[0:00] Oh perfect. So we are now here in the conference room for our interviews, for our four finalists, for our city manager position. That's what we'll be doing today. We have our consultants here with us. Greg, thank you so very much for the work that has gone into this and the the direction that you provide. [0:20] Added and brought us to this point. I'm gonna turn it over to you to give us some talking and talking points and and we'll we'll have this all wrapped up and be ready to go by 01:00. [0:30] Very good. And I just, you know, also want to reiterate how much we appreciate your time and commitment and attention today. This is a heavy lift. We know we all have busy schedules and to be able to devote time. [0:47] The process is important, but said that the selection of a chief executive is the most important decision that any board will make. So it's definitely time well invested. I have a few housekeeping items to go through in terms of the materials. [1:05] And I think we'll start with that. I have combiners in front of you and if you have a moment if you could just turn to the 1st tab, which is the schedule for the day. [1:25] So we are at this briefing time until 01:00 p.m.. And that's time just for us to get oriented and make sure that we have an efficient interview process. We all kind of understand what each of our roles are, get all of our questions answered. [1:40] Then we'll have candidates interviewing on the hour. The interviews are scheduled for about 50 min in content, and so there's about a 10 min break built in between candidates that you're free to use for a light discussion or as a break throughout the day. [1:57] And I'll be keeping track of time. So I'll just be sitting here on the side, not participating in the process, but monitoring making sure that we have good set of interviews and also managing our time. If we do run long with the candidate I'll prompt them to be more concise, and sometimes that. [2:16] Is a candidate being maybe a little nervous interviewing and sometimes that's the result of follow up questions and doesn't matter what the reason is, we just want to make sure that all the candidates get to speak to all the questions, and so I'll make sure that happens. So right about 04:50 in the afternoon as and it wraps up, we have. [2:36] Some time for discussion. We have right about 50 min to discuss and debrief and the purpose of that time will be somewhat simple. It's really for this group to come to consensus on who you'd like to invite back tomorrow for. [2:55] An interview and there's not a preset number it could be one, could be two, could be three, could even be four, it's unlikely, but we're hoping to invite back a small number of candidates tomorrow. [3:10] For tomorrow's interviews, which will be at 07:00 P.M. and those interviews are intentionally unscripted. There are NO prepared questions tomorrow. Tomorrow's an opportunity for each of you to ask questions that you're interested in, topics that. [3:25] You know, you may have been intrigued by from based on today's interview or just things that weren't covered today, and it's also a better chance for the candidates to get to know you. Today's a little bit one sided. Today is really you getting to know these candidates and deciding who you want. [3:44] To explore that relationship with more tomorrow. Tomorrow should be more conversational where they get to know you and get to understand your priorities and your interests as much as you get to dig into that second layer with them. If in the unlikely event that. [4:04] We are not able to make that decision on who comes back tomorrow by. About 05:40 P.M. and I think dinner was gonna be serving that period also. I understand you have a listening session and a meeting. We could recess and then finish up the conversation after your meeting, your business meeting tonight, but that sounds fun. [4:29] Yeah, I don't expect don't expect we need to do that and I I think we all agree we'd rather make that decision. [4:36] And I know the candidates would as well because they are you know obviously have a lot invested in this process. Any questions on the schedule or the itinerary? The next tab. [4:52] In your binders labeled guidelines and I apologize pay. Sure. Mr. Mayor, we don't have a 05:45 listening session today, is that right? We do. You do. So this 05:00, the TBD is really 05:00 till hard stop at. That's correct. Thank you. You're you're. [5:11] We're absolutely correct. The tab behind, sorry, the page behind the tab guidelines is a list of topics that we are not permitted to ask candidates about by law. We just pulled pulled together the four major employment laws that are applicable and create a list of topics that we cannot ask. [5:33] Candidates about the questions today are drafted in part to make sure that we stay within the law and don't ask questions that are inappropriate, but they're also for consistency, so we're asking the same questions of the same candidate out of fairness. [5:48] You do, however, have the opportunity to ask follow up questions, and I would encourage you to ask follow up questions as needed. Especially if a candidate's answered to the question doesn't really fully answer the question that was asked or if maybe it prompts a follow up, feel free to ask that. It should be a follow up to the. [6:10] Topic. But I do quick quickly want to go through this list of things that you cannot ask candidates about. You cannot ask about a candidate's birthplace, their citizenship, nationality or ancestry, race, color or that of their family. [6:29] You can't ask about foreign languages, it's can certainly be relevant. You cannot ask how they acquired the ability though. Most topics related to military service are out of bound, so it's better I think just to avoid that in most cases. [6:45] Arrest records, marital status, sexual orientation, relatives, dependents, maiden or bachelor names, all, all prohibited. Residents. [7:00] Home ownership, religion, disabilities, any kind of medical conditions, age, and financial information are not able to be asked about. Having said that. [7:15] You'll find that especially during the introductions as the candidates are responding to the 1st question, which is really them introducing themselves to you, you'll probably hear them tell you some of these things. It's ok for them to do that. They can tell you about maybe their family or their belief system, they can volunteer it, you just can't. [7:35] To ask about it. And I would encourage you to not take any notes about it either because since you're not using it as part of your decision making it, there's really NO reason to make any notes about it as well. Any questions about the guidelines? [7:52] Okay, next tab in the booklet are the questions themselves, and mayor on the page, there is a paragraph with bulled prints as introduction. That's a script for you, feel free to paraphrase. [8:12] But we, we genuinely and sincerely want to thank the Candace for being here today. This is a recruitment after all and they you'll see they've put an immense amount of work in preparation for the interviews today. It also reminds them how many questions they have and how much time we have. It just really sets the stage for the interviews. [8:33] And then if you would ask the 1st question as well, which also prompts their introduction, and that's a two part question, please tell us about your background and experience and why you'd like to be the next city manager for the city of Bloomington. That's the only question that they're expecting. They know they have a chance to introduce. [8:53] Use Themselves and explain why they're interested in the position. I will tell you that my experience is oftentimes just out of nervousness and getting started, sometimes people forget 2nd half of that question and it's pretty, just give people some grace and give them a prompt if they, if they do. [9:13] And then we could if you are all ok with that, we could just assign the rest of the questions going around the room. Is that alright? Okay, so Jen, if you would take question number two, that's really prompting them for their presentation. [9:33] They were asked to prepare a presentation and I'll have it on the screen so that when they walk in the room, it's ready to go, they'll have controls in front of them. The presentation is at the top of page two. [9:48] And it's really an opportunity for them to showcase their work to you kind of really talk about as a city management professional, what's the biggest accomplishment they feel like they've contributed or pulled off and, what made it difficult, what made it so relevant, and you get the chance to kind of see and hear what their. [10:08] Abilities are but also. Their ability to produce a product with some time on their hands and not just answer questions in the interview setting and also how they might present. Do you want me to just read, the non italicized part or do you want me to read the all the italicies? No, just the non italicized part. 2nd, the italicized part's just there for your reference. Thank you. [10:31] And then council Member move you to question three. Council member Lowman, question four. Council member Delessandro question five. Council member Revis, question six. Council member Nelson number seven. [10:48] Mayor council number eight. Let me just jump it over. I Okay so since I'm doing the intro and ok so council member Carter number eight. Council Member number nine. Council member lower number. [11:03] Lowman number ten council member Delassandro number eleven, and Mayor if you just go back to the closing two questions, this is a lot of questions for the time we have especially when consider there's a 10 min presentation. [11:20] So, questions three through ten, they're gonna have probably about 3 min a question. You know, they'll, they'll, they'll know that, but we'll just need to keep things moving along, especially if there are any follow up questions already know that. [11:37] They know they have, yeah, three or 4 min of question time budget. Not gonna police others have time here for them, NO. No, I'll just be keeping track of time. They I've talked to all of them in advance of the interviews and they know that these questions are like 3 min of questions. So if they take 5 min and then 2 min. [11:57] That's ok so yeah I'll be keeping track and making sure Sometimes people will be a little shorter on their intro in their presentation and take a little longer on the questions, that's fine, but I'll be checking their progress along the way and if they're slipping behind I'll get them a nudge. [12:14] And if we don't get through them, we just don't get through them, that's ok. Yeah, but I'm gonna try to make sure we get through them. So it's really rare when we don't get through them, but it can't happen, I suppose. But what's the expectation for us in terms of follow up questions? Because some people. [12:42] Because you can see there's a lot of content here and there's a lot of really good topics that were honestly were drawn from my initial conversations. [12:50] With all of you. And so we want to make sure that everybody gets a chance to speak to all of them. And if there's a really legitimate question in your mind that prompts a follow up question, please do ask it. We want you to feel comfortable with the candidates, but it will be at the expense of them maybe having to go a little more briefly on some of the other questions. Well, and like you said. [13:11] Tomorrow we'll have the opportunity to do follow like if we do have some follow UPS or additional questions that were as spurred because of their answers today, we can always dig in tomorrow. And at the end of the day as well, tomorrow we can also decide sorry today we can decide how much time you want with the campus tomorrow as well, so. [13:32] Based on how much you've given to the Did we coordinate that with port? They're not gonna leave. They have assured me that we'll be out of there by seven. Okay. [13:51] Nope. Okay, one moment. The next tab in your binders are the candidates cover letters and resumes in the order that you'll be seeing them today, so you should just be able to page through the colored tabs one by one. [14:07] And then the last page, the last tab is entitled ranking, and I do want to spend a minute with this because this is gonna be our friend at the end of the day. I don't know if, any of you have used a forced ranking tool before, but. [14:24] Say one thing or two things. One, this is a discussion tool only. It's helped to have its purpose is to help us have a more efficient debriefing discussion at the end. It's not gonna force any outcomes. Two, this is very, very easy to use and but also easy to overcomplicate. So. [14:43] All we're gonna ask you to do, think of the columns as our 1st, second, 3rd, and 4th interviews of the day. So we're gonna be moving across the sheet as we move through the day. After each candidate interviews. [14:57] Take a minute and decide which one you believe is more suited for the role and give that person the lowest number and then give the next candidate 2nd number. So, e.g., after our 1st candidate, we pre filled in a one for you because there's NO one else to compare that person against. [15:18] After 2nd interview, as soon as the candidate leaves the room, take a minute and give the candidate you believe is more suited for the role of one and give the other candidate of two. Oh, I get it, ok. And then after the 3rd candidate, re rank them again. [15:33] And then again at the 4th, and at the end of the day after the 4th candidate finishes, you each have your own personal ranking of the candidates with one being the one you feel was most aligned for the role and four being the one you believe is least aligned for the role. [15:50] And then we'll I'll collect these from you and we'll use it to kind of quickly spot consensus and get to our decision for the day. There's, we call it force ranking tool because you cannot use fractions or decimals or ties. [16:09] Force yourself to rank after each candidate interviews and you'll be really happy at the end of the day because if you hold off and you just are not sure, and then you still have to make the decision, you just have to make it later and it's harder. [16:25] Any questions about this? It does prompt some questions. I'm happy to I'm curious myself if I, if I may. We're ranking all of them today based only on the questions that we are supposed to. No, i'll cover that in a minute. Thank you for asking that I just want to make it clear cause I do have other questions. [16:45] Besides yes, the ones based on the resumes. And I will get to that next because that's important. So one last thing about your binders on the inside left jacket of your binders are some note taking forms. There's one packet for each candidate. [17:04] You can record some strengths and weaknesses and overall comments on the page. And then on 2nd page there are some overall comments space to write for each question if you'd like. This is a memory aid only, don't feel like you have to write. [17:21] Everything down, but write as much down that you feel like you need to to have a good debrief at the end of the day. We will collect these and they'll be retained for records purposes, so be sure everything you write is, you know, something that's appropriate. [17:36] And then I do want to go next to council member Rebus's point because it's really important. So I think I I shared this document with the group when we met to discuss the candidates in the 1st place. [17:56] And, our experience has been that there really are four main areas that you should be considering about Candice as you're evaluating them. I think we all kind of quickly go to education and experience being probably the most likely. [18:16] Indicators of qualifications, but there really is a lot more to it and there are dimensions to those as well. So in experience yes, experience is important. The amount or years of experience are important, but of what size organization, of what type of organization is relevant. [18:35] But. How well is that experience aligned with this job here in Bloomington Minnesota? Has the candidate been successful in their experience? Have they been able to accomplish things and especially things that are relevant to you? And has it been challenging experience or has it been relatively easy experience? And I think the most. [18:56] Obvious example might be someone. That has gained their experience in a much, much, much smaller organization or community might not be the same as someone has with larger experience. Likewise with education, amounts of education's always kind of top of the list, but does that education align with the job list manager. [19:19] And have this, has the person continued to invest in themselves? Did they get their education 20 years ago and stop developing themselves or have they continued to invest in their professional education? Either through formal education or certifications? [19:35] The other two areas I think are also super important, and these are things that just to consider the 1st category I consider risk factors, how often has someone potentially moved or changed jobs? [19:54] Past behavior is a good indication of future behavior and if they've have a pattern of moving jobs frequently, let's know that there's potential they could again as well. Things like reputation past legal or financial issues. [20:10] Place allegations, any concerns about whether someone can accept a job offer if they were to receive one? Terminations or forced resig resignations, disciplinary issues, I think we're past the point of confidentiality risks, sometimes, you know, there's concern that's. [20:29] Somebody might have to back out because they're worried about their name being out, but the names are out at this point. [20:35] We have done a significant amount of vetting of these candidates and I feel like these risk areas have been mitigated greatly, but I'd still want you to be thinking about it. And then subjective qualities. These are all those things that are very hard to quantify but are nonetheless important. [20:53] A person's communication skills, their leadership abilities through charisma, emotional intelligence, energy level, style, work ethic, is a person risk averse or is a person willing to take calculated risks? [21:09] Their leadership style, the ability to think strategically, the values alignment with your organization and with the community of Bloomington, any kind of local ties or local connections, initiative drive, dependability, integrity, those sorts of things. [21:26] Very hard to quantify, but still very important. So when the candidates are interviewing today to council Membersus's point, we want you to be thinking about more than their interview performance, thinking about them more comprehensively about what they have to offer as a candidate. [21:44] So with that, any last I noticed that it's in a different order than how you had in your packet. Yeah, it's just because it's on a PowerPoint slide. Okay, that's it. All right, that's all. I mean to that, ok. If there are NO other questions, we are at our starting time for our 1st candidate. I will get us started. [22:02] Any question? No questions. We go. They're all in person? They're all person. Okay. And I'm just gonna have the 1st slide ready so that we don't have to mess. [22:21] This this is where we go. Right back, like getting up and shaking hands or anything, right? That'll take a lot of time. We're just not like getting up and like we'll just I might just to say hello, but not everybody else. [22:44] But saying we're not all gonna like stand up and like shake hand go around the room. Yeah sure not doing introductions or anything either, right? They can see our names? Yeah yeah Straight to business. [23:00] Last thing that last thing I want to do is use their time to talk about us. Hey Zach, you'll be right here at this chair. If you want to say hello to everyone 1st, we'll do. Thank you for joining us today. Thanks. Nice to know this conversation. [23:20] Sorry. Oh, NO. Yeah Nice nice to meet you. Hi I'm. I feel more natural. Pleasure. That feels much more natural and better. Firstly, my mother will ask, where are you playing? Amazing. [23:40] Back, thank you so very much. For your interest in the position, thanks for journeying on up here in the Minnesota to to talk with us. We really do appreciate it. We've got ten plus questions today to ask you and we've got about 50 min to get it done, so let's get a budget your time accordingly and we'll leave the last few minutes for you. [23:59] To ask any questions if it's wonderful and so pretty standard. And I'm gonna jump right in and we're gonna kick it off and keep going. Great, great. Tell us about your background and experience especially as it relates to this position of our city manager. And second part is that let us know why you would like to be the next city manager of Bloomington. [24:19] Yeah, well again, my name is Zach Walker and it's an honor to be with all of you today. My background, I have served 20 years now in government at positions of increasingly responsible jobs and, and really a diverse array of opportunities I've been in the state and region. [24:39] Government levels before I found my home in local government, so I've really been able to amass a. [24:46] Very interesting breadth and depth of knowledge has served me well. My time in independence, which is my most current stop, has really been defined by a series of historic firsts or haven't been done in a long time, which has been really fun and energizing for me to get to do with my team. I am very. [25:06] Be Interested in the Bloomington position because the opportunities and the challenges that you've identified really align with the lived experiences that I've had in, in my career to date. [25:17] E.g., you identified that you would like to have a manager who can carry forward your very impressive legacy of of financial stewardship. I developed and implemented a series of financial policies for independence that has really put us in much stronger financial position than when I was hired nine years ago. You identi. [25:37] Identified the the need to have somebody who could focus on equitable community development and redevelopment, and I'm gonna share with you later a really exciting economic development project that we have accomplished, but I'm equally proud of the redevelopment work that we've done, particularly in our areas of the community that have been historically marginalized or have not seen. [25:57] The same level of investment of, of other parts of our community and the results that has brought to independence. And finally, you talked about in in your materials somebody who could focus on organizational culture, particularly as I understand there's been some leadership changes over the last year or so. That's something I've had to. [26:17] Navigate as we've rebuilt our financial position and independence. But I've also been tested in ways I never expected to like four different public safety line of duty deaths and actually the the passing of a city, city council member and the ability to navigate our community and our organization through that has really helped. [26:37] Helped me grow personally and professionally as well. So I'm interested in your position because your mission statement talks about cultivating a remarkable and enduring community where people want to be. [26:49] That is the kind of community I want to serve, and that's the kind of legacy I want to leave in my time in public service. Thank you. Thank you. Yes sir. So I have the next question. Right. So you were provided a question in advance, so I'm just gonna turn it over to you to share your presentation. Oh, ok. Happy to do so I have. [27:09] Have a few notes gonna jump to that, but, it's it's exciting to get to share this with you because this is a project I'm very proud of in independence. So the the opportunity to share this with you is exciting because it really reflects the kind of leadership that I brought. [27:29] Bring to the communities and the organizations that I serve. You'll see the presentation is called from Vision to reality, and it focuses on, the east Gate redevelopment project in independence, which is a long dormant project that had been promised to the community for quite some time. So I thought it might be helpful just to put in context a little bit more about me. We talked about. [27:52] About some of my my experiences, but really I think I can summarize particularly in the context of this presentation myself as somebody who's committed to building coalitions to get really complex projects done in a community. I am somebody who's versatile, I can start the week in Washington DC with our council, guiding them through. [28:12] The halls of Congress to advocate for their community with their peers in the federal legislative delegation. And in the week in front of Walmart on a brist December day ringing the bell for salvation Army and my sweats. I'm somebody who's accessible. I believe that organization and community building happens outside of the four walls of. [28:32] City hall, obviously that's an important part of the job, but getting out in the community to build relationships with staff and the community members is important. So nothing is too. [28:43] Difficult for me, including working on a street maintenance crew. If this job doesn't work out, I found that patch a pretty meaning pothole, and I'm somebody who is, is deeply committed. I I put down routes in the community that I'm in. I find a variety of ways to get involved because I believe that progress happen. [29:03] At the speed of trust and the more involved and invested you are in the community, the deeper and the more meaningful those relationships are. [29:10] And so I think that benefits not only me and my capacity but each of you as city manager to have somebody the community knows and understands and and trusts. The story really makes a lot more sense through the background of independence. So the project we're gonna talk about today, this was before it developed. I I sent our comm staff out on a drewry day to. [29:30] Really add to the drama of the project site here, but independence is a community of a hundred and 23000. That makes us the 5th largest city in the state of Missouri. We're an old community in terms of our our history, a hundred and 98 years old, which comes with some really cool history and unique stories, but also challenge. [29:50] It's like a billion dollars of deferred capital maintenance. What do you have to have to make maintenance improvements? Revenue? [29:59] But we're sensitive to the financial position of our community. Our median household income is roughly $60000, which has increased about six or pardon me about 30 % in my nine years as city manager, but still lags the state and national average. We're a very blue collar community. Historically our industry's. [30:18] Have been the retail sector, the hospitality industry, and then the trades, people working in construction, manufacturing careers like that. [30:28] And we're becoming an increasingly diverse community. We are now at about an 8020 split of white to a non white population. I think that's probably best reflected that over the last three decades, our Hispanic population has jumped four times over that period, so we know that we really need to. [30:49] Reinvent ourselves to generate the revenue that's necessary to fund the needs in the community, but we also need to make sure that the kind of jobs we are bringing along with the skill set and the talents of the community as well. [31:02] So, this project was one that had been promised to the community for about, pardon me, got excited there for about 50 years. I love this headline from 1972 where, you know, any day now, this project's gonna pop exclamation point. But here we were in the late 2010s, with. [31:22] This project having still not developed. So this unfortunately had really become land that was not only vacant but was underutilized from a tax revenue generating standpoint disconnect from the community and assemble of promises unfulfilled to the community. [31:41] We got really excited in 2019. It looked like this project was finally gonna pop. We had a highly regarded logistics developer who came forward with initial plans for the project and it was sailing right along, had made it through the planning commission and then when it made its way before the council. [32:00] Well, it ran into very strong and fierce neighborhood resistance to the project. Folks were concerned about traffic, about noise, and about the impact that a logistics center could have on the quality of life and proximity to their, their neighborhoods there. [32:16] So, as that opposition mounted, the council started to retreat from the project, the developer was worried about their standing and reputation, so they started to retreat and the deal fell apart. We maybe could have, you know, put our, our foot down and held together the necessary. [32:36] Council support to get this done. But ultimately it became clear to me that pushing harder was not gonna be the right answer. Instead it was going to be, we needed to take a step back, we needed to listen differently, and we needed to frame this in a more inclusive manner while also still communicating to the business community locally and nationally that independence was. [32:59] Still open for business. So how we started to do that? Well, we framed the conversation not as a new project per se, but as the fulfillment of a decades old promise. We built a strong coalition of city staff, our elected officials, the business and civic community, and this new developer that had come forward north. [33:22] Point who actually happened to be the largest industrial developer in the United States. [33:27] We worked closely with the council to reestablish alignment and ownership of the vision, so what did they want to see and what were they going to be willing to support to get this project done? We worked with a developer to structure a public private partnership that respected the taxpayers resources. [33:45] Made sure the necessary infrastructure improvements were done. So this didn't create a burden on the the surrounding neighborhood and community. And then above all honored that community input, and you can see the developer hosted a series of neighborhood meetings refined this plan an infinite number of times before bringing this forward. [34:05] Over to council. So it wasn't fast, but it was deliberate, it was strategic, and ultimately it was successful. [34:13] So there's a lot of cool numbers I could share with you about this project, a billion dollars of private investment. The governor gave us a $51 million grant to make the necessary public improvements for the infrastructure in the area. All the taxing jurisdictions collectively are gonna see about a hundred and $50 million of new tax revenue over the next 30. [34:33] Last years. 