be a part of that.

Yeah.

You gotta feel like what before you belong, or what uh belong before you feel like you believe.

So I guess then if you wouldn't create community, I think attract new talent could fall under there, world-class destinations can fall, because all those things would be objectives under there.

Yeah.

Okay.

So I'm just gonna go with the create community.

Well, if I can have two around here, you see people wearing lots of Iowa shirts, whether that Iowa Hawkeye community.

So maybe we have more Davenport shirts.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I say that Tennessee back then.

Livability.

Uh this is the one where we're the affordability.

Yes.

Yes.

Yeah, I think so.

I mean, yeah.

It certainly, you know, conditions.

I know homelessness is a thing you're very concerned about and should be.

And and I think that's an objective maybe that fits under there.

Could be your own, it could be its own priority.

I'm not trying to say it shouldn't be.

But okay, so I'm gonna put a line for the ones I think we've kind of already addressed.

Not that I'm saying that they don't matter.

But they're case.

Um infrastructure we've already said about, we've kind of always said that.

Grow tax base.

I mean that's economic.

That's economic development.

Oh no.

No, y'all say it's not because you're talking about population and everything else.

Well, I think expand development is our expand development is under the grow economy.

Talk about then the grow tax base.

Is that just higher population?

And people spending money here.

Okay.

Because they have local option sales tax, so you're bringing in people that don't live here, but they're spending their dollars here.

Okay.

It is.

I think part of that fits under economic development.

Part of it is sort of fiscal policy.

Um, right?

Of like how you attract how you use your tax revenue, how you policy for fees and so forth.

So let me took it.

I took it as expand development as to spread the development, you know, bring it in and spread it throughout the city.

Yeah.

What I got out of it.

Make the whole whole city thrive, the entire city.

Right.

Which is I think that's gotta be one of your uh objectives under economic development.

Whole holistic whole city.

Okay, so we got three.

I I think number six on our list might have been uh reduced crime, so that would have fit in with that prioritize public safety.

Okay.

Do we need that?

Let's let's take that, John.

Do we need one on public safety?

Since we already have community, or does it fit under community?

And I don't know, or not I'm beyond saying now.

I think the this is more of an optics perspective, I think, but we've got infrastructure on there, right?

We're not putting infrastructure on under a create community.

You could potentially, but we're not, because we're saying it's a huge priority, like should public safety be that priority too instead of a bullet point under a create community.

What's this group feel?

I mean, I'm all for public safety.

I mean, let's do it.

I mean, and if we look at our like every two years we have a citizen survey, that's always top of the survey from our constituents' public safety, it's infrastructure.

So I mean I think go ahead, explain why we really didn't talk about it so much this this go around.

Yeah, so uh on our side, the reason we didn't have it is because it it hasn't been the pressing issue that it was five or six years ago, which is a which is a positive.

Yeah, um, but certainly there's that you you don't take your foot off the pedal either, right?

You don't want to take uh you know stop focusing on something because it's it's better and you want it to continue.

Um the thing I was going to ask is we're we're essentially recreating our operational pillars here.

So tell me what the difference is between our six operational pillars and what we're listing on this uh on this board for the next two years.

I think that's that's a great question, and I think it's a little murky, just honestly, but I think I would say your operational pillars are a little bit above all of these.

So nothing that you say are our strategic priorities for the next three years should be in conflict with any of those operational pillars.

Yeah, and and if you don't put public safety on the top five, it's not as if public safety isn't going to be one of our six operational pillars that we know we have to fund and do well, right?

Um but do we have when you take us down to the next level, right?

Because we're gonna start to get more granular, okay, and infrastructure, what are the three things you want to do, et cetera.

Um, right?

Are there three initiatives in public safety that we really want to focus on in the next term or not?

That that's my that's my question.

That's the right question.

I think when you look at affordable housing, I think affordable housing has been one, and if you couple it with homeless homelessness, it's something that we're getting uh hit on by the public pretty hard of you need to do something about this.

I think when you drill that down one step, you are going to get three or four different things that we can have staff do in the next two years.

And to me, that's the difference here is do you have some actionable things as you drill down that you want staff to do in our next term?

Yeah, I think that's well said, and you you know, just what you're saying, you kind of tie it back to these pressing problems.

What's the pressing problem that you feel like we need to address?

So, one of the things that we had, and create world class destinations, um all of what you said is fiscal responsibility, homelessness, affordable housing.

We we have to have fiscal responsibility to continue to give these organizations who are more professional.

Um that is what they do for homelessness.

That is what they do for housing.

The city does give funds, so that that is a fiscal responsibility that we that we need to pay attention to.

I that's a good point.

I think one thing you could could do is you know, put housing there, and fiscal responsibility might be, even though yes, it's a overarching thing, it might be one of your objectives because you're saying how you want to address affordability and homelessness.

And I know those are in some ways we were talking about this last night, two different issues, but they're tied together.

So anyway, that's a thought.

Mayor?

Would it be appropriate?

Like we're I don't want to say we're stuck, but we're kind of you know thinking uh about this.

Like staff have any epiphany.

You can ask.

Are you seeing something like why don't you just do this?

I don't know.

If you don't, that's fine.

I guess then we'll hear your thoughts while you're there.

I I think it'll shake out in the next session.

Okay.

So let me ask this group.

Are you good?

Kyle made a really good argument there.

