Special Meeting of the City Council

A quorum being present, I wanted to call today's June 23rd special meeting of the Cambridge City Council to order. Today we'll be having a mid-year check-in on the City Manager's 2026 performance review process and a discussion on progress toward annual goals. The first order of business is a roll call of members present.

Councilor Al-Zubi? Absent. Vice Mayor Azeem? Absent. Councilor Flaherty? Absent. Councilor McGovern? Present. Nolan, present. Councilor Simmons, present. Councilor Sobrinho-Wheeler, present. Councilor Zusy, present. Mayor Siddiqui, present. You have six members recorded as present and three recorded as absent.

Please join me in a pledge of allegiance and pause for a moment of silence. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. I swear I know it. Okay and then pause for a moment of silence. Per Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025, adopted by the Massachusetts General Court and approved by the Governor, the City is authorized to use remote participation at meetings of the Cambridge City Council. In addition to having members of the Council participate remotely, we've set up a Zoom teleconference for public comment. You can also view the meeting via the city's open meeting portal or on the city's cable channel 22. To speak during public comment, you must sign up at www.cambridgema.gov.

You can also email written comments for the record to the city clerk at cityclerk at cambridgema.gov. We welcome your participation and you can sign up until 1030. Right now, we don't have anyone signed up. Please note that the City of Cambridge also audio and video records this meeting and makes it available to the public for future viewing. In addition, third parties may also be audio and video recording this meeting. Given that we don't have any public comment, we'll go straight into the agenda. I opened this meeting. We will have it facilitated by the chair of GovOps, and so I'll pass it to him.

Thanks, Mayor Siddiqui, and thanks to counselors and the city manager for coming for this. I was going to talk through a little bit of an overview of the process, which is also in the The packets and the materials that was posted on the open meeting portal. And then I was going to turn it over to the city manager to talk through some of the rubric and next steps. and then open it up to questions and comments from city councillors. The purpose of today's meeting is the mid-year check-in. This is part of the city manager evaluation process. In terms of the council doing this process I'm glad it's something we're doing now. It is now a requirement of the charter from our previous update. It is a time for the city council to provide feedback to the city manager, to talk about what's going well, what can be improved, both in the city manager's role and in the broader city performance.

In terms of the structure of our city government, the council does not direct city staff from any of the departments, Department of Public Works, Community Development, Police Department, We go through the city manager, and so this is our time to talk about the operations of the city, the functioning of the city, what is working well, what needs to be improved, any specific points of conflict or things that have come up. The specific part in this process right now is the mid-year check-in where we are halfway through 2026, talk about the previous year, and then in the second half of the year, will do the formal evaluation process and provide scores on different categories as well as narrative feedback and the chair of government ops, myself, will compile those into an overall review which we'll then discuss through. So I'm just going to talk through a little bit of that process, which is on page one in the packet for anyone who has questions. So this is June.

The mayor will call a special meeting of the city council chaired by the government ops for a mid-year check-in. After this, the next part of the process will be in November, November 13th, where we'll have the city manager's self-review, the results of the resident survey, the employee engagement survey, and feedback from the city manager's direct reports. On December 4th, the Chair will gather feedback from the City Council using the evaluation template on the City Manager's performance, which again is in this packet. I, as the chair, will then write a consolidated review of the nine city councilors' reviews using the evaluation template, synthesizes the themes and key points. and then on December 18th, the City Manager Port Performance Review will be delivered to the City Manager in a special meeting of the City Council. We'll present that consolidated review and discuss that again at a special meeting of the City Council.

and there'll be an opportunity for the city manager to respond both verbally during open session and in writing to the evaluation from the city council. Today, we can answer any questions about that process. I would encourage counselors to look through the rubric here, which has been compiled with the city manager based on feedback from counselors and myself and the city manager, if there's anything that is is missing or you know any questions about that rubric now is the time to raise those as well as feedback from January to June of this year. Things that have gone well, things that need to be improved, questions about city manager performance or broader city operations. This is the time for those in the midyear check-in. So that's an overview. I was going to go now to public comment. It doesn't sound like we have anyone signed up for public comment. With that, we can move right then over to the city manager. I'll turn it over to

City Manager Wang to talk through the evaluation process, talk through the materials, and then we can open it up to questions and discussion from the City Council. City Manager Wang.