5000 new jobs. Something I'm very proud of, though, is the neighborhood was very sensitive to the environmental impact and their quality of life. 56 % of this project site has been preserved as open space. We've invested 250 acres of new parkland, trailheads, a dog park, and the developer actually did a. [34:54] Partnership directly with the local pop warner football league to make some improvements to their adjacent football complex that has made them quite happy. I do have to pause here. Mayor. I watched your state of the city address and you admonished staff for letting you wear the same outfit four different times. I let the mayor wear the same outfit to the development agreement side. [35:14] Doing the groundbreaking and the my game for you. So in addition to learning that, some of the other important lessons I learned, legacy leadership, it means more than finishing work that others started, it means being persistent over a a peer. [35:34] Period of decades if that's what it takes. Community transformation, it's not just about fast wins, it's about earning trust and showing persistence. And the city manager's role is often to hold the long view, navigate tension, and keep the project moving forward even when the path can be hard. [35:54] So this wasn't just a real estate project. This was really a test in leadership, and it's one that I'm proud to say we passed. [36:03] I think this project really has some parallels and matters and should matter to you because I see a lot of the same strengths and opportunities in your community. You have a clear sense of direction, a bold and intentional culture, and a community that values both innovation and stability. Your values, as I've identified. [36:22] By them being regional, ethical, and professional, and bold mere the kind of attitude it took to get the east gate project done. So I'm excited about the opportunity to help you build the next chapter in Bloomington, and I believe I bring the experience, the humility. [36:40] And the energy to lead that kind of an effort. Thank you again for the opportunity to present this to you today. It's it's exciting to get to share this with you. This story is one of many that I could have picked to present with you today that I chose east gate because it reflects what matters most in public leadership. [37:00] Trust vision, and results. I would be honored to serve as your next city manager and to work alongside of you in building a legacy board. Thank you, right? Well, that was a great example, but I'd love to hear if you can share us with us another time where you successfully build trust that. [37:22] That's different. Acceptable community group or stakeholders and what specific steps did you take to really build that and maybe not as big a level as this one, but how did you navigate that? Well, i'll pull something that we had on one of those slides at our council member and that was the billion dollars of of deferred maintenance and part of the reason independence had found itself. [37:43] In that position was that in those hundred and 98 years, the community had never been asked to support a general obligation bond. In fact, when I was hired, that was one of the pride points that the council shared with me of we don't have any economic development debt in our in our community. [38:03] Oh boy, ok. I knew we were going to have to spend some time. It wasn't going to be fast, it wasn't gonna be easy, again, taking the long view, but helping the council to understand that not all debt is bad thing, that we need to invest in ourselves. A healthy community is, is one that's investing in itself. [38:23] New we're gonna have to talk to the community about what is a general obligation bond, particularly at a time in our region's history when there is quite a community outcry in, in our county about property tax assessments. So there was a lot of frustration. [38:43] About that. So the way we finally went about this, after you know several years of kind of laying the groundwork and slowly educating elected officials and community members about this need felt like it was really time to bring this forward. And the way we really accelerated that was I asked each of the seven council members to appoint three members. [39:03] Which may have been crazy because a 21 member committee can be quite unwieldy, but I wanted to have diverse representation across the community to make sure that if we could sell it to this 21 member group, they could go back to their corners of the community and sell it to the folks that they interact with on a day to day basis. Ultimately, we got that group to come. [39:23] Come up with what we believe was a manageable project list within our bonding capacity. [39:31] We got the council to unanimously approve that valid measure. And then we went out together, myself council members, as appropriate city staff and made 35 public presentations to different groups across the community. And those weren't always. [39:50] Easy. You know, there was a lot of hard questions, the prevailing attitude in in today's, you know, economy seems to be. [39:58] We have to tighten our belt, you should do the same, but we really tried to paint a picture of we've fallen into the position we are because we've not invested in ourselves like your peer cities. And if you want to look like Phil in the blank city, then you have to behave like them. So that turned out, and and I don't know a hundred percent what Minnesota law la. [40:18] Looks like, but in Missouri for a general obligation bond, you have to get. 57 % voter approval for an issue. One of the questions for infrastructure did reach that level. 2nd question fell 54 vote shy. And then the other question didn't was was quite a bit more behind, but we got our 1st ever general obligation bond in a. [40:42] That community passed, and frankly I'm pretty excited that it's that infrastructure question because people use streets and sidewalks and bridges every single day. [40:50] I think we're gonna be able to prove to them that we can deliver on the promises and build that trust to carry this forward in the future. Thank you. Your true time when you successfully increase the engagement for underrepresented or marginalized communities. [41:07] What approach should you take? Yeah, you know, I think the story that that I want to share with you about that is the work we have done to serve both our homeless pop population and and people who are are struggling with mental health and mental illness, and a lot of times. [41:27] There's some overlap between those two populations. So a couple of things that we have done having identified that this is a prevailing and growing need and issue in our community. We use some of our initial COVID relief funds to partner with a nonprofit entity in our community to start a program that we call independence together. Independent. [41:51] Together and that stands for something and don't quiz me on what it means. That involves finding individuals who are experiencing houselessness. [42:01] They are put to work on a crew with the non, through the nonprofit, they administer the whole program. We're just bankruling this thing. They go out and pick up litter and debris in the community so they're beautifying public right of way, parks, public spaces, et cetera. [42:16] And they are earning, a daily stipend for that. And a portion of those funds are then being set aside into escrow, so that eventually they save up enough funds that they can have a down payment on 1st month's rent for housing. That program, we're real proud of it. It has now expanded out to where. [42:36] Odot has partnered with the nonprofit of odot's our state highway transportation program. So they're. [42:43] They are very research rich now and able to expand the program to serve a broader population, and our municipal league, last year gave it their recognition for project innovative project of the year. On the public safety side of that, we have both in our and I know you've done the similar thing with the. [43:03] Your brain health program for your police department. We started a mental health co responder program so that if a call is made to 911 about some issue, a co responder goes out with the police department, a mental health professional, and if this is an issue that can be de escalated because somebody's experiencing a mental health crisis and it doesn't need. [43:23] Need a law enforcement response, then they can triage it in that front and help get that person through that immediate crisis and then into long term services. [43:31] And then through our fire department, people who maybe aren't engaged in some sort of, you know, criminal activity but also clearly having a mental health issue, maybe a medication issue, something like that. We call that Arch alternative response to community health, and we have community paramedics embedded in our fire department. [43:51] Who are going out on those more ambulatory type calls and again diverting the need for public safety resources to respond to those or ensuring that these community members are receiving the treatment and services that they need. [44:06] Oh. Hello again. Yeah. I'd like you to tell us about the communication systems and norms that you put in place with your city council. How do you ensure transparency for them, avoid surprises, support all of the members of your council equally? Absolutely. [44:24] So I'm a member of ICMA, the International Groups Association, very firm believer in that profession's code of ethics. And part of that means council members get equal access to to information. It it is imperative that nobody ever be surprised or that one council member be. [44:44] In a more advantageous position than the other. So a couple of different ways that I'm trying to engage in those conversations. [44:52] One, I am sending a weekly report on Fridays to the city council that provides them updates on some of the key accomplishments or emerging issues either from this past week or that are coming up in the next week, and I'm doing that through the lens of our strategic plan, so I'm tying that directly to. [45:11] Deliverables in the plan, help to reinforce them that their plan that they've adopted is working, but also giving them that core information that they need. If an issue is really kind of hot or emerging depending on the circumstance and how much I think I need to communicate and put. [45:31] Let's be clear, this is more art than science, but I will, I will call council members and run through that issue with them. If it's maybe an issue where I don't have as much information or it's kind of still emerging. [45:47] Send a text or an email to the group to say, hey, this is something that's emerging. We're dealing with it. I'll follow up as I have more information for you. And then this is admittedly somewhat unique as I've talked to my colleagues in the profession, but this has worked very well for me. [46:06] I'm actually having weekly meetings with each member of the council and. Now I would respect each of your time and figure out what works best for you. I, I, you know, we would figure out if that's something that would be valuable or more cumbersome for you, but in my present role as I look out seven lanes of traffic, seven elected officials, it is helpful for me to have that weekly face to face touchpoint to. [46:30] To convey and communicate issues, I keep a list of here's the things each council member needs to know that week. [46:37] But it also gives me a chance to hear of what's on your mind. What are the important issues you're concerned about? Are there things coming up on the council agenda that we need to spend some more time discussing? But I want to make sure, in some way shape or form that I would have an opportunity to, to touch base with you on a semi regular. [46:58] Basis without becoming cumbersome or burdensome and disrespectful of your time. Very quick follow up question. What is the style of government in independence? It's the council manager form. Same as our thanks. My question. Tell us about a time when you had to navigate or reinforce the boundaries between the city council's policy role and the city manager manager's operation. [47:23] Responsibilities. How did you approach the situation? And what steps did you take to maintain clarity and mutual respecting the roles? You know, council member, that that starts and ends for me again with the ICM Code of Ethics that I view my job and and I am functioning at the highest level when I. [47:46] Understand that it is my job to work with my staff. To take an issue that's coming before the council, to research that issue thoroughly, to look at all of the alternatives, present that information to the governing body along with a recommendation of what we view as, as the best course of action, but then to step back and, and let the council make that decision. [48:10] And put our full heart and effort into implementing whatever decision that the council has made because that is the form of government, you're the duly elected officials, and that's our job to do that. So when new council members are elected, we have a council member orientation with that group. And that is one of the 1st thing I share with them. It's not my job. [48:30] To tell you what to do. It's my job to share these recommendations with you to help you sound through these issues and then collectively as a body come up with the decision that's that's best. [48:43] I really believe and just, you know, I hold myself to a standard of continuous education and self improvement, and I try to look for and provide those opportunities to the governing body as well. Whether that be something that's put on by the Missouri municipal League for new elected officials. [49:02] Whether that's something through our regional council where they're having elected officials training or something like that, but they really try. [49:11] To help the council understand what is your role and how can we best function together? Because we have a council who's up in the crowsed nest of the ship, looking out across the ocean and charting a course for us and communicating that to a staff. Man, we can navigate that. We can hit it and we can do great things for a. [49:31] Community. And ultimately once the council has seen that practice and action of, hey, you, you guys give us good info, then they, they really become believers in the system in the form of government. [49:48] Sorry about that. That's quite alright. All right here. Yeah sir. Describe a specific time when you took significant and calculated risk in your leadership. What was the risk? How did you evaluate it? And what was the. [50:05] Yeah, so the lead up to this is this I'm gonna call it an interesting benefit. That's the nice way to put it independence or independence. Oh yeah. Minnesota device you had a benefit where if you worked for the city for five years. [50:26] You vested in the city's health insurance plan for life, and not just you, but your surviving spouse and any eligible dependents. So, if, if, I I worked for the city for five years and I passed, my wife stays on the insurance until she passes. This was costing the city tens. [50:46] A millions of dollars. But you wanna slap a horness nest. Tell retired employees that you're gonna change and modify their health insurance plan. So again, I I've communicated to you and I'll reinforce. I believe the city manager's role is to really hold that long view and see where we need to go, but. [51:08] Practice relentless incrementalism, you know, can I move them out and even a teaspoon at a time today? Leave it just a little bit better than I found it when we started the day. [51:17] So ultimately, the sort of the measured approach we took with this was step one, we changed the benefit in one year that you had to, for all new hires effective X date, you had to work for the city for for 20 years. You know, most ok great you know that seems reasonable fine. [51:36] And then we came back a few years after that and said, you know what, this is, you know, not gonna make an immediate impact, it's not gonna hit anybody here today, but to leave the city in a better position where it lets I recommend we change the benefit that all new hires, NO new hires after this date qualify for this benefit. [51:56] Regardless of tenure of service. And then the next year, I went for the the full inchilada, which was, can we start to make some changes to the existing plan? As you can imagine, there was significant resistance. [52:13] There, were a series of public meetings. There was a hurse that said retiree health insurance. There was a poster that had me throwing an old lady over a cliff in a wheelchair. That was cool. So it was awesome. [52:33] What we did, I mean to kind of cut to the chase is we met with, kind of some appointed designated representatives from that retiree group, and I believe in the power of data, data tells a great story, and I helped show that group and convince them that it was costing them more to stay on the city's house. [52:53] Health insurance plan, not not that what great things this is gonna do for the city. They could care less. Most of them don't even living independence anymore. What what mattered to them was it's going to change their financial position for the better. So the deal that we made was we developed a custom Medicare. [53:11] Advantage plus plan for that group. We still contribute to the plan at the same percentage pro ratter rate that we were doing with their health insurance plan when they were on the city's plan. But the end result in addition to saving them personally significant funds is it has saved the city initial calculations. [53:31] For $10 million annually, but that's multiplying out through compounding rates over the last several years since we've done that. So, we ended up in a win win place. Everybody feels good about it and the city's in a much healthier financial place than it was. [53:47] Great example. Ok, I have the next question. Cause so can you tell us about a time where you had to lead a team through organizational change? How did you maintain morale and accountability? Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I've shared with you that our financial position was really strained when I was hired at. [54:07] Right here. You know, I knew there were gonna be some things that would be easier than others to do, but one of those things I knew we were gonna need to do was to get more lean as an organization. I have ultimately consolidated eight city departments into two. [54:28] I'll give you a little more context on that. We, we took what was our public works department and merged that with our water and sanitary sewer departments, so that's into one, and then we took our finance. [54:43] Human resources, technology services, and law departments, and we call that finance and administration now. And then we have actually done a partnership with our county, for shared services with our health department. Most of that I was able to do through natural attrition. People. [55:04] Hiring. So we were able to do that in a, you know, relatively painless manner. But as you can imagine, there's quite a bit of personal identity tied in with those departments. You know, saw in the picture, I try to be present as much as possible with staff and to meet them where they're at. So. [55:23] I made sure to go around particular. Let's use the example of public works water and sanitary sewert. I went to the daily check in meetings 7730 in the morning before they headed out for the day. Talk to them about the changes that were coming. [55:40] Let them know that it wasn't going to mean, you know, a change in their positions, a change in their pay, help them to understand the community benefit, the financial benefit this was gonna have for the organization, but also ask them, what are you concerned about? What matters to you? And I'll tell you one example there, one thing that really mattered to them. [56:00] Was identity, you know. Water didn't want to be public works. Public works didn't want to be sewers. If what's the name? You know, so we call them municipal services. It's it's everybody's the fresh start for all of them. Nobody won, everybody was a, a new department and that has created a shared identity for them. [56:22] In some of the cases it did involve having to. Move some people out of the organization. I think what worked well for us there, and by NO means do I, you know, pretend that it's perfect because those decisions are very hard and and very emotional, but the people that we had to move along, we, we did that in a very humane way. [56:43] We ensured that they had a financial package that was not gonna leave them high and dry and gave them time to transition out of the organization. But we also then met with the staff and and let them know this is not a reflection of your service. It's not a failure on your part that you didn't do enough to protect the leaders or the department director's position. [57:04] Position it's a reflection of the position that we find ourselves in and trying to make independence healthier financially and operationally efficient. [57:12] And so I think that built that trust with people that we cared enough to come and meet with them 1st hand face to face. It was just a something they heard about one day or a kind of anonymous email that I took the time along with staff to go meet them on their turf face to face and, and share the changes that were coming before. [57:32] Before they happen so that they, they felt. We valued them enough to share that with them. Thank you. How have you met, how have you integrated the city's strategic plan into daily operations and decision making, and can you share how you reported progress on both both the staff and the public? [57:53] I, my time independent now had four different strategic plans. The 1st one we had was a, was a five year plan. We we started and adopted a second strategic plan, but then we had council. [58:13] Collections and understandably that group wanted to do their own plan. And then once we completed that one, we just involved on on a new strategic plan. Kinda soup to nuts the way that that has worked for me is I love to bring the council and the senior leadership team together. [58:33] Usually with a facilitator, so there's a neutral party to help, you know, move the conversation along or isn't perceived as being biased in any one way, but really spend the day identifying what are the core issues that the vision that the council wants to achieve, and then the senior leadership team is there to talk to them about. [58:54] Maybe what's practical or, you know, how we can get to that. And ultimately then work with that facilitator to come up with a plan that is measurable and actionable because I believe that things that get measured get managed, and that's the stuff that we prioritize. [59:14] I'm sending that weekly report to the council and the senior leadership team. You know, so that might say something like today we had a credit rating call with Standard and poor, and it said this and this is why it matters. Parentheses action plan item 5.2 point. [59:34] H because, you know, then they can consult their strategic plan say, oh, we, we really are working on that. That's pretty cool. We're sending then a monthly report to the council that will have updates. It's a matrix that's got all of those deliverables in the plan and shows them here month. [59:54] In the last month since you saw this, this is what some of the significant achievements have been. And then back to the public facing document that we also put on our website. [1:00:04] We do quarterly presentations at a council work session so the public can hear some of those updates. Those updates are, really aligned with the performance metrics that we have set. So we've got the performance dashboard, but then we're able to present that publicly to call more attention to that. [1:00:24] Our budget, we've are utilizing a priority based budgeting system, which I know your organization has recently moved to. I'm a firm believer in that so they can see that full, 1st three 60 perspective of we're budgeting for these results. And then I love to do an annual retreat with the council where I show them. [1:00:43] With the significant accomplishments from the strategic plan the last year. Here are the next parts of the plan that from my perspective, I think we should look to activate, but you know you all give me your feedback on what matters to you. So I try to make sure we've got weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual check ins with the council that then all of those are public facing so that the community can track and follow along as well. [1:01:07] Okay. As you truly know, the Bloomington Fire department is undergoing a significant organizational transformation. From your experience, what are some of the key issues to ensure that we get it right? Please share examples of ask what you've done. Yeah, what I would want you to know what I can start off with is. [1:01:29] Being a city with the agent history that we have. We have one of the oldest fire departments, west of the Mississippi River and one of the oldest fire unions, west of the Mississippi River, a very active engaged group. I think the important thing to get right is we gotta start off. [1:01:49] With a very strong. Vision and plan of what does success look like? What do we want the the mission of this fire department to be? You know, is it truly just a department that responds to structural calls? Is this going to be a department that focuses on emergency medical services and ambulatory calls? What. [1:02:12] What would that look like? But we need a very clear definition of what is our fire department going to be and what does it look like? [1:02:19] We need to make sure that we involve stakeholders at all levels. So whether that be the frontline fire department personnel, the fire chief, I think they know their profession better than anybody, so we need to consult with them about what they view as the needs, these things they need to be successful. [1:02:38] Both the resources they need. I think we need to make sure and you guys do an excellent job of this. I've seen it demonstrated in your budget process, how you go out and meet the community where they are. We need that same kind of process as for the fire department, so we asked this community, what kind of fire department do you want? [1:02:56] I I will caution and tell you that fire service can be a very expensive department and very expensive service. They have a very unique work schedule that has, if you're not careful, the opportunity to escalate the cost of the department very quickly, so we. [1:03:16] Need to make sure we've got some strong guardrails in place to manage those year over year cost increases. [1:03:25] You know, an an independence, if you jump back about 15 years, our police and fire department have gone from being about 50 % of the general fund budget to 76 % of the general fund budget, and that's because I don't think those guardrails were always there in place to. [1:03:43] Ensure more sustainable managed growth. So I think we need very clear expectations about what we're going to be. [1:03:50] I think we need broad input into what that department looks like, but then we need some really firm policies, procedures, operating guidelines et cetera, to ensure that the department functions with the resources it needs to meet those expectations, but not in a way that. [1:04:10] Is not sustainable financially for the organization. [1:04:15] So we're in a cycled growth here in Bloomington. I'm curious how you work with residents, with the council, with staff, with everybody engaged, you know, all the stakeholders you might have to ensure that we've got, you know, history, right? You might, you mentioned this a little bit earlier, that stability versus innovation. So history, growth for the future. [1:04:35] Sure. Concerns related to, you know, change, all that. How are you managing that? How would you recommend we manage that? Yeah. It it starts again. I mean, I, I really need and value each of you for the roles that you have. You, you represent different parts and different areas of this community and and you know the city. [1:04:56] Be better than than anyone. You have your pulse on the community. And so those frequent ongoing conversations with each of you, help me to know where the community sees itself at and where it wants to go. You know, what is an appropriate level of growth? What kind of housing do we want to have? [1:05:15] I think for me, what's worked well is understanding the balance, ok? And what I mean by that is we are a historic community. We've got a, a historic independent square that is a national historic district and working with the merchant. [1:05:34] And the square association and the business community to. Preserve that history while also making investments in that area that continue to make that an attractive place that people want to come and shop and eat and visit and, and hang out. So finding that that balance there, I think that happens by being very intentional with the square, e.g.. [1:05:58] We recently engaged in what we called reshaping the square square, which was a redevelopment plan for the independent square. And it brought broad perspectives from people who've lived in the community a long time and maybe don't want to see as much change to merchants on the square that say we gotta do new things to generate new foot traffic and make our small businesses successful. But. [1:06:18] I think through that planning process. We've really found the right balance and now have a plan that's that's quite actionable, and I'm I'm proud to say I'll say real quickly there that that plan led us to get a $6 million appropriation through community projects funding from Congress, which now we're doing a major streetscape project up on the square. So that's, that's exciting. [1:06:41] U. We did a housing study in independence 1st of its kind, which really helped us understand the market, what kind of housing, gaps are there in the community, but also what kind of housing does the community tolerate and where, you know, not every part of the community is cut the same. It's not cookie cut. [1:07:01] Better. So for me, these inclusive plans are, are imperative because they ensure a broad process that gets enough community input that then once that plan is adopted by council, you're really facing very little resistance at that time and you're working and activating a plan that the community. [1:07:22] Sees themselves in, it reflects their input, their thumbprints are on it, and now they feel ownership in the outcome. [1:07:30] That does it for the questions that we have, you can breathe now for just a moment. All right. Wondering if you had any questions of us. We probably have time for one. Okay, then I'll I'll follow my heaviest hitter action. I I know I am the only. [1:07:47] Non minnesocon in your process. Are there any concerns you have about that that I could address here today? Go ahead Victor. Why? [1:08:03] Simple, just why you want to move here. I want to work in a community that wants to do big things. I want to work in a community that has the resources to do big things. I want to work in a community where my lived experiences will. [1:08:22] Add value and help leave partnership with the council, a legacy and a positive impact. This community checks all the boxes. You've got the financial stability to do great things. You've got clearly. [1:08:37] In a very engaged community, a very diverse community and value that inclusivity of, of those diverse perspectives. I've watched your meetings. You've got a great city staff. I think it's a sign of a healthy culture when the council and staff can engage one another and you know one of the last meetings I watched. [1:08:58] He's the planning director about he's up before 08:00 and one staff member felt sure enough to make fun of the go for place project because she was clearly a badger's fan. I I think that's a healthy city staff, so all those factors are there to do big things and do great things and you get into city management. [1:09:15] Because you want to leave things better than you found them. Thank you. Okay. Yep. Can I just slight tangent from your question, please? The city you work at is a larger than Bloomington. It's a suburb above a major city. [1:09:31] Their major city has a football team that wins. What, you know, what are you leaving to get here? What do you see in Bloomington that you don't have there given, you know, independence looks like a great city, it's a large city. It seems to be thriving under your leadership, which is good? Yeah. Yeah, that's fair. [1:09:51] Man, I I hope they can keep winning, but I got my doubts. I'm suffering that super bowl because that was fairly. I. [1:09:59] I could go back to the independence and I will if if you know this isn't the right opportunity and continue to do great things, and I'm not carpet bombing America with my resume looking to do something else, but this is a very special opportunity and clearly a very special place and. [1:10:14] I'm at a point in my adult life and my career where I'm ready to try something new if the right opportunity is there. And again, from a city manager's perspective, all the ingredients are here to build upon what is clearly already a great community. [1:10:30] Populations just a number. That doesn't really bother me. It's more about what the community has to offer and what kind of impact I can make. And I just see so many things that align with the experiences I've had and the needs you've identified and I want to be a part of something special. [1:10:46] Thanks one of something really quick. I think you kind of answered it. I was gonna ask you, what about your lived experience as you articulated it draws the parallel for you? Yeah, it's it's, you want to continue to grow this community, but to do it in a way that's respectful of. [1:11:02] Preservation of open space, the the communities tolerance for levels of growth. We have navigated all of that. You want to continue that great legacy of financial management. I came up in the budget office. That was my chair to city, my path to the city management chair, I should say. [1:11:20] And, you know, as you navigate this, you know, organizational culture and dynamics and community, those are all issues that I've dealt with and learned from and feel like I could add value to that as well. I'm sure you know our process, I'm sure Greg has shared it with you. I'm talking with four people today and. [1:11:40] Ideally a couple of finalists tomorrow and then this group will make a decision based on where we will go next. I wish you all well with that. Very good. Thanks so very much for being here today. Thank you. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you. [1:11:56] Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you too. [1:12:18] So can't provide without me, I'm gonna make a call quick. [1:13:34] Independence. [1:15:13] Okay, you go on the, on the minutes for everything again. [1:15:34] Where is it? No, something about this. [1:15:41] I thought that was gonna throw them off. I was kind of surprised I only handle that. I was gonna make every mark. Hey, at least it's the who, you know? It's nothing I have to do that every single morning I always had it off, don't know what happened. You gotta start to go off with you in every. [1:16:01] I don't remember what date he's but. It was fun last year man. Yeah, it was very interesting I learned a lot interesting, yeah. I, I want to see what they what they want to do, but they run all, see how big it is how deep, how high it is. What are you talking about? No. [1:16:24] Yeah. We don't feel voting on it every year, Victor and I They used to have that one group that would invite us to go out voting on it. You know, I got parents with a boat, but you know something like group invites us to go out of wines. Yeah, that's going with, it's. [1:16:42] Minnesota River or Watershed District or Valley. They have three of the years. [1:16:51] Keep paying for it. It's the Vinnesota River. Yeah I've actually never gone oh the anniversal. When is that? Oh yeah, that's probably why. Yeah. [1:17:06] Not taking a day after that. I thought it was gonna be on a barge. Yeah, I said they had a food spread, and you did have to pay if you wanted like a drink, but. [1:17:24] That if it was not bad. I used to go out of cargo and go up to the. Last year was oh last year. Yeah, but now they were doing it again in August. Yeah, I think they do it every year, you know, cause watershed has money and get the watershed for the. [1:17:46] They only get to spend about 25000 a year on anything. So NO wonder they have other money laying around? Recorded. Oh stop oh NO don't stop that. To be aware. Everyone knows that my loves you start talking about it sometimes down the road. [1:18:09] Back. We forgot we were Tim so sorry don't listen to it. I didn't mean to say all that stuff. You know, man. [1:18:29] There might be a 1 min gap in the. He can just say he wasn't. I didn't say anything. [1:18:54] That is so hard, just they're all very similar. [1:19:03] I only had three questions. And seven parts each, so three? Yes, please. [1:19:17] Just to there's there's NO I I don't know if we talked about this or not, but there's given that we all participate in both like you know Minnesota, like National League of Cities, Minnesota legal Minnesota cities, you know, city mayor council mayors, there's NO conflict. [1:19:37] Likes here, right? In the sense that we none none of us know these people outside of work and everything like that. Okay. [1:19:44] I mean, I I don't. Yeah, ok. I mean I i've run across them, so yes, know them if I've seen them at leak. I mean it's like you went out and had dinner with them and spent 3 h talking about their family or anything. Yeah, right. I got you, yeah. That that makes sense. It happens. Yeah. [1:20:00] Just close down grandmas, you know? But we would have you there NO matter who was also attending. Yeah, I was thinking about the. [1:20:19] The 1st ranking question. I was like oh wait, that was just one I know that's already yeah. [1:20:28] Oh yes. Move one. [1:21:06] This is not being aired. Just to request. We're ready. Okay. [1:21:12] We have you right here and presentations on the screen when it's time for that. Welcome you, thank you. You're with us today. Can I go like this? Yeah. Good afternoon. [1:21:29] Good afternoon Happy that we are out this Yes. Well, thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you for your interest in the city managed position here in the city of Bloomington. [1:21:45] We have ten plus questions and about including including your presentation and about 50 min to get it done, so budget your time accordingly, and we'll leave the last few minutes. You can either proposing statement or ask any questions you might have of us. [1:22:03] Alright, we'll go around the table as we ask the questions and I get to kick us off and we'll dive right into this. Okay. Please tell us about your background and experience especially as it relates to our city manager position, and let us know why you would like to be our next city manager. [1:22:18] Alright, I feel like I have grown up in local government. I started my career as a actually a swimming pool operator, in environmental health. It was an entry level job, I got a degree in community health, community health education, and. [1:22:38] And at the time in the early 2000s, jobs were hard to come by. And so I thought, you know what, I'm gonna try to get an in somewhere and see where that takes me. And so actually that was a wonderful way. I was new to Ramsea County it was a wonderful way for me to get to know the, the environment and the landscape cause I had to go to every single swimming pool. [1:22:58] Stick my arm in that pool and I can tell you by putting my arm in the pool if you should swim in that pool, it's not. I don't even need chemicals, and that was really hard as an early parent, but now I'm fine. I got over it. So anyway, so I started environmental health. I worked in health education within environmental health, and so I really had a love and a passion and. [1:23:18] Passion for, for public health work specifically environmental work, which actually connects later on in my, in my journey. And so, I've always just been in leadership roles throughout my entire life. It's just kind of what I'm drawn to. It's what I like to do. I love working with people, I love investing in. [1:23:38] People and I've done that as a coach and i've done that in a lot of certain ways. But I moved over from that type of role to work within chronic instance. [1:23:46] Intervention and so I took a journey through public health, moved around from environmental health, talking about garbage to talking about chronic diseases and talking about ways that we utilize government roles to invest in people versus individual health roles, which also placed the role in what we do in, in local government in general as well. [1:24:06] I learned very quickly that I like to change up my work and positions started to open up in supervisory and management roles, and so I went for those positions and became a manager and then very quickly learned that this whole public health thing is pretty cool and there's a department head role open. And so my 1st day. [1:24:26] Hey actually of being a public health director, officially because I was in an interim role. If you look at my resume, you're gonna see some overlap in times. I was in an interim role in the public health leadership position, as well as an interim role in the social services position position, and both of those overlapped with my permanent role. [1:24:46] The deputy county manager position and that's a whole different story that we can talk about another day. And so my very 1st day was the 1st case that became public of COVID in the, in the state of Minnesota. And so I was thrown into an incident command process and, and really managing. [1:25:06] High stress situation from the beginning of my career as a director and and moving forward. So I spent many years in the public health department, which all lent to my ability and learning to then lead at an administrative level across a local government system. [1:25:26] County, 500000 people in residents, 4000 plus staff within that organization. And so when I say I grew up there, I grew up there. I was there for a couple of decades, very committed to the work within the county and found that I had a different home in different places within that county system and really got to understand and know. [1:25:46] So the broader context of what local government is and how it works, as well as managing very large budgets and figuring out how to make things that aren't working, work a little bit better. So, and then as you know, a year ago I made a transition out of Brandsey County and over here to. [1:26:06] The wonderful city of Bloomington as one of our assistant city managers, and my role overseeing multiple departments like in a servant service team model actually played really well into the new change here at the city of Bloomington because. [1:26:22] As you all had moved on the previous city managers asked to move to that service team model and it really does work and it really, I have a lot of experience helping different departments who do kind of cross sector work come together and work better together. [1:26:42] Give us more to that question, let's see why I want to work, why I want to work in this job? Like I said, I, I love working for local government. This is where things happen and city, which I've learned over the last year is where things really happen. This is where I learned. [1:27:00] All about if you have an issue with geeze making a mess, and I said this to Greg at the lake and on the beach, you get the call. If you have an issue of something not growing right in your backyard, you get the call. If you have an issue of the water pressure isn't that great, you get the call. I love being able to actually be connected. [1:27:20] To the things that we actually have the tools to make a difference on. And it's, it's, I don't wanna say those things are little things because they're very big things in the scheme of people's lives, but it's also developing a city and investing in in a city to make the city even stronger place. The city of Bloomington had a good reputation before I got here around. [1:27:40] How well people, work here and the level of professionalism and I really experienced that when I got here. And so being able to step into a role and to earn the role of a city manager in a city like this would be an honor and I'm excited to be able to be here to apply for the job. [1:27:56] Thank you. Awesome. I have the next question. It's pretty short. So you were provided a question in advance so we're gonna turn it over to you to share your presentation. Oh, got it. All right. Perfect. And I'm glad it works because you said bring it on a just in case just in case. [1:28:16] Can do that. So glad it's working. All right, ok, so the question was. [1:28:23] And it came in a couple different ways, but to select a career accomplishment or and or a significant career accomplishment I'm just gonna tell myself cause I know you guys said it on minutes. That's difficult for me to do especially since there's just a lot of different things that take place when you're in these leadership roles, and a lot of. [1:28:43] Different outcomes that can come from them. So I broke the rule, I guess, and I chose three things and we'll see if we can get through them in 5 min. I'm gonna ask because I feel like I'm at the listening session and I only have 5 min to talk that you hold questions about how I get to the end. Alright, so I picked three different things. One was, of course, the, the COVID nice. [1:29:04] And I think everybody here has experience of what it meant to to lived through that that pandemic. I'm hopeful that it's a once in a lifetime pandemic. They happened in the past every 100 years, I'm crossing my fingers that we don't see another one for a long time. But my role in that space was as the public health director and as the incident manager. [1:29:23] And so you can do both of those typically in public health or you can assign somebody else and I was both of those. I actually had two different roles because I was on the leadership team across the entire county system, I also was on the incident management team for the entire system. So I ran a process that was ensuring that we were. [1:29:43] Holding community health and making sure the people in the community understood as much as we could because we were all getting information at the same time what was happening to everyone and how to address it, but then also how to continue county services and ensure that especially in those early days what it meant to still be Opensea county was. [1:30:03] One of the only local government facilities and agencies actually kept doors open the entire time. So there were two, I played two separate roles and there might be a theme as I go through here that maybe that's not a good thing that I am always in multiple roles, but one of the significant outcomes of this piece is if you, if you recall, and in my memory is back. [1:30:23] After the last five years, but. We were getting data for as a public health department that was basically giving us the age of people who were being affected. It wasn't giving us demographics that really drilled down into who was getting sick. We didn't have a vaccine at that time, so we had to figure out how to manage that sickness. You could get some of that data from your fire department because they were taking the calls. But other than that, you weren't getting that data and so. [1:30:46] So my team pushed me because I was the voice in the space at the Minister of Department of Health to ask for the commissioner to, to work with her team to get us the aggregated data. We needed to be able to get into those concentrated spaces because we knew that people were being affected in ways that not every, they were hiding, they were scared, they didn't know where. [1:31:06] To go and how to come out for that help. And so they did that. They actually, because of what I asked in those meetings and pushed for the commissioner of Health at the time Jen Malcolm got her team to actually work to provide deaggregated data. What that allowed us to do then was it allowed us to drill down into zip codes of where people were living and who. [1:31:26] It was getting sick and so that we could create testing sites in those specific neighborhoods. We were a model for testing sites and vaccine sites for all public health departments across the state. MDH was bottling what they were providing us resources to other public health departments based on what we were doing in that space. And so that was a really big. [1:31:46] Change that came out of this. You would think that would, that, focusing on zip code and and drill down deaggregated data is something that everybody should be doing, but not everybody always has the tools to do so and not everyone thinks to do it. A lot of times it's like, well, we're in charge, we understand our community. Let's just decide that we're gonna do this over here and. [1:32:06] And and decide that that's how this is gonna go. And that wasn't enough for us, specifically because we had a very diverse community when we saw that in addition to our older community within nursing facilities that people, brown and black people, people in English were as a second language, they were the people who were not coming out and seeking help or getting to the dr.. [1:32:26] Or, they were skipping appointments because they were afraid. And so we knew if we got this data and we responded in that way that we could change the way that we provide health care from a public health lens to the group. Other things I think that we've learned from that process is similar to what you all learned. We learned how to. [1:32:46] Be more flexible as a workplace. Because of these changes, because of this work, we learned that we could do our work differently. Virtual work ensuring that people are feeling more socially connected, is a huge thing and it still is a huge thing as to how we continue to move forward. So this is one thing I wanted to highlight. 2nd thing I wanted to highlight, because things, you know. [1:33:08] Some of these things COVID wasn't easy, but, I actually feel like closing a care center was harder than managing some of the things that we managed through the through the COVID-19. And so I really wanted to highlight this. Two years into the pandemic, we we made a decision to. [1:33:29] Closed the Rantsy County Care Center, but how we got there was when I took over for the service team that I was in charge of, I was going through a budget and I was looking at, you know, what kind of investments we're making for things, where are we at in the black? Where are we at in the red? And I noticed the care center. And what I understood, the question of me was figure out how to invest in this care center. [1:33:48] And make it so that we don't keep putting millions of dollars into it. And I'm looking at this and I'm looking at the numbers and I'm like, I don't know how we're going to do this. When nursing facilities opened in the late sixties or the late fifties, they were run by local governments and institutions. They weren't necessarily run. [1:34:09] By private entities. You saw a lot more government run facilities and skilled nursing facilities back in the day. But when you have changes to Medicare, when you have changes to the Affordable Care Act, and you see that there are a lot more options for people to have home based services. [1:34:25] There's a lot out there that can be provided to community and privately owned and operated senior centers where being able to understand the system in a way that they were providing assisted living care. They were providing rehab care, and that is something that us as a county, we could not provide anymore. So I find I I said. [1:34:45] To my county manager at the time, I said, we have two things that we can do with this. We can keep putting millions of dollars into this because we believe this is a system that we want to keep doing, but we have to be ok with the fact that we're just gonna keep putting money into this and we gotta be ok with that. Or, we can decide that there are other entities that can do this work better and. [1:35:05] We have to be done with this. And so that was a policy question that then went to the commissioners. The commissioners made a very difficult policy decision and made the decision to close the care center. So it was my job then to it's always like the people who raised their hand who then have to do the work afterwards. So it's my job to lead lead the team to figure out how to close this facility. This was extremely difficult. You have. [1:35:30] Staff who have worked for decades in this facility, you have people who have lived in the facility. This was their home. You have people who NO longer have family members who are in this space anymore. And we had to figure out how we were gonna do this. So we put I brought a team together, had somebody who was in charge of. [1:35:50] Of the social work aspect of working with the residents, had somebody in charge of working with our state agencies because with all these licenses, you have to undo the licenses. You can't just be done. Some of them you actually sell to other facilities and they use the licenses. And then we worked with unions because you have union staff who are working. [1:36:10] Through this process and they're not gonna just be like, oh yeah, close it. We're done, we're good. They want to make sure that they are being treated and the staff are being treated in a way that they have earned their position, their seniority in this space. So I had an experience early on in my career that actually, I was laid off from a role because there weren't. [1:36:30] No, there's NO more funding with the grant that I was working under. And so I knew what that experience was to be laid off and I said, I don't want anybody in this facility to have to go through the experience that I went through the way I went through it. And so I took my experience and we worked with our HR team, worked with the county manager. [1:36:50] Make sure that our county board understood that we were gonna work to make sure that every single person who wanted to keep their job within the Ransee County would keep their job. And they did. We also made sure that those who were close to retirement had the ability to retire. We also made sure that even if if you were not at retirement age, but you were almost there, but you. [1:37:10] Didn't feel like you had the ability to move into another job that you had a way to off ramp. [1:37:17] With dignity from the care center. And so, all of these things just play into that. We have really tough decisions that have to be made sometimes, and when you are a steward of public money, you have to make sure that you are looking at these public dollars in a way that we're using them responsively. And we have to make sure that sometimes. [1:37:37] We have to make a hard decision to stop doing something and it doesn't feel good, but there's ways to do it and ways to go through it, that you can do it. So I was actually on site once a week in this process to make sure that I was, that I was the face that the staff were being able to talk to because I didn't want somebody else to do it, I didn't want to hide behind others. [1:37:57] They needed to be able to talk to me. I answered questions. HR was on site with me and we worked together to ensure that people got what they needed as we ended this and it was a successful closure of the care center. I had another one, but I will stop here cause I think these two were good examples. I was just gonna give you a tough decision, but you're right on time. [1:38:17] At 09:45. [1:38:22] Alright, I don't know if we're closing out of this if I just do that. Yep. Yeah. Thank you. Wait, can you tell us about a time when you successfully built trust with a skeptical skeptical community group or stakeholder? And what specific steps did you take and how did you know you were successful? [1:38:39] Yeah, I love it. I actually feel like this is one of my superpowers, I just need to keep. So, one of the things that I, one of the things that I do and one of the things that I've done in the past is making sure that we're engaging community and processes. [1:38:59] And so, I talked about this maybe in different groups with, with, some of you, but, we had a group of people within the county system and they referred to themselves as the black community commission. They felt that they were commissioners of Ramsey County based on the fact that they lived in Ramsey County, they paid taxes. [1:39:19] And they demanded certain services from the county, without barriers and they saw the barriers that were taking place. And so, they had a group of leaders who came to those of us who were in leadership roles and said, hey, there's things that that you are doing in the county system that we don't agree with. And we want to be a part of fixing. [1:39:39] In that, but we can't do that unless we build trust unless that we can trust that you are going to listen to us and you are going to help change the things that we want. And so we actually had this group, we went through a budget process like we do every we did every two years, like you do every year and. [1:39:59] Which we had community to be a part of this process. And they actually said, we want to be able to approve your budget for the Departments of social services, the biggest department in the county system of which I oversaw and the Department of Public Health because both of those departments had two of the biggest issues that they were working on. It was community based asthma issues and then. [1:40:19] Children and child protection. And so we did, we actually took time and created an infrastructure where we would meet with them, and I would have separate meetings with their leader to ensure that the groups that were meeting were making sure that they were, everybody was on the same page and we were going in the direction that we wanted to go. [1:40:39] And we would sit with them and 1st we taught them about the budget. We taught them what it meant when you were looking at these millions of dollars and all these line items because it's not normal for people to understand how to navigate and read a government budget. And then we talked to them about what do we have the ability to move? [1:40:58] How do we adjust levy? How do we change? Can we move certain funds into certain buckets? What's a grant? What's a levy? What's, you know, because it's a lot, it's a lot that goes into it. So we put the budgets in front of these groups and they question things. They asked us why we did things the way we did. They asked us why. [1:41:18] Where we were going with this. We made adjustments and ultimately what I ended up doing, they did approve our budgets before we went to the county board. I actually invited them to be a part of the presentation of the budget at our county board budget presentation to show that we believe. [1:41:38] And what they were doing to the point that we put them at the same level as our elected board of commissioners. And so we worked together over time to build that trust because they were very skeptical. They're still skeptical of. [1:41:51] Of certain things that happen within the county government system, but we continue to show up and be there and connect and bring them with us in places where not everybody gets access to be in and that helps to allow us to build trust. [1:42:12] Sure time when you successfully increased engagement from underrepresented or marginalized communities, what approach did you take? Can I use that same example. Catch you off but you had something that's one of the examples. It is though. [1:42:29] So I was a little worried actually when I came to the city of Bloomington because of all the work that i've done in the past to actually engage community and work with community. I come from a very diverse background. I represent both being black and having a family that's actually from Mexico and Europe that I I come from a space that actually. [1:42:50] I have a lot of different cultural influences into who I am. And so I, it is part of who I am to make sure that I bring a lens in to understand that there are multiple lenses that are in our communities and are we thinking about everyone when, we're doing our work? And so, you know, I. [1:43:09] I don't know that I can give a better example than I just gave and so, but I I would just say it's not easy work. And I think what I've run into in leadership roles is that the easy part is to say NO to the community engagement. But I think, you know, the examples of here in the city of Bloomington of the. [1:43:29] What is what's the group called the restore the nine? You know, you can see the UPS and downs of like There's very much so that people want certain things from their community and they want to make sure everybody wants the same thing. That's usually what I can see through this is that people want to make sure that they have this beautiful outcome at the end. It's how do you get there and build. [1:43:49] And the trust is what's gonna get you there. And what I saw in this last year of work was started out feeling a little skeptical that we get there to the people who were a little worried about it. We're congratulating the team here about the job well done and thank you for keeping your word of being connected and staying connected with us. [1:44:13] Tell us about the communication systems and norms you put in place with your council or then in this case maybe the commission, right? The commissioners. How do you ensure transparency, avoid surprises, support all of the members equally? [1:44:27] All right. Well, I like this. And I think since since being in this role for the last six months and then it's similar in the, in the past, my past roles, it's actually intentionally having meetings with your counsel, your counselors and your, your commissioners. [1:44:46] It's making sure that you set up those engagements so that you and others are getting information that you need. And so building that transparency it is really important because in this role, you actually have to figure out how to build that transparency, that communication, that connection, not. [1:45:06] Only with your elected officials, but with the staff as well. And sometimes when you're in this role, it's actually the fun part is that you can see where everybody's brains are going. Every single person, you can see where their brains are going and your role is to try to figure out how to bring those as close together without violating confidentiality and with. [1:45:26] Figuring out ways to get people to move in the same direction so that we come out in the same direction. And the best part is when other people think and feel that it was their idea and they got there and you connected there and go, yeah, that's fun. So for me, it's being intentional about having those check ins. Sometimes it's the one on ones. Sometimes it's pulling people aside. [1:45:47] Sometimes it's making sure that we show up in the same places together. It's being, for me, it's being present in a community with council people and with commissioners. It's ensuring that it's that conversation and that connection when things are hard and when things. [1:46:06] They're easy. You know, typically when there is a mayor or a board of, of the board's chair, it's also making sure that that one on one connection with the person who is leading the group, they always get a little bit more information than everybody else and that's because the the role that they're in, and they also working with that. [1:46:26] Person helps to make sure that we are also communicating, and that that chair, that mayor has the same communication going to all of you, that the person in my role has the communication, you know, type of communication that's going to you. [1:46:42] The transparency piece, I don't know. Sometimes I'm probably told I'm too open. We'll see. I don't know if you're gonna have questions about what are your strengths and what are your things that you need to improve on? I don't know if I'd improve it or not. But my communication style is typically a style that I. [1:47:01] Feel like I can talk to a lot of different people. I can communicate a lot of different messages. I have NO problem with engaging in healthy conflict, and so for me, when there is conflict that I need to engage in, I typically just step into it. I try to name it so that people can hear it and see it. And I. [1:47:21] Also try to help commissioners and council people when you're in spaces and you're saying something and it doesn't land the way that you hoped it would land or there was a, you know, another impact of how it landed, and just let you know these things so that you're aware of this is how this happens. [1:47:41] This is how this went down, you get to say and do what you need to do, but just want to let you know that this is, this is how it impacted people and it's never to make anybody feel bad, but for me, the truth is more important than trying to make people feel good. And there's probably somewhere in the middle there, but, those are just, you know, it's those in very. [1:48:01] Strategic the way I answered your question, but a little bit all over the place. But for me, it's ensuring that there's, there's connections, you all stay up to date on the things that are important for you to stay up up to date on and it's about timing, about that communication as well. [1:48:17] Let's ready? Yeah, thank you. Tell us about a time when you had to navigate or reinforce the boundaries within the city council's policy role. [1:48:33] And the city manager's operational responsibilities. How did you approach the situation and what steps did you take to maintain clarity and mutual respect in those roles? Oh, this is an interesting question for an internal candidate. [1:48:54] Handle this. So I might be a little more general than I have been, but I've, you know, this does come up because I think, and I've heard. [1:49:07] And and you know when I sit at the Legalan Minnesota cities, I get similar questions from my colleagues of they're trying to navigate tricky situations and they've got a council who have lots of ideas and lots of wonderful things that they want to do and lean into and like and. [1:49:27] Just and and direct and. I do find myself, and I probably have done it with a few of you here, of politely and respectfully asking the question of, is that your role? Is this the policy decision? Or is this something that's operational that you need to, and maybe not I won't say you need to, it's just how it's coming out right now. But the. [1:49:50] So we need to think about allowing the staff to lean in and do their work. And that can be hard because councils commissioners, council people, there's a reason why you're sitting here. You have very strong ideas and opinions about the health and well being of, of the city. [1:50:10] You have visions and you want to see things done in a certain way. This is also a bureaucracy. This is the government. There are a lot of people who work in this space over almost 700 if you counted today. And so there's a lot of process that takes place in order to get to the vision that you have. And so. [1:50:30] Without getting into lots of details, there's certainly, examples of, you know, people have different ideas about, about. [1:50:41] How we should get from point A to B So part of my role is also figuring out how to lean into the ideas that you have and the ideas that other elected officials have and how to work then with staff teams as if they're right there behind me. They're, they're all hanging up. How to work with staff team. [1:51:01] To take that idea and transition it into something that we can do and transition into something that brings you then the policy piece and allows you to then vote on that policy piece or make a decision on the policy end of things. And that's actually fun. I, I love being able to do that. You know, I keep having the word. [1:51:21] Increased traps in in my head and so sorry. I apologize for that. I'm not really sure, but you know it's something like that. That's an example of these you know these certain things seem to be barriers for us to be able to do business in the city of Bloomington, so how do we continue to move those barriers out of. [1:51:41] The way, and so you, you know, as you bring those up, those are conversations that then I take to the team and have conversations of like, you know what? [1:51:50] We give, incentives for our sack fees, right? So what about an incentive that we can give to help reduce the cost if we need to keep these grease traps at, at this certain level in the costs, then what about we move those incentives into spaces like that? And the team is actually. [1:52:10] We're working on that as a solution. So, there's ways to lean into navigating kind of what the roles are and not just saying NO cause nobody likes to hear NO. We like to figure out a, let's figure this out. Let's take some risks, let's lean in a little bit and see how we. [1:52:30] We can change kind of this directive that's being given in a way that isn't necessarily a policy directive. [1:52:37] But move it into a space that we can bring it back to you as a policy directive. You describe a time when you took a significant calculated risk in your leadership. What was the risk? How did you evaluate it? And what was the result? [1:52:58] Yeah, what's the I, I don't like it when people keep saying that's a good question. If you guys are doing good on the questions. I'm just reading. You can't take credit for that one? I did one that was hard, and this was a risk more so on. [1:53:18] On. Risking trust levels and risking relationships developed. So in my previous role, one of the departments that I oversaw was community corrections. Community corrections is basically your correction