Bronwyn's Council Review

As usual for the review, my comments are red and italicized in the context of the latest Council Preview by David Martin.
 

A special meeting of the Ames City Council is taking place tomorrow (Saturday), Feb. 6th, 9:00am, at City of Ames Water Plant at 1800 E. 13th Street in its east and west conference rooms.  If you'd like to attend, enter through the main entrance and look for signage. As is usually the case, this meeting is workshop-style, off-site, and is not a Zoom meeting. We'll probably meet until at least the early afternoon. The agenda is a single item: Council Goals Update. Under this broad topic, we'll discuss the state of our established City Council Goals for 2020-2021. An important bit of context is that we approved these goals on February 25, 2020, and the very next day, we received an email from the City Manager on February 26 informing us that the City was beginning to deliberate how it will respond to a possible pandemic. Needless to say, our immediate priorities shifted. 

At our goals update meeting, we'll discuss where we are, consider alternatives, and examine our decision-making process and effectiveness. The Council won't take actions during this meeting; any actions coming out of our discussions will be taken up in a future meeting when the agenda can properly identify the action being considered.



I always find the annual goal setting/review to be one of the most interesting meetings of the year. Historically few people attend, likely because it is typically held off-site and not broadcast or streamed. It is always open to the public to attend, and this year we had one person in attendance. (For COVID19 precautions, we were in a very large conference room and wore masks when not eating or drinking.) Though it is usually held in January, this year's goal review fell at the end of Budget Week which was helpful since it gives us some insight in how much funding will be available to pursue tasks related to our goals. In a year when we have new Council members, this meeting has more team-building elements, but this year it was mostly a review of our prior goals since it wasn't a Council election year and we have the same crew as last year.

Supporting documents:

• Meeting Outline
• State of Council Goals for January 2020 - December 2021
  
  Our current Values and Goals are listed below. We spent time reviewing these, as well as the specific tasks leading to each goal, which you can find in the link above. We modified or removed some of the tasks, depending on if they had already been completed or affected by some other factor, such as the Iowa Legislature. 
• We Value Communication and Engagement with the Public
  • Adopt an attractive, single civic app by the end of 2021
  • Use the best communication engagement techniques and modern technologies to engage the community by reaching people in geographic areas using multiple channels.
• We Value Diverse Housing Options for the Community
  • Increase the stock of diverse housing types for a variety of income levels through zoning, including adjusting minimum lot area, multiple dwelling units on a lot, and accessory dwelling units
• We Value a Fun, Vibrant Community That Attracts and Retains People
  • Begin construction on a downtown community space by 2021
  • Obtain referendum approval to construct an indoor aquatic facility by summer 2021
  • Create a Beautification Master Plan for community entryways and thoroughfares by the end of 2021
• We Value a Diverse, Equitable, and Inclusive Community
  • Develop a shared understanding of diversity, equity, and bias as they relate to Council decisions and the policy-making process.
  • Through local ordinances, expand protections for Ames citizens beyond the Code of Iowa floor protections by 2021
  • Identify, by the end of 2020, the ways the City can assist the Ames Community School District in its efforts to close the achievement gap
• We Value Environmental Sustainability
  • Initiate and complete a Climate Action Plan by the end of 2021
     
• Effective Decision Making Body 2020
• Positives and Challenges from Last Two Years
• Planning and Housing Workplan Status 2021
  
  The Planning and Housing Workplan and a list of other staff referrals were also reviewed at this meeting. Throughout the course of the year, Council refers many items to staff, such as memos or staff reports on topics which constituents have contacted us about. (Think parking complaints, rezoning requests, and other spontaneous requests made to Council during the year.) We discussed which items had already been completed or are underway, which things might be on hold, and if any items had fallen off our list of priorities. 

We were also lucky enough to get a tour of the plant, below are some pictures.

 



 

Thanks for reading,
Bronwyn Beatty-Hansen
Ames City Council, At Large