Good morning.

Today is Wednesday, February 20th, 2024.

We're here for a joint special commission.

Thank you.

Roll call, please.

Commissioner Catana.

Here.

Here.

Here.

Here.

Mayor Lady.

Here.

If you might have noticed that Commissioner Kaleria lost her voice, uh, but so she will be uh you know giving us a lot of sign language to express her uh her feelings and thoughts.

So we want your voice to recover, so take it take it easy.

We've got a long day ahead of us.

We've got a lot of a lot of business to take care of today.

It's a special day here today, uh, swearing in our newly elected city officials, and so we're excited about uh the moments ahead.

Uh for today and for now.

On our agenda are two items.

Uh one is to evaluate the uh city manager, the other two evaluate the CRA director, um, and to discuss their employment uh and and hear from them on their uh impressions of their own service and what's ahead for the city and for the year uh ahead.

So I'd like to start with uh item three, which is um the city manager's evaluation.

George.

Oh, thank you, Mayor.

Good morning, Mayor, Vice Mayor and Commissioners, and to all the uh the fellow staff members and any residents that might be listening.

Appreciate the opportunity.

Uh just as a little uh reminder and recap, it was uh just a little over six months ago that my first annual evaluation was done, and the commission had wanted to sync it with the other two um individuals that have contracts with the uh the city meeting, the CRA director and the city attorney.

Um so you know that's you move your microphone closer to you, please.

Sure.

Uh air conditioning noise.

That sound better.

I think so.

Okay.

So um that's why we're here at more of a six-month mark than an annual mark.

So hopefully you all got a chance to uh to see the accomplishments uh book that uh we've all participated in, and um also sent out again that that leadership uh skills description that that I've used before in terms of evaluating senior managers, which I always found is kind of a good standard as opposed to some of the the forms that you know some folks like and some folks don't like.

But um we have been very fortunate, I think, uh, in what's uh continued to happen.

Uh last year in that first year evaluation for for me from my perspective, it was a very difficult year uh at first because coming out of three years of the the COVID experience and all of the all of the disconnect that happened with not only employees but with the public and uh and production and contact and customer service and all of those issues and many were still I think probably trying to figure out in terms of impacts on individual psyche and public health.

Um it was a difficult time, and we had a lot of things to clean up, and so last year was a lot of that.

This first six months of this this second year for me from my perspective has been kind of starting to get it cranking again and and produce and raise those customer service levels.

There was so much um the theme for this past budget was uh safe and clean, safe and clean, safe and clean, which I think we've addressed in a number of ways with your support in the budget going forward.

The um the old uh more better faster has not been forgotten, and we'll talk about that a little bit more in a in a minute.

But um, customer service, customer service, customer service is what we have been teaching and preaching, and I'll apologize if my voice starts doing something too, because I've got the sinuses doing something on my my vocal cords in the back there.

But um, so customer service has been a big priority in addition to those ongoing issues that we talked about.

Um, because quite frankly, that's what we're here to do.

We're a service organization and delivering that service in uh in a quality fashion as efficiently and cost effectively as possible, but as quickly.

There's a there's a time factor there that's important.

So many of the things that have happened over the last several months, better part of the last year when we look in here with um, you know, getting the seller permitting system and the uh the development services hub, which is the latest name we've been talking about for the second floor of the library, getting that completed and open for business, getting the first module of the Acela permitting system done has been um has been a major accomplishment.

The groundbreaking for the PD headquarters, obviously, the opening of the employee health center.

The opening of the employee health center, that is something that we have worked on for many, many years and talked about for many before that.

And again, kudos to to Tammy and everybody and HR and Ray Lynn that worked on that because that's one of those win-wins for everybody.

It's for the employees for the cost reduction for the city as an organization for the service.

Um the labor unions were very happy to work with us on that.

So that was a win-win for everybody.

The launch of the community court, the opening of the Armory Community Center at Dowdy Field, the State Road 7 mobility hub.

Believe it or not, we're on the street now with the Washington Park Industrial Area RFP after many rewrites and back and forth, because quite frankly, um, it's a it's a unique situation, and it it needed quite a bit of editing to make sure that we got the deliverables right because you don't want to go through that exercise and not get the deliverables right.

So that's on the street.

Obviously, completion of the stormwater master plan, and now trying to tune up the financing plan for that.

So there are many, many, many, many more things, obviously, that we've all worked on collectively, and thanks to all these people here and and many others that we don't see right now, the almost 1,500 employees in the city.

Uh, we've been able to accomplish a lot, I think that we should be very thankful and proud of.

Um, so won't go through all those details, obviously.

Moving forward, um, obviously, priorities that uh in my mind going forward.