Thank you so much. Through you, Chair Sobrinho-Wheeler, thanks for kicking us off and just excited to do a mid-year check-in. I've always found I think this process is very helpful to have. structure around how we're discussing how we work together. and tried to lay out some of this in the memo, but maybe just to talk it through very quickly. Very grateful for the city council and getting the new term started off. We have really well and organized working with the mayor, the vice mayor, committee chairs, and across the whole council. We held discussions on goal setting. We reaffirmed focus areas. for the City Council over the term, core values, City Council rules have been updated, and through the budget process we identified

and so really quite a busy six months in terms of getting organized for the term and appreciate the collaboration In terms of this review process, I think the biggest change from I think the feedback has been that the focus is a little too much on the internal administrative side of the city. and there's a desire for more of our work and conversations especially on outcomes that matter most to the community to be part of these discussions so I would say that's probably where I'm trying to focus more than in terms of

providing a report on how we're working across housing, transportation, economic development, sustainability, and government governance operations. And I think that's actually reflected more in the template where I think the overall rating categories and performance reviews that we're using, it's the same template, but the idea is for those to better reflect The work that we're actually doing together collectively rather than simply the things the city is solely responsible for the administrative side. So I'd say that's the biggest change in this process. We still have administrative goals that we've set, which are more on the administrative side of the city, key initiatives that we're working on that will strengthen the city. and some of our core operations and then measures that we're looking at on service level requests, service level agreements,

for C-Click Fix, Employee Engagement Scores, the Community Survey, and our fiscal position. But I think the sort of message I got as we went through this process is there's more interest in I think in terms of report on the first six months then, I would say we have acted very quickly to advance discussions on the three budget priority areas. And so where we landed was social housing, supportive housing and expanding childcare. On all three of those, we have been having a lot of conversations and advancing discussions. The Social Housing Task Force has been created and will hold its first meeting tomorrow on June 24th. We have begun internal discussions on developing more concrete options for furthering our commitment to supportive housing and we are working with

McGovern and Councilor Al-Zubi, the co-chairs of human services to schedule a committee meeting for the fall where we can bring a clearer list of things that we could consider and start prioritizing. and we are holding a joint city council and school committee roundtable to begin discussions about child care expansion next Monday on June 29th and so that will really kick off A clearer conversation about how we're thinking about different options for expanding childcare and the universal pre-K program. So I'm really excited. I think the idea of us creating more concrete priorities and then being able to devote the resources necessary to move those forward and then to fit those into Our work plans and ultimately to fit those into the budget process in the coming years. I think that's a really strong movement forward and appreciate partnering with the council on all of those.

I'm also just really excited we have both gotten through the FY27 budget process. That is a process that continues to create greater structure and engagement with the city council and the community. Really proud of the work that the finance and the budget team have done, both implementing a completely new budget system while also holding our first community meetings to engage folks on the budget. and then continuing to find ways to create efficiencies and be able to get a budget passed that reflects our values, that makes investments in the things we care about, but that also recognizes we are in an economic slowdown. We continue to do work across all of the council focus areas. And I think this probably wasn't the time to list everything we're doing on housing, transportation, economic development, sustainability, government operations. but maybe the one area I did want to

that is becoming a growing focus. I appreciate Councilor Zusy for calling an Economic Development Committee and really starting to focus on Thank you very much. that the flexibility we've had to make all of these investments in our schools, universal pre-K, affordable housing, all of that has come because we have a very strong economic base within the city. and that economic base is not doing as well as it has been over the last 10 years. So over the last two budget cycles, a lot of our conversation has been, what do we do to manage our budget growth? What do we do to manage the tax levy?

to accommodate for that but we've not spent nearly as much time thinking about the city's role in investing in that economic growth and opportunity. and I think that that economic development committee really started to bring that conversation into city hall to say the city has a history of having done work to ensure that there is an ecosystem here that really is the envy of people around the country and around the world. What has been created, when I think about 50 years ago, the city council, passing new rules on recombinant DNA, making the infrastructure investment in Kendall Square, zoning for innovation. So ensuring that startups and entrepreneurs have space that they can work in, all of that was Thank you.

Thank you. So I think that's a conversation that we've started on June 9th, but I think there's more for us to dig into. And I do think as we get into the fall, a more intentional conversation about the role that we play in economic development will be really important. And just a small example that I wanted to highlight that we've all been living in these weeks and this summer is even the vibrancy of our community, the work that's been happening on the World Cup, The work that we do through the License Commission to loosen some of those regulations to allow for bars to open later for people to be able to walk around and drink during these big events. That is part of our economic development approach, which makes the city exciting, vibrant, a place that people want to live.

