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Council Priorities 2015: Honesty, Focus, and Listening about Listening

Uploaded: Jan 23, 2015
At the annual retreat to set the top-3 priorities for City Hall, I suggest that Council create two separate sets of priorities, one for Staff and one for themselves, with the latter being the focus here. (Retreat Announcement).

Listening about Listening:
Council after Council after Council has said that they want to improve public outreach, but what we get is just more of the same. The latest version is the "Our Palo Alto" initiative. During the candidate debates, now Council member Cory Wolbach said that he had attended sessions and was disappointed. He later told me that the groups he had been in had produced lots of interesting ideas that didn't make it into the Staff summaries of the meetings. At one session, other members of his group included Council member Pat Burt and then-Planning Commissioner Arthur Keller. So ordinary residents shouldn't feel that it is just them having their inputs ignored.

If there is going to be real improvement, Council is going to have to make concern about the adequacy of the public input an integral part of their hearings, and they need to hold the City Manager accountable for making improvements (Council does not manage Staff directly, but only through the City Manager). If you are interested in the details of these problems, I refer you to extensive writings on this by me and others. (foot#1)

Focus:
It is routine to hear from City Hall that they are behind on developing crucial policies because of staff shortages. Think of the long-delayed Residential Parking Policy for the University Avenue area. Or of the Comprehensive Plan update. When I was on the Citizens' Advisory Panel for the Housing Element update before the recently completed one, staff shortages were the reason given for the "monthly" meetings happening less than quarterly, and for failures to incorporated input. Yet there never seems to be a shortage of staff time, funding, or Council attention for a myriad of projects that are justified by phrases such as "further bolster the city's position as a leader?" (foot#2)

These projects tend to be highly controversial because of the costs, both individual and cumulative: A few hundred thousand here, a half million there, the occasional couple of million. While there are many like me who see this as vanity, hubris and conspicuous consumption, there also seem to be many residents who believe that Palo Alto should be a "lighthouse", or example, to the nation, if not the world, on a wide range of issues.

The conventional way of handling competing demands for resources is through budgeting. I suggest that Council create a new category in the budget for Leadership so that the many leadership projects are being prioritized against each other, and not overwhelming basic services.

Focus should also be a theme for individual agenda items. Council should emphasize to the City Manager that one of his key responsibilities is that when he brings an issue to Council for decision, the presentation of that issue should facilitate Council being able to focus on making the decision. Currently, competent decision-making in Council hearings is impeded by the mass of clarifications needed and the public comments, both written and oral, supplying important information omitted or misrepresented in the Staff Report.

Honesty:
Underlying much of the contentiousness of various local issues is an increasing belief by many residents that City Hall does not, and will not, deal with them honestly. Start with wasting their time in purported public outreach meetings which have little/no effect on decisions that often seem predetermined. Take Staff Reports that are so badly skewed that they cross the line from being simply biased to being deceptive. Worse are the Staff Reports where the skew and misrepresentations are so transparent that they can be seen as insults?flaunting the ability to get away with not having to have a legitimate case for the recommended decisions. (foot#3)

City Council needs to remember that most of the public views City Hall as a unified entity, and the public badly over-estimates Council's ability to influence individual events.(foot#4) Even those who understand the difficulties view the responses by previous Councils as underwhelming, often to the point of condoning, if not encouraging, dishonest behavior. Council needs to prioritize changing the City Hall culture. Take the redevelopment of 240 Hamilton as an example. The obstructed attic storage space had very recently been converted into accessible space, and was falsely presented as both larger than it was and providing an exemption for parking requirements for the new building (and costs thereof). Was this a case of a (low-level) Staff member failing to check the developer's claims? If so, why? Or was it part of a larger pattern where Staff helps developers find ways around City rules and impact fees? If so, this is a serious management problem and one of corporate culture. If you expect an answer, I will have to disappoint you?because I don't know, because to my knowledge, these questions were not even asked by Council of the City Manager.