Are you good if we move um housing over to this list and make it its own one of your four one of your five priorities?

Yeah, yeah.

We're all for that, both games.

All right.

Um disagree with that?

I don't think so, right?

Okay.

All right.

Now, so there's nothing in law that says there have to be five.

If if we've got four and they're good ones, we can stop.

But we've got, you know, to your point, Kyle, there's no need in just listing it if we're not feel driven by it.

There's four.

Do we need to put public safety on there?

Are we good?

We're saying that's a part of our operational pillars.

It's not gonna go away.

It's not like we're not gonna have a fire department, police department.

Um, so these are your priorities.

You're saying if you're saying in the next three years, though, we are they're not fully staffed in terms of up to the maximum number of sworn officers.

That's priority.

We are having our our chief has retired, so we need to find a new chief of police, which should be a top priority, no different than it was finding our city administrator.

So if we're looking at it from the perspective of top priorities of in the next two to three years, absolutely, because we want to make sure that though that's taken care of.

And I mean, we have four good ones, and we have room for one more.

I don't see why we wouldn't that list public safety prioritizing that.

And so I agree with them.

Yeah, that should be added.

We're good, you agree with that?

Yeah, I I agree with it.

The other thing we've got a problem with in this city is people run the lights, run the stop signs, and speeding.

So, yes, I'm sorry about that.

They got those little cabinets now.

All right, so not in any order, and by the way, as Tim said, when we bring the report, we'll bring the recommendation that you adopt these as your strategic vision at a regular uh council meeting, but we will alphabetize them, trying to present the idea that these are all a part of your strategic vision.

And if one part falls down, it all collapses.

So that's if you want to change them staff later, that's great.

But from SGR, we don't get into that unless you as a council say, no, we want to prioritize them.

And I actually did a council retreat a couple of months ago where the council said that.

So, no, there's some reasons we need them to be prioritized, which we did, but normally we don't.

So here's our five infrastructure, economic development, create community, affordable housing, public safety.

We good with this.

I'm good, so Tim, anything you want to weigh in on at this point?

Go on, Tim.

He's a smart man.

He's like, not yet.

Not it.

All right, great work.

Let's take about a 15-minute break.

We're gonna come back, and then we're gonna dive into the hard work.

We'll have a couple of rounds of it.

All right, I think we've got everybody.

Are y'all ready to start again?

And he'd come in.

Yeah, can I say that?

Well, good, it's only 15 seconds.

All right, Rick's wanting to say something.

I I just want to, you know.

I know we don't want to prior.

We said we didn't want to prioritize these things, right?

But I've been around a long time, and we've done a lot of these things, and a lot of these things have, you know, we've been lucky.

We've got ARPA money, we've got to do main street landing, we've got railroad money, we've got all that.

But there's a lot of things.

If this isn't a priority, this needs to be our number one priority.

Because if we don't have this, none of this is gonna come.

And it seems to me in the past that this really it's been a priority, but it's never gotten the total funding and stuff that it needs to be.

So, you know, we can talk about economic development.

We've done a lot of that, and we need to do more.

We can talk about public safety, which has to be number one, but a lot of this public safety rolls back into infrastructure too.

This isn't just police and fire, they're important, but public safety is also streets, sewers, all that stuff that make this community goal.

That's you know, so to me, I know you didn't want to prioritize things, but I think that needs to be our number one issue right here.

Just my opinion.

Rick, you sound like me talking about books.

I thought, oh yeah, I love that book.

That's uh that's my favorite one.

Oh, yeah, this that I love that book.

That's my favorite one, you know.

Like, but you're right.

No, no problem.

I think where you end up prioritizing them is not where they come on the list, but on the attention you give to the objectives, you know.

Uh so that's that's really where we're going at it.

I I'm just saying, you know, we've we've been fortunate we we we got a lot of ARPA money, and our staff had all that stuff ready to go by planning, right?

The sewer, the everything we got.

We got a lot of nice things through the ARPA money, and then we got railroad money, we got main street landing, and that's great.

But you know, and we we we there's a lot of things we could have done different, right?

We could have taken the railroad money and put that into infrastructure, but we didn't, and I'm okay with that because we took out of we used to fund parts of Main Street landing as a goal at a million dollars a year, I think, and then we took that million dollars and rolled it over in the streets.

Well, as my colleague says, a million dollars don't get you very far.

And if you've drove anybody that's drove around this town is going, what the hell's going on here?

So if we don't fund our streets, maintain our streets, and I know it's a tough challenge for these folks back here, but you if you if your infrastructure is shit, so is your community.

Yeah, and you're not you're not gonna have people want to come here and invest their money when they gotta drive around this town and swerve through hot holes everywhere you go.

So infrastructure needs to be number one, in my opinion, just my opinion.

Okay, well, I'm guessing that when we divide up, you want to be on the this team, right?

Oh, sure.

Okay, all right, good.

I need two more people from council that'll be on that.

All right, those three, y'all be on that.

And by the way, if you if you really care about one of these topics and you're on a different call it team, you'll get a chance to weigh in because when they report out, for example, on infrastructure, we'll all have some talk about it.

Like, oh, wait, what about this?

What about that?

So, even if you're not on that one, doesn't mean you didn't get it, you won't get a chance to to weigh in.

Okay.

So the three of you will be infrastructure.

I need um three more to do economic development.

