Title
City Council Retreat Planning Committee Report
Body
Summary and Background Information:
On February 25, 2014, the City Council Retreat Planning Committee held their third meeting with staff from the City Manager’s Office to review the Council meeting calendar and a draft of a 12 month rolling calendar.
The Committee settled on a recommendation to utilize the 5th Monday of each month (4 times per year) for a Council study session. Committee members raised this issue at the Council meeting on March 3, and the Council voted to include this on the schedule for the balance of 2014. The first “fifth Monday” is March 31, and the Retreat Committee is providing this update for Council consideration. Future fifth Mondays occur in June, September, and December this year.
The second item related to the 12 month rolling calendar. Currently the staff uses a 45-60 day calendar for planning specific Council meetings, and provides the calendar as part of the weekly City Manager’s Report. The staff also uses the annual work plan to look ahead and notes which quarter of the year that a specific item may need a Council study session or formal action. Several items on the work plan require neither approval, and the timeframe is used to track a completion date goal. The intent of this document for the Retreat Committee is to identify a long term schedule, where Council may utilize a series of study sessions to review adopted plans, future planning efforts, or complex policy issues. It may also provide opportunities to schedule new policy issues raised by the City Council without disrupting the work plan and annual initiatives underway.
Over the last several weeks, staff has been developing a more robust 12 month rolling calendar that will serve internal and external reporting purposes. The calendar will also need to tie into the Legistar system used by the City for preparing Council packets and tracking agenda items. The initial calendar is based in Excel for easier formatting and exporting of agenda items from the Legistar system. Staff also used this work as an opportunity to implement better deadlines for City Council packets, which may enable publishing of the agenda earlier in the week. There are still some formatting and content improvements that will be made, but a draft of the 12 month rolling calendar is attached to this memorandum.
The last unresolved issue related to regional coordination with the various service districts (water and sewer, fire, schools) was also discussed. There was general agreement this was a high level policy issue, even above the goals and objectives as stated in prior Council retreats. Further discussion of this item may occur after the committee report at the study session on March 31, 2014.
3 Levels / Select One for Retreat
High Level Policy - Multi-year Effort / Regional Coordination with Districts (Water, sewer, fire, schools) - Commerce City Compact
Review and Update - 2015 Budget / City Council Goals and Objectives
Longer Term - 2015 Work Plan and Budget / Projects, Policies, Major Initiatives
Staff Responsible (Department Head): James A. Hayes, AICP, Deputy City Manager
Presenter: Council Retreat Committee members / Staff support: James A. Hayes, AICP, Deputy City Manager
Financial Impact: N/A
Funding Source: N/A
Staff Recommendation: Informational briefing only