I started to write that to often there were no consequences for deception and dishonest behavior, but realized I needed to add the qualifier "negative" to "consequences". Over the years, I have seen too many instances where Councils allowed various parties to profit from (revealed) deceptions and dishonesty because they didn't want to expend the time and effort to "get it right." My suggested priority of "Honesty" has strong interactions with my two other priorities. Without "Focus", there is the strong inclination to continue an unending sequence of "We'll let it slide just one more time." And many of these problems do not suddenly emerge during the hearings before Council, but were revealed, or should have been revealed, in the public outreach meetings and the hearings before commissions and boards.

You shouldn't get a trophy for simply participating:
Over the years, I have heard from newly elected Council members their surprise and aggravation at being told they are expected to praise Staff for their work, regardless of its quality.(foot#5) Council needs to recognize how toxic this practice is. They have a chamber full of residents who have come to speak about problems in the Staff recommendation and deficiencies in the Staff report, yet before they have a chance to speak, Council member after Council member praises the Staff for their "excellent work" on the issue. And then Council can't conceive of why residents would walk away muttering that "The fix is in."

Similarly, you will routinely hear Council members describe a proposed project as "an exciting addition to the city" when speaking from the Council Chamber dais, but refer to it as a "non-starter" in other venues. Charles de Gaulle summed up this situation nicely: "Since a politician never believes what he says, he is surprised when others believe him."

What City Hall Does preempts What Council Says
This is about Council's credibility, and for the City Manager and Staff, a lesser used sense of honest. When newcomers to local politics ask why Staff isn't following official policy, or is actively working to undermine it, they get an explanation of the complex power dynamic between Council and the City Manager and the difficulty of putting together a Council majority willing to act. Historically, when Staff says "Don't wanna!", they often get away with it because Council members have to carefully pick their fights.

On place to start is to monitor the composition of the various forms of citizen advisory panels. For example, Council states that protecting single-family neighborhoods is a priority, but you would never know it from the composition of the advisory panels on housing: They are packed with appointees with varying degrees of hostility to those neighborhoods. Yet past Councils seem to be surprised by what results.

The Duck Test and "Caesar's Wife"
* The Duck Test: If it looks, swims, walks and quacks like a duck, it's (probably) a duck.
* "Caesar's wife must be above suspicion."
In response to various episodes of City Hall misrepresenting facts and providing skewed analyses that would financially benefit favored individuals to the detriment of the city (to the tune of hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars), various commenters have characterized City Hall as "corrupt". Rather than attacking such comments as "uncivil", the proper response of City Hall leadership should be "We shouldn't be putting ourselves in the position of passing the Duck Test."

Your suggestions for priorities?
It is a week to the Council retreat (Saturday January 31). People need to start putting out their ideas so that others can critique and refine them, and so that the better ones can find enough support that Council might consider them. (The email for Council is city.council@CityofPaloAlto.org).

---- Footnotes ----
1. A sample of readings related to listening about listening (commenters are encouraged to suggest more):
Improving Palo Alto's Stakeholder Group Process, Guest Opinion by John Guislin, Palo Alto Weekly, 2014-11-09.
Visioning or Potemkin Villages, earlier blog entry here (2014-05-08). A number of the comments have interesting details and perspectives.
Part 2 of Why the City doesn't hear residents' perspectives? It doesn't want to, earlier blog entry here (2013-12-03).
Why not "constructive engagement" with City Hall?, earlier blog entry here (2014-10-23).