All right, Mark, Matt, who else?

All right, John.

Y'all are my eco development people.

And then we'll do one more.

That leaves Paul and Tim and Ben, yeah, I'm sorry, to do um create community and Kyle and the mayor, let the mayor move around.

So Kyle, you're gonna get to choose.

So you didn't you you you deferred everybody?

Now you get to say which one do you want to go to?

Um, so we'll put you in echo echo development too.

Okay, so let's put our infrastructure group right there.

Um, let's put our economic development group right here, and then let's put our um create community group right in the center.

And then Tim, I'll let you move staff to where they need you.

Now, before you go, let me give you just a couple of thoughts on what we want from strategic priority from for uh milestones.

So think of them this way.

Think of your your milestones as this way.

Number one, they answer the question.

What do you mean by that?

So we say infrastructure.

Well, we need to give some definition to say what do you mean by that?

Okay, so that as you're writing your objectives, make sure they answer the question.

Do you mean uh water treatment plant?

Do you mean streets?

You know, what tell us what you mean so that city administrator can look at that and go, okay, I know what initiatives I need to create to uh support those.

Now, also think um objectives, not tactics or initiatives for you as council.

So, for example, I always use this illustration.

If you say fix 17th street, I want to say that sounds like an initiative, right?

I need something a little bit more global because fixing 17th street would fit under it, and we don't want to lose that idea, but that really becomes Tim and the staff's determination of okay, how do we know 17th Street is above 34th Street or whatever?

So then the other thing I always use is if you're going on a trip, think interstate, mile markers or milestones tell you you're moving in the right direction, but when you reach that milestone, you know, that's not the goal.

So so Jade, when you get the buckies, that just tells you you're getting close to San Antonio.

That's not the goal.

You got to pass buckies to get there, but you haven't accomplished the vision just because you hit Buckies.

So these milestones are things that you gotta do to accomplish that vision, but in and of themselves, they're not the vision themselves.

That makes sense.

So I'll walk around and help you.

Now, the good news, I was telling the mayor, not that any of you have been worded up and great, but you get to use more words here than you did on these.

So you don't, I don't give you a structure of how to do it, but I might, if you get too granular, I might say, hey, pick it up a little bit.

What are you trying to accomplish here?

So if I do that, it's not because I pick it on there.

All right.

Okay.

Who wants to be the spokesperson?

Okay.

It's it's real simple, folks.

I'll put it up there, and you can you can be the you can talk us through it.

This is infrastructure, and uh talk us through that.

More.

I mean, that's everybody that ran for election, that was their biggest thing.

They, you know, well, we're gonna do more streets going to do that.

And it's the biggest concern that you're site okay, right?

Okay.

Okay.

That's well, we need to do that.

Actually, I have a question.

Like, what is infrastructure mean?

We're talking, we're talking streets.

We're talking we're just strictly talking streets here.

Because we talk through the sewer stuff, it's all okay, right?

They're doing fine jobs.

Any anybody anybody in here think our streets are good?

Let's see, show of hands.

I'm not commissioners.

I think there's some pretty good options.

I mean, there are streets.

So let me provide clarification.

Yeah, help us streets are in disrepair.

Help us out.

I think there's a general consensus that we've made a lot of headway on your arterials and your collectors.

So that's that's I think somewhat of a consensus.

Um, I think it's generally more on your neighborhood local street level.

It's really when we dive into what infrastructure means on what could we do differently, or what we can do in addition to what we're doing, it's primarily neighborhood local roadways.

Yes.

In addition to not swap one program for the other.

In addition to.

Well, you probably can't, right?

Because those arterial streets are usually funded by federal and our neighborhood streets don't qualify for, which is one of the issues why we haven't gotten to the neighborhood streets, is because it's going to be all our money.

Right.

Yeah.

Right.

So that's the big um objective.

It's got to focus on neighborhood streets, make sure maintenance at that level is being attended to.

Um the the word more you've kind of heard.

And then another part of this, although this is more staff directed, is is to message it, you know, really well.

Because you can be doing a lot of things, but if you don't message it well, you get lots of pushback.

And by the way, I was just telling Denise, I I I can't tell you, I can tell you this.

Almost every entity I work with will say we got to communicate better.

And when I hear that, here's what I say.

Congratulations.

It means you're alive.

That's what it means.

If you got it, no, sure, we can always do better.

But who the only person, the only group that doesn't need to do better with communication, are in the cemetery.

Because I got nothing to say and nothing to worry about.

So don't beat yourself up or others up about communication challenges, because yeah, we can always do better and we want to do better.

But it's always going to be a challenge because you're a living organism, and there's too much going on to ever communicate enough about.

So it's just, you know, that's the way.

So, but that's that's an important thing is to make sure you're doing a great job with that.

All right, council, other input on this.

Anything else, yes.

I want to tie it to what our group is talking about in economic development.

So if you have a large system, infrastructure system that you acknowledge you don't have the funds to adequately care for, then you should not be adding to that system.

And and so our our economic development should be focused on existing infrastructure, right?

Because any cornfield development that we do is going to add infrastructure to a system, and once you build that road, build that sewer, you now have a maintenance bill in 10 years, and you have a replacement bill in 30 years.

And so any development that you can do that doesn't add to that system is is worth a lot more than any development where you add infrastructure.

Yeah, really, really good point.

Very good point, Kyle.