system where people, you know, we house people who. [1:53:40] No longer are in the jail system but are in a correction correction system and or juvenile detention. And so there's a lot of staff within that department and there's a there's a big leadership team and so we're, we're continuing to get a lot of friction between the leadership team and I oversaw that. [1:53:59] With the director of that department, and the the frontline staff and a lot of long term staff who had been there for 20 to 30 years, so they know how it's been, right? They know they've lived through multiple leaders, multiple leadership teams, and they weren't happy right now. And I'm saying this with a hundred percent, more than a hundred percent respect for the director of that. [1:54:19] That of that department. Amazing human being, it's a hard department to be in day in and day out. You're dealing with people who come in for violent reasons, for, and, and. [1:54:29] Ensuring their health and well being when in your, in your care. But there was a lot of push on the type of leadership that was taking place, in that space. And so. [1:54:44] I agreed with the way that that department was being led, but I also was listening to the staff who did not feel happy and did not feel heard. So I took a risk in taking over a process to hold listening sessions for the entire department. That's a lot of people. It's over 400 people in that department. [1:55:04] And it was important for me to be able to sit down and listen to every single person who wanted to be heard about what was working and what wasn't working in that space. It didn't mean that I disagreed with that leadership. It just meant that I needed to take a step to make sure that people felt heard from their, from the top leadership of the county system. [1:55:24] And that was a risk because I'm risky than that relationship that I have with that director. That director did not feel happy about this process and. [1:55:36] And but respected the fact that that this was the decision that I made and I think that respect was there because of the trust that I've built over time within that space. And so I held these these meetings and got a lot of feedback that was very influential into what. [1:55:56] Would come next as to how to work together between leadership and between staff. And again, this is union departments, and then supervisors, managers, deputy directors, and sat and listen to everybody. And so for me, I didn't have to do that. I didn't have to make the space to do this. I could have just, you know, allowed the. [1:56:16] Things to move on their own, but I it was it for for me because I hold connections with people as a very high strength and a very high importance in how I do my work and very collaborative in the style that I do, do my work, it it was a risk in the for me in the relationship that I had. [1:56:36] That with the director at that time. [1:56:42] Oh, I'm next. That's ok. Ok, can you tell us about a time you had to lead a team through organizational change and how did you maintain morale and accountability? [1:56:58] Again always find that's an inter internal candidate, but I will just say, I sat in these rooms through interview process a little over a year ago and it was I could feel, what it felt like for staff in. [1:57:18] In this city. Before I got here, and you and you could slice through it in some of the rooms that I was was in. And so I walked into a space here at the city of Bloomington where people were concerned about decisions that had been made and direction that we were going. [1:57:40] Going and they weren't shy about talking to me about it. And so I found myself coming into a space that I did not create, but it's now my responsibility to figure out how to bring it together. And so for me, in order to do that, you have to 1st sit and listen, and you have to sit and listen. [1:58:00] To, what, what's going on, what's missing, how are people feeling? You have to, you have to, and what I do in those spaces is validate where people are at and, and how they are and, and, and what they're feeling and. [1:58:16] I find ways to bring people together and to bring the mission that was there before I got here and the vision of this space and to put it on the table to make sure and and allow people to buy into that vision and mission again. I would say the space of this organization today is much different than it. [1:58:36] Was a year ago when I got here. There's been trust that's been built. I've created a space where, there's more communication. Send out a weekly news for you for staff so that they know more about what's happening in the organization. There was organizational change. [1:58:56] That I helped to lead around, our city council meetings go. How long they're taking? How do we even lead up to those council meetings? We, What I came from in Ramsey counties we would do agenda reviews, and so we would review each agenda for the council meeting and we would have the people who actually do the work. [1:59:16] And sit and present the work to all of you, come and be in that space and answer a handful of questions. What is it that you're talking about? What are the, what are the things that are gonna jump out of us? What are the potential questions that you feel that the city council is gonna ask? What kind of things do we need to put in front of the city council before you bring this to them? Those kind of. [1:59:36] Questions were not happening with the staff who are, who are doing the work. They would happen at the executive level, and I would find myself as a new person in that space going on, I don't know what that project is. I so I can't sit here and I can't tell you about what this is. And so that's also a different type of organizational change that. [1:59:57] I have been a part of and I have helped to lead to help get some more effectiveness and efficiencies in. [2:00:05] The day to day and how we do that work, around making sure that we as a group can be as successful as possible. All these things take time. You put the idea out there 1st and then you hear the responses of, well, that's not gonna work. You guys aren't thinking of us. Oh goodness, and it's like, ok, and let's try. [2:00:25] And so it's it's putting out those ideas, it's trying them. It's also saying to people, listen, what's working so far? We've done this three times like this. What's working right now? What do we need to pivot on? What do we need to change? How do we need to adapt? It's similar to our listening sessions. Let's try to be more inform a little more informal and have it in the heck and see how it feels. [2:00:44] Well, we need to pivot because some things have changed and we need to make some changes to ensure that we're all getting what we need out of those spaces. So, all of these processes that I work to make organizational changes in, it's all about. [2:01:02] Putting putting ideas out there that don't necessarily come from you. They're not, they're all mine, but their ideas that other people can bring into the space. It's trying them out, it's listening, it's adapting, it's failing forward, it's taking the things that didn't work and putting those to the side and put the things that do work and move those forward together. [2:01:24] Alright, how have you integrated a city's strategic plan? Daily operations and decision making? Here how you reported progress both staff and the public. So in my previous, can I just get a question check? How many questions have we asked? We have that. [2:01:41] Three load. Three left. Okay, and 10 min, right? Yeah moving. So, what I've done in the past is, had a strategic plan that the elected body has approved. So it's the in the past it was the county's strategic plan, and so we were the people who were in charge of. [2:02:04] Ensuring that that strategic plan was accomplished in the roles that I've been in, I'm typically a sponsor of different strategic plan items, so I'd make sure that people are doing what we said we were going to do. And so what has been done in the past and what I have had a part in leading is, doing, and this is some of the conversations that. [2:02:24] We have had as, as a council, but on the opposite years of a budget, of a two year budget, that, that other year is performance evaluations and or performance measures. And so similar to the city of Bloomington where we have a site that you can go in and see where we at on, on. [2:02:46] Where we're at on ensuring that the work that we're implementing is connected to our strategic priorities and our strategic plan and that they're getting done, we actually would do presentations every year. And so I would leave the entire the entire service team. So it's six different departments and the departments would lay out. [2:03:05] But here, here's the specific type of measures that we're measuring, so in child protection, it's how many children are in the protection system. And our goal is to get kids out of the child protection system. And so we would look at every year, what is it that we're doing to do that? How are we moving on it? If we're not moving on it, why not? We need to. [2:03:25] To do something differently and what kind of investments do we need to make? We also could see that some of these things that we would have in our strategic plan don't need to be on the strategic plan and don't need to be measured anymore because we've all we we've done that. So it's also about making sure that you are rotating things in that are the most important things at the time to have a focus on. But for me. [2:03:45] Me, it's ensuring that it's not just a plan. They're not just priorities that look pretty on the website or in a book, but it's things that are tied to the actual work that we do in our system. And that work is connected to funding, and that funding and that work are connected to the people who are, who are doing that work. And so, if you have something that just. [2:04:06] Sits there and nobody is not connected to any work, it's just there's NO point to doing it so that frustrates me. So the way that you, the way that I in the past have made sure that we're, that we are doing this work is that you, you connect the actual things that people are doing on a day to day basis to this. We don't, in the past for me, I haven't always. [2:04:25] Is. I haven't always put up measures that are connected to every single piece of the work. I think what's different and something that we're changing here at the city of Bloomington is the priority based budgeting. And so that is actually gonna create an open and open a different window as to how we connect the work to our strategic plan, our strategic priorities, and what we might actually. [2:04:47] Find is that we're gonna need to maybe change some of those priorities based on some of the high impacts, high value to the work that we actually do and assess. So these are the things that are really important. It's also important to assess this over time. [2:05:02] My next question. As you surely know, the Bloomington fire Department is undergoing a significant organizational transformation. From your experience, what are some key issues to ensure we get right, get it right, and please share any examples from your past work, not to sportland? [2:05:20] Yeah, this time I was surprised actually when I learned more about the city of Bloomington that we actually had a volunteer fire department for as long as we did. This is a big city, to have a volunteer fire department, and so I'm impressed that that change was made. [2:05:40] And so when you reorg an organization one, you gotta make sure the people who are in the organization fully understand that this is the direction that we're going. [2:05:49] And two, there's a lot of tentacles that come with that. Typically there's a union involved and so creating a union to ensure that, that the people have what they need and they feel supported. What are the finances? What do the finances look like as you're moving forward? It's a big deal to have full. [2:06:08] Time firefighters with the pension with funds that are going to support this. And we've seen this over the years. I think the good strategy of utilizing the safer grant, to help boost this fire department is important and now we have the work to make sure that we are investing in this fire department. [2:06:28] As we continue to move forward. And I think that's gonna be something that's going to be. [2:06:35] Something that we work very hard to accomplish, but I know that the city can accomplish it based on the very good financial background of the team that we have here. But I think, some of the things that we also need to think about is just the long term sustainability. [2:06:55] Of that. And so as we think about that, we have to take a look again and this kind of connects to that priority based budgeting. We ought to take a look at. [2:07:04] If we are going to say we are going to pay for these things and we only have this much money to do the work that we need to do in this city, what are we not doing anymore? And those are the hard, the hard discussions and the hard conversations that we have to have and this gets to my example about the care center. These are things that we need to make sure. [2:07:24] So that as we're investing in it moving forward, that those investments are there. [2:07:30] As we see changes to Medicare and Medicaid in our system, in our society, it is our fire department that is going to be the 1st responders. They are going to continue to be the 1st responders for people who don't feel like or can't or can't afford to go to the. [2:07:50] Hospital when something happens. So, this is something that we have to figure out and we have to keep moving on in, in the right direction. I think we are moving on the right direction. I think the policy direction is there for us to continue to invest in the fire department. [2:08:05] Sure Alright question before you get to ask us some, so if you want any, if you want to ask us any, you might want to plan accordingly. Just make sure you have the risk space. Bloomington is in a cycle of growth. How do you work with residents, council, and staff to ensure that we remember the history of Bloomington, plan for the future of Bloomington. [2:08:25] And address the concerns associated with that change. [2:08:33] Well, like I said, this is I just had a conversation with someone who is in leadership at Toro and she is new to that role as well. And we both were like, I love this city. [2:08:50] Like you, I mean Greg, maybe you could talk about it later. This this is it's residential and it's got this huge business aspect to it and you don't find this in cities in the same way that you do in it, so it's it's special. And so when I think about the future of Bloomington, I have. [2:09:08] Five things that come to mind. Otherwise I'll go to my notes. But those five things are ensuring that, we have a stable workforce. We can't do anything if we don't have a stable workforce. And so continuing to think about how we invest in our workforce, what do we look like as a workforce? How do we mirror the community that we. [2:09:28] We are working for though that is important. And we have to think about our healthy economic development. We have an emerging tech hub that needs continued investment and there's more that can happen. Medical hubs are popping up everywhere. We have space for this in this city. So ensuring that we're investing. [2:09:48] Testing there ensuring that our commercial notes, which I have heard from people, they can need a, they need a little love. And so the work that we're doing on our economic development plan is where that needs to go, that work around the commercial notes and, you know, the facade work and working with small businesses and working with our larger businesses to ensure that we have. [2:10:08] The ecosystem, a business ecosystem that continues to thrive and grows in the city is huge. The housing w we've, we've got a good problem in that we've got an aging community, and that's a really amazing thing to have people who are aging in, in community. And we have a housing stock issue. [2:10:28] The houses that are available are expensive and others there there aren't enough of them. And so what does it look like for us to be innovative and have different types of housing available so that people can age in community and feel respected and we have new families, new people and new individuals who are coming in and wanna be here. [2:10:48] The financial stability of our local government is also really important. And so, and that that means both for us as we've had big ideas over the past ten years or so, it's what does debt management look like? How can we keep taking risks, keep innovating and continue to invest, but also we gotta pay the bills. [2:11:08] And that's really important as we figure, as we figure things out. And then we need to prioritize and maintain services that we feel are a priority in our system. And so not only is it about a stable workforce, but what is our workforce doing? And also when I talk about workforce, it's about the workforce of our community as well. People. [2:11:28] On our community need to feel like that they belong here, they are investing in the city of Bloomington because they live in here while not working for this enterprise, their investments in wanting to be here is what's going to continue to make this an amazing community that me and the lovely person at Charrow go. [2:11:53] Well, as Lona indicated, that that those are the questions that we have. Okay, I think we probably have time for one, maybe two of the questions you might have with us. The, the one question that I'll just ask one cause I get to talk to you all the time. [2:12:09] What do you, what, whoever wants the answer, what do you hope for the person in this role? What are you hopeful for? What are you looking forward to in the next city manager? [2:12:27] Oh my I'll go. Sure. I you know never tired of I I would say like a real partner, a partner to the people that work here that choose to come and work here, a partner to the us as a council, a partner to the community, and I think a partner too. [2:12:44] The the the way that that that community is kind of a series of concentric circles, right? So, you know, I, I want the folks that own half this city, you know, like how Sanderson and Kendall to be just as happy being among them as the people that run, you know, Oasis for youth or or, you know, Veep. [2:13:04] For bridging or whatever, right? Because, because the we thought through and considered them as partners. [2:13:11] So yeah, I'm look I'm very much looking forward to a partner for our city. Thank you. But she said. I'm all of America, you know, just from my my background, my backyard so I want them happy also. Clear understanding of our vision, your vision, and. [2:13:32] How I having the tools and the ability to execute that vision and my mind went very similarly to Lona's, just somebody is highly, highly collaborative. [2:13:47] And has the skills associated with being a collaborator, so I think about whether you're collaborating with the city council or with staff engaging them in, not just the work they do every day, but decision making too. Collaborating with our external partners. So that's why it's like very similar, in terms of. [2:14:07] That we're thinking, you know, partnering with our elected officials at the state level, the federal level. I just think this is such a huge position that I don't think the expectation of having one person that's like phenomenal at everything. Like that's just like not ever gonna be the case, but somebody who knows how to collaborate with others to leverage their skills and expertise to help them. [2:14:27] Let's achieve our goals, I think it's gonna be really important. [2:14:33] Awesome. All right. All right. Thank you. I'm sure the process here. We're talking four people today. We're gonna deliberate sometime today and well into the evening is my guess, but we'll see and then we will. [2:14:49] Okay, at least a couple of people back tomorrow for additional conversation. All right? Thank you. Thank you. Alright, good luck. [2:15:10] Kind of scary as they said you were gonna be. Good to know, just. [2:15:27] You jumped up turn around? The jumping jackage. Exactly. I keep that blood sugar. [2:15:44] What'd you say? He ended up getting the chocolate and I said yay, you gotta keep the yeah got to keep it instead of like 15. What was that? I was awake at three. Oh woo. At five I finally decided to just get up. [2:16:03] I hate when that happens. I hate when that happens too. I have found lately the last year would have been will download audio books from a library. I find one that's really boring I'm not into it. I kind of keep reserving it and then I will put it on. When i ca like when I wake up at three in the. [2:16:21] Morning I'll just put on my at the boring preparing for this. So it's like mind is before I know what I'm sleeping so. [2:16:28] 02:00. I don't know. 03:00 in the morning. It's gotta be a boring audio book because if you get somebody one that's really interested in or somebody's like voices in all. [2:16:51] Things like that. Merger. [2:17:17] Let's see these that. Oh, just on the wall in there oh NO it's not working on something. [2:18:16] In full screen mode. I tried that, but it's not filling the page. Not sure why. Is it Google Docs or Google Slides instead of It's not, it's a PDF. [2:18:34] This is their 1st half figuring out how can you manipulate this correctly. [2:19:01] So there's a PDF PowerPoint that same PDF. Exactly. A lot of, it seems like people are using PDFs more instead of. [2:19:11] Powerpoints. It does guarantee that stuff doesn't like lead off the page and stuff like that between versions. At the same time you can't really go into like presenter mode with it. Yeah, that's the problem. You zoom, zoom in. I've tried. [2:19:27] Oh, it doesn't I can get his won't, that won't manage. Like those little the little plus sign at the bottom or that's off? You know I've tried that, but it doesn't do anything. Can you get there? Let me find this. [2:19:46] I wanna say handle yes, I feel like I paced through there. Like covered arrow, but I don't know how you think there's a whole trying to start over. I don't know. Could you I don't know why I have bridges in Medicine County and like nail down if that'll work. [2:20:05] Wasn't anyway, Mark Cleane. Oh, I love that guy. God Mash for such a good show. Yeah, what's your name? Margarette hand? I didn't Harry Morgan, we're the. The woman you. [2:20:26] Yeah. She just passed away just the last month. Yeah. What a great tringer she had. [2:20:33] And normally when this does work right, you can still arrow through the slides. Yeah I've never tried. Open with Google slides. When I go full screen, it does not let me click anything that way. Well for sure. Let me see if else. [2:20:51] Try that from the beginning also. That's what we know about handles. [2:21:05] Alright, independent. I think I think I retried the google side thing like Jenna mentioned? Is that where the library? Is what we're in right now is Google slide library. Either way couldn't let him click on it. Independence is known for the Truman library. Yep. Can you do plus sign there? [2:21:24] Right, yeah. Apparently, two years the child of home of treatment and then it also has apparently importance to the Morban church, which I did not know. Oh, what is interesting. It is interesting. It was the central Police. [2:21:44] Holy city where righteousness prevail and the saints were prepared. This was all that's the whole sky stopped on their way so weird. Yeah, you're not getting around that. Okay, you're not getting around that. [2:21:56] If you've seen the booking more of it? Yep, exactly. What about the other one? Yes yes. Yeah that's one of one slide as well. That's on the slides. It was saved that way. [2:22:16] That's not your problem. As long as she can I was supposed to be going to then I think that's probably fine. Yeah that's the good question though is how do I Can you can you press the little arrow there? Does that take it to the next slide? I see yesterday. We had just seen it. Wow. [2:22:39] It wasn't even click on the mind. I think it's one page. Does you have this 22 pages, but that was. This whole black box is slide one with all of this saved into it. I've only ever seen this. [2:22:55] Yeah wait a minute, wait a minute. No, working. Wow. Hope you should brought something. [2:23:12] So you have to type in the page number to go to page two? Nope, can't do that. It's scrolling there, right? No, oh wait. You can highlight it though. Down arrow, NO. [2:23:30] There's NO down arrow. Oh, the down arrow on the keyboard. Yeah, I tried that Page up page down's not working. Definitely not working. We might need to just do a quick practice of this here. [2:23:46] They haven't paid the subscription. Yeah. What did you say? They haven't paid the subscription. [2:24:30] Go to the file and go to like open with and maybe try opening it with something else. [2:24:36] Like if you go down to the yeah that might just open this one. Open we had adobe. That's what he had opened before. Now he can have the He has the. Now can you scroll down? No, the buttons on top are highlighted. I can saved. [2:24:55] On one page, have you tried turning it off and turning it back on? I can't tell you how many times I've called IT and they're like, have you just restarted your computer? That's what I was told to. Yeah. And then most time that's what it does. It fixes it. Reboot, yeah. [2:25:14] So then if you say click open with yeah I know what you're talking about. And then Adobe? Yeah. There you go. I don't know what else would be. Oh, if you extend the window. [2:25:33] The the pane on the left, there we go. And now it's one of one. Yeah. Yeah I don't think that I mean if you look at the size of the violet of this of the thing, it's really small. I think he he's thinking she maybe just said, oh NO, it's two meg, it's not looking goodbyes. Oops, I don't want to do that, sorry. [2:26:00] Let's try, let's just try pulling it up in, it's just one slide. Yeah, it's just it was a save issue. It was just one of 22. Now we can't go anywhere. You have a look, it doesn't show you. Yeah, well if you do like that, there's NO, you can't make something there, you can't go to another page. It doesn't. [2:26:20] Yeah it's the 1st hopefully. Probably good. Okay, she did that, then we just didn't follow along. [2:26:27] There's definitely nothing in there. I'll try the other one but yeah one page. So yeah, you're right. It's probably a, same issue. [2:26:47] Almost looks like a screenshot of yeah the thing as opposed to the actual thing. Alright, we'll just screw up with his computer anymore. Advisory. [2:27:08] In Golden Valley new whole screenshot? That's what I thought. I have to ask about that later. Nice. [2:27:17] They lost pressure in their water tower. We tried to open place and put it up? Since yesterday they put it in chrome. Oh my brother called me and he said yeah they were boiling water and my rest of my family boiling water, a couple of my coworkers are up there too. Yeah. Should we offered noah water? [2:27:36] Yeah, this should just What do you say? Okay. Okay, take this home what we thought. Yeah, NO problem. And to be like a kind of crisis like that and then would you like her water? You take a glass. [2:27:56] They may want to come. Thank you. Okay. Give me something to do so I don't. So you're gonna talk too much? Listen to the guy who was talking with his mouthful. [2:28:14] I just like coming to pick on each other. I was just following up with what you said. No it was a good one. It was a good one. In case people don't think we can get along. [2:28:29] It's like brother and sister over here, that's the problem here. Yeah, if you have one, I will pull it without anybody watching You put them right in the ink well just like back in the twenties. Shower during your boil water advisory? [2:28:48] I wonder if it's kind of like you can't yeah you just Don't drink the water yet don't use your tooth brush, Don't brush your teeth, don't run the dishwasher. What are we doing? Boiled water. Ooh, not Austin. Boiling new hope and crystal. Boiled water or. What happened over there? They lost pressure in their water tower like Saturday night into Sunday. [2:29:08] And when you do that, then it's ripe for picky stuff. It just hits there. No air going into it. No. It's like drinking water out of the lake. [2:29:28] It's option. It Depends on what leg. No, NO. I've dranked water of legs, but I mean you can't help it. Yeah, you're forced. So I'm there it's not too bad. They got microbes, but the animals. [2:29:47] Okay an entertaining portion of the video? [2:30:23] I just got pinged at work. I need to change my password. I'm like I. [2:30:31] Don't want to do it because I can't remember it. Oh I hate that. I don't enjoy anymore. I quit. Good for me. No, NO NO NO. [2:30:59] So I have an out of office, right? I'm out Wednesday Thursday Friday this week. Somebody shows up new, can look at my calendar, can see BS purple out. [2:31:10] 30 min meeting on my calendar anyway. It's like I'm NO, I'm just gonna decline it and I'm not even gonna tell you why. Now, like I'm not even gonna bother. Figure it out because look at my calendar. I mean. [2:31:28] You should have more compassion but I just don't do they. Well, I mean when I schedule meetings with folks I open up everybody's calendar that I have access to and find a time where I'll available. Yeah, like I don't just, even I don't just like, I don't just schedule it and be like HR whatever, right. My HR business partner, I'm a senior director, my HR business partner can't look at my calendar. [2:31:48] Sorry, yeah? Probably sounds snide but who is the company? Oh mentive software. Okay. I don't know if you use them or not. They we do association management products, so I haven't I purposely not talked to you about it because they didn't, right? [2:32:07] You know, just a regulary vehicles all the time. Right, just leave it in a power company name. Point presentation. All these weird things that they wouldn't it? Yeah, I don't you know busy getting up to speed. I just started control so that we can just change anything or NO, they'd have their own presentation, right? They want to bring it. They love that. [2:32:34] Alright, awesome. Well done. Alright, she's only got 40 min. That will cost youth anything. We won't hold that against her, will we? No. [2:32:54] You just not get our break. No. Okay, we'll start 5 min late with the next one that we can eat indoor. Everybody did their force ranking, right? We're on, we're on time ranking? We're good. I better get that done. [2:33:09] Okay Halfway they. Okay. [2:33:28] Hi there. Hello. Nice to meet you. I'm supposed to say hi from Brooke Carlson. Hi Brooke. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Thank you. Are you there? Sean Nelson. I am Lona it's a leasure. Thank. [2:33:48] Thank you. Okay. Technology, right? Yeah. Hat off to Greg and do you for mustling your way through to help. Thank you so much for being with us today and thanks for your interest in our city manager position here in the city of Bloomington. Do greatly appreciate it. We have ten plus questions. [2:34:12] Because I think there's twelve or 13 or so. Okay. And we'll. Give you that's in addition to your presentation. We'll have a full 15 min even though we're a bit off schedule here, but we'll give we'll have the full 50 min, so don't sweat that at all and we'll give you the last few minutes so you can ask us a few questions if you would like to as well. All right? So we're just gonna dive right in. Okay. If you are ready? I am ready. Let's get your water open 1st. [2:34:36] Thank you. If you could please tell us about your background and your experience especially as it relates to our city manager position, and let us know why you would be the next city manager here in Bloomington. Sure, great. Well, 1st of all, thank you all for the opportunity today. It's really exciting and truly an honor Bloomington's an amazing city. It's a city right. [2:34:56] Rochester benchmarks again, so it's really an honor to be a finalist with other really amazing finalists. So a little bit about me. I have, I feel like I've grown up in local government, right? So I've been doing this work for about 30 years. If you walk into my office in Rochester, you'll see a whiteboard. My team knows how much I love whiteboards, and on there. [2:35:15] As a statement, it's my personal mission statement as creating communities of choice, not circumstance for all. [2:35:23] And I have been guided by that personal mission statement in my 30 years of doing work for the, in local government. I have been I started in local government doing neighborhood development, so really helping residents connect residents to city hall when they at a time where they felt really disconnected. So growing up in community and connecting to. [2:35:43] Community. I've been a parking supervisor, sometimes I say all roadsly to parking. I've been a parking supervisor. I've been an assistant city manager. I've been a city manager, and I'm currently a deputy city administrator. I've worked in three different cities of different sizes across three different states, each with their own very unique. [2:36:03] Set of opportunities and challenges. So, and I've been very involved at the national level with the international city county managers association. I'm a credentialed manager. I've been very involved in ICMA helping start their sustainability committee, being very engaged in what's now their global engagement committee. I currently serve on the board of directors as a midwid. [2:36:23] SVP, throughout my work in local government, I, like I get passionate. This is, this is what energizes me. This is why I get up every single day. What kind of great community can we make today and how do we help partners along the way do it? Why Bloomington? Again, when I think about my personal mission statement and I. [2:36:43] I look at things like your amazing strategic plan, your other plans, I look at. [2:36:49] Tools that you have like the Bloomington brief. And I think about the stories that are in there and there's so much more than just describing the projects or initiatives, there's an undercurrent there around community that lives in each of those, projects and initiatives, and to me, the opportunity to be a city manager. [2:37:09] Would be a really a privilege. I'm not looking to leave Rochester. I love Rochester. We have a great team. We're doing amazing things there. But when you see the opportunity of a community who's. [2:37:22] It Appears by all accounts that they're working so closely with your mission statement, how can you not pursue considering that? So that's a little bit about me and why why Bloomington. Very good. Well thank you. Yeah. Great, well I have the next question, so you were provided with a question in advance, and so we're just gonna turn it over. [2:37:41] For you to go through your presentation. Oh, sure, great. Thank you. Yeah, this is really fun to do. I actually wanna. [2:37:49] Present this to my team. So my challenge or my issue is talking about leading transformation in America City for help, right? I'm a little new to yourself. Okay, so as the deputy city administrator, I lead the transformation and partnerships. [2:38:10] Team and so for me, my responsibility is to manage the city side of the work around both forward and bound and destination Medical Center, and I will get into that a little bit. But for a little bit of table setting, I wanted to share with you our community profile so you can see that there's a lot of similarities in terms of Rochester and Bloomington. As I said, we benchmarked. [2:38:29] Work against Bloomington is one of our cities when we think about the work that we're doing. And so. [2:38:35] These are just some of the more notable statistics around Rochester. Also think it's important to understand the work that I do helps position Rochester to receive these kinds of accolades. And so, and that's really important to me again, I think they line up to the work, my personal mission statements in in the teams that I lead. So for. [2:38:55] For us right now, what we're facing is truly unprecedented growth and accelerated growth in a very compressed time frame in a compressed geographical area. So my role is to make sure that the city side of this work mails $5 billion investment our billion dollar CIP, the other infrastructure projects that are happening through. [2:39:15] Destination medical center and private development. We've had record private development over the last five years. My role is to make sure our teams are working collaboratively, not only across the city organization, but across our other partner organizations. Putting into context bold forward and bound is $5 billion is the biggest. [2:39:33] Capital project in the state of Minnesota and again that's I'm the team that leads the city side of this work. This investment is in a geographically constrained area. It is in our central business district. It is also sitting next to, we have a historic district and one of our oldest historic neighborhoods of high. [2:39:52] Highly engaged residents. And there's a lot of layers to addressing growth of this nature, right? There are a resource issue, there's regulatory issues, and ultimately, for me, it is about that last bullet. How do we emerge out of here stronger, a stronger vibrant downtown as well as the community, and so the work that I do to. [2:40:15] Guide the teams is really what I'm focused on. So how do we address? So specifically I wanna lean into what I did in prior to my current role. Previously I was the deputy city administrator for development services and infrastructure team. And so what I was charged with doing was kind of bringing together departments in the development services around. [2:40:35] Some who were underperforming, all of which you were pretty siloed in their own ways and how did we come together to improve our processes, the regulatory environment and reestablish pre partner partnerships? Ultimately, this impact team created a model that we rolled across the city organization and created other impact teams. Here's just an example of. [2:40:55] Some of the resources, now I joined in late 2018, so the comprehensive plan was already underway, but these other initiatives occurred during my tenure as deputy city administrator and for development services and again for us it was thinking about what are all the tools and how do we need to create alignment so that we have efficient, we've been. [2:41:15] We've made more efficient use of our time. And I just add the last note there because I always think it's really important to get outside record when you get outside recognition, it's unsolicited and it's an affirmation of that we're headed on the right path. [2:41:29] So, in terms of outcomes, this has really been fun. You might think, well, it's, it's, you know, a multi year initiative ideas, but we're already seeing the fruits of our labor. And the 1st one is that we really have a shared vision and a culture of collaboration and I cannot_that enough. We really look at this and this is the lens that I bring every single day to the teams, not only in the. [2:41:49] Said the organization but our partners is that it is not just about staffing for project delivery. It's not just about us doing the plan reviews and the permit reviews and the inspections, but looking at the totality of this work across these other lenses, thinking about the equity piece, thinking about sustainability, thinking about education, all that has impact when you're in it. [2:42:09] And post project. Another role for me, and one of the things I'd led was thinking about how we stand up teammates, put teammates together and resources together in alignment with supporting this work. So what's our present state? What do we need to support not only service delivery around these special initiatives but day in and day out? [2:42:31] Service delivery, and then what does it look like posts? So not only is this a teammate and resource plan to deliver on city services and special initiatives over this window, but also serves as a succession plan for our organization because I, last number I looked in development services realm, which most of where this where. [2:42:50] Work lives, about 60 % of the employees could be eligible for retirement in the next ten years. So there's a succession component to that, a lot of institutional knowledge that we could lose. [2:43:01] Foundational to my work throughout my career has been focusing on partnerships, right? I really believe in bringing people together, understanding what is our common goal, helping partners, including ourselves, get clarity around what our role is in the work and and making sure that we come together on a very regular basis. So here are the part. [2:43:20] That we work in with day in and day out as specifically as it relates to unbound and destination medical center. [2:43:26] Also turning inwardly, thinking about innovation and construction delivery and impact. I could put so many things on this slide, but I tried to give you highlights of things like the meetings and how we intentionally bring people together. Some in which I led or others in which I helped support. I can't take credit for all of this, but, and then doing an analysis of. [2:43:46] We have the right kind of tools and technology in place. So that's part of the work. And then it's a conversation about delivering solutions. So when we think about innovation, it, as we said, nothing is going to look familiar in this work. When you're talking about $5 billion in roughly 20 square blocks, it's not gonna feel the same. And so our. [2:44:06] Our solutions have to be different. And so these are just some of the buckets of creative solutions that we've delivered. And when we think about innovation, we have to think about not only what's the performance measurement piece of it, where our partners roles and delivering on what we say we're going to do. So that's the message that regularly bring to our team. Lots of. [2:44:26] Infrastructure investments happening, really shared this slide just to tell you I work as part of a team that led the successful renewal of $205000000 local option sales tax. There were four buckets of funding for that sales tax, three which fell in my portfolio. [2:44:40] This other slide is to help you understand that one of the strengths for me that I had brought to every community is how to leverage funding. And so when I brought to Rochester was that how we were able to secure outside funding for. [2:44:57] Transformation investment above and beyond our typical stuff, right? So since 2020, I've helped lead teams to bring nearly a hundred and $70 million to the city of Rochester to support transformational projects. Lastly, the last outcome that I'll highlight, and I know this is a really busy slide and I really normally I would have broken it. [2:45:17] Sounded like five more, but it was already way too big. So I really want you to focus on the graphic on the left hand side. One of the things. [2:45:24] Again as I said, my role is to bring the players together. How are we delivering on this work? And so in a conversation with my team, we developed, I led the process to develop these guiding principles. We think we literally have hundreds of teammates across our organization and our partner organizations working in this space day in and day out. [2:45:44] The professional services, architects, engineers, contractors, designers, people on the street. What's our north star? What's the glue that ties all of our work together so that we're leaning into the project in the same way? And so we, we work to develop these guiding principles, we rolled them out to our two main partners. They have also embraced them as guid. [2:46:04] Guiding principles and in fact, tomorrow and Wednesday we're doing our 1st round of training with a couple hundred employees on the guiding principles. So when we think about what we're trying to do when a road closure happens, how do we create the best experience possible through construction? How connectivity is not just about physical connectivity. Connectivity is about. [2:46:24] Communication and relationships as well. So what did we learn from this? There's a lot we've learned. I tried to capture the high notes, but ultimately at the end of the day, it is about people. [2:46:35] Like this work will not be successful if we are not and lifting up people. We have, we are gonna have anxious moments, we are gonna have celebratory moments, but if we don't lift up our team, we will, we will not have fail moments. Fail moments are 1st attempt in learning. That's how we see, see this work. [2:46:54] I could have put this slide, it might feel like it's a little bit out of order, but because I said it's, it's about people, I wanted to really emphasize when we think about the city organization, these are the leaves that we have to address when we think about our teammates and think about our organization and creating alignment, if we don't do this. [2:47:14] This work well, we will not help the community be successful. And so that's the other piece of when we think about the people piece of this work externally and internally. And so as we say, we lead this work group, lead this work together and we move forward together. [2:47:30] Then I'll stop. Next questions. Thank you. And you sustaining. A challenge. All right. Next question, can you tell us a time, can you tell us about a time when you successfully built. [2:47:50] Trust. What a skeptical skeptical community group or stakeholder, what specific steps did you take and how did you know you were successful? Yeah, that's a really great question. One of the things I'm really, really proud of is that when I came to the City of Rochester, I was brought in in late 2018 to start the community development department prior to. [2:48:11] My coming, planning and zoning lived. It was a joint city county department and it lived over at Homestead County, and there was decision was made prior to my coming there was to bring it in house, and why it wasn't it isn't a reflection at all of of our partners over the county, but our development community really felt like. [2:48:31] Service delivery was lacking, and in fact, things like plan review took six weeks or eight weeks or longer. So there was a lot of distrust in the community, the building community, the contracting community, the people that we had to deal with day in and day out, and a lot of mistrust and lack of confidence in our ability to deliver. [2:48:51] So. Bringing the community development department over and not only standing up that department, I had six months to stand up that department, bring hire a team, convert everything, bring all the, all the historical content over. And at the same time we, it wasn't just about planning and zoning, we added sustainability, we added historic, we grew historic preservation and urban design, but. [2:49:12] Really getting in the conversation with our partners, particularly Register area builders and understanding where the mistrust happened. And. [2:49:22] Literally for months it was just focused on the relationship, and it was acknowledging we get it. This work has not been good. Time is money, you have not, we have not delivered for you. So it's an acknowledgment that. And then trying to break down and understand where. [2:49:39] Where, why there was such a barrier to delivery. We had old technology tools. We were siloed. We had bad systems and processes. We had cold language that you could find five different conflict points. You could find five different interpretations. So it was really starting to break all of that down and bring them along as partners. They were. [2:49:58] With us at the table when we updated our planning and zoning code to a unified development code. They were with us at the table, I'm particularly proud at the council meeting they endorsed it enthusiastically and the members of Rabbator a couple of years of this process said, you know, we kind of disagree like maybe. [2:50:18] Be on seven issues, but it's not worth holding up everything else. I would say today. [2:50:25] About 70 % of, plan review is done in two weeks or less. 95 % in three weeks or less. 31 % in a week or less. Like those are the kinds of stats that I'll start delivering. I took way longer than I appreciate it. Thank you. [2:50:42] Alright, sure time when you successfully increased engagement from underrepresented or marginalized communities, what approach did you take? Yeah, really great question. So, we decided that we were gonna go after the Bloomberg Global Mayors challenge. [2:50:58] Proud to say that we were one of 15 selected that year. We were only one in the US I believe. When we identified our problem, we have to identify a challenge, and we said it's equity in the built environment. BIPOC women in Rochester make up 13 %. We knew that we had. [2:51:18] And opportunities in the construction industry and yet there was a serious disconnect. There was gaps they needed people in the construction and built built environment industry, and. [2:51:30] BIPOC women presented a great pool of candidates to create opportunities for wealth building. So when we talked about applying for the global mayor's challenge, said, you know, I mean I can just I can put together an application, but it's not going to be authentic, right? I'm not from that community. [2:51:50] See I don't know what it means to be a bipoc woman. I don't know what it means to not have opportunities in, in certain fields, so. [2:51:59] What we decided to do rather than present a solution automatically to Bloomberg as part of the challenge, we said we can prevent a solution. Our solution is bringing BIPOC women and contractors to the table and helping them get to a place where they. [2:52:19] Can develop the solution. And ultimately. That was what we leaned into and that was our strength in our application, is that we said, we know there's a problem, we know we have BIPOC women who don't have opportunities. We know we have hundreds, literally hundreds of positions available an opportunity for wealth building and yet. [2:52:42] Somehow they're disconnected and so. But we need them at the table to tell us what the solution needs to be. We can't tell it for them. And so, that grouped we were awarded. We were then also able to get some additional federal dollars directed towards that. We built a partnership with workforce WDI to grow their training program and create greater. [2:53:06] Connections out of that we use co design as a process. It's the 1st time we use co design and we went from a project to using co design as part of a process and delivering a solution. [2:53:22] My turn hi, talk about the communication systems and the norms that you put in place with your city council. How do you ensure transparency, avoid surprises, make sure everybody's getting the same amount of equal support? [2:53:40] Sure. 1st of all, my my personal role to my team is NO surprises, right? So I think that's important for council to also have that, right? You set the policy, we execute on your policy. You are, you are the ones taking the calls from constituents, from partners, from. [2:53:59] Local state federal leaders wanting to know about initiatives. And so for me, what I have done as a city manager in the past and what I provide support to my previous and current city administrator is information on a weekly basis. I've done weekly communication to council members. I have done regular. [2:54:19] Sit downs at whenever's most convenient for them, whether they want to do it weekly, biweekly, but at a minimum bi weekly is important so you know what's going on. I also use those as opportunities to share trends, right? Like here's a really great article about how, how to use AI in your organization, right? So it's, it's. [2:54:39] Not just about problem solving around issues or opportunities but also growth opportunities, education opportunities. So that kind of weekly communication through a newsletter, Whenever there is an emergency situation, that kind of communication is really important. Pick up the phone. I make myself available 24 7 h. [2:54:59] I don't expect my team to do it because they need downtime, but I just know for me, I can be available and when an issue arises, it's. [2:55:08] It's making sure if you call one, you call all so everybody's armed with the same amount of information because you all have, you're all representing the city in Europe and you're representing your boards at largency. So, yeah, so those are some of the ways in which I've done it. Thanks. Thank you. Thanks. [2:55:24] Tell us about a time when you had to navigate or reinforce the boundaries between the city council's policy role and the city manager's operational responsibilities. How did you approach the situation and what steps did you take to maintain clarity and mutual respect in those roles? [2:55:46] Okay. You know, I think at the end of the day it always it's always about a conversation. It's about relationship building. Do you have the kind of relationship in place that you can have a radical candle conversation, right? So. [2:56:01] For me, working with elected officials, it's understanding the form of government and is there clarity around who is the policy decision maker and my role as a city administrator in terms of delivering, delivering the work that feeds up to your policy agenda, right? And where, where can. [2:56:21] News can get sideways is when there is that lack of clarity and alignment around irrespective roles. [2:56:29] In the past, when perhaps there was an elected official that felt out of passion, not, not ill intent, assumed good intent, right? Not ill intent, just as committed to delivering for their residents is having a conversation with them regularly sitting down with them and saying, here's where I see your role. [2:56:48] Based on our charter, based upon our relationship, based upon how this is supposed to work in your strategic plan and here's how you can be successful in this space and here's how I can be successful in this space. There there was a situation that I can recall where, for whatever reason the selected official just didn't understand it. And so then that's I think where it's important. [2:57:08] Important to pull in perhaps the mayor or a peer to say. [2:57:14] This is not working because it's becoming a barrier for services to our community and it creates confusion confusion around among residents if they don't know what's the appropriate channel to call, right? And so trying to approach it from that perspective. So 1st having that conversation, helping. [2:57:34] Being. Reset kind of the, the relationship and clarity on the role, and ultimately if that doesn't work, then you lean into others. I also think that that's an opportunity for resources like Minnesola Cities, ICMA can be these those are the kinds of organizations that are really helpful for. [2:57:55] Local city administrators and local elected in terms of that relationship. Management. Thank you. Describe a time when you took a significant calculated risk in your leadership. What was the risk? How did you evaluate it and what was the result? Okay. [2:58:19] Let me think about a different project, but I I would I would go back to unbound. Well NO, you know what I'll I've got a different one. So, when I took over as the development services portfolio C administrator, one of the one of the projects. [2:58:40] That we're working on is link, which is our bus rapid transit, and it's a partnership with. Mayo clinic. When I took over negotiations for an operating agreement, it had been kind of failing struggling for about two years. Mayo came to the table prepared to say a three year agreement. [2:59:02] To commit to a three year writership agreement. And, you know, this is at at the time was about a hundred and $45 million projects and we can't commit to a hundred and $45 million projects only with a three year commitment of writership paid ridership mind you. So. [2:59:19] Through the course of those negotiations, and again, a lot of relationship building, a lot of trust building, a lot of understanding the lens in which Maya was approaching this work. Ultimately we landed on a 20 year agreement to bring forward to city council for a fair free system. [2:59:37] With the potential for four or five year renewals. So ultimately we went from a3a3 year paid fair commitment to ultimately as much as 40 year commitment on this project. [2:59:54] That was a huge, that's a huge risk, that was a big risk, not only for staff, but it was a big risk. For me it was a big risk for the city council, but it was the right thing to do because it is, it will be when it opens in 2027, it will be a fair free system and we have protections built in along the way. [3:00:10] But we took that approach with a lot of grace and a lot of, I want to say liberty, but a lot of confidence that we were ultimately it was in alignment with where the city council wanted to go with this project and so we felt. [3:00:28] A certain level of confidence in being able to approach the negotiations that way. Thank you. Can you tell us about a time when you had to lead a team through organizational change? How did you maintain morale and accountability? [3:00:47] Oh gosh, those are so fun. So, one of the things people know about me is I'm not I don't shy away from difficult conversations. But I also do it in a very collaborative way, right? So I will go back to when, we started the community development department, so a year after standing that up, we had a building safety to. [3:01:06] Department and, part two of ultimately creating a truly efficient, well oiled high performing development services team was bringing building safety under community development. That had another layer of anxiety, well liked department manager had resigned or retired, actually not resigned or. [3:01:27] Hired, and so. Part of my and all they knew was what they heard about me and bringing over community development from the county to the city, right? So, I sat down with every single teammate in the 1st two weeks and, wanted to hear what they loved most about their job, where they felt there were opportunities to learn, oppos. [3:01:50] Opportunities for improvement. And I'll just give one example. One thing that came out of it was I, I realized that. [3:01:57] And and there were 40 employees. Every single employee's computer was updated, like should have been replaced at least two times. And so, and that that's a huge IT challenge, but also it's a huge service delivery channel challenge where you've got inspectors out in the field. [3:02:15] And when getting to the corp, why haven't your computers, your tab, your laptop's been replaced? Well, we don't know what we want in the field. Some of us want iPads, some of us want tablets, ok? That's the, that's the 1st barrier. Let's bring him in and let's try him. Let's, let's just bring him for two weeks before everybody will try a. [3:02:35] Laptop, everybody will will try or a tablet, everybody will try an iPad. And then it became half like this half like this. And we said, you know, what are we trying to do here? Ultimately, we're trying to make. [3:02:46] That we are entering inspection reports same day. So it doesn't matter what the, the vehicle is to do it, whichever is most comfortable, the, the goal, the outcome is inspection reports get filed that day. So, some people got iPads and some people got tablets. Some people needed bigger amount of. [3:03:06] Will get you a big monitor. Some people said I don't like the big monitor. It's like, what are the tools that you need to do your job effectively? Like that is most important. And we started. [3:03:16] They they knew that they were heard, they knew they had a voice in the decision, and I think that's part of what has helped us hit those targets that we hit so quickly. I mean, we saw plan review numbers just. [3:03:32] Improve almost. I mean, I I can't remember within a matter of months. Does that answer your question? Yeah yes, thank you. How you integrated a city's strategic plan into daily operations and decision making, can you share how you report. [3:03:51] There are progress to both staff and the public? Yes. That is what I love to do. I love to do that. Strategy is my top strength, right? So, four years in my role as assistency manager, which in I was the same as deputy is in Minnesota. That was one of my top roles was. [3:04:11] Every year the council would go into a two day strategic planning process, come out of that with a set of priorities and a management agenda, a s and my job was to work very closely with every department manager in seeing themselves in those strategic priorities, whether it was southwest arterio, whether it was, you know, mobility, creating in arts and cultures. [3:04:31] Strategy, where did departments. Finding seen themselves in that work, building out an action plan and work plan and a set of performance measures and then creating a reporting structure, so that has been foundational to my work almost since the beginning is reporting out on action plans. Currently, in the city of Rochester, we have an action plan performance. [3:04:53] Report that we share out. We do, we have an internal newsletter where we every single week is an action plan update from some department or some impact team and we report to council quarterly on our action plans actually I think now we've just adjusted that to semi annually at, at request, but we. [3:05:12] The. We manage that work internally on a monthly basis with my impact team. I meet with the leads on my impact team weekly and we go over their work and where we're at on their work plans. So very comfortable living in that space, very comfortable reporting where we're being really successful or where we've hit some bumps and maybe aren't performing like that's part of that. [3:05:33] Transparency piece, right? You're you're not Sometimes you're gonna miss it, but understanding why and what's the plan to get back on track. Yeah. As you surely know, the Bloomington Fire Department is undergoing a significant organizational transformation. From your experience, what are some key issues? [3:05:55] To ensure we get it right and please share any examples from your past work to support this. So I feel like I keep going back to people, but people are at the I mean our work is people. I mean that's our work, whether our our organization is people are and our community is people. So ensuring that we. [3:06:15] To get it right. 