2. This particular phrase was used to justify requiring all new single-family homes to have their garages wired for electric vehicles ( Proposed law aims to make new home EV friendly, Palo Alto Weekly, 2013-11-19). The question is not whether such wiring is a good thing, but whether it was worth the City requiring it. At an estimated cost of $500 per house, what builder wouldn't want to advertise his house as "EV-ready"? Or risk having fewer bidders because he couldn't? Or that someone who has paid several million for a house is going to forego buying a Tesla because the addition of wiring would cost a few thousand?
But City Hall doesn't ask these sort of questions because the purpose of these kind of laws is not to promote electric vehicles, but rather to promote their vanity as being a "leader".
Additional consideration: There was a similar law for new hotels ( Palo Alto speeds ahead with new electric-vehicle requirements, Palo Alto Weekly, 2014-07-03) that is a similar example of vanity: Hotels are very competitive and could be expected to respond to the market. There is a hotel at the end of my street that installed chargers (Creekside Inn) and I remember only once seeing either of them being used (I look because I am curious about trends).
One situation where such a requirement could well be justified is for apartments with detached parking: There would be negligible market pressure on the landlord to provide it (minimal vacancy rates), and there could be no practical means for the tenants to provide it themselves.

3. The Maybell rezoning (2013 Measure D) is a case-in-point. For example, part of the justification for underparking the housing for low-income seniors was that there were walk-able facilities nearby, and cited a Walgreens (0.3 miles) for groceries. It also ignored that a significant part of the route to these purportedly walk-able destinations did not have a sidewalk?seniors would either be walking over badly uneven ground, or walking in the travel lane of an often busy street (cars and bikes).

4. Palo Alto has a Strong City Manager form of government. (Aside: For those who want to find more about it, it is also known as Council-Manager Government). Briefly, Council's interactions with Staff are either through, or supervised by, the City Manager who is a rough correlate of a corporate CEO, with the Council being a rough correlate of the Board of Directors. Note that I said "rough" because there are some very significant differences.

5. Required praising of Staff: The rationale for this practice is that it would be inappropriate for a powerful Council member to be criticizing low-level staff members. However, this ignores a crucial fact: When a Staff report goes to Council, it is redesignated a "City Manager's Report", indicating that he now owns it. The cover letter/summary is typically signed by him and one or more higher level managers. This is not a mere formality (rubberstamp): Over the years, I have made suggestions to Staff members about more effective presentation of materials in the draft reports and been told that that was not how the City Manager wanted it.
Consequently, criticism of the report is not being directed at that low-level Staff member, but at the City Manager, who in most situations is more powerful than not just the individual Council members, but the Council itself.

----
The Guidelines for comments on this blog are different from those on Town Square Forums. I am attempting to foster more civility and substantive comments by deleting violations of the guidelines.

I am particular strict about misrepresenting what others have said (me or other commenters). If I judge your comment as likely to provoke a response of "That is not what was said", don't be surprised to have it deleted. My primary goal is to avoid unnecessary and undesirable back-and-forth, but such misrepresentations also indicate that the author is unwilling/unable to participate in a meaningful, respectful conversation on the topic.

An abbreviated index by topic and chronologically is available.
Democracy.
What is it worth to you?

Comments

Posted by pat, a resident of Midtown,
on Jan 23, 2015 at 12:18 pm

Doug, have you sent this (not just a link, but the full text) to the city council. If not, please do.

"The conventional way of handling competing demands for resources is through budgeting."

I would argue that setting priorities has to come first. Then the budget funds should be allocated according to priorities.

I've written many emails to many councils over the years about priority-setting and budgeting, all to no avail. Maybe my latest, sent January 1, will have some impact on the new council. (I'm not holding my breath.)

Re consequences and getting a trophy just for participating -- the missing ingredient is accountability. We all know that council doesn't manage staff directly, but when the city manager isn't doing the job, council has got to (1) ask questions and (2) make demands. How many debacles like the Homer Bike Tunnel, the Mitchell Park Library, the "glass jewel" sidewalks does staff get away with -- and then claim success?


Posted by Douglas Moran, a Palo Alto Online blogger,
on Jan 23, 2015 at 12:38 pm

Douglas Moran is a registered user.

> "I would argue that setting priorities has to come first. Then the budget funds should be allocated according to priorities."

Budgeting occurs at multiple levels. I was referring to the top-most level of budgeting for broad categories (such a "Police" vs "Infrastructure") which is inextricably part of priority setting -- I suspect most of us have experienced the bad manager declaring something to be a priority but allocating no resources to it.