All right, Tim, anything you is this good for you?

Anything you need clarity on?

No, I I hear loud and clear, you know, more in in this area.

Heard it in onboarding, definitely heard it in the budget workshop.

Knew that I would hear it in uh the council retreat.

And you know, when I've had many conversations with uh Clay on this topic, you know, I've never heard out of him.

No, we can't.

You know, it's you know, I have not heard that.

You know, now it's been way.

And I appreciate this out of Nicole and conversations with Basha, you know, letting us know what our capacity is.

All these things at council, uh, you know, when we get to the point that we're presenting this as the work plan, you know, we need to make sure that we share what the realities are in this community.

Uh, but also uh I think that we have the ability.

If it's asphalt and concrete, you want, I think we have the ability to do that.

We'll find a way to staff.

I put Denise in this group uh because a very big part of this, and Mike was sharing it in his experience wearing the elected hat, uh, is making sure that we tell our story accurately, that we're communicating to the community, you know, what a repair means, what a rehab means, you know, what we're gonna do next year.

So I definitely hear this, and I think yes, that's enough.

Yeah.

All right, very good.

Yes, add two questions.

So for those that are on council, is anyone against this?

I think I'm not against it, but I still think it all needs to be balanced.

I I think everything still interacts with each other.

I think a failure of of anything we say stops all of it.

Right, but very specifically though, if we're saying we want more money invested in streets, that's really what it comes down to.

Does anyone have an issue with that?

That's what I want to know.

That part of the perfect second question the devil is in the details because we have finite dollars.

So if you're saying we're going to increase this, that means that you're going to decrease funding somewhere else unless we are recommending that we have an alternative source of revenue.

And so then my question would be what are we decreasing?

Nothing are we sitting on a surplus?

That's where I was going with next.

So every year we have extra and local option sales tax.

And we have no issue as a city, and I say we, but before my time, finding money for all other projects, but not streets.

So why is it that we can't say, like, say a million out of that extra in local option sales tax goes to neighborhood streets specifically.

What I would ask, I'm just thinking out loud.

There's a question.

I'm asking it as a question.

So that's what I want to hear.

What I would like to hear is at our current capacity, what is the maximum we could, right?

In terms of streets for C right?

What it what can we do?

And then if we add it uh private contracts and whatever, what would then become our new capacity?

I think if we find out what is what it is we can do right now and do it well, I think that kind of guides us to how we need to either proceed or add to to make what we want happen.

So it's kind of Tim, I it's kind of a budget workshop question, but and that that becomes our responsibility.

So you know, let's play with numbers.

You know, let's say right now we're putting five million dollars into asphalt and concrete.

Let's say council has an outcome of this says we want two million dollars more over the next couple of years.

It becomes our responsibility to share with council what that reality looks like.

That means that I need one and a half more clays, you know, on staff.

It means that uh, you know, we need to consider maybe a three-year contract, you know, multi-year asphalt and concrete uh contract uh that we find that doing it that way, we have a 15% savings, and then we can stretch our dollars a little bit more.

I've done that in other communities, it's probably been done here.

But to your point, that is exactly our responsibility when we're bringing this work plan back to council.

Yeah, yeah.

Great great question and a comment.

Was that a question or comment?

Yeah, Clay, when they um increased the road use tax fund a few years ago.

How much more a year were we getting, and then where did we put that money?

Uh 1.6 million dollars, and it goes into high volume materials and collectors.

Yes.

Um, we could use that road use tax fund for neighborhood streets.

You can do whatever you wish.

So here's my concern.

And and I kind of voice this whatever you wish.

Well, we're talking about roads.

Yeah, there's always a caveat.

I don't, you know, I raised this concern at the budget meeting the other day, which is yeah, you could take money from the local option sales tax.

I have no problem with that kind of you know, infrastructure I'm I'm good with.

Um, but you also might be you know taking a bucket and dumping it to the ocean uh type of deal.

So if you want to do something really impactful with neighborhood streets, potentially you know, taking them the road use tax fund revenue that increased and saying we're not going to put that into big streets and put it into neighborhood streets, you might be able to get to a point where you're putting enough money in neighborhood streets that it's actually impactful.

That's that's my point.

You you need to do something that's impactful, otherwise you're going to say we're taking this money, and and you're still going to have your residents saying, Well, the streets still suck.

So last comment here, we're gonna throw it in.

You need to do something impactful, you're correct.

I don't believe we need to take money from one pot to put into another.

I think we need to add money to do more.

And if if you if we keep saying we don't have the money to do it, come on now.

We took in 18 million dollars in low cost sales tax last year.

That's what we budgeted for, correct?

How much did we take in?

23.

What do we do with the extra money?

Um 60% went to the net service fund, and then 40% remains in the fund.

So $2 million additional is in the fund.

So could we use that extra two million dollars to throw into another project without taking from one project to do a project?

So that really becomes Tim's problem.

I'm just saying, you know, this is going to be a council decision.

Yeah, do we want to spend more money?

And and I'm I get some folks that are saying we don't have it, we need to shift from here to here to here.

We need to my opinion.

I think what Tim will do is bring you options.

Right.

All right, I gotta move us on so we can get to the next thing, which I think is economic development.

So who's presenting?

All right, come on up here.

Yeah, come on, come on, Matt.

Spirited debate up here.

Oh, that's good.

Yeah, yeah, it was great.

