Mayoring can be complicated — even in a community where it rotates every year among City Council members.
Under the state’s Brown Act, Mayor Jim Clarke was saying, “I can only talk to one City Council member at a time on a particular issue.
“The only time I can have a discussion is during a public meeting. Usually, though, there are so many items on our agenda, you just have a scant amount of time to talk about an issue.”
So Mr. Clarke proposed a series of “special meetings” with Council members “to do strategic planning. Two questions needed to be answered:
- “What do we want Culver City to become over the next five years? That is a long-range view.
- “Second, there would be specific topics we could have discussions about with the community about.”
Mayor Clarke mentioned several:
- “How do we create more affordable housing?
- “How do we make the city more energy-efficient?
- “How do we increase voter turnout?”
Ninety days ago, after the big-splash weekend of Fiesta LaBallona, Mr. Clarke and his fellow Council members held a formal all-day strategic retreat at the Kirk Douglas Theatre.
“Out of that process,” said Mr. Clarke, “we came up with long-term and more immediate topics and goals. We created a working committee made up of one Council member and staff to define more specific objectives.”
Each member was assigned a topic to develop.
“This is a bit unique,” the mayor said. “The reason for it is that our (city) staff does a great job. They attend conferences and they do a lot of reading, always looking for best-practices.
“They bring many ideas to us, but there is no sharp focus. So each department is doing things – but it does not all come together in a common goal.”
All of this may seem to carry a scent of being in the weeds, but it is necessary for running a city efficiently, the mayor maintains.
“The city manager (John Nachbar) particularly felt this kind of planning was helpful as we develop our budgets and work plans for next year,” said Mr. Clarke.
“These goals we have come up with are going to be sharp focuses so that departments will be able to direct their energy toward the attainment of these goals.”