So I think this question of how we make public investment in this ecosystem, I think that's something that we need to continue to lean in. and I'm excited about more of those conversations as we move forward. So I'd say I also provided some updates on some of the key administrative initiatives. Happy to talk through those or to answer questions. But I think I'm looking forward to this discussion and and thank you all for your work and your collaboration.

Thanks, Senator Wang. We'll open it up now to questions and discussion from the council. No one else has them. I'm happy to go first, but first we'll see if my colleagues want to start. Do you want to start, Councilor Noem?

I really appreciate this process and I hope it's a model for the rest of the city to ensure that we're actually doing Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Very positively ensure that time is taken to reflect on how an employee's work is unfolding as opposed to strict evaluation. The word review is really, really important I think. and this is a performance review, not evaluation. I have in the past always talked about how ensuring that in order to properly judge, we need to make sure SMART goals are incorporated as often as possible. It's really easy to say Thank you very much.

So I think I provided a few examples of some smart goals that we might want to consider in the long-term review. Is this an opportunity to just talk generally about where I see where we're at? Through you, Mayor Siddiqui, to the chair. So I just want to comment on a few of the really positive things that we've seen. We have seen departments delivering more long-term plans and coming forth before the council to ensure that we understand Those work plans like CDD saying, okay, here's the 17 or 112 initiatives we're working on. We want to make sure we prioritize them. I don't say that snarkily. It's actually really important that we understand the workload of the departments and I think that's something that's been missing in the past often. As we have often heard, we're just throwing stuff out there and then

Thank you very much. The better, and that has been developing. DPW has often done that with some of their five- and ten-year plans. CDD is now presenting it. So I think it's really useful for us to do that. Timelines, I think, help all of us help the council, but also help the community and help the staff. I also think there's been Thank you very much. I know it's still controversial and I know some people feel like it was maybe not something that should have moved forward but I think it really is emblematic and symptomatic and a very positive move forward to say you know what in judging everything we're going to

We're going to change a decision that we thought had been made because we believe there's other ways to address some of the concerns. And I think that represented a nice balance, so I want to give kudos to that. and certainly we can't underestimate bringing us through a budget in this challenging time when if you talk to anyone around here even really strong cities like Boston where their decisions were to lay off In Boston's case, probably hundreds of workers. In every other city, it's tens of workers or passing an override in order to just keep their school system operating at exactly the same level. and we were able to provide some relief but also continue to grow our budget albeit not at the same pace as the past and I don't underestimate the difficulty of that. I also think, for instance, the work on the commissions is also positive. That's something we've been waiting for for a long time. Working to ease permitting in projects while maintaining safety is another really key element that that

also brings in, I think, a lot of departments from ISD to licensing to economic development. I think it's really important work moving forward. It's moving forward a little more slowly than many of us would have liked, but I recognize it is moving forward. and I think I owe the DCM Watkins some more information about people I've talked to who have some really good ideas on that. and on, I think there's still some delta, plus and delta to think about. I think being more proactive with many of the initiatives and including the council is a really important element that is I think part of the challenge in the city is there has been a culture that has not been helpful and some of it I think is still prevailing where the council is viewed almost like an impediment and something to get through and control.

and just placate instead of true partners, true equally respected and equally informed people who are capable of and I think I understand that culture is challenging to change, and yet it is now three, four years into this new administration, so I hope that that kind of change continues and perhaps accelerates. because I think we still sometimes are viewed as a barrier and not a true partner. For instance, even last night I had to raise the question of in looking at all the boards and commissions, the council wasn't even included in the timeline until the very end. That's an example where we need to change the mindset. We are truly viewed as troubling and as nine different people as we are as a body, as like the board of directors that can really contribute to the health and well-being of the city.

I think the judgment sometimes we have to remember that I have heard from some community members that they don't feel equally respected by the city it's another thing I think we have to continue to work on there's a lot of energy and excitement and support for the administration yet there's also I think we have to convey that the city is open to constructive criticism. There's still a little bit of that residual from last administration's frankly of Thank you very much. Hear them and change and take them in, then I'm going to be a better policymaker. Some examples are it's hard for the It was really hard for the council in the last six months to have two department heads leave with one day's notice and just be thrown into, I have no idea what's going on. I understand, of course, there's always restrictions on how it is that that unfolds if personnel matters are...