I listened in on that.

All of you guys had great discussions.

When I was right in Fast and Furious, it may not make any sense, but uh I'll start right here.

Retention and attraction.

If you have economic development, uh you need to, you know, you need to retain what we have.

So Alderman Holloway throughout he believes we're about four percent unemployment in Davort, which if that's the case, no matter what the number is.

Can we reduce that in half by retooling our workforce with either apprenticeship internships, community college, uh whatever, to get that unemployment rate down?

That obviously is good for everybody in the community, and then we also want to attract new talent, and that comes back to what type of businesses are we looking for.

Okay, I think all the above is the approach we're looking for on all these businesses, whether it be industrial, whether it be you know commercial, it's kind of it's kind of going away a little bit.

Are they more touristy type of of uh in businesses?

And there's obviously a skill set that everybody needs, all the way from you know the the basic skill set you need to do an industrial type of making a widget versus uh you know, do you need a college education to run a business?

So and everything in between.

So we want to retain our talent, we want to attract new talent.

We do that by having good quality jobs in the area with different skill sets.

We want businesses of all size, again, whether it be the thousand man industrial plan, all the way down to the mom and pop store, uh, and everything in between.

Obviously, jobs are changing, the economy's changing, you know, brick and mortar as we talked about, that's kind of uh on the down low anymore, they're going away.

So we these are the different areas that I think I heard amongst everybody.

Uh and as Alder McGrip already said, if you have a vacant lot somewhere that's already got infrastructure in place around it, it's a lot cheaper to utilize that area or even a vacant building because infrastructure is already there, rather than running out to different areas where the infrastructure costs, and I'm an infrastructure guy, I'm just saying he makes some good sense on some of this stuff, but it's a combination of all the above.

So you've got that alternative, which is a high income revenue coming in the city, low cost, versus going to Brady Street, going to Elmore, going to veterans, and a lot of these are in my neighborhood in my neck of the woods.

Going north, the industrial park we have out there with the Amazon, all those businesses going west, that we just spent a lot of money on the sewer system, so obviously we want to utilize it.

And then we had a spirit of debate about the downtown area.

We want to remain uh keep it vital, increase its fatality.

Uh so again, we didn't necessarily agree with what our direction was, and we had 10 different opinions.

So I think we need to uh really have more discussion on this from everybody, including staff and everybody on council and the mayor.

What we want to focus on, I'm of the opinion we focus on all of them.

Maybe focus is not the right word, but we we shouldn't say no to any of them if it makes sense.

Okay.

And again, industrial commercial tourism, you know.

Do we want yes, sir?

Can we put West End on there?

Not west side.

You talk about the version of the state.

West end.

I grew up on West End, bro.

It's right there.

You're talking yeah, but you see, you're tying that to the side.

No, no, no.

This is the north side, everything's got a slash.

Okay, this is something from this.

This is the north side where I'm at now.

This is where I grew up.

Okay, and I will not forget.

Perfect.

Just wouldn't make that clear.

Trust me.

Because the West End sewer really isn't it's a West Side sewer, not the West End, not the Rocky Ham Road stuff, you know.

We'll make sure that Denise gets it right.

We're talking semantic stuff.

I love you, but give me a lot of people.

Well, you know, I've been I've been fighting for Rockingham for the last 25 years to get nowhere.

So, it's not a lot of words.

All right, get going.

So just combobulated now.

Go ahead.

Sorry, uh, but a combination of all.

And then we talked about zones.

I uh to me, you know, you've got your uh you know, do you have a tourism zone?

Do you have an industrial zone?

What do you want to focus on the west side?

What do you want to focus on the north side?

Obviously, though the north side's pretty heading strongly this way already.

But do you have a tour tourism zone in the west side?

Is there a water park going out there?

Is there a uh you know, do you want to refocus on the Mississippi River?

Yeah, you know, as uh Alderman Grip said it's the only place in the world where you got a river going east and west, and the Mississippi only place in the country where the Mississippi runs east and west.

So do you focus on that?

Okay.

So those are all the things that we talked about.

Good discussion, and did I miss anything?

Mayor?

I just I think uh maybe a little bit to Rick's point on the downtown.

I in my mind, the westward growth is where I want to see the other build.

You know, whether that's doing my uh or or the old uh craft hindsight, there's no part needs to go past the highway.

That's the time respect.

But the thing I would add is I think the place that we had agreement was, and I keep going back to you, and I can't find it on the wall.

Was Paul's word, which is essentially we want that prosperity to spread across the city.

We don't want to focus in just one place, we want development across the city, and we want everybody to share in that development.

That was a consensus when we started to drill down.

We had a lot of uh different opinions, but that one was the one that we I think probably all agreed on.

Yeah, if it makes economic sense, we are not in a position to say no to anything if it makes economic sense, and whether that be any of these areas, uh, but the West Sewer is what uh what we got very across the city, yep.

So that's anything else?

I think we're good.

Very good.

Tim, does this give you the direction you need?

Yes, it does.

Okay, very good.

Great work, great work, both groups.

Last but not least, come talk to us, Ben.

Try and simplify it.

This is um create community.

It's like community engagement.

Let's uh kind of have some overlap with the last group as well.

Sure, let's say all these tie together.

Now, again, you know, we got in the little bit of the weeds on drilling down from some of these, but thought first just that increased engagement with our youth, you know, our parks and rec programs and activating spaces there.