1st of all, I I presume that there was, I, at least from what I've read, right, there was an analysis done, right? This is, this is the right roadmap. So how are we benchmarking against the original recommendation and are we on target, right? That's 1st piece. [3:06:38] Again, where are we bringing the teammates impacted by this along in this? Some might be more willing than others. And so under ultimately getting your teammate on board to embrace this. [3:06:53] Is really, really critical for future success, right? And for future, you know, good working relationships, not having missteps or or performance failures in certain categories. So I think that's really important. Reporting out to council is really important. Managing the resources that have been allocated. [3:07:13] Into that, is it. Was it the right amount of resources? Is there an opportunity for some savings if or is there an opportunity with just a few more resources to grow to something even better? I think that's all in that bucket of analysis, you know, you have your original report, but then actually do the implementation and bring people along, I think you're constantly. [3:07:35] Iterating the solution and I think that's really important. So. [3:07:40] In terms of where I have done that, I've already talked about the community development department, trying to think about where I've done. Well I mean I would say when we did development services, then we developed the development services and infrastructure impact team. I was community development, which included building safety. It included public works and underneath public. [3:08:00] Works landed streets and flood control and snow removal and parking and transit. I actually. [3:08:10] Put together an organizational restructuring that pulled out parking and transit into its own department. We knew with link brt coming online and having another set of teammates I think it's roughly like another twelve teammates to support that plus the officers creating another, another. [3:08:31] Division for patrol division for VRT. We pulled out. [3:08:36] Parking and transit and made it its own department, and that was under, and I worked with the transit division manager at the time to build out what that structure would look like. And so now it operates as its own department. Thank you. [3:08:54] I had the final question. Oh wow options, which is great. That's why I'm not talking too fast. So Bloomington is in a cycle of growth. How do you work with residents council, and staff to ensure that we remember. [3:09:09] Our history, that we are planning for the future and that we are addressing especially constituent concerns associated with this kind of change. Change management, right? [3:09:25] Yeah, I I think it's I don't have to go previous, but it's that one of that last bullets on outcomes of less or lessons learnt what we've learned from this work so far, right? Growing community doesn't mean loss of identity, right? It it means a more robust community in my opinion, but. [3:09:45] Okay. When I, one of the things that I did when I was in Debugue was the city council said, let's, we want a sustainability strategy. And, you know, some of the community embraced that, some of them said, what does this mean? And others said NO way this is agenda 21, right? I mean that's. [3:10:05] That's the range of which you're dealing with. And for us, it became a bringing task force of residents together, very diverse on both sides of the table, businesses, all of them coming together and getting clarity around what it is we wanted to achieve. And through that process, it was a really wonderful ah moment. [3:10:25] For me that I have carried forward and when one of the members of the task force stood up and said, you know. [3:10:33] My grandpa used to do this back in the thirties. So this isn't anything new. And so that really kind of became the story that we shared was, this is not something that is being done to you and something new. It's something that's being done with you. We need to bring you along in this at a pace in which you. [3:10:53] Can absorb it and so I think we need to acknowledge some people's change meters really high and there's those are the early adopters and some people's change meter is really low and we have to bring them along like and and so, you know. [3:11:07] And then how do others help bring the the people who are struggling with that change. But grounded in that is saying let's build off of what makes Bloomington so great. Let's not replace it. Let's not substitute it. Let's build off of what makes it great so that the people that have been here for decades can really embrace it, but that the people. [3:11:27] We've been here for two weeks really feel. Like they can embrace that this is the community of choice, right? That they choose to be here because it's welcoming, because they feel connected to the vision, because they feel connected to the process. And then, you know, there's things that you need to do in terms of planning for the future. You've got to have the right tools, like you've got to have a growth management map, you've got to have a strategy in place, right? There's limited resources. We. [3:11:50] Don't have enough money to do everything that we want to do. So what's the pace in which we do this work? How are those, how are those resources allocated? How are they distributed? This is where your department managers and your leaders. [3:12:02] Man, they're the people you need to lean into because they are boots on the ground doing this work. Their employees are the frontline staff that sometimes have the better idea of how to, you know, make the widget work better, right? All of that informs that process. [3:12:17] And so it is, it is an acknowledgement of what makes Bloomington so great and who helped help bring us to that point, who helped create that history. It is about having a strategic plan. [3:12:32] That embraces that, but also is strategically risk taking in terms of where we want to go. And, and then it is bringing in your team who are helping you in implementing it. But it's also responding to residents, right? You have to be available to residents. Meet them with. [3:12:52] Where they're at, to suffer for community cafes? Do some want to be informed just by going to the mayor's state of the city? Do some want to just come to public hearing? Does some want you to come to their service club? Those are the ways in which you need to engage the community in this space. If they feel disconnected and left out. [3:13:11] They will, they will be some of your greatest barriers in really bringing the community along and and long term sustainable resilient transformation. Well, thank you for that as council member to Alessandro said those was the last of our prepared questions. [3:13:29] Now, we'd like to give you an opportunity or if you have any questions of us. I have I have a couple 1st of again, just really, really great, great information fun to read through, right? Only a local government geek would say that, but really one. Can you. [3:13:48] Can you describe for me how how you would define community in the city of Bloomington? Who wants that one, anybody wanna jump in? Well, that's what I like to tell is I remember when I was I was young. [3:14:08] This kid had had taken his his mom's car, the police department stopped the kid and then mom was driving the car and the kid was up front and the police were front and back and the mom was yelling all the way home. They drove the car home and that's the way I kind of see the community that's very supportive here. It doesn't matter what you look like or who you are. [3:14:28] Are your mom is powerful, your parents, they're very powerful, and the police are gonna even enforce you know what we need to do. So I just think of it as the community's all working together and oh everybody's watching this kid, you know, getting punished, like, ok, maybe I should do that, you know. [3:14:42] I agree my husband was a science teacher for 23 years, 7th grade science teachers so when you say the parents support like that's, that really resonated with me. Here's the parents supporting teacher anyway. Yeah. For me it's really. [3:15:01] A place that everyone can find their opportunities, whatever their interests are, having that sort of broad based aspect and people appreciate that, that they're different, but they can all find their own home here, whether it's through their faith, through their school, through their sports, through. [3:15:21] Just getting out of the park and just some of the things that people have individually developed like the Todd todd things, sorry, my kids are older so than that but you know just the all these different ways to connect that everyone can find something where they're, they're being welcomed within Bloomington. [3:15:38] I think it also applies to economic development and jobs that people have opportunities to do, you know, whoever they're at within their career. Is that something here. Yeah, I would agree with that. And I think something that I hear a lot from people is that Bloomington feels like a big small town. Even though we're the 3rd. [3:15:57] The largest city in the Metro area and in the Metro. We're not like we, is it our chosen's ahead of us now or dallute or and I have lived here I think since 2017 and I really feel I found that to be true when I lived in a small town and I. [3:16:17] I feel like everywhere I go, I see people that I know and like my kids know, you know, and it's just and so I really like what Sean was saying, she's like where people a place where people can find their place within the community, whatever that looks like for them and whatever is meaningful for them. [3:16:35] And so yeah just and and I'm a data nerd, so I'll i'll throw out the data associated with some of these questions at least in my head. You know, I think about, I think about the idea that when you think about where, where people want us any any time we ask financially, like where do people. [3:16:55] People want us to spend the city's money, it's overwhelmingly similar. [3:17:01] So people will say in our parks and in our recreation. They'll say in public safety and and support and then in equitable community development. And so NO matter where you go in the city and you talk to people of all different groups farmers, markets, you know, wherever it is, the the these things keep coming up, which is why the. [3:17:21] We kept keeping them at the top of our priority list as well. But it's it's I don't think it's very common that you get such a a strong. [3:17:33] Consistent. Answer to that question, NO matter where you go and I'm fascinated by the cohesion of the priorities of our community. And it feeds into your community's satisfaction survey as well like that. I'd to think so anyway. I mean, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. [3:17:52] Yeah. [3:17:58] Yeah, I maybe just one more. What, what skills do you think are most important for the next city manager? I would say more than a skill is like stability, all of us are gonna cycle in and out of here. [3:18:15] And it's really the city manager's job to continue to move the boat forward when we're all gone and new people are in here and have different ideas and priorities. How do I keep that wave, that next wave coming from washing the city out, washing the residents out? So I think having that, that long term vision, the ability to support staff and. [3:18:35] Continuing to roll in the right direction when we know waves are coming and we're gonna have to manage through that. [3:18:45] Yeah, I think three of you were up in 26, is that right? Well, the whole council was last week. Two, two or three are up this year, two, right? This Year yep. [3:19:01] Three up this year for the next year, seven again, I have NO idea how it's gonna work. It's crazy. I would answer that question with effectiveness would be what what I would look for. You know, I say this because I was someone involved. [3:19:21] But I feel like the direction of the city is pretty well laid out, at least in the short term, three to five year plan. I want to see that done effect, I want to see that executed effectively. [3:19:33] You know, but it doesn't mean that we don't have conversations about the next 30 years. Of course, we have to have those conversations, but maybe related to the stability question or the stability concept is, you know, I don't think we trash everything that we've got in flight and start over just because we've gotten a new city manager. So I'm hopeful that we'll find. [3:19:53] Someone who feels confident that they can pick up where this is sitting and and effectively manage it to to good outcomes for the city. [3:20:02] Give the momentum going, yeah. I'd say somebody focused on collaboration, a consensus builder, a leader, about five different ways. [3:20:16] You know, to, to lead this, the staff of 700 to to lead with the city council and, you know, provide the appropriate care and feeding for the city council at the same time and then to lead the, the community. [3:20:31] And, and you can draw that community circle as wide and as far as you'd like because Bloomington itself is obviously the community, but we're I mean, we acknowledge we're like like Rochester Bloomington's. [3:20:46] A leader in a lot of ways and people follow what we do and there's that's part of it as well in terms of being a leader is sending the example for the rest of the metro and other cities and like we we we benchmarking as Rochester as well so you're right. [3:21:06] A lot of people follow what you do. That's been I mean I knew it even before all of this stuff it's really, it's really if I may add one more comment I I think in my view effectiveness rather than having so many projects happening at the same time reduce the amount of projects from making it. [3:21:28] Happened as as quick as possible. I I think to a certain extent I've seen that in Roger myself. I used to visit the male clinical app so I've seen the changes and how quick they have happened down there. But perhaps here there's. [3:21:47] A little more constraints in regards to that because it's not just medical. It's it's a variety of projects here but I I like to see a city manager that have instead of having such a broad. [3:22:03] View of the improvements reduced them and make them happen in a much quicker manner and then get to the next ones. I think we will be a more effective city that way, in my point of view, at least. [3:22:27] If not, that's ok. That's alright. This is probably one quick one, maybe one person. Yeah, really, I mean, I think I've heard it in in responses, but the biggest community issue in the next two to five years, but I think what I'm hearing is. [3:22:43] Tax money. Yeah, ok. Yeah I think like a lot of communities are age. I mean we have aging infrastructure, we're building our fire department, I mean. [3:22:58] We have some big investments going on right now and, you know, we are very much challenged with, a tax levy that, you know, we, we. [3:23:13] We know that there are needs, there are things that we need to invest in, improvements we need to make, and there, and just to keep it running as it is now, we're still gonna see a pretty significant tax levy increase. Also acknowledging that a significant portion of our community are seniors on fixed incomes. [3:23:32] You know, people who are lower income who can't afford the tax level. So, you know, I think that's the 1st thing that immediately that's probably the thing that like worries me the most or keeps me up at night is like how the fiscal realities mean operationally some of the decisions made at the state level, right? But we're in terms of absolutely. Got it. You probably know that the. [3:23:52] Pointon has a triple triple A bond rating and we want to keep that and so that's important if we sacrifice it, we wanna. [3:24:00] Able to defend that because we can't defend it. Yeah what I'm gonna keep it as much because yeah because other projects just suddenly goes up. What I would say is just on that, just renewal in the face of that, you know, in terms of. [3:24:16] How do you renew your city when you're facing that, that, that fiscal as the choice? Yeah. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Cindy, and I'm sure Greg has laid out the the process here talking to four finalists today and there'll be. [3:24:34] Bring our heads together afterward and writing at least back tomorrow for a second discussion and then hopefully we'll done that. Great. Well, thank you so much. Thanks for the process. Thank you. Maybe in the interest of time I won't I can work with everybody's hand up. Yes, you as well. Yeah, thank you. [3:24:54] Thank you so much. Thank you. Can do it fast. Thank you as well. Good luck with your decision. You have an amazing pool of candidates I have to say. No surprise. Thank you. [3:25:17] Just wanted to see if that actually wanted you to be able to go through because I want to see what's on that wall then you wanted to know too. I just want to know, I just hang out here. Yeah I want to know what's going on in there an office remodel someone's officing it. I thought leave. [3:25:33] What was moving in there? I think legal was moving in there. Yep. Also recently? [3:25:40] Yeah. You signed off on that there? Yeah I think you're right. What do we have behind? Oh, thank you. Are we good should we take like a 5 min. [3:26:04] I was in such a hurry to get that presentation going. I left my email signed in. Oh is that with me? That's what the chiming is. Get that turned off. [3:27:17] That's how it should work, ok, great, yeah. [3:28:07] The phone died yesterday, so on top of everything else I had to carve out like an hour or two. Oh, NO, that's a big job for the AT and T store. Just a new phone. That's challenging. Yep. Would you drop your phone or? It just gave up the ghost, let's say. Yeah. [3:28:24] We can't keep it for 20 years. What is They had to be close to ten. Yeah, yeah, close to ten. Yeah. Well I mean you're better than I am. I got I got my phone, my phone costs the same money as my, my wife's compute, new computer. [3:28:42] Far exceeds the value of my car when I was frying. Wow, should you leave this behind? Yes. [3:29:03] Before we get started again, I just want to remind those they haven't been keeping up their ranking forms be a good time to update those. We'll help at the end. We'll help at the end and this is ranking all things considered not just like, not just interview before. [3:29:23] So it's all things considered. I want to listen to NPR. Don't tell me. Just reminded everyone be a good time to update your. No. [3:29:45] Just telling you not to do that. Why are you doing that? [3:29:50] You're the only person I know that would be like I'm not gonna do with the guy who isn't acting this telling us to do. Did it his way. Of course, right, It's important. That's why he's asking us to do that. He's trying to see where we have consensus and where we don't. [3:30:07] So it's like your own way of being like this is my where you know like so at the end if everybody ranked Cindy in their top two, then he you know. She's mad at me. I like that. I'm not maddy. I'm disappointed that you always you wouldn't use somebody who were paying money like to give us advice on this that you wouldn't take it. [3:30:29] I think it's seriously, I just do I put i went and listened to everybody and then I had notes for everybody. You can change it at the last round. As you go, nobody's telling you you can't. You could be like this is one and this is two, this is three, this is two, this is one. [3:30:47] One this is why I understand the system. I just You just don't want to participate in it. It is that. So else he wouldn't doing it. [3:30:56] I think there's the term four. Hold on we're kering here for just a minute. Are we done? We're ready yes. God, I I actually go, here we go. Here we go, guys. [3:31:12] Hello Carter. Hi, nice to meet you. Hey, Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Hey I'm. It's good to meet you, absolutely. [3:31:30] Yeah, I'll look at that ready to go. Ready to go. Well, thank you so very much for your interest in this position. Thanks for coming in this afternoon. You do appreciate it. [3:31:46] We have, 1012 13 questions, something like that, in addition to your presentation and trying to fit it all into a neat little 50 min. Budget your time accordingly if you could. We will leave the last couple of minutes for you to ask us some questions as well, so. [3:32:04] Just gonna go around and ask questions and I'm gonna kick us off and we're gonna jump right into this if you get with that. Sounds great. Thank you. If you could please tell us about your background and your experience and how especially as it relates to our city tradition, and let us know why you would like to be the next city manager. [3:32:20] Thank you. Well, thank you for the opportunity to be here. I appreciate it. It's an honor to be selected as one of the four finalists. I think you have a difficult choice in front of you and I don't envy that, but I'll do my best to make it hard for you. I, so again, my name is Noah Chuckman I always like. [3:32:41] It's like shocking corn. And I'm in my I think 20 about to be my 22nd year of local government public service. I spent 15 years with the city of Minneapolis, started off as a policy age, one of the Minneapolis city council members did that for about five years and then spent the last ten years I was in Minneapolis. [3:32:59] In the city's code enforcement department, which is called regulatory services. And the last five years I was there, I was the deputy director for two years and director for the last three and then I left Minneapolis after 15 years and spent five years as the city administrator for the City of Daluth, and finished that service in January of last year, started in Golden Valley as the. [3:33:23] From city manager in March last year. And then selected to be the permanent city manager in July and so I continued to serve Golden Valley's city manager I'm very proud of that work and the the team there and the work that we're doing. I have a bashtro's degree in political science from market University of Milwaukee, a master's degree in public administration from Hammond University in st. Paul. [3:33:45] I am a long time member of the international city county Management Association. I'm a credentialed manager with ICMA. I sit on the board of directors for the Minnesota City county Management Association where I'm the 1st vice president, and next year I will be unless something wacky happens, I will be the president of that organization. I'm very proud of the work. [3:34:05] That. We do on behalf of people that do city management work, excuse me. And you know, I referenced Golden Valley and the work that we're doing I'm very proud to to work there and and you know, should you choose someone else I'll be proud to continue working there. But I also am someone with Longtist of Bloomington who. [3:34:27] Recognizes the role that the city plays in the region and in the state, and this is an opportunity that I'm excited about as a result. My 1st job was at the multh of America. I was there on opening day at bare bones and worked there off and on into college. My in laws have lived. [3:34:47] At a hundred and 7th in Charitan for about 50 years. My wife is from Bloomington, and literally on Friday we moved into our house over from Mount Normandale drive. And so I'm now a Bloomington resident as well. I do like to be honest and say that that is a coincidence. I did not buy the house. [3:35:10] So you're not leaving if this doesn't work out so I told my family that it would not go over great. But I I'm excited to be here both now as a resident and then also someone who has has spent a lot of time in your community, our community now I should say. [3:35:27] I'll have to get used to that. And so for me, I see the work that has happened over the last decades in this city and recognize that this is a train that is moving down the tracks pretty fast and it's an opportunity for anyone in this position to come in and get to jump onto that and be a part of what you all have built in our building. And so for me that is, that is exciting. [3:35:49] I also, you know, have. A chunk of my career left and I'm excited to find, to, to either continue in Golden Valley and have that be a place that I work for a long time where if this opportunity comes to fruition, this would be a great place to spend the next chunk of my career and so I'm just honored to be here and I appreciate the opportunity. [3:36:11] Thank you. Thank you. Alright, well I have the 1st question. So you were provided a question in advance and you have a presentation prepared so we're gonna turn it over to you actually to kind of kick things off. Yeah. Thank you. Well, I really appreciate the opportunity to share this example. This is work that I'm very proud of. [3:36:31] Up that came out of my time in Deluth and during five years of of work as a city administrator, and it's not one specific project, and so if I'm not fully answering the question, then I guess I'll own that. But it is as as I think I will explain a series of interconnected efforts to establish. [3:36:51] Culture as a priority for the organization, institutionalized systems and demonstrate the organization's commitment to staff. And that's something that I really prioritize and feel strongly about and so I felt like it was a good example to share. [3:37:05] I'll do this correctly here. There we go. When I arrived in 2018I found really outstanding service delivery with the existing resources that the city had and the staff had, but also there had been, I think what I would call a lack of emphasis on people, facilities, and the culture. And since 1st impressions really matter. [3:37:26] Especially to new employees. That 1st day is really impactful and meaningful in terms of how long someone is willing to commit to an organization. [3:37:36] It's something I really pay attention to. And so the city of this is city hall. The city has a lot of buildings as you do, but the primary staff and public safe public facing facility is city hall. It was built in 1928, it's on the national reg register of historic places, was placed there in 1986. So it is long recognized as a hist. [3:37:56] Work building, and it is beautiful inside. I believe strongly that workspace in public space are a metaphor for how we care for staff and how we want the community to see us as organizations. If they're careful it really says a lot. And that was that was not really the case. [3:38:16] The building itself was in fine condition, nothing was falling apart, but the cosmetic. Things, the the little things were missing. And so e.g. in city hall, these were the 1st wayfinding signs that I saw. And the building when I walked in for my interview, it was a similarly warm day and when I walked in for my interview, the, the lighting was dark. [3:38:41] The paint was old and and not It clearly just had not been refreshed in quite a long time. And then the wayfinding signage, this is something that really caught my attention when I walked in the door the very 1st time. And as you see, it's signage that was I think put up in the late eighties or early nineties is my guess. [3:39:00] It, if you look closely, all the out of date information on the left and on the right has been taped over with a similar color of duck tape, which I think is at least there's a color match I think that's good. And then on the right they'd also taped a sign over it. And. [3:39:19] To me that that's something that's missing, that's a missed opportunity to demonstrate to both our staff and to the community that you care about the face that you're showing them and the way that you are, looking outwards. So as I got started. [3:39:36] At the city. So how did I start? I got to know the team, of course. I I don't want to gloss over that and act like I only cared about the building systems, but getting to know people, of course, is the 1st thing. But I also looked at quick easy changes to make in city hall, that would help to address some of this. There was already capital work happening in the building that. [3:39:55] We had long plan for. So building looks like you have a remodel going on just outside this room that that type of refresh was happening, but we had, they had not gotten to or focused on that public space and so we updated paint, lighting and some of those visual cues in the building to demonstrate, to show care, and. [3:40:15] Change. I also pulled our HR team into the city's leadership meetings. I feel like it's important. I really believe in a focus on dignity and respect for all staff. Even if we have a staff member who's struggling or in a disciplinary situation, I believe that their humanity comes 1st and it's important to focus on that. [3:40:36] And start there. I worked hard to be someone who manages by walking around and talking to people and also working to be really clear about what I, what I expect and what the organization expects. And, so it is something that, we had to do was to demonstrate what that internal organizational goals were. [3:40:58] And understanding something different from your excellent comprehensive plan, something internal focused and I found at all three cities I've worked for that the staff care deeply about their work that we are proud of it and they want to be treated, like they care as much as or like we care as much as they do. [3:41:17] So we did work on our internal values. We had a leadership retreat for all department heads. Deluth also has, in addition to the city administrator, a strong mayor, and so the mayor was involved in that conversation as well. We set our how and why statements, so lifting Deluth was why we. [3:41:36] Do what we do and better bouldering together was how we did that. And then we had staff vote on the definitions for better bouldering together, so they felt invested and clear in understanding what those words meant to them as a group. [3:41:49] And that gave us investment from all levels of the organization. And then we started looking for opportunities to make things both more personal and more fun, for step, and so we started with the fun, city Halloween the community to make city hall to trick a treat, and kids came in and we're. [3:42:09] Able to trick a treat throughout the building and offices. Departments decorated their offices and we had a contest and we also had a staff costume contest which I did never win. It's like my best efforts. One of the things that I struggle with sometimes in interviews is coming off is very serious, and so I was really. [3:42:29] Grateful for this opportunity to put this in here because I this is a little more representative of how I show up to work. I I do want to have fun at work. I don't do this every day. It's an opportunity to show that. We also worked on the more personal side of things, which is starting awards, the better boldered together awards, and this is. [3:42:49] Something I'm doing in Golden Valley right now as well. We made those values that we talked about more personal. [3:42:56] We wanted to recognize staff based on nominations from their peers, and that nomination process was staff submitting in any or all categories, better bolder or together that they came as individual nominations or group nominations. And I also gave out a special award most most years when it was married. [3:43:16] E.g., in 2023, we had three staff who were in a meeting with one of their colleagues, that colleague collapsed and actually went his cardiac arrest and they saved his life, got him back and were able to help get him to the hospital. He he lived and he was able to help present that award to me. [3:43:36] For fort with me, I should say. And then I say leaders lose and I say that because I don't believe that the city manager or the city administrator department heads really should be eligible for staff awards unless they're part of a group. They already want the award, their department head, they're the boss, and so it's really to focus on that. [3:43:55] Unless they're part of the team that one and then, then that's fine. And then like, like most organizations we had to pivot because of COVID and actually that 1st special staff award went to the city's IT department, because they took us from business as usual to all online in about a week. And that that of course provide. [3:44:14] Got new challenges and I imagine for those of you who are here at the time. You know, how, how do you connect with people in that new situation? How do you do that by phone between the screen? And I I really struggled with that and there's nobody I could ask for advice. You couldn't call a city manager who served during the Spanish fluid epidemic. How did you do this? And so we, we started off with twice daily. [3:44:39] Leadership meetings, then we moved to once daily, then we moved to twice a week, and then we moved to once a week as we kind of settled in. But that, that was part of. [3:44:49] That struggle was figuring out how do we maintain some of the rituals that we had as an organization, how do we do staff awards online? Very awkwardly as it turns out. And we looked for ways to have fun during online meetings, which really doesn't go well together, but we tried. And then we also dealt with challenges just like. [3:45:09] Other cities and e.g. during civil unrest in 2020, there was the was not as active as the metro was, but we had a couple of nights that there was some activity and one of those nights there was. [3:45:25] During that unless three separate dumpsters were said on fire and I was getting ready to go to sleep at about 1230 and I called the deputy police chief that was on and I said, Laura I'm getting ready to go to sleep unless you need me, she said NO. He said anything going on? She said, No, everything's fine except for the three dumpster fires. And I thought. [3:45:42] There's NO better metaphor for these jobs. Sometimes there's just a dumpster fire that you have to deal with and I, that's one of the things that came out of COVID for me is recognizing that even when something is terrible and not going well, you still have to get the work done and you still have to focus on taking care of the people as part of that, and. [3:46:02] And. That was a, that was a big one. I struggled, as I said, with connecting with people. I'm really someone who likes 1 min meetings, stopping someone in the hallway, saying, you know, asking them how their family is, getting their guidance on something, getting them to tell me what they need. And that is something that we, I struggled with and had to work hard to do online. [3:46:23] And and then like every organization we had to figure out how to bring people back, how do you do that gracefully, and how do we manage expectations? [3:46:31] We continue to work on prioritizing staff needs and I'm trying to make sure I'm on time here. We focused on, we did get COVID funding as most cities did, we focused on investments that would save property taxpayers in the long run, so things that would otherwise go on the levy worked on how we could impact staff, and one of the things that's consistent throughout. [3:46:51] My, my work is that culture work takes time and intention and maintenance. And one of the things we did, the lucy Hall was not air conditioned, and that's because it didn't used to need to be. But I talked about the day I came from my interview was 80 or 90 degrees and I was sitting in a hot room sweating, so I'm very grateful that. [3:47:14] But culture work takes is a long term project. It takes continuous maintenance and that's something that we did coming in and out of COVID. But it did put a lot of it on pause, and one of the things that I want to just talk about is we had a new normal, everybody did. We had the ventilation work that I was talking about to, to work on. [3:47:31] On the air conditioning and we also had capital model projects. So the things that. We came back to work, but then we immediately sent some folks out as well to other buildings, to other parts of the building. And so we had to work hard to meet people where they were, to have continued flexibility and to balance what the community's needs were as things changed and staff needs. And one of the things that we did was start a leadership development program, which was called Bridges to leadership. [3:47:56] That was something that the city had not had, but we invested in that as a way to make sure that everyone in a supervisory role was on the same page about what expectations were. They used common language and they knew each other. Because as it turns out your public works department and your police department don't always have a ton of crossover. And so it's a good way to get people in the. [3:48:16] Same room and have conversations about some of the challenges they have at work. So, we started here, and with long term planning adaptation and keeping the destination in mind, I always like to think about government work as you're true, you're turning a cruise ship, you're turning a giant aircraft care, something like that, you have to know the destination, you have to set a course and you have to stay on that course. And it's not a speed. [3:48:40] And it's not as Jetsky and residents a lot of times think that it is, that you can just can go the other direction. But I I like to think about it as having to keep that destination in mind, and this is where we land. [3:48:52] These are the new wayfinding signs that that ended up in city hall. They're not the most flamorous thing that you've ever seen, but they're clear, they're clean, they can be easily replaced if something changes, and my experience as a leader is that you can't just tell people that you care, you have to own your mistakes, that intentionality matters, change. [3:49:12] It takes time and my wife uses the phrase and I think she got it from a podcast, but she says clear is kind all the time. [3:49:18] It's one of the things we talk about with our kids and so I wanted to to just share that and with that I I know you have more questions for me, but if you have specific questions on this, I'm happy to answer them. Thank you. All right, so next question, can you tell us about a time when you specifically build trust with a ski. [3:49:38] Skeptical group or stakeholder and what specific steps did you take and how do you know you were successful? [3:49:47] When I think that's a great question. When I, as I was mentioning I was the director of regulatory services in Minneapolis, and