But I did want to highlight that that was certainly a challenging time for, I think, me and for some of the Council over the last year. So I look forward to continuing those culture changes to do everything we can to be true partners and collaborators. Thank you. Thank you. to positive change in a way that incorporates truly the voices of a range of people in the city.

Thanks, Councilor Nolan. Other councillors?

I see Councilor Zusy saw her first and then Vice Mayor Azeem.

Thank you. I felt like the budget hearings were a great opportunity to get a sense for the full breadth of the city's work. and hear directly from its leadership. It was very impressive and informative. I remain concerned about our increasing our budget at 4.1%, understanding that this required 2.1% Thank you very much. I also appreciate the need for the city to maintain its outstanding services. We're used to them, and they help to make Cambridge the dynamic, welcoming, and inviting place that it is for residents and businesses alike. But do we need to host a free party three times a week as of late?

Do we need to pay $40,000 per pupil when most communities pay $23,000 to $25,000? should universal pre-K costs $31,000 to $50,000 per pupil. I fully appreciate the importance of this program, but it has a very high price tag. I'm concerned about the city investing further into the three important initiatives. They're all good. Social housing, supportive housing, and child care expansion without making cuts elsewhere. Remember, we're going to have less money, so we must evaluate existing programs and create greater efficiencies. and pare down programs before adding others. While appreciating the city's ongoing investments in our water and sewer and safe streets, I also worry about our continued borrowing.

I know we got a really great rate this year, but we now have a debt of about a billion dollars with less revenue in the next years, which will make it harder to pay back. Finally, in considering our key initiatives, I think upzoning the city or how we manage the upzoning of the city should be also included. We've got to consider how this will be done and this will be your greatest legacy. It must be done well with attention to detail and fairness for all involved. I also agree with you that Cambridge must work harder to remain a vital center for innovation. We've got to figure out how to match our millions of square feet of empty labs and offices with our startups. We've got to keep them here. They do fund all our amazing social programs.

And third, it's absolutely critical that we continue to focus on transparency and engagement. Our citizens are the city's users and regularly share amazing insights. and we must consider their counsel and not ignore them. Their concerns are valid. We can't govern by ideology. We've got to have reality checks. Also I really want us to better prepare our kids for jobs of the future. The world is changing. And I know we've got tons of programs, but we've really got to make sure that our students are prepared for jobs that will be here in five and 10 years. I thank you for your extraordinary work. Again, the city does amazing things and I really appreciate your thoughtful leadership. I see you as more than our administrator. I see you as our leader.

And you and our city staff should be advocating for what's best for the city rather than like bowing down. to the political council. I mean, we have a role. We were elected by the people, but we're really relying on experts. Thank you. And with that, I yield.

Vice Mayor?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. You can certainly feel like I think that we have similar but slightly different interpretations of the role as well, and I'm sure that complicates things. I try to keep things very tangible and so I wanted to say there was two things that I complained a lot about the last year that have been addressed. I just wanted to thank you for those. One is that I think we had a couple of conversations and perhaps you felt like I was being a little bit unfair or harsh but Thank you. Thank you. And so just thank you for that. I felt like it was really, really helpful, even down to having our three priorities. And if we have extra money, where that money will go, I think that really, really helps clarify things. and then the second was you know I think that between you know Ahern Field and then like New School of Music and everything else there's been a bunch of contentious decisions where perhaps staff had a different opinion and I think that it was actually very helpful that at the end of the day, you guys left the decision to the city council.

Obviously, I think that there's certain decisions of high impact where those conversations will be much more difficult. But I think it's actually very helpful for the long-term sustainability of this form of government for people to feel like, hey, there's this example of something that is very tangible, means a lot to people, and maybe it's not the long-term optimal decision in some sort of terrain, but like for right now, It's really important to us. And I think that hearing that from the city council and being able to do that, I felt was really, really meaningful. And I think that I'd prepared much less positive remarks if it had gone the other way. But I'm glad that we're not there. So I just wanted to give you two pieces of, you know credit for those and those were my two biggest concerns last year and so have been addressed I think that for the next year I have two other similar pieces which is that

you know I think about the you know I think we've talked in some ways for this to death but like you know the layoffs that happened last year and I think that you know fundamentally There's this feeling that the city manager gets to make a decision of hiring, which of course you guys get to, but then it goes to the city council and we're kind of left with like, do you defend this? Do you critique this? And I think that fundamentally, if you're going to take an action that's going to generate a lot of controversy and you want us to be in a place where we can defend those actions, we need to be part of the conversation earlier before decisions are made. I think that you know it's really difficult and also unfair strange to have made a controversial decision it come to the floor and then for their expectation to be like, you know, us to say like, hey, this was a city manager's decision, hands off, like, you know, like maybe he made the right call when like I had no idea what was going on before the decision was made. And so I think that.