Um got into investment of our neighborhoods, you know.

Uh, I was a dream program and you know, some other things there, you know, increasing our quality of life again.

Like Kyle mentioned, you know, Paul's talking about that that uh spread spreading things out, making sure that uh that everybody in our community, you know, is is being lifted up, and then lastly, um just making sure that we improve um telling of our story so that we have that sense of we coming throughout okay, all right.

Very good questions for him, council, Mayor.

Uh I I really think we need something to me here that specifies the the homeless challenge and the fact that that's my order.

Yeah, and and that's where I think you know that that well um quality of life, right?

I mean, people need to have how I mean great if we're keeping people housed and we tried to condense them.

Yeah, and then uh we're sticking with milestones.

Y'all are keeping it down.

Go ahead.

You're also sorry.

Um but I understand what you're saying, but that involves a lot, a lot more than just the lines up there.

We have a lot of talk about that.

But when you when you invest in the neighborhoods, we're talking about that, cleaning them up, helping all of them.

And I don't mean, you know, I mean abandoned homes, run down homes, everything, existing homes.

We talked a lot about you know you gotta help the ones that need it.

And then go up, you know.

Uh quality of life is that telling our story, either youth.

I mean, they're all tied in.

To me, they're all designed on making our whole world better here.

It starts with start with you and go.

And then in the neighborhoods layer, and again, it's all one story to me.

This is definitely hard work.

Kyle, you had your hand up.

But we still we still have two more.

We had the affordable housing conversation and the uh public safety.

Right.

And I think we can probably put that that homelessness issue under the affordable housing one.

Yeah, I think that's right.

Good point.

All right, good work, good job.

This is the hard work, right?

But this is great discussion.

And and I gotta just commend you because there's so many councils that can't have this kind of discussion like this.

Uh and they don't make a lot of progress for their city.

And so I appreciate Jay.

For the create community, and I'm I'm gonna go back to my code enforcement hat.

You we need to educate, get the word out of what our city is, um, what our ordinances are, um, what programs we have, how can you I mean it it's all communication, it's letting our citizens know what we can do for them, what we're here to help with, and give them some guidance.

Yeah, um, I found that if I had those conversations with citizens, um, you know, I'd walk into a uh a rental unit and say, I understand this, you don't own this apartment, but this is your home.

This is your home.

Make it your home and respect it.

Treat it as your home.

And I've walked into the worst of the worst.

So having that conversation with our citizens and letting them know that hey, we're in this together, and giving that information, and sometimes it's just giving having that conversation and listening.

Yeah, um, that is what creates our community.

Yeah, that's telling our story collectively and individually.

Very good.

So, I mean, you you can the quality of life and engaging the youth, all of that.

It it starts with us.

Yeah.

All right, let's move on.

We got one more round to go.

I'm gonna need, I'm gonna leave Mayor out of it again.

You can move back and forth.

I need five council members that want to tackle affordable housing, and five that public safety.

So who's my affordable housing people?

Kyle.

Anybody else?

Two, three.

I need two more, four, one more, one more affordable housing parts.

All right, man.

Let's put those guys over here.

And then everybody else didn't raise your hand.

Your public safety, you're over here, and Tim, I'll let you decide which staff needs to go where.

All right, let's let the public safety report out first.

Who's doing it?

Chief, okay, Jeff.

All right, let's uh draw our attention to fire chief.

And uh they did a lot of talking.

I'm not saying that very far as well.

Yeah, I think um essentially the word that came out of our group relative to public safety was the word more.

Um, and then a discussion of quite honestly the each infrastructure has more things.

Well, okay.

You can change to a longer word.

Staff rivalries here.

We like more silver smaller.

But the discussion, I think everyone agrees that we probably need more of public safety, but what does that look like?

So uh range the conversation range from departments such as police and fire, examining where we can create efficiencies with the sharing of personnel through technology, uh a lot of talk on uh a drone first responder program that is shared by police and fire, um stuff of that nature, and then also an examination of what is the right size staffing now uh for the agency.

Are we right staffed given the fact that we run uh 5,000 more calls a year than the city of Cedar Rapids fire department, and they're a town of 37,000 greater in population, and they're running 11 companies, our staffing, we would like to run 11 companies, we're more often running 10 companies running those 5,000 calls more per year.

So, are we right staffed currently so that when you go into the economic development and the infrastructure mode, and you now need to add a fire station, which for me is adding bodies, adding them to the buying a new engine, building a new fire station.

There's huge expenses with that.

So, looking at a plan that adds people over time to prepare us for that development, but not doing so because if we wait, if we're not right staffed now, we'll police and fire.

Um, if we wait to get right staffed when we also are adding to it, now we're having now we're hiring 15 to 20 folks versus trying to hire two or three each year over a course of three to five years, right?

So am I missing anything?

That was really kind of the conversation of a focus should be building efficiencies across public safety, but also looking at what our right staffing is.

Uh, and then I'd be remiss if I didn't mention my partner's stacking issues as it relates to what law enforcement's facing around this country.

I don't have those same stacking uh problems, uh, but police and law enforcement across this country does what we can do to right size that.

All right, I'm gonna add technology because I kind of heard you guys oh you got check.

Okay, good enough.

No, no, no, that's fine.

You said it, but I just didn't know it was on the list.

All right, council.