Posted by Douglas Moran, a Palo Alto Online blogger,
on Jan 23, 2015 at 12:57 pm

Douglas Moran is a registered user.

> "have you sent this ... to city council"

I haven't and I won't.

1. (minor) I have become accustomed to being dismissed as one of "the usual suspects".

2. My primary purpose with these blog entries is to make it easier for people to make their opinions known, whether it be the underlying information or the phrasing and terminology that reduces their effort in expressing their opinions or anything in-between. My hope is that people will take the parts that resonate with them and then modify and annotate it before sending it to Council (or others) as truly their own. If I were to routinely send this to Council, I worry that people wouldn't do what I just described, thinking "Council has already seen this" and "I am not adding enough for it to be worth my effort."


Posted by curmudgeon, a resident of Downtown North,
on Jan 23, 2015 at 2:22 pm

Be the staff's sillynanigans as they may, the buck stops at the council. In apt bucolic terms, we should expect its members to recognize bs as bs, discern the wheat (if any) from the chaff, and not act like (or be) starry-eyed hayseeds trying to get the town on the map.


Posted by William, a resident of Palo Verde School,
on Jan 24, 2015 at 11:11 am

Doug, I would encourage you to send copies of your blog to the full Council at the official city e-mail address.

The Council Members who dismiss your comments will continue to do so. You are correct that they will not consider anything than what supports their desired outcomes. (paraphrase of John Barton's statement at Chamber of Commerce breakfast several years back).

That said, there is great value to having your comments entered into the official city record. First, it is establishes an official record. Second it puts the information into a space that is discoverable in the event of future grand jury investigations or law suit against the city. It also means that Council Members can't deny that they are in receipt of the information and have a responsibility to act upon it.


Posted by Jo Ann, a resident of Embarcadero Oaks/Leland,
on Jan 24, 2015 at 2:47 pm

Doug, I would encourage you to send the full copy of this blog to the City Council and would encourage others to to send it also.

Like you, I'm tired of having my emails dismissed at a time when the city is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to "seek community input." (I write every few months to ask what's happening with fixing the Town & Country light(s) on Embarcadero.)

I thank Lyndia Kou for calling attention to this and reminding us of the address for the City Council which again is: city.council@CityofPaloAlto.org


Posted by Douglas Moran, a Palo Alto Online blogger,
on Jan 24, 2015 at 3:11 pm

Douglas Moran is a registered user.

Re: comments by William (and Jo Ann and pat)

While I understand the points you are making, my experience is that "official record" and after-the-fact investigations, such as a Civil Grand Jury, tend to have negligible effect in producing needed change.
Aside: The Civil Grand Jury report on the interactions with Arrillaga did bring the issue back to the fore just before the Council election, but there was already considerable momentum there and it is hard to tell how much of an incremental push it gave. Besides, such retrospective investigations are very rare.

Politics is messy and I am trying to encourage more Palo Altans to understand what needs to be done to be effective. Too many Palo Altans exist in a much more structured and rational professional environment, where pushing data and recommendations up the org chart produces action. Consequently, we see too many Palo Altans who think an email to Council is effective. No matter how well researched and reasoned, it isn't. My very first entry of this blog ("Librarians against books") talked about such a situation: Multiple sympathetic Council members told the group that they agreed there was a problem, but weren't going to act unless they saw substantial public outcry.

Summary: The focus needs to be on getting enough visible support for "Get it right! Now!" rather than preparing for after-the-fact criticism.


Posted by RV, a resident of Green Acres,
on Jan 24, 2015 at 4:58 pm

Thanks Doug for a very insightful and timely perspective.

It is as actually very concerning that the agenda and direction of staff is not directly governed by the council. In my opinion staff have a bias towards a particular perspective and present their reports based on that. During meetings the council will ask some obligatory questions but will most likely go with the recommendations of staff. I have seen this happen during Maybell discussions whereby staff appeared to have a specific agenda to side with PAHC and the council, despite enormous public opinion, still sided with staff recommendations. Perhaps the answer maybe that staff do not make any recommendations but just present the basic facts and let the Council, who were elected by the electorate, make the decisions!