If you're fine with just being unpopular and saying this is my realm and I don't care if everyone opposes me, that's fine. But if you expect support from our side, it's really helpful to be brought in earlier in the process. The second thing was very, very concrete and a little bit more similar to the budget process and bring a technical piece. But I think we still hear a lot about like, hey, inspectional services, CDD, traffic and parking, are doing really well together. And I will say almost every week it is my experience that someone will give a complaint about it's really, really frustrating to go through this process. And I know that to some extent you guys are working on it, but I also know that it can be really hard to change a process. and that there are a lot of staff who are just used to the way things work and like actually we're gonna be better than comparable cities and I just wanted to reaffirm that like from my perspective if there's a single operational thing to fix on the next year like I think we need a lot more

collaboration between those three departments and specifically on permitting so that it doesn't feel like you're getting the ring around, but instead you can just have one meeting with all three of them. I know it's hard physically, it's hard for a whole bunch of other reasons, but like it's really really hard when you know we have conversations about like 9 Wineman Street and there's a design and it's like oh well actually this won't be the real design because they haven't gone and talked to the people about you know stormwater yet and then I'm like okay well like Why are we getting people riled up of when this won't be the actual design, right? And I think that figuring out a way to go through this faster and in a more streamlined way would be really helpful. and so from my perspective like on the operations that's like a place where I would like a lot of focus of the next year.

Thank you. Simeona Wheeler. Thanks, Simeona. Yeah, a few points here. I think the one just on, we sort of talked about the evaluation process and categories in the last meeting, so I won't belabor that too much. I'm glad to see sort of tweaks to it. I think it continues to get better while not being perfect and it is a challenge. I think it is just a container for us to talk about study manager evaluation, what's going well, what's not. I think on the one hand could include more specifics on how are things going on housing and transportation. On the other side, if we had those categories, I think people would just and so on. have these categories. I do still think there could be tweaks. I don't know if the council is the best one to review culture in the city. That's not to say culture is not important,

The staff or the council is just interacting with department heads, and I don't know if we have a really nitty-gritty view of culture, if that should be a category. And on the flip side, I think maybe it would be good to include a category around budget here, given that is the biggest... City Council does not have direct power in incorporating the budget that's a city manager function that might be a category we want to add in the future um that's you know sort of feedback on evaluation categories and then to just talk a little bit about sort of roses and thorns um you know roses accomplishments We have our first meeting on that tomorrow. Great to see that coming together. I think that is clear feedback from the council and interest from the community and it's exciting to see that moving forward. They're also excited about the funding and the budget for that task force and the community land trust. That's great and I think responsive to questions from the council.

I was also trying to think back to things earlier in this year. It's sometimes hard to remember what was actually the past six months versus a year ago. But the updates to the welcoming community ordinance and responding to ICE, I think that was January, February, when a lot of things in Minneapolis and other places were going on. It was great to see the city move quickly on those to say, all right, we're not going to allow folks in public buildings to have that joint announcement with Boston. That was an accomplishment and a great thing to see at the beginning of the year. And then I do think the budget process and this is maybe where counselors come at things different, but I think our budget is actually extremely healthy. If you look at where other cities are at and they're having to do layoffs, having to think about Prop 2.5 overrides and at 99% of their levy limit. We're nowhere near that. Our budget is extremely healthy. We have a AAA bond reading for the 25th year in a row. Our budget is in a very good spot. And in terms of what I hear from folks is more on the other side of

We still have these new developments coming up and knocking on our door and so much happening and developers coming and asking for zoning relief. How are we seeing all these things and we're not doing more? How are we not doing the RISE program? How are we not doing XYZ? Why are we not spending More to really lift up our residents when we have these gleaming towers and Kendall Square. So I think, you know, you hear it from different folks, but just to say, you know, from every objective measure, I think our budget is in a very good spot. And if anything, you know, could be doing more. And in terms of the budget process, I'm glad we've got the prioritization process and thank you to Councilor Nolan and Councilor Al-Zubi for you know working on that and having the the process where counselors put in priorities and we talk about those and we've now put those together I think that is a great improvement and hopefully we can Thank you for the work on that.