Uh anything else you want to add to this or comment on?

Kyle and then mayor, I'm sorry.

I want to comment on the drone response to reduced uh the number of phones that you have to go on.

I was at a national planning conference a few years ago, and two of this to California is like the leader in this, and I got to watch them do that operation, and they can like put a put a drone to a call right away, and then the officer there can determine who needs to go to it.

I think what I heard from firefighters is we're going on way too many calls.

How can we reduce it?

And so I love that idea of using the drone uh technology to reduce the number of calls if you want.

That's awesome.

Excellent.

Very good.

Mayor, you had your hand up too.

This is kind of like two chiefs and 10 kind of understanding what the drug is.

Which may not be any better, I'm not saying administrator and chief said.

Yeah, that's a good point.

Let's start with you, Tim.

Does this give you the direction you need?

Or you is there anything you want to ask about?

No, uh, both my chiefs front row seat in this conversation.

I think I understand it.

Nothing that really surprises me.

Something that maybe didn't make the list, but I also heard, and I think it's true, is uh, you know, I I know that we talk about uh we are uh doing more and telling our story.

This is definitely an area that uh we need to uh communicate as much as we possibly can about uh what we're doing on the public safety side.

I just figured the police and fire as well as uh was a part of this conversation earlier today.

So yes, all right, all right, very good.

Anything else, uh council listen, Mark?

I just have a couple of these.

Does the fire um does the fireman go on every like uh EMS is dispatched?

Does the fireman go alone with them or no?

How much time do you have?

That might be an offline discussion.

What percentage of time?

That unless it hits, we have two different levels.

We have fast track and non-fast track.

A fast track is difficulty breathing, disoriented, stuff like that.

That this the dispatchers will automatically dispatch us to all calls for uh EMS call get processed by medic through an EMD protocol that can last anywhere from a minute to four minutes.

They're asking questions to try to make that determination as to whether or not we go.

Part of what we're looking at is are those protocols necessarily need to be tweaked to reduce the number.

But even in our own department, when I have these conversations, I say, okay, so say I'm able to create a 10% efficiency by reducing the calls through sec and medic and what we're going to.

Uh, that's really only about 2,000 calls, and I'm still then running three to four thousand calls uh more than Cedar Rapids, which is a town of 37,000, uh, and what they're running.

So I'm not sure why those numbers are, and I don't think there's an easy answer.

I think that there's a multitude of reasons, but that would be I guess the quick response to that.

And if you want to chat more offline, we can.

That's fine.

All right, let's go to affordability, housing affordability.

Matt, you did all the writing.

You're gonna do the talking too.

Okay, bring it up here.

As the mayor pointed out, I wrote a book.

Well, I love it.

Yeah, man.

I guess I misunderstood the assignment.

No, you got it.

You're fine.

There's really two different things here.

There's uh affordable housing, and then there's homelessness.

So some things we talked about is to optimize government money and then sum it up on the back with the two big points.

But go to the homelessness problem.

And uh one thing that stood out to me as a very good comment, if I could read my own thing, is uh uh you gotta understand the problem before you solve it.

And I probably am not I'll I'm just built as probably a lot of people.

I don't necessarily understand the problem.

So that's the one thing that stood out to me on the homelessness.

You've got to figure out uh you know the motivations and uh the lack of motivation and all those things to understand the problem first before you solve it.

Uh we talked about the heritage fund having roughly about five million dollars, how to use it.

We'd like to see I think our committee or subcommittee would like to see most of that, if not all of it, don't back in to some of these issues, uh try to solve these problems.

Obviously, homelessness would be the one, the other one would be affordable housing, the barfa ending again at five million dollars, and uh Eric's fund would be the optimal place to find some funding for this, and then uh came up some creative ideas maybe on some mortgages, uh down payment options, public uh private partnerships, uh, kind of similar to the URT program and or excuse me, the homestead program, and uh maybe you know, you reusing some of those monies to dump back into funding this for future uh programs.

I'm trying to get my uh again, Mr.

Oliver McGrip uh said they want to throw uh some empty lots, and again his point was it's a lot easier uh to fill up some void spaces.

Uh developers don't necessarily want to do it because it's more cost-effective to build uh you know larger areas for obvious reasons.

We talked about uh tiny homes.

I guess they're using it in some other communities.

We'd have to check on some zoning options if that's something we'd want to consider.

Uh and again, Oliver Grip suggested rather than going out and putting you know a bunch of uh half million dollar homes in an area, that's maybe put into some ordinances, maybe potentially uh institute some multifamily options, duplexes, multiplexes, quadplexes with they couldn't possibly.

I actually live in a condo, and I'm very happy there up by the Eastern Iowa Library, and I I'm surprised we don't have more of those.

You know, it's probably the footprint of a half million dollar home, but we got four different residences in there, and I'm I'm happy I'll be there for a long time, I'm sure.

Uh and then we got into homelessness again.

Uh nonprofits, we've got to maximize our relationships with nonprofits and also different communities.

We want a quad city approach on this, trying to uh resources, pool or uh brainstorming to figure out a comprehensive approach that goes throughout the quad cities.

You've got a housing issue, you've got they need uh medical attention, vital documents, driver's license, IDs of some sort, those are all things as part of that.

Uh and again we get it back to you know what it are they do they want to to try to get out of it, or are they happy being all this?

I mean, that's something you gotta figure out.

