All this week, Ark Valley Voice is running a series of interviews with all current Salida city council members and Mayor P.T. Wood, providing an overview of the state of the city. Lawton Eddy and Joe Jordan contributed the series of interviews.
The mayor and each city council member were asked the same five questions. What has gone well with the current city council? What has this city council accomplished? What are the city’s “works in progress”? What are the lessons learned and the changes or improvements that resulted? What are the shortcomings – what could be done better – and what are your hopes for the new council going forward?
Some responded to all questions. Others chose not to respond to one or more questions. Beginning last Monday and continuing through Friday, Aug. 30, Ark Valley Voice is running the series. We have not edited the responses other than for grammatical or syntax errors.
Question 4: What are some “lessons learned” and the changes/improvements that resulted?
Justin Critelli:
We need to keep improving transparency and communication. There’s a frequent perception that if something isn’t out there for public view, then government is intentionally hiding it. The biggest lesson is to always take the more transparent route, even if it’s not legally necessary. Otherwise people think we’re being devious, and that’s just not who these members of council are.
While the outcome has appeared to be wrong sometimes, there has been no devious or malicious intention on the part of these council members.
We need good communication with as much citizen input as possible. We do take pains to be transparent but sometimes things happen quickly and personally I can get impatient. But we need to take the time to involve the community.
Jane Templeton:
Since I’ve been on council there have been no real problems or incorrect handling of anything. I’ve been proud of how council has conducted themselves and city business.
I see a very effective process now – which probably resulted from correcting processes that didn’t work well before.
We are more open and transparent than we’re required to be. We do this not because it’s required but it’s the right practice; to be open and transparent as much as possible.
Mike Bowers:
Vandaveer [Ranch] has been the biggest downfall. It has caused division and distrust. We need to make it usable for development. We need solutions, not just complaints. We need to quit procrastinating on this.
We need to make everyone on council feel included. There have been times I have not felt that.
Dan Shore:
We learned many lessons in the hiring of our City Administrator. It was a perfect storm of circumstances, including a traumatic brain injury of the man running the hiring process and loss of his records, The Mountain Mail not running Mr. Nelson’s disclosure of the incident prior to the hiring announcement, and the absence of advance community input that announcement would have created. These factors overshadowed the extensive due diligence that was conducted including conversations with law enforcement, psychological assessment and extensive reference checks.
In the future we will still do the same extensive due diligence, we will still hire a very qualified person to interview and hire a prospective administrator, however, we will do more to insure the communications in the news media are timely as intended. We will create more open community involvement such as a citizen task force participating in interview and hiring process.
Cheryl Brown-Kovacic:
There have been a number of lessons learned that point to a variety of necessary improvements.
We need better processes for scrutiny of contractors doing work for the city.
The future hiring of a City Administrator could be much improved by utilizing a citizen advisory committee.
We need to make some parcels of city land available for housing needs.
Harald Kasper:
Information distribution has not always been managed well. In the future, communication is a priority for any critical decisions made — no surprises. Public involvement would have been a healthy thing in the administrator’s hiring.
Personally I learned a great lesson. My biggest mistake was not checking with the local media to be sure an important article was released before the hiring of our city administrator.
Mr. Nelson and P.T. went to the paper with Drew’s story before the final hiring decision was made. Had the paper published that article two weeks ahead of the hiring decision as was intended, the community would have had the information and an opportunity to respond then. Instead, that article sat on a desk and was not published. I share the responsibility for not checking with the paper to be sure that happened.
Mayor PT Wood:
The communication piece has to improve. There needs to be open communication about what we’re doing and what people want us to be doing.
We know we’re not perfect. We’re making ongoing efforts to listen better, include people better. We’re practicing reflective listening and seeing lots of different people feeling comfortable about speaking during public comment.
We’re interviewing a company to help structure improved communication. We want citizens to know we’ve heard them. The City retreat came up with four pillars and “Improved Communications” is one of them.
We need a strategic communication plan about how to best interact among ourselves internally and how to share the conversation with community. The key question: How do we solicit and process feedback for idea creation and collaboration? We need a better model than just public comment and council reaction.
We need to make the website more user-friendly for community to have ready access to information and updates. This needs to be artful and thoughtful – not haphazard.
There has been a lot of reacting and shooting from the hip in the past. Now we’re planning for the future and preparing.
We had a great retreat with council and the City Administrator. We decided as a team that we want to provide good quality public service.
Our four pillars are; Communications, Community infrastructure, Financial Stability, and Affordable housing – laying the groundwork for housing to happen.
We need to think more about how to make our facilities such as the SteamPlant and the pool, revenue-generating.
We also need to better understand the capacity and demand of our water and wastewater infrastructure; evaluating this so we can be prepared for future needs and not be surprised. We need to deal the best possible way with water sources in a changing climate.
Friday, Aug 30, is the final installment — The State of Salida: The Shortcomings, what could be done better and hopes for Future Council.
Editor’s Note: The reference by Harald Kasper and Dan Shore regarding the release of information concerning City Administrator Drew Nelson prior to his appointment was also shared with Joe Stone of Ark Valley Voice. He made the decision not to write a story about it.
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