I think that is an accomplishment. The second category I have was sort of the fingers crossed category of things that policies have been working on that we've not finished yet, but I hope we will, and that includes changing the curb cut policy so that the city council does not. I think we understand there's something coming on that soon, but that is a policy order I put in like a year and a half ago now that I've been waiting on and would love for a little more fast feedback on that, but no, there are a lot of things, but that is in the fingers crossed category where I think something is coming soon. and also the maximum unit size policy, which I think is coming as part of the discussion around updates to the multifamily housing ordinance. You know, knock on wood, hopefully by the next time we do this, I can move that into the accomplishments category, but I think things are coming there.

and then the final are sort of room for improvement pieces, to work on. And I think a lot of those go to the structure of city government, and they're just going to continue to be challenges, but hopefully can continue to improve on those. One, I think Councilor Nolan mentioned already, which you know changes from department heads and you know the police commissioner leaving the public health department commissioner leaving and that's a piece where We've had those big changes and at the same time have not seen big changes. you know deficits in those departments as a result I think folks you know for the large part think the police department is moving ahead as it was before public health department is moving ahead as it was before at least you know in terms of feedback I've gotten from residents And so that is a piece where it's both a little surprising, a little confusing, and the work of those departments has gone on ahead. I think if that were not the case,

have more feedback about what is going on here, how come it's not going on, but those transitions have largely not seemed to impact the work that much. I will say that is just a challenge of the structure of our city government, where those department heads leave and we got outreach from residents and reporters to say what happened with the police commissioner. And I think sometimes residents think, oh, the council must have more info from the city manager they're not sharing. And we'll just say publicly, like, no, I don't. I don't know anything more than what was in the paper about why those department heads left. You can see that as a feature of the system or as a bug of the system, but I truly do not know any more than what's public, and that is just how it is. And the city manager, and we've had those conversations about once you tell nine councilors, You're essentially telling the public and so you just can't say things and you can think that's a good thing or you think that's a bad thing, but that is just the structure of our system right now.

and then the other piece I think does go along with that community engagement aspect and I think other folks have mentioned it just sort of you know push and pull around Ahern Field and I think just last night around some of the license commission changes or proposals around Thanks for watching! License Commission should look at doing a policy that says you can only have one drink for 30 minutes. And so when those things came forward, it was a question of The Council never asked for this, and residents, who does? And that is, I think, an issue with the structure of our city government, or just a question of when residents hear about these things, and get upset about them, who do they talk to? Who can they take out? They can't vote out the city managers. They go to talk to the councilors, who they can vote for or against, then we have to respond to them.

and that is just a thing that we've got a I think the community engagement piece we did a policy order last night I think all of us on the council you know banged our fist and said you know we don't want these changes from the license commission we did not ask for these The best thing would be if it didn't happen in the first place or that that engagement happened ahead of time. And that is the thing I think we're asking for now. Can there be more as the person who oversees the License Commission and the Ahern Field kind of discussions. Can there be more outreach and discussion there? And that is just how our system is set up right now. I will say on the flip side, when things go really well and the council didn't ask for them, that is a thing also. I think of all the things with the World Cup and the watch parties and the open container zones. That I think is a big accomplishment. I don't think we ever put in a policy order asking for a bunch of World Cup parties but those are great and that's happened and the council didn't directly ask for that so I will just say there are things on the flip side of that as well that happen they move quickly council can't be on top of all of them and that we should just you know

Thank you for joining us. Thank you. Councilor McGovern.

Thank you Madam Mayor, through you. Thank you Mr. Manager. I agree with much of what's been said, not all of it. I do think that we have a complicated system. On one hand, You know, we hear you shouldn't bow down to the council, and yet we're doing grass at Ahern Field, right? Which your recommendation was turf, and your department heads studied it, and thought TERF was the best solution. And then you heard opposition from the community and from the council and you changed your mind. So should you bow down to the council or should you not? I guess it depends on what side of the coin you're on. You know, but I think it's difficult when you have Nine different opinions.

I think Councilor Sobrinho-Wheeler is correct in that from our side, it can get frustrating when... Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I would agree that moving forward, managing our fiscal responsibility is important. I don't think public education and child care and housing would be the three areas I would want you to go after.