And obviously, there's a different approach to what their motivation is to how to deal with that those issues.

Again, public-private partnerships, regional collaboration amongst the quad cities, figure out what other communities are doing right, what they're doing wrong, learn from other people's mistakes, or other people's success stories.

Uh GFS, I learned some is some sort of mobile positioning uh system, track things.

Uh you know, make sure landlords are treating uh uh their people with uh respect and dignity.

Uh meet people where they are, and don't assume, and then you know I would like to see us be a leader in it, and then if you want to skip ahead, access and partnerships, partnerships again with different communities, different nonprofits, and then uh access to obviously affordable housing is I can sum up that whole thing.

What I what I missed.

Yeah, how could you miss anything?

That's great.

Sorry, I'm sure.

Yeah, you know, it's super good job.

All right, questions from the other group or uh others on it.

Just one help us out, Chief.

Uh it was mentioned landlords accountability.

I I think whether it's market rate or affordable, anytime we're looking at multifamily development, I think we need to be up front at the on the front end, far more uh precise about understanding what their management's gonna look like before we you know, particularly if we're talking incentives of any kind.

Yeah, um, you know, I remember the Mississippi apartment building.

We were having a lot when I this is 10, 12 years ago.

It was a challenge piece of property in terms of the number of 911 calls, etc.

They got new management, it was like a light switch.

I mean, it was they they put money into the building in terms of investment and the quality of it and just upgrading it, and took a more um they had management on site, they were more consistent, were present, and it was it was I mean, Bruce might exaggerate it was like a brand new property.

Uh and and I would also argue we've got some market places in downtown I lived in one.

Property management sucks.

And it's it's something that I think we should be more demanding about on the front end, particularly if we're talking to storm tax credits or any kind of any tax credits of any kind or incentives that we're putting on the table.

Yeah.

I you know, I have a son that's an architect developer, so I'm I'll say this honestly.

You know, uh they will say, I think they all go to college somewhere in Nebraska to learn how to say your city is the hardest city in the area to work with, you know.

They all say that, right?

They teach them how to say it.

And and then the other thing teach them to say is this is my hometown, but I'd rather work in name the city than my own hometown because your standards are so high.

And and uh everywhere I go, I just hear that kind of thing.

You gotta set standards high as a council and then enforce them, and because it will pay off in the long run.

It will, even though they'll complain.

Jade, yes.

So I know that we have uh program that all landlords owners have to go through in order to have a rental.

Um they used to have to come and sit through eight hours.

Are we doing that?

Is it just online now?

It's online.

I'm not sure.

Um, what about making it also a program it's mandatory in order to have a rental in Davenport that you have to go through this, but also making um mandatory program for property management and their responsibilities and um you know, our expectations.

Yeah, maybe maybe so it's probably a staff issue, but certainly a good idea to to mix in there.

Let me ask this uh Tim before we wrap this part up.

You're good with this.

I mean, I think we'll probably have to um condense some things into some objectives, but any questions you have on this?

Yeah, there's a lot there, and and and I don't have any questions, and not that the other areas aren't fun and exciting that we've talked about, but this one's fun and exciting to start thinking about it.

Uh because it really, you know, some of the other uh you know, goals, aspirational goals of being you know, identified as the leader.

You know, this is an area that we definitely can do that.

I've had some experience in some of these conversations, uh, some successes, and uh definitely something that Bruce and I have already started talking about, and uh you know, the the the day of more is here in this uh in this area as well.

So I I good Rick, we have you to thank for that word.

This that's my takeaway.

The more we better do more, so that's good.

I like it.

I like it.

All right, so let me let me wrap up with a couple thoughts and then get any final takeaways from council.

What I'll do, I've got some pictures to take, I'll create a report, get it back to to Tim, a rough draft in the next week or so.

Uh there may be some edits because I might get some things wrong and so forth, but then eventually it'll come to you, council, uh, with our recommendation as a as a company that you adopt it at a regular upcoming council meeting as your strategic vision and priorities.

Then we'll be working with Tim and the staff uh if they need on now creating the strategic plan, kind of the work plan that goes under that.

And lots of times uh that that's that's less needed from us, but but we're like glad to be a part of it.

So that's that's kind of the process it'll go.

All right.

Um kind of a closing thought that I want to share with you.

Number one, kudos to everybody.

It's been great dynamics, interchange and uh dialogue.

I really appreciated the conversation with staff and council listening to.

Um I'm gonna draw from a story in that book, Culture Code, uh, where it was a story that Coyle tells about a big five-star restaurant in New York, and this uh wait, the the the wait staff had been preparing for this big party that this one person was going to be in charge of.

It was the first time they were going to be in charge of the entire party, it was a big thing.

And the coach talked to him just before it was was you know time for showtime, so to speak, and said and asked this question: how will we know if tonight's a success?

And and then he answered his own question and said, here's how we'll know.

If you ask for help at least 10 times, that's how we'll know it's a success.

That's not what you're expecting, right?

You're expecting that coach to say, if you don't have to ask for help more than 10 times, that's a success.

But it's the opposite.

He's telling them you can't be successful if you don't abandon yourself to the strength of others.

You've got to ask for help.

And you know, you got a team of helpers here, council, and you got a community of helpers.

And so that's my encouragement to you is don't try to do it alone.

You've got people to help you, and uh that's that's really important.