Are you ready to go in the back?

Okay.

Okay, we're ready to go.

Call to order this city council retreat.

Happy Friday, everybody.

It's nice to have some sunlight coming in through the windows, a beautiful day outside, and we're in here doing the important business of the city.

And so with that, uh, I just will note for the record that the whole city council is here along with many of our uh city staff, directors, and others.

So I'll turn it over to our facilitator who will kick off the day.

Great.

Thank you.

John, do you want to say anything before we get going?

Sure as well.

All right, great.

Well, good morning, everyone.

Uh, to those of you I haven't met personally, my name is Ashley Sanoff.

I'm a member of the SSW consulting team, so I work with Sarah.

Um, I've been supporting the work that's been happening with our firm and Westland over the past few months, but more in the background.

Uh, but today I'm here in person to help lead the first half of the city council retreat.

So I'll be guiding you through right now and through lunch, and then Sarah will be joining us uh during your lunch break, and she will take you through uh the second half of the agenda.

So I'm really happy to be here.

Thanks for having us.

We're gonna have a really great day.

It is a beautiful day, but it's also a beautiful day to do some awesome work.

So we're thinking we're we're channeling that.

Sometimes it's easier to do a council retreat when it's really rainy outside, but we don't have control over that.

So we can with a nice natural light that's flowing in here.

So today is really about taking the next step together as a team and as a city.

Um, over the past uh several months, you've done a lot of work thinking about your financial priority, your financial realities, your priorities, kind of different funding options that you can explore together.

And so today we're gonna continue to build on that.

So specifically, we're gonna talk about your priorities, your council priorities for 2026-2028, and then we're also gonna talk about uh the framing our future with the proposed um work plan for the community engagement for this work.

So um, so it's about building on that work, and our goal today is so by the end of today, we're gonna have clear direction on your council priorities for the next two years.

Through through that process, we may identify some items for future council agendas.

So that's what my handy flip chart is over there for, so that we can capture those along the way.

And then uh we're gonna be uh discussing and providing direction on the framing our future program.

Um and then if time allows, we can discuss is it's community advisory groups.

I got that acronym right.

Okay.

Cities all overdo it a little bit differently, so I want to make sure I got that one.

So community um advisory group uh work programs.

So if time allows, so we have we've built a little bit of flexibility into the agenda.

It's your agenda, and so we can flex as needed, but that's really outcomes for today.

And so, in terms of how we're gonna get to these, um get to these outcomes together.

We're gonna do a quick warm-up here in just a moment, which I'll explain.

And then at 9 30, we'll jump into the council priorities refinement discussion.

What that's gonna look like.

Staff is going to uh provide updates on uh different priorities.

We'll check in with council if they need to be paused, adjusted, elevated, um, and provide that direction.

Again, that's an opportunity.

If there's anything other topics that come up, we'll capture them for future agenda topics.

We have a nice break at nice 15-minute break to look forward to at 1045.

So we'll take it then.

Um then at 11, that's when we're gonna jump into the framing our future discussion.

So, this first part of that discussion, what that will look like.

Staff will provide an overview of the proposed approach.

Um, I know council has received and has had some discussions on it already, and so it's an opportunity to dive a little bit deeper and to hear from staff on that proposed approach.

And then we're gonna have more of a structured conversation to see how council is landing on that proposed approach.

What excites you, what maybe questions you have, if there's anything missing, and how you're feeling about moving moving forward with that, what adjustments need to be made, and that's gonna be really helpful to provide staff that direction on how to move forward.

Um so after we have that discussion at 12:30, we'll break for lunch.

Um, and that's when uh Sarah and I will transition over.

So Sarah will come in and she'll take you through starting at 1.15, part two of this discussion.