But I do think that thinking about how we're going to grow, given the tighter financial picture, which could become even more tight than what I guess a question I would have is, you know, goals are funny things, right? I mean, you can have the Very aspirational goals that aren't necessarily realistic to accomplish in a year and then you get evaluated on those. So when you look at social housing... You look at child care, you look at any of the things that we're working on. We're not going to have a social housing building by the time we evaluate you again.

We're not going to have solved the child care problem or the housing crisis by the time we evaluate you again. So what would you think? I mean, you listed here sort of in the first six months The progress that we've made and that you've made as a city manager and how we should be evaluating you, what's a reasonable expectation Thank you very much. Thank you. We've dealt with 240 Albany Street, or we're down the road on dealing with 240 Albany Street. What would be your sense of a realistic assessment?

Through you, Mayor Siddiqui, or Chair Sobrinho-Wheeler, I'm not sure which, but both. I'd say on social housing, I'm really excited for us to be exploring this. I do think we need more mechanisms to work with. We sort of have right now one option on the market development side with an inclusionary component. and then the other end we do 100% affordable housing with state and federal funding and there's not much in between. So finding The possibility of a different model that's more mixed income or that is able to be financed, I think that's really the work of the task force to start to explore, look at other cities. I think in that respect, I would probably set expectations around those different timelines.

When we think about 100% affordable projects, it goes through a ton of approvals, state and federal limitations on resourcing. Those projects are usually four to six years in the making from when you essentially have the land and have a project identified to when you're actually able to occupy the building. on the market side, those are projects that go between two and four years, depending on the size and complexity. So from when we actually get through the social housing task force, identify I would probably expect the timing from when you start that project to when you're actually able to move people in to be somewhere between that two to four years in that four to six year timeframe. McGovern, the more transformative work that we do together, which I think, as you're noting, Councilor McGovern, are a little harder to see on a six-month or a 12-month timeframe.

but then we look across five years and we can see that we went from two projects and I think we had two projects and 60 units in the pipeline and the affordable side to now we have Now we have a thousand units in the pipeline and we have a building, the first affordable housing overlay building opening at 52 New Street. So I think that's the story of how we can really move the needle over time when we're working all together and rowing in the same direction. And I think that's the work that we'll continue to do on housing in particular. And then it'll be important that we're also finding smaller wins, you know, things that are showing impact in the immediate term. And I think the World Cup watch parties, thank you for just shouting that out. Councilor Sobrinho-Wheeler, you know, that's a great example of, I think,

You know, teams from, you know, Matt Nelson in the city manager's office, Pardee Safari in economic opportunity, doing a lot of planning in advance, but also being ready to move incredibly quickly when, you know, when the state. at the last minute said, you know, you can take advantage of more flexibility in the regulations. And I think for all the challenges that we've had with some of the draft regulations that the License Commission has put out, They acted incredibly fast. You know, those regulations at the state level came out, I think, on like Friday. And, you know, the License Commission picked them up on Tuesday and had them passed. And we had a watch party on Friday. and I don't know that there are a lot of other examples recently of the city moving that quickly. So I think that's the work that we're hoping to continue to do together.

And I appreciate just the partnership with the council where maybe my last note would be, Councilor McGovern, to your note, and I think some of other people's comments about This is a pretty complicated system and form of government we have. I think a lot of it is that we are fundamentally a place where we are sharing power in ways where so many more people have a voice than in many other communities. So there actually isn't as much concentration of power as people sometimes are led to believe. Each counselor has a real voice. In this chamber, the council as a body has a real voice in decisions that we're making. The community has access in ways that are not as true in other communities. And I think what my hope is, is that we navigate that shared power structure well, where we can give people in our community trust, that there is legitimacy in decisions, they have a voice in the process. It doesn't mean everybody gets what they want,

but we are being very transparent about you know these are the decisions that got made we can't get it right every time but then If people have an issue, they know where to come and then we can work it out from there.

Through you, Madam Mayor, thank you for that. I appreciate it. I don't know if it quite got to my question, which maybe I didn't ask the question. Clearly, but given that this is your mid-year review and we're going to be reviewing you in another six months, I want to know how do I review you when the goal is Social Housing, and as you said, it takes four to six years and we're far away from even that clock starting. What would be... I'd like to see and maybe to... Sobrinho-Wheeler is the head of government ops, you know, thinking about what should I realistically expect progress to look like in six months. If I'm going to evaluate you on Well, we don't have a social housing building yet. That's not a fair evaluation of you, right? Because, of course, we're not going to have one in the next six months. But it's also...

