Speaker numbers apply only to this recording.
On Thursday, September 10, 2026, the Des Moines City Council convened a workshop at 6:00 PM in the City Council Chambers to discuss the implementation of the city's first Strategic Plan and to consider establishing governance norms for council operations. The meeting was called to order by Mayor Yoshiko Grace Matsui and adjourned at 7:59 PM. Councilmember Jeremy Nutting was absent and excused by a 6-0 vote.
At this time, I'd like to call the September 10th, 2026 Des Moines City Council workshop to order. Councilmember Steinmanns will lead us in the pledge. Please stand if you are able. And to the Republic for which it stands. One nation under God. Okay. With that, please let the record show that Councilmember Nutting is absent. He had let us know in advance he had a conflict. Is there a motion to excuse? Alright, I got a motion made by Councilmember Steinman, seconded by Council Member Voss. All those in favor, please raise your right hand. Thank you. And now we'll be turning over the meeting to City Manager Catherine Capri. Thank you, Mayor and Council. This is a workshop we talked about several months ago. Once the strategic plan was adopted, quite a few of you asked, well, sort of, well, gosh, what's next? How are we going to talk about implementation? And more importantly, how are we going to talk about how we're tracking our performance and how we're reporting that to you all? So we've got kind of two sections of today's night. Nancy Hetrick, who you all know well, is here. So we're going to talk about implementation of the plan, and then the second half will be about governance and whether or not the council wants to talk about some protocols or guides you all may want to consider. So Nancy. Good evening, everybody. It's very nice to be back. Nice to see you all. I'm delighted to be here. Just me, we don't have Julie, and so any writing that happens on flip charts tonight comes with my apologies. Boo, I know, I know. I will let her know that as well. But that's okay. I think that you know, really, this is about you. This is about you all anyway. Uh, and so, yeah, as Catherine just mentioned, uh, we want to, you know, bring it back into the room, the strategic plan. Talk about uh, you know, we have a strategic plan, now what? How do we implement that? What does that look like? And uh the city manager will be providing uh an update, uh, and you have copies of the work plan that staff has developed for the first year. Uh so there'll be an opportunity to review that to talk about it, what it looks like, what it means in the organization, and how that supports the plan that you all adopted earlier uh this summer. So we will talk about that. We also want to spend a little bit of time thinking about and talking about what is um what are the best methods and approaches for communicating progress? What do you want to know? What do you want the community to know in terms of cadence, in terms of methods, um, level of detail, these sorts of things. So we want to make sure we have some time to talk about that as well. Uh, because we want to make sure this is a living breathing document. What's happening in the organization with implementation obviously uh aligns and delivers on the plan, but making sure that you all are feeling the opportunity to celebrate progress, to ask questions if things get stalled, and to bring that back out into the community because we asked a lot of people what do they care about, and that's gonna inform the plan, and they are going to be interested in knowing the outcomes. So that's the first chunk of what we will spend our time together in this evening. Uh, and then we will pivot a little bit and talk about uh governance and how together you can help to you know work together and establish potentially some key norms that that helps you just to inform how you work and really deliver on results for the plan and everything else on behalf of the community.