Posted by Safety First, a resident of Green Acres,
on Jan 25, 2015 at 11:21 pm

The three most important things a City should be concerned with: Safety, Safety, and Safety

In a kind of sad metaphor of our digital age, our last City Council seemed to answer the development "phone" whenever it rang. (Or, "squirrel!" as Doug put in one of his posts.)

We need to find a way to put Safety First. One way is for us to make a separate Safety Element in our Comp Plan. The state mandates that anyway, and what we have is an afterthought in the natural environment from another time. We also learned that Planning and Transportation is who tells the fire and police department when there is a traffic safety problem, not the other way around. P&T should be under or at least not above Safety departments. There's a reorg of priorities AND probably of City pecking orders needed to put safety first.

When we went through the whole Maybell referendum arguing that the City has a policy of heightened scrutiny of developments on school commute corridors, and yet there was never anything more specific than that done, no specific policies to point to, no rules to enforce. The policy should go in a Safety Element, with other safety policies, and how and when the City Council will exercise the broad powers it has in relationship to safety, and what rights the public has to expect it.


Posted by david schrom, a resident of Evergreen Park,
on Jan 26, 2015 at 6:29 pm

What a beautiful, insightful, respectful, honest commentary! Thank you, Doug!


Posted by Ronna, a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood,
on Jan 29, 2015 at 2:35 pm

I agree that thoughts such as your article ought to be shared with city council, if for nothing other than to create a paper-trail, if and when a person (or an entity) is looking for help, for one reason or another, even for "Best Practices" purposes and for another city.

Please reconsider sending this to the new council, in preparation for the Priorities Retreat. Your insights and experience are beneficial.

I agree that just one or two people cannot change a system that is reluctant. But you can (and do) have an influence. You can draw attention to a healthier way of doing things.Honesty, focus & listening about listening is a topic worth taking on!

In fact, that is the reason I went to council on Dec. 15th, 2015, telling them I'd heard rumors of lacerations on the feet/legs of people cut by the newly installed glass "jewels" sidewalks on Cal Ave. Safety is an issue worth taking on too!

After Dec. 26th, when I accidentally kicked a sharp shard out of the aggregate, and saw why the glass was coming loose, I wrote to council, yet again, also writing a letter to the editor to the PA Weekly, giving everyone a heads up that this safety issue needs to be addressed before the contractors finish and leave the project. I did all I could do, as a concerned citizen.

The story was picked up by several television stations: channels 4, 5 and 11, and when a person does an Internet search for "Glass Sidewalks" now, concerns about the sidewalks come up. One news report showed a collection of loose shards, similar to the collection I gathered myself.

I did not believe that there was any problem with the sidewalks, until I did my own investigation. But I could see the shards are not "rounded, polished jewel-like" pieces that are flush with the walks. They are sharp and frankly, the kind of glass cities BAN, trying to clean that up, as debris.

From the response coming out of the city, they plan to put even MORE glass out there; the reason: thus far, there have not been any lawsuits from injuries.

So Doug, about your article, I agree that leaving a paper trail for council that will be picked up in the Internet has a variety of benefits.

In the case of the sharp glass on Cal Ave, it serves to put the PA officials on notice that there is a valid concern about the glass -- no one can say they did not know there was a problem -- it gives a source of help to anyone that may be injured as a result of the glass, and lastly, it shows WHY glass is not a good idea, if any other city gets the bright idea to do this to their own business district sidewalks, helping other parties with Best Practices.

When I first heard the rumors of lacerations due to the glass, I tried to find other places where this type of glass was used. There was nothing at all.

I could only find it in glass countertops, not on sidewalks; the only glass in sidewalks was different, not sharp, looking like it came straight from a Recycle facility as broken shards.

So it's a public service to politely draw attention to issues, providing solutions. I agree with those asking you to share your comments w/ council.

Thanks for your thoughtful article, and for all your interest in making the community better and healthier. Well done! Gratefully, Ronna


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