that is a department that does code enforcement, it does fire code inspections, animal control traffic control. So the folks if you go downtown for an event, those are the folks standing in the internet. [3:50:06] Section helping people get through safely. And then they also did housing inspections, and so between housing inspections and fire code inspections, they're responsible for a hundred thousand rental units and about 25000 rental properties in the city of Minneapolis. And that works out too, but when I left almost seven years ago, that was about 51 % of the population. [3:50:27] And then you also do the exterior maintenance requirements for all the other residential properties. [3:50:35] At the time that I was the director of regulatory services, there was a strong tenant advocacy movement happening. And because of the number of rental properties that Minneapolis has, I also had a very strong. [3:50:52] Rental property owners group and I believe they're still located here in Bloomington, the Minnesota multi Housing Association. And so we actually had to build trust with both sides of that equation. We had tenants who very passionately felt that they should be prioritized, that they should be cared for more than the. [3:51:12] They were by the city, and we also had property owners who. [3:51:17] My experience was largely were well intentioned and sincere in their effort to want the same things and figuring out how to bridge that, that gap as a regulatory, as a regulator at running a regulatory agency is a challenge because you've got both both sides pushing. [3:51:35] The, the harder challenge to your question, council member, was the, was the tenant advocates. They were very passionate sometimes asking for things that were beyond the scope of what the city could offer, whether it's because state law preempted or there was another reason that we could not do it. Sometimes it. [3:51:55] Something that would require me to double the number of inspectors that I would have needed and I was always happy to make that request to mayor Fry and it didn't go very far because of the budgetary impact. And so I had to work to make. [3:52:09] To be clear that I was listening, and the way that I tried to do that is showing up to to talk to them. They would ask for a meeting, I would say yes. They would have a community meeting, I would attempt. And it wasn't every single one cause it didn't always work, but showing up and being sincere and being as transparent as possible, is really important and. [3:52:29] Is how you develop trust with people and sometimes saying I I wish I could do that, but I can't is just as important as saying yes, because people, I don't think most people who are rational believe that you can say yes to everything that they ask. So I worked hard to build trust and when I was reappointed. [3:52:48] I was originally appointed by mayor Hodges and when I was reappointed by mayor fry. I, if I remember correctly, they, the tenant advocates showed up to speak for my in Minneapolis department heads at the time had a public hearing for their nomination and they spoke in my in my favorite. And so that was one of the ways that I knew. I also knew because they called me. [3:53:08] And they would ask for things and they would reach out to me directly, and the same went for the property owners and I have maintained, actually maintained relationships with the property owner group in dilute. They would come up and check in with me. And one of my last days in Minneapolis I had I went and had coffee with the leader of one of the tenant advocate groups to just. [3:53:28] Talk about how to move forward in ways to be productive. Yeah. Sure time when you successfully increase engagement from underrepresented or marginalized communities, what approach did you take? We may I'm gonna use another Miniapolis example to be honest with you. [3:53:51] So. One of the things that I was a part of in Minneapolis was we had, every spring snowmelts, then everybody sees what's under it and you'd get phone calls from the community about that. And when you run a regulatory agency, they call you and they say, I want my neighbors, whatever. [3:54:12] Picked up soon and the grass got too long and you know it's it's that stretch of May where suddenly it goes from nope from Brown to a foot high. [3:54:22] And what we ended up doing was doing direct outreach to the most, the neighborhoods that have the most, orders that would get written during those spring months, we would do direct outreach to those communities. So everybody would get a letter that every household that a letter that had one with one page, it said it was. [3:54:42] It's basically did you know? This is what the rules are for long grass. This is what the rules are for rubbish. This is what the rules are for cutting the branches so that people can walk under them on a sidewalk. This is what the rules are, this is how you do this and it was not my idea, but I was part of implementing it and then kept it going while. [3:55:03] Why was the director and we saw over time a 60 % decrease in orders written. And the reason I mentioned it is not I think community engagement in the sense of bringing people together, but it is community engagement in that we are, you're reaching out to people directly, you're demonstrating how, that you understand. [3:55:23] The impact that government has on them and looking for ways to reduce it. And because there is a strong correlation between. [3:55:31] The neighborhoods where the highest number of orders are and then the socioeconomics of that neighborhood, what we were able to do is impact folks that would really be potentially harmed by an expensive fine or the city coming out and cutting the grass for $200 or whatever it costs. And so it was a way of doing that outreach. And it was for me. [3:55:51] U. How we were able to kind of reframe that. One of the things that happened while I was while I was there and that I was really proud of is we, we had staff that were then specifically tasked with reaching out to tenants. Previously, most of the staff were inspectors, and their job was to interact with the tenants, but their focus was on the. [3:56:12] Conditions of the property, and so by having tenant navigators set up so that they could connect with tenants directly and hear from them, it made sure that made sure that tenants had a direct connection to the organization and were able to. [3:56:26] Advocate for their needs and their properties as well without having to go through the landlord or feel like they were tattling on the landlord. Thank you. Tell us about the communication systems and norms that you put in place with your city council. How do you ensure transparency. [3:56:46] We, you know, avoid any surprises, support all of us equally, things of that nature. [3:56:52] Thank you. So in, in Minneapolis, 13 council members, nine council members in a mayor, and Golden Valley has five council members including the mayor. And so II7 is a nice balance, I I think that my. [3:57:12] My my goal and my. My best intent would be to be as consistent as possible, to make sure that I'm sharing the same information with everyone. Now that doesn't, I don't believe that that's possible to be perfect about it. Some folks have an interest in one topic and not in another and I'm gonna, you know, lean into the topic that somebody has an interest in. But. [3:57:34] If something's asked publicly I would, I tend to try to follow up with everyone so that everyone gets the same answer. [3:57:41] One of the frustrating things in Daluth that I found is that and that I recognize is probably a challenge for you all here is there is a combination of districts and at large council members, and that meant that there's in Daluth there's five districts and four at large plus the mayor, so ten elected officials, and very frequently an email would come in to every. [3:58:01] One, and I would get follow up question from the district council member before at large council members and the mayor. And so I worked hard to start to be proactive about seeing that, saying to them, I'm we're on it, we'll get an answer out. [3:58:17] So I think that consistency is important. I also recognize that the mayor has a different role as the public face of the city, and so I think that that is something that, is a, is a piece to navigate and certainly where I selected that's something that I would work with with the mayor to make sure we were bouncing carefully. But my, my best hope would be that everyone has consistency. [3:58:37] Or similar information. That we are meeting on a schedule that works for you. You know, my, this is a full time job for me and it is my, I believe largely not for most of you. And so I try to respect that and understand that. And, so I have had a monthly meeting with council members. [3:58:58] More frequent meetings with Mayor in both in Golden Valley and Intoluth. Minneapolis is a little different in how that operates and how that runs. But my goal is to be pretty consistent, to be available. And then, you know, I work really hard to both appreciate that you all have full time jobs and also balance. [3:59:18] My life and staff's life, and so I try my best to contain that work to business hours. Part of that is for my mental health and wellbeing, and I also know that if I send emails to staff in the evenings that they will feel obligated to respond. [3:59:36] And so I try really hard to focus that. And so what I always say is if you send me an email, I'll get back to you 1st thing in the morning. If it's an emergency, please feel free to call. But if it's graffiti on a stop sign and it's Sunday afternoon, I think we can all agree that an email is fine because we'll get to that. And so my goal is to also then respect your time in. [3:59:56] Your evenings as well and to try to avoid imposing on them. You know, you all I imagine spend a fair amount of your evenings out in the community and as the faces of the organization, I want you to be able to do that without. [4:00:11] Having to also try to take a phone call for me about something that could be handled at another time in another way. Thanks. Tell us about a time when you had to navigate or reinforce the boundaries between the city council's policy role. [4:00:26] And the city manager's operational responsibilities. How did you approach your situation and what steps did you take to maintain clarity and mutual respect in those roles? Thank you. I I think each city's different. What I have tried to generally. [4:00:47] Ask is that elected officials reach out to either me or a department head so that there is someone with a senior leadership eye on an ask. And some of that is around understanding the big picture. Some of that is because not every staff member understands what your job is and they. [4:01:06] I have found that some staff will take an ask from an elected official as the top priority I have to do this right now. And that's I'm trying to find a way to say this that's not this word, but I'm gonna use it anyway. That's a little dangerous because it can set somebody off on a path that actually might get them in trouble and I don't want to put people in that situation. [4:01:26] I had, we had an unexpected detour that rose up during my time at dalufe. And I don't remember the exact cost, but something got in the way of of very heavily trapped road on a day that there was going to be. [4:01:41] It was at ad hock ridge, which is a very popular hiking place in the luth and there's one road that leads up to it and the same road ends on the other side. And so if it's blocked, it's blocked. And I had one council member who was very intent on getting communication out about that. And she, we had a. [4:02:00] We had signs up and we had a project engineer involved and she said. To me, I'm gonna call project engineer and ask him to do X Y and Z And I said you absolutely cannot do that. And she got very mad at me about that and I was respectful the whole time and but I just said that is my job. It's my job and the department head's job to talk with him. I hear you and I will get that to you. [4:02:25] And she was very unhappy with me. And so. We've sorted through that situation operationally, and then I went back to her and I sat down and we talked that through, and I saw her at the legal Minnesota city's conference a couple weeks ago. She gave me a big hub. We run into each other and still are in touch and I really believe that you can have disagreement. [4:02:49] It can be passionate disagreement and still not take that personally, not have that be damaging to your long term relationship if you do it respectfully and thoughtfully, and so I'm happy I'm always happy to sit down and have that conversation. And one of the things I tell my staff that I I say all the time and I. [4:03:08] I usually point over my shoulder because I'm sitting at the conference room table in my office, but I always say if you leave my wife and my kids out of it, I'm pretty hard to offend. I might disagree with you and I might give it back, but I'm not gonna get real offended if you just don't agree with me or you think I made a bad decision. I. [4:03:24] I make bad decisions. That's how it goes, not to be clear. But occasionally I'll make a bad decision. That's how that goes. We all do. That was a little more than I meant to that, that happens, and so I'm open to that and. [4:03:44] I think that if, if, if I or if I say something the way somebody doesn't appreciate I wanna hear that because. [4:03:51] I'm not interested in upsetting people and, you know, back to our culture conversation, I want people to feel, proud and happy to come to work and that includes all of you. And if, if you're not feeling that. [4:04:07] Back and forth is done respectfully, then I'm failing at my job and and so I really, I would want that to be an open dialogue. I I feel that it's very important that people are understand the lanes that they're in and that we all stick to those. I would. [4:04:23] You know, I don't get to I don't get a vote on the city council, and I have decisions I get to make that are mine and and I think that we would talk to each other about all of those things cause that's what the job is. But sometimes you're gonna disagree and having that happen is ok and having the conversation. [4:04:43] Is about it and owning mistakes and owning things that didn't go well is also just fine and something I feel is important. [4:04:51] Thank you. No, just a couple of minutes behind, but we can catch up on the next few questions. Describe a time when you took a significant calculated risk in your leadership, what was the risk? How did you evaluate it? And what was the result? [4:05:06] I have had to make difficult personnel decisions in my career, and when you are making a difficult personnel decision with a leader in the organization, it has a lot of ripple effects. So i've done that in. [4:05:23] Most of the jobs that I've had, the one that I'll speak to is one that happened in Minneapolis and we, I have a department, a division director in my department who was not doing the job the way that he was supposed to, he. [4:05:37] Got himself in trouble in addition in in terms of some of the things that he said to s to a few folks. And so I unappointed him removed him from his position, and that was a test of I had to figure out how to explain that to his department of 40 something people at our division. [4:05:57] 40 something people and I had to figure out how to. Plan for plan in advance to make that as smooth as possible to understand what the next steps would look like for the organization and from a leadership standpoint and then had to ride that through and that's really stressful and hard. It's one of the hardest parts of these jobs for me. [4:06:18] And I, you know, to the, to your question about evaluating it, I think that in retrospect I have thought about it for years now, there's things I could have done differently. I could have acted quicker, and I could have. [4:06:35] Been more decisive about it and I've learned that lesson, it's something that I'll, you know, I use that lens to then evaluate decisions that come up in the future. Right, can you tell us about a time you had to lead a team through organizational change? How did you make. [4:06:55] Team in morale and accountability. In dilute, we had a department of this very large catch all department that was called the public administration department. And that sounds vague cause it was vague. It included the city clerk. It included HR. [4:07:15] IT properties, so all the facilities folks, the parks, and libraries and in that case I was very fortunate that the department head was clear that that was too much and he was one of the advocates for changing it. [4:07:31] But we made a decision to basically split that into two departments and, to bring someone who was internal up to the department head position for the new department. And then we went around together and talked about that to all the staff impacted. We went into staff meetings and we sat down, I explained the changes. [4:07:51] That was happening. I was able to be very clear there was not punishment for this was an punishment that this was an organizational change that was being made to make sure that they had what what they needed to be successful as staff and. [4:08:09] We we just were as transparent as we could be about it and open with people and then made sure that we continue to follow up with people and provide opportunities for them to speak to us privately or to speak to their new director or their old director depending on which one it was privately. [4:08:24] Thank you. Funny caught up on time, so. Okay, thank you. I'm trying. We're good. How have you integrated a city's strategic plan into daily operations and decision making and you sure how you reported progress to both the staff and the public? [4:08:40] So when I started into the imagined dilute 2035 plan had had been completed and was being was being implemented and being worked on. It. [4:08:55] I had, I would have liked to do reporting and I've seen the reporting you're doing on your website is wonderful. You should be very proud of it. It's something I part of the reason I'm excited about this position, but that it is, it's hard to do and because I wasn't there when it started, it was a little bit of a. [4:09:15] Pick up and. We did not get to the place of reporting in the way that I would have liked. We used it for when the mayor gave a state of the city speech, we would use markers from that plan to, to make sure that we're the community was hearing that we were tracking those changes and, and what was happening but you all are miles ahead in terms of how you were. [4:09:37] Reporting and how you're tracking these things. Currently in Golden Valley, what what we are working towards is getting more into strategic planning. That's something that the city did not have. We started with last fall and into the spring of business operations analysis, so basically what it sounds like of understanding all the things that the city does. [4:09:57] Why we do them? How much staff time it takes. We then had a visioning session for the city council in January to talk about big picture vision and goals for the city. And now we've worked to put some very specific strategic directives in place of these are the things that each department is going to work on to to try to get towards those goals. But we. [4:10:18] Have not yet gotten to the place of being able to measure them. Minneapolis while I was there had results in Minneapolis, which was a very data heavy and data driven, way of tracking results, I guess, I don't know if they would put it and so I, I started from that and understand that I had a team of data analysts in my department and. [4:10:43] Regulatory services that would help us to track. The trends, see where we were missing, missing the number of inspections we were trying to hit, something like that. So I'm very familiar with it, but I have not been able to be in a city where I have been involved in the genesis of it all the way to reporting. And so I recognize that your comprehensive plan and that your strategic plan stuff and. [4:11:05] It's in 2027I imagine there's plans to to pick up a new one and and roll forward and so that would be very exciting to me to get to be a part of that. [4:11:15] As you surely know, the Bloomington Fire Department is undergoing significant organizational transformation. From your experience, what are some key issues to ensure we get it right? And please share any examples you have in password to support this. [4:11:33] Well, I've worked in two cities that have full time fire departments. In Minneapolis I was not responsible for the fire department in the luth I had oversight it was the fire chief's boss. I do know chief Seal very from my time in Minneapolis, but and. [4:11:50] And then the golden Valley we have paid on call and we're having the same conversation about if and when to move into full time. I think for me, with this type of change management, what you, what's really important is again keeping the. [4:12:07] Keeping communication lines open, I think that it it is Can you, do you mind repeating the question? I just want to make sure. Absolutely, yeah, not a problem at all. Happy to do that for you. So, as you surely know, the Bloomington fire Department is undergoing a significant organizational transformation. From your experience, what are some of the key issues to ensure. [4:12:27] Do we get it right and please share examples from your password to support this. Thank you. [4:12:33] I, you know, for what I think about in terms of what you all are in the middle of is figuring out how to best, explain to staff what timelines are, explain to the community what the timelines are and the cost is and also what that means for daily operations and what it means when you call 911 or for. [4:12:53] Let me now of what it means when I call 911 and and ask for fire to come out. Hopefully I won't have to do that. I, I think that. [4:13:05] Big organizational changes that and I'm trying to think of a good example, in Minneapolis we went, and I was the deputy director at the time we did what got referred to as tiered rental licensing. Forgive me for having to dredge that on his brain. [4:13:25] And that tiered rental licensing was, is a system that is, I believe still in place and it is where you take a property owner who has the most, has, has a high number of regular, when you do an annual rental license inspection, high number of orders cause they're not maintaining the property. [4:13:40] They would get in, they moved into a tier that they saw an inspector every year. The folks who had the medium number saw an inspector every two to three years, and then the folks who really did a great job of maintaining their property saw an inspector every five or six years. [4:13:54] And we shifted to that model from an annual inspection that our staff struggled to keep up with because we wanted to prioritize having the greatest possible impact on the properties that had the greatest possible need. And to do that, we had to have the data prepped to be able to analyze it. So there was a whole. [4:14:15] System that had to be put together and my team was was who did that to weight things in the right way. If you had a major life safety issue, that was weighted very heavily. If a firesting or a fire smoke alarm did not have a battery, it was something that was important but not as important as a hole in the floor that could come to. [4:14:36] So we had to communicate that to, to rental property owners who didn't love it, to tenants who didn't understand it right away, reasonably so, and then actually most challenging to the inspectors, and they I had an inspector in Minneapolis who liked to remind me that she had started her job the. [4:14:54] Here I started kindergarten and. She didn't want to change because she had been doing her job in the same way at that point for almost 40 years and I guess a little less than four years I'm giving her too much credit. But she really, you know, then the longtime inspectors and and one of the benefits of cities is you have people that stick around for a long time, but one of the long. [4:15:18] Time inspectors really struggled with that and they really pushed back and the more we we talked about it, the more we emphasized. [4:15:26] It is a change. We're trying to help your workload. We're trying to get you the help that you need. You want more inspectors, we know that this we believe this will help to reduce the burden individually on each of you because you'll be able to focus on the places that need the most help rather than. [4:15:41] Say, ok, I gotta get to the next one. And so after a few years they, the rental property owners got it and felt recognized because the people that were active in the rental property community as part of the trade group really care and spent a lot of time on their properties. The tenants understood how they could. [4:16:02] See the rating of a building before they moved into it to understand what it was in, and then the inspectors had had a better understanding and felt more comfortable because they felt like they were able to do their jobs in an effective way and have more of an impact. [4:16:17] Livington is in a cycle of growth. How do you work with residents council, staff, community in general to ensure that we remember our history, plan for the future, address any concerns that might come up related to that change? [4:16:31] I think one of the best parts of city organizations, as I was just saying, is longtime staff. I think one of the best parts of communities is longtime residents. I mentioned my in laws have been in Bloomington for 50 years and they they can tell me what happened and. [4:16:50] You know, on this block back in the day and I think it's important to honor those things and to listen to that and be informed by it. But I also think as it is with community changes it is with organizational change, we aren't building roads for 1978. We're not building structures on. [4:17:10] Under the building code from 1992 and we need to be open about that. And so I think it's important to honor that history. [4:17:18] To be proud of that history, but not to be, not to but to learn from it and grow with it and that history should be a part of where you're headed, but you can't you literally cannot head into the past, and so it's important to to kind of do both things and say. [4:17:37] Whether it's through design elements in a new building or street naming or talking about a logo, figuring out how you can honor that history and have it be part of what you're doing every day without being fully stuck and married to it is really. [4:17:53] Really important. I had I had an animal control inspector in Minneapolis who came up to me earlier earlier in my management career and gave me a long story about how his vacation had been denied and he was very upset about it. And I listened and I was sympathetic to him and he left and is. [4:18:12] This manager came over and said that was five years ago. And I said, so the next time he brought it up again. And I said, you know, that I understand this was five years ago and he said yes. And I said, how are things going right now? And he paused and then was able to acknowledge and recognize that things were going better now. And I said, how have you. [4:18:35] Found that experience moving forward and he said sometimes it still doesn't go the way I would like. And I said, ok, well let's talk about that. So we talked about that and I think that's a similar to some of the conversations I've had with residents where they say, well, I I moved here 60 years ago and it never used to be this way. Okay, well what do you like about it now? [4:18:55] What is the part that you're excited about right now? How can we turn your focus to that? And so for me that is, I think you have to do both things. I think you can't be stuck with either of them and you can't ignore the future at the expense of the past, but you can't be married to the past either. [4:19:15] That was the last of our plan for questions, ok? And I think we have time for a couple of questions if you have any questions of us. I I do. Thank you. And 1st of all, I, I believe I'm the last day and so I want to say thank you for sticking with me here on the last one. I've done 4 h of interviews and us a lot. [4:19:34] I think my question for you is. [4:19:39] My 1st question honestly is how how do you all get along as a governing body? And I I recognize I'm putting you all on the spot, but it's my opportunity to do that. At the end of our 4 h of interviews, now we're going to a council meeting now. [4:20:02] I I think we get along well. We we work together well. I think we're like any large group, we sometimes butt heads. Sure. I don't think anybody takes it personally. Sometimes gets a little heated but more often than not, those who like to pick her. Yeah. [4:20:20] More often than not. I think what what I like about what we do, I think we do a lot of the work, we do a lot of the work and then when it comes to the public hearing, we have done that work ahead of time. So we've got there are some people say, well, you guys just all vote together all the time. It's just that's because we've done the work and there may have been some raised voices or there may have been some. [4:20:43] Disagreements why we were doing the work, but by the time we get to the public hearing, that's all done. And all this has been done in public, you just didn't see it because here's the public hearing. So, I think for the most part. [4:20:53] This group gets along and and works well together certainly works better than a lot of city councils that I've seen. I think that's just fine. Yeah, well, and that is somebody considering interviewinging you in the same way that you're interviewing me, that is an important question for me. [4:21:10] Thank you. I mean I don't I don't mean that anybody else wants to. I think the other thing I would say is that one of the things I've noticed since I've been here, you know, a long time as long as Tim's been but you can see how long our managers are stuck around. That's a real testament to our ability to be able to communicate and have disagreements but still get the work done and. [4:21:30] To be able to support one another for long term disability. Thank you. You know, I I know Jamie just a little bit, and I know he's here for, I think ten years or so. Are there specific things that you have expectations around and you I recognize you may not share them with me right now, but are there specific things that you'll be asking this the new city manager to. [4:21:52] Do or work on. Is that something that is part of your prep here? And is there anything of that you're willing to share? I I think what I'd share is that the way it's worked. Sorry, I've been here long enough that I've recalled Mark Burnson I don't know if you Kark. Mark. Entirely different management style. [4:22:12] And jamie. And, what I would say is that I think the council works best when the manager and the council are working together toward things as opposed to the manager and the mayor deciding what happens and and then it just happens. So I I think. [4:22:32] I don't know what that might be going into the future but I do hope that it's going to be seven plus one working on things together, trying to move forward on things and and trying to figure out the best path forward on everything from A to Z that doesn't include a world's share. Let's just put it that way. I I think there's. [4:22:50] It's a collaboration. It's, again, I think the city councils that I've seen that are most effective, that's what's happening as opposed to either the the city council, either over be over being overly directive or the city manager deciding that they're gonna take things and running with it and bring the council on. [4:23:10] It's gotta be an instantine board. Fair enough. Thank you. I don't think I have other specific questions at this point. All right. Thank you. Well, you are correct. You were our last of the four this afternoon, so we thank you for being here. We're gonna have a little conversation now and see if we want to talk to, you know, a couple or three, however many tomorrow again and and then come to a decision. [4:23:32] To which direction we want to go. That's great. Well I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you about the position. I I again I'm glad I I will never. [4:23:42] I'm gonna try to figure out how to get a picture of me in the Halloween Custom into any interview I have ever, I go. But I really appreciate the opportunity and I wish you really good luck in making a hard decision and I hope you choose the right candidate for the community and for you. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. What did you say that you lived here. [4:24:02] Just by norming delay. Oh nice. Most likely your candidate council member then I'm gonna go home and unpack someone. Thank you very much. Great, thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. [4:24:23] I don't know I just want to I'd like to do this participanting up. For our discussion, do we turn the recording up or does that have to be recorded too? I don't recall I'm not sure. [4:24:43] Oh, yeah. We're done with them. Oh, got it. So do we Greg, do we keep recording this part of the conversation or can we turn the recording off? [4:25:00] What's the opening email to say about I could get an answer for you? Yeah, why don't we do that because this being, this is I mean this is your personnel issue. It is personal relation. You're taking a quick break. I think we could have a more robust conversation if. Yeah. Wouldn't you just love to watch a recording of people talking about you? No. [4:25:19] Get along, right? What we might have to do is designate. That this part is a closed session. You still have to record it but then it doesn't become public for you know a while. Yeah, yeah. I can't imagine we Can't for sure we gotta keep it right now so it has to stay open. Okay, ok. Oh, ok. All right. Well, that's great. Yeah. For sure. [4:25:44] I can use it. For anyone that has their ranking forms completed I'll I'll just collect some of those and we'll use that as a starting point. [4:26:05] Let, I can't read. I think my hearing is ok on that. Thank you. Definitely not gonna read my notes. Find you. [4:26:30] I don't give him to call my wife. Thank you. [4:26:45] Okay. [4:26:51] Okay. [4:27:32] So we're being recorded. I got a question for you. Thank you. [4:27:51] Oh, let me look at my guy. I know Hard. [4:28:06] Actually it sounds like So let me ask this question. It depends outside of Normandale lake. I guess they've been plugged in the past? Yes. [4:28:23] That's ok. That's ok. Cause what should I had was the last one. I remember him from the last time I thought. I think it was ten years ago? I thought so. Maybe maybe I'm mistaken, maybe just something similar for me. I don't reply, but. [4:28:40] Background. I don't recall know our last name. I don't I don't remember the name at all. It's just the background is just at that point in time similar background, but. [4:29:01] Are you thinking? That's what I'm thinking of. It's the same person. But yeah, they had a similar just kind of there were Minia, they were they're, they were coordinate at the time. Thanks for making allowing me to get that out of my head because I just wanted to get that out of my head, Took me a minute to come up with a name. [4:29:24] Hey, are we all back? Yeah. Yep. All right, so there are some differences just in the individual rankings, but there are like oftentimes when we do this, there are kind of like really obvious candidates that the top or to the bottom, and I wouldn't say it's like super obvious in any way, so I think it would. [4:29:44] Would be helpful if we start just with some discussion on each candidate. [4:29:50] We'll go top to bottom in the order that they interviewed today, and if you just want to share some thoughts, maybe some positive attributes, maybe some concerns about each so you can hear from each other. And then we'll talk about where the rankings are and where. [4:30:09] You know, we can find some consensus from moving forward tomorrow. And if someone would like to open up and just share, there were some attributes that you thought really stood out positively or eventually as concern areas. I was surprised I mean I just I guess I wasn't surprised but. [4:30:27] I just noticed that there are a lot of similarities between and Bloomington, just the way he described them and so I thought that was a good thing, just some of their kind of their their population, their growth. [4:30:42] Just different things that they are grappling with. I also appreciated that he very obviously did a lot of research and homework and so he meant feel like he, he set our mission, he very clearly knew what was going with the fire department, very clearly, I mean like he talked about several of the things that. [4:31:03] We're working on and watching the council meetings and so, appreciated that and just overall, I felt like he had a very impressive background, particularly around like the financial management and kind of cutting his teeth from local government in finance and then also economic development. So. [4:31:23] I think what I appreciated was that project you shared was pretty major, and I think we're on the cusp of something like that too. Our industrial is getting old and is ready to be redeveloped, like we Lindalle to Linda retrofit. That's been slow. I want to move fast on that. I told everyone that, but having that experience with, I think. [4:31:43] Is a huge positive to support the work that we're doing here. Yeah, the only concern is, he's lives in Missouri, you know, but yeah, they do have a better football team, so that was not anymore. [4:32:03] They're not gonna make it this year. Still more than the and the royals still they have more champions. [4:32:10] I'm to that point, I did put that as a weakness just that he doesn't know Minnesota or Bloomington and so it would, and I mean it can be a strength and a weakness, I guess needing to come in and really get to know the community, the key partners, build relationships with legislators, like all the things, and so. [4:32:30] Again, having a fresh perspective can be a positive but but you know, does take time. Your point about the economic development, he used the phrase practice relentless incremental incrementalism. Yeah, practice relentless incrementalism. [4:32:50] And so to to understand that it's it's a it's marathon that a sprint and to make sure that you put in place that what you need to make sure that it gets done over time. Yeah, I've I have the same opinion about him. I think he's. [4:33:08] By far, looks like the strongest person to to accomplish what the city wants to accomplish in the next ten years or so. He has experience, you know, to manage to make that project happen after. [4:33:27] You know, 3040 years and and actually convinced the community that he was something that they had left behind rather than that's the most difficult part of anybody to accomplish to get the recience to. [4:33:44] Something that you know they have done. So I mean he also mentioned the fire department like his answers that he was concerned about the fact that, you know, it is a big. [4:34:04] The expensive proposition and he was thinking about the future not only what is happening at the moment. [4:34:11] So I, he had the best answer for that question I feel like. Really? I well I liked that he was like, we need to be clear about what the success looked like and like what he would cost? [4:34:30] Had a good response too, but I I think yeah I just I like that he very clearly centered down like what, what does the success look like and then how do you get there? [4:34:47] Realistically over time, Yeah NO I mean it's certainly long term, yeah, I know from a long term perspective, yeah, I think he did a I what I was impressed with, I was much more impressed with his his written materials, but I was really impressed with when he spoke. [4:35:07] Here he really talked about long term type things that he wanted to accomplish or or get done. He showed us how he did it. He gave a lot of examples of how which the he'd do you know carry that out but yeah so I thought those were. [4:35:26] Anyone have anything else you want to share about him before we move to our next? I just want to make sure you all had a chance to I don't know who said it but it's how similar independent sounded. And I mean just looking at this when you said that, I mean he talked about the community investment, the billion dollars it. [4:35:41] Of deferred maintenance holy. You talked about the mental health programming within the police department, the employee health insurance, same thing we're talking about, and there was one other thing too, other consolidation of the departments. [4:35:57] And, the, the notion of the council vision and the senior leadership team practicality doing the work, so it was just and I, you know, I've done enough interviews in my life, I don't know if he he I won't say gamed it prep prepped it appropriately, you know, made sure that his themes are top. [4:36:17] Aligned with our themes and topics. But even if he did, you know, set it up in that way, he did a very good job with it. So I guess if you have if I wanted to say some other thing, so I mean I got those parts so i had the mental health thing too, which I thought was really key, he really did his homework, there's NO question about he did his homework, but the thing that I kind of came away, you know, the 8020 split, he, he acknowledged that. [4:36:39] You know, the, the community you know just in terms of the split of the community, didn't use a lot of examples of or I just I needed to hear more about the diversity type aspect of it. He seemed to really center on the the financial aspect of it. And I, you know, I wanna be. [4:36:59] I was just thinking about that in terms of kind of just two different city managers, not to say that that was a problem with with Mark, but just a different, you know, our last one had a much more of a focused on that part of it was moving the city in that direction, and so, I just had some concerns about that. [4:37:15] More questions I would have about that, so and my last concern that I had was his his reasoning coming here is we're a place where he can do big things, which completely we are, but I don't want to lose sight of the little things, right? The fundamentals. [4:37:31] And so I don't want those big opportunities to elevate the things that we have to do, continue the culture of the the workplace making sure that we're still responding to residents and doing the work that we need to do properly while doing the big things, having the opportunity to do it. So that's the only thing concern I have is. [4:37:50] Making sure like that's still the fundamentally are still the priority. I'll say one more like kind of last concern, but if I'm like crossing any lines, just cut me off and just like nope can't, you know. And we, we asked him the questions at the end or he asked the question and we kind of turned it back around like. [4:38:06] Again of like why Bloomington and like just looking at his resume like he's so deeply embedded in the community like in independence and in Missouri like like in a lot of the volunteering professional, you know, like all the And I just, you know, I don't know where he lived before, but he, you know, he's been there since 2005, and I guess I just worry that like. [4:38:26] But what if he moves up here and then he decides that he doesn't like it and he wants to move back, you know like I mean two nice winters but we might have a really bad one and then he's like, what was I thinking? And so, I don't know. I again I don't know if that's like that's ok to say, but you know, I think. [4:38:46] Like like the longevity is they get a lot of eyes in that area, not so much snow. [4:38:51] So he doesn't get it nearly as close. Oh NO. Yeah, so just one thing. Okay, let's move to our next scan. That was Kathy. Anyone want to start off for a conversation about Kathy just so you all have a chance to hear from each other? Yeah I wanna just say, I thought that herb respon. [4:39:11] Us to. That last question that we had was phenomenal. I really liked that she laid out the five you know different things that she could see the, the, the council doing. I I really like that response in terms of how, I mean, I I felt like of, of the people who kinda came through. [4:39:33] I feel like the her, what she wrote down and then also what she had to say was really aligned in a way. And I I had to kind of stop myself a couple of times kind of thinking to myself, hey, you know, is it because I have this bias that, you know, she's already here and I can see somebody, but I was just trying to just pay attention to what she said. [4:39:53] And then also what what she had to, what she had to say. So I, I was. [4:39:58] I really like what she had to say with that. There were a number of other responses that that she kind of brought forward that I was really impressed with in terms of the direction to where the council is what we've talked about and some things that we're looking trying to do. Here's an example of a candidate who's got a lot of background with it with with respect to looking at different lenses. She talked. [4:40:18] About that, you know, our our city is changing, and so I I just think she's got a really good understanding of that and coming from Ramsey county. I I didn't think that I would necessarily see that connection, you know, where other folks have been city managers, you know, she's got some background in that operational background that I think would be very useful for where we're headed to and where we're going. So I would I. [4:40:38] Really impressed with what I saw today. And I got more things to say about who were other full tips today and she, she clearly has an advantage. She's part of the, the entity already. I mean her answers were right on cube. [4:40:57] But she's been practically part of a running system already. I mean prior department questions and answers were right under that everything and and and again I don't I don't think it's being biased to say this, but yeah, I mean out of the. [4:41:17] I, of course the answers would have been on on spot because she's part of the institution already. He was expected and to me it wasn't any surprise that she knew how to answer the questions that we asked. [4:41:36] To her disadvantage also at the same time was the fact that she's part of the team and so you could see that in her demeanor when she was answering little nervousness and stuff not as you know as composed as the others but you know of course and. [4:41:54] She had all the answers to the questions cause she's part of it. Regarding Kathy I I would actually state that what I appreciated about her interview was that many of her examples were not from her time here. That what that is what I appreciated that she was able to draw from experience outside of. [4:42:14] Of the six months that she was here. You could have some someone with lesser comfort could have leaned into telling us what we already know as a way of getting past that and she didn't do that. She actually spoke to some real big challenges as it relates to COVID-19 and closing that care facility, which. [4:42:32] In NO small small way reminded me a lot of the conversation around creek side, right? And, and things of that nature. So, I actually appreciated that she went places that we didn't ever hear. None of us were involved, well maybe you were mr. Mayor, but none of us were involved in her hiring in the 1st place. I didn't have any of that background. And so I got a. [4:42:52] Much more rich perspective of of who she is as a leader, as a result of what I think are the majority of questions were answered with things outside of the city of Bloomington. [4:43:04] I would just add that I was not surprised she did well. I mean she's very competent and she's I think proven her leadership in the position already. There were two areas of concern that I just want to bring up is one, she talked about a group that had a bunch of issues, so she gave them control of the budget. [4:43:23] That struck me as very odd, and then this is a very minor thing, but she said our fire department was a volunteer fire department. And I've been corrected on that so many times that it jumped. I've done it myself, and it's not. It's a paid on call fire department. Volunteered to get paid. You gotta get volunte. [4:43:43] Here to get paid when you get caught when you go and you show up. So it's in my mind, a slight technicality and people in the community think of it as volunteer, but I thought I've just been corrected so many times on it, I thought she was playing towards that. That's what I figured she was playing towards that, that's why I looked, that's why I appreciated that response, so not wrong though. [4:44:03] Council member a quick question about the on the budget thing. I I read it a little different and so maybe I missed something that you took it. What I wrote down was, she she it reminded me a little bit more of our community based process that we went through during the COVID times. [4:44:20] Where she put the budget in front of stakeholders and got their feedback. It wasn't so much that she put it in control. At least that's the way that I took it, but I'm curious if other people, the way I wrote it down was put budget in front of stakeholders almost as a means almost in the same way that we have done, e.g., you know, if a, if a, someone like mr.. [4:44:40] Park has come in and asked, he spent an hour and a half with. With Lori economy Schuler and Carry Carlson going through line item by line item, it felt very much like that. I I didn't get the sense that decisions changed or the budget changed as a result of their input or that they changed the budget. I don't know if maybe you may whatever. [4:45:04] And maybe I misheard it. The line I heard was Elevated the people up to the same level of of and I think that if that's Yeah that's where you were you took that, that's what I heard that but but on the other hand, I had the same, had the same feeling. But then you know what what occurred to me was. [4:45:22] I remember when Jamie had mentioned that we wanna do this whole strategic procedure and we want to elevate you know the community to the same level as council. And you'll remember I was really reluctant to do that. And that's essentially what happened at that point in time. And I don't I mean, I would want to get more clarification in terms of what she meant, but. [4:45:42] But if if she meant it in that regard, that's how I took it would have had the power to like she herself give them that power. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like the commissioners would have had to have. I wonder, I think it was I think it was more like a feedback. Can I point out we're down to 20 min we don't want to stay here later, we might down. [4:46:02] My number was just I I wonder if she would have. Hatching up and nervous whatever she would have used the words endorsed as opposed to approved. Okay, I had the same question you had Sean. Yeah, my my question I have is how do you pick and choose? Because just cause this one's a loud voice coming to you and other groups didn't, how do you pick and choose? Good question. My other thing really quick is. [4:46:25] Just like obviously she's got a year city experience now under her belt and I. [4:46:32] I think she's done a phenomenal job. The other three candidates do have the ICMA like credentials and things like that, and I don't know what it takes to get that, but if she were to be the person who moves forward, maybe that would be something we'd wanna. [4:46:48] We want to encourage her or require her to get is to get that certification and like stuff. Yeah, my I guess I The last thing I want to add, she does a great job building teams and I a hundred percent want to see her continue doing that. It's all the other stuff that comes with the. [4:47:09] The manager role, the economic development, the working with so many different parties that I, I wonder if she can still do her job as building teams while trying to manage all that other stuff simply because she doesn't have the ICMA experience, the city manager experience that NO one's having. [4:47:29] Well, well, to that, you know, she will have to get an assistant to fill her role at this point that will free her too I mean because the one thing that I did learn with Jamie is that the access he had to, to all the people that he had built over the years that he knows, I mean everywhere we went, the guy knew. [4:47:48] Oh. He knows everybody, right? Yeah, NO, I mean, you know, and he's been, he's been in the area for 2030 years, right? So everywhere we went, he, he knew people from all over the place. So that's the part that she will have to build. But if she has an assistant taking her place, that could free. [4:48:09] Like to do more of that stuff. While, you know, encouraging Elizabeth and the other assistance to build on on what they have already built at this up until now. Alright, Let's to Cindy next. No question. [4:48:27] Is that The thing that stuck out for me was the finding funding from other sources. That was huge, being able to do that because we've been asking to do that and it's not even a trickle to drop and to see them get. [4:48:45] Hundreds $7 million, whatever it is, maybe it's because it's may or whatever that really stood out to me along with just her experience and how she builds teams and that was was really impressive. I was very happy she gave examples outside of DMC. Yep, you know what I mean Cause obviously that's a totally different thing so but she gave examples of. [4:49:05] Like. Park projects and infrastructure projects and so I I appreciated that as well. I I personally, my 1st, my question is if we were to bring her back to my very 1st question is like the opposite of what you you said, which is I think Mayo brings money and she took advantage of it, which is NO small thing, but. [4:49:26] When you're in an environment where that doesn't exist, how do you handle it? And I don't know that I heard anything that told me she would know what to do by herself without such a big. [4:49:36] You know whale of a thing sitting in front of her letting her go get, I mean that's fishing a barrel in my opinion, but I could be wrong about that. Like I I could be completely wrong with that, but I would wanna if if she comes back, I wanna ask that question, I actually have that written down. If Cynthia comes back. [4:49:52] I want to know what you do about that when that isn't on your radar because the model of America's not anywhere close to being like Mayo when it comes to attracting that kind of stuff and I'd love to hear what she has to do from that. And I would say I was super impressed by her. [4:50:10] By the, by just kind of like building off of the comments, it's like I think she obviously is an expert in economic development and has she has had is been wildly successful whether Mayo is there or not, you know, but I just think about like in the city manager role, like it's. [4:50:29] And this person in her role, she's not just gonna be doing economic development like he's gotta do all of the other things too. And so, I don't know, I mean I again I think she's very, very impressive, but that was cause kind of my. [4:50:45] Bye. My thing was that she didn't answer the question in regards to the fire department. I didn't give us any any what she would do to to make it successful or but the concerns could be. [4:51:06] So that's what I I took I mean her resume is impressive, yeah. And then as as the council member Alessandro said the Mayo attracts even donors, international donors, we're not at that, you know, in that position. Mayo has people don. [4:51:26] Maybe millions of dollars. By the country, which, you know, we don't have that kind of access. How is she gonna succeed developing the area that she has done insert. And and actually if you look at her resume, she probably has a ton of that kind of experience from the Buke that she did not share with us and I was I was this I don't know she. [4:51:48] Is leaning into the idea that. We needed to hear about Minnesota stuff because we're Minnesotas or whatever, but you know, as an example, co led smarter sustainable dibute partnership with IBM Watson research research. That's interesting. He Lee's on assisting transition of the tourism bureau from Chamber Commerce Division to an independent nonprofit, like that's an interesting. [4:52:10] Conversation. We didn't hear about and that was when she was a city manager or assistant city manager. So like I I don't know why we didn't hear about things other than Rochester with her. [4:52:21] Especially since the majority of her experience is somewhere else. Yeah, and I, I just I was hoping to hear a lot more about her being the, you know, the city manager, and this one I felt was the furthest away from, from the resume itself. And so this is why I kind of. [4:52:38] You know, rated or lower. I mean, very impressive experience, a lot of economic stuff I think we'd take advantage of but I just from what I read from the resume that what was here, I just I just didn't feel like I feel like there was a lot more questions that could have been answered. Maybe in a couple hours that could have gotten out of it but I was, I kept wondering why so focused on her current roles and not being the. [4:52:58] The being the city manager. No, NO. [4:53:03] In the interest of time, let's about Noah lasts and then we can see if we can come to consensus on tomorrow. Any comments we want to share about noah? I was the same two things. He didn't answer the fire department. [4:53:23] Question and what's the other question we had that was similar to the fire department app? I mean and and that was. [4:53:47] I think that one that one is the one that came up between me, he didn't answer that and then, and a lot of the other questions he he went on on to talk about subjects had nothing to do with the question. And so that's kind of. [4:54:03] You know, that's why I rated him the way that I did because like it was other answers directly from the questions that were being asked. I felt like. [4:54:20] I, I felt like the example, the example that he gave in his pre presentation was the most, the right word, basic, like the most like it was, it was. [4:54:37] It was, well, of course she did that. Like I felt that's how I felt from that presentation was like of course you did that, that sounds right, but like how did that transform anything? I mean, I'm all for signage, don't get wrong, I love wayfinding. I think it's a fascinating practice I have a very good friend who has your dr. didn't that and it's really fun to listen to her talk. But I wouldn't. [4:54:58] I think that unless you were signing up for that job, that that would be the thing that you talked about when you were talking about like being a prime candidate for up to His presentation surprised me. And see, I got something different out of that because I I wrote down specifically, he said something along the lines of how public space and the building, the physical space. [4:55:15] Reflects the respect and care that you have about your employees. I I wrote that down too, and I love that line. And, and I I mean he talked a lot about employees and working with employees and respect for the employees, and I, that that stood out to me. And you're right, Victor I mean, he did pivot on the whole fire department question, but then again he I mean he at least supervisors. [4:55:35] The fire department at the load. Yeah, I thought he started strong but yeah and I think if you want to continued in that same, I think he would have, he would have been able to make that that connection that he was really trying to make there. I I think he did a great job. I did have the question about the fire department because I I even though he asked the question second time I'm like, I don't think. [4:55:57] Like you have that answer, but I did think, you know, his his treatment of staff. [4:56:02] And I think he got really real with some of the circumstances, and I really like those examples of where he had a difficult time of dealing with a council member and how he turned that around. You talked about dealing with difficult staff, how he would deal with that, letting people go. I he really gave some really good examples. [4:56:22] I thought of how he would manage in those different situations, which I know it was very candid. I really appreciated that because you know, I mean, there were some of the other examples that I thought were better, but I really liked how he was able to, to, to. [4:56:36] To talk about these things, so, I was, this was one of the ones I was more surprised with based on what I read and how he did his his interview, so my my concern was, he was the city manager, a city administrator in Belute for six years and we didn't hear enough of what happened in belute. A lot of examples from minneapolis. [4:56:56] I was like, there had to have been stuff that happened in the loose than six years and I wish I would have heard more of that. So different type of management structure up there strong manager, right? So and Emily was there for most of the time. And strong mayor. That's what I mean strong mayor. Yeah. So like, you know, he, I don't know that he had as much opportunity candidly comparatively. Yeah. [4:57:20] Alright, well I'm gonna take an opportunity to see if we can move toward a decision. In terms of how the rankings went, there's most support for moving Zach forward and he he was ranked 1st by three of you, second by two of you 3rd by two. [4:57:39] Review and NO NO rankings below three. And this, you know, just decide who. [4:57:45] Comes back tomorrow, of course, and having heard each other, maybe some of you might feel differently about your rankings, but there's most support. Second in terms of rankings would be Kathy. It's a little more mixed, but there are three that had her as. [4:58:05] It's number one. One is number two, two as number three and one as four. So kind of all across the spectrum, and then 3rd would be Cindy. One of you had had her as the number one, two as number two, two as number three, two as number four. [4:58:27] And then Noah would be the 4th with two of you as two, one as three, and four of you as four. So, as a group, it unless some of you changed I think I just want to see if there's consensus or if you, I don't know if you care. [4:58:47] Actually vote, but it seems like Zach, there's support to move him forward. [4:58:53] Is that something you all can get behind? Yeah. Okay. And then depending upon how many you want to move forward, next would be Kathy. Yes. Yeah. [4:59:08] Okay. We I think we had talked possibly about two. Do you want to bring two back tomorrow or three? This is where we have to make that a tougher decision. I I think I think it was telling certainly with with Noel, with four people putting in as number four that is pretty obvious, but two people did put Cindy as in. [4:59:28] They're number four as well. I'd prefer to only deal with two tomorrow, that's my preference. Okay. But so if we could do Zach and Kathy, that would make me happier, but I, if we feel strongly to bring Kathy back as well or Cindy back as well, then. [4:59:45] I don't know that I'm dying to it. I would agree I think two is probably the opportunity to get to know somebody. Others? Cindy and Kathy were a tossed up for me, so if everyone's supportive of Kathy, I'm good with that. So is there consensus for two? I think those two are the right too. [5:00:05] So we're starting at seven tomorrow. Hold on 1 s. I'm sorry. I'm looking for a motion to authorize and direct the consultant to offer invitations to Zach Walker and Kathy Haden to advance to second interview for the city manager position on 15 July 2025 and to take further actions consider. [5:00:23] With this motion. Second. Okay, I'll make that motion. Okay. I thought you said I'm making the motion, not I'm looking for a motion. My apologies sir. Not a problem. Got a motion by Dallassandro second by council member Riebas. [5:00:42] Move forward with those two candidates? All in favor, same time they're saying I? Os motion carries seven zero, thank you. Okay, so can we keep it or NO. And keep those tomorrow if you bring them back. And then. [5:00:58] We're starting at 07:00 P.M. tomorrow. How much time would you like with each of these two? Like an hour? Say 45 min it's probably. I mean, 45 min without structured questions, it might it might get long if we just kind of me Andrew. Yeah. I would, I think you've said 45 If you bring one at seven and. [5:01:18] One at eight that gives us a little buffer and a little ake, would that be ok? That sounds good. I'll do. And if it only goes 30 min, it goes 30 min. Yep. Is it gonna be set up the same way here or is it gonna be more casual? [5:01:29] It'll be set up the same, but there will be NO structured questions. So we need to come without You need to come with some thoughts based on your interview today, what you want to follow up with each of them on. Or if there was a topic today that you know we just didn't get to that's interesting to you, you know, bring that topic tomorrow. [5:01:47] But it's really an opportunity to have a conversational interview and they're gonna be probably more active in asking you questions too cause this is a two way street, you know? Sure. Mr. Mayor do you want us to have some ground rules amongst ourselves like, you know. [5:02:02] He goes around the horn and keeps them like one at a time around the horn. I would also like, you know, I don't know, somebody's asking nine follow up questions one question. A couple quick questions perhaps and then that would be helpful to everybody turns. Yep yep we would feel attached. [5:02:18] And I assume you'll kick us up, kick us off and then wrap us up. Yep. What about what about if e.g. Saw were to ask a question and I had a follow up to that question, would I wait my turn or? I think that's legit I think we can, you can do that. But let's just try to be respectful of each other and not try and dominate with you know each questions in a row or a 20 min. [5:02:38] Question leading up to, you know, that kind of people, right? Okay. Right on. Thank you. [5:02:44] Go team. Anything else that you want to cover today? Cause we have a little more in addition to cover tomorrow, but today the decision was just you to bring forward and we've made that decision. Yep. And I'll take care of the steps to make that happen. Are we supposed to show up early for any plan if it was tomorrow like 06:30 or anything? Okay. [5:03:04] And then we'll, we'll have the discussion afterwards. The discussion afterwards. I can get my nobody's getting fed. Consistency so I don't lose track if you all just everything in your binders and just bring your binders back tomorrow, we can deal with those. [5:03:22] Alright. I look for a motion to adjourn. Motion is second all in favor? I hope you are adjourned. Now we've gotta go on to the next. Now we gotta go to work. 12:00 tonight. Now we weren't doing it in the room. He said they. [5:03:42] Yeah I've brought a bunch too. Yeah, I had full. I'm not gonna get let myself get angry. So we eating. I brought little shake.