If we come back in six months and, oh, the task force has met three times, that's not exactly a great evaluate, you know. So I'm just trying to understand sort of We want the goals to be reaching and we want to push because we want progress, but we also have to be realistic in what you can accomplish in that amount of time. And so as we look at this, you know, this... Thank you. realistic goals, right? Because the goals are so huge, right? I mean, it's one thing if we said your goal was, okay, by next year, I mean, the curb cut is a good example where Sobrinho-Wheeler filed that over a year ago.

If one of the goals was in a year you're going to get the curb cut ordinance passed and it's a year and a half, that's very simple. You didn't do it, right? But saying, gee, we want a social housing program, well, that's a different lift, right? So I guess I just want, moving forward, if we can think about what is a... What is a fair assessment of progress? Because it does seem sometimes that it's, you know... We're not going to accomplish all of these goals as quickly as we all would like. So just something to think about in giving a little more guidance to us on how to evaluate this progress over the next six months. Thank you, Madam Mayor.

I mean, I think milestones is the right framework. And so the Social Housing Task Force does have a pretty clear work plan. I can probably check in terms of I think we've actually laid out the agenda for the social housing task force, which of the work streams are moving through. And so we could say, this is where we expect to be. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. you know, this year's review or next year's review. I think those are things I'm pretty happy to be more clear on.

I think curb cuts is one of the things that I think I know like Councilor Subbino-Wheeler, we've been back and forth and I'm trying to figure out like, you know, how we get that back. I believe that we did communicate curb cuts is coming at the summer meeting. It's been a little bit of a wait. I think it does get back to conversations about prioritization and also you know we can perhaps do something more similar to where we are I think we've landed in a really good place with Housing is an example where we have a pretty clear work plan and over the last three years we've really been able to deliver and keep to it on the major projects that we're working on. I guess I would chalk up the curb cuts delay to the challenge where the law department, which is primarily working through a lot of these ordinance changes, you know, We ask a lot of our law department.

Curb Cuts has ended up being more on the back burner. And I think if we are able to communicate more clearly with the council about some of the incoming projects that the law department picks up and to say you know we actually have got to delay some of these so that we can get some of the other things Thank you. Thank you. We're gonna have to wait on some of these things so that we can get other things out.

Après vous, Madame Mayor.

Your way? Après vous. After you. Oh, okay. After me. I hadn't heard that. Sure, I can go. Let's see. I think a lot of great things have been said, so I'll try not to repeat everything. I think we've had a really productive series of... Conversations about managing a lot of the council work and bigger ticket items from kind of managing the council agendas, thinking about some of the imperfect processes designed to give some structure and clarity. and piloting that prioritization process with the finance co-chairs. I think convening the task force and working groups, obviously that's timely because we have the social distancing Housing One Starting Tomorrow. So I think the collaboration has been stronger. I had a few points, I think, thinking through the last six months. You know, something that we have discussed is the memorial drive.

and some of the feedback that we got from there and thinking about how to get out to the community, even if it's not necessarily information to share, but how we can be working together better in those moments of crises. So I think I wanted to bring that up. I'm trying to do the compliment sandwich. So the other thing I think you carried and the team carried through from... Last year's goals that wasn't mentioned in the letter and I wanted to mention it because it's a big body of work, which was the class and compensation study. to address non-union compensation. And so, you know, that was a partially met goal last June. And, you know, it's been met. There's been a lot of work that was done. And so wanted to kind of just acknowledge that and wanted to just say that.

The other thing I've also with this mid-year check-in brought up for me was I think the explicit mention of federal responses is not in this year's but I think it's worth bringing up. I'm really grateful to the solicitor and her team who've been really active and everything, you know, everything. and I think at the same time we have a lot of work to do on thinking about what comes next and being as proactive as possible and I was reflecting on Last night's conversation and thinking about how last year we had created the Federal Stabilization Fund and we had asked how would we make decisions on how to use that fund and how to do so collaboratively and proactively. And I think some of the comments we've been hearing

Thank you so much for joining us. I'm looking forward to doing that. In the next year and a half, and so I wanted to mention it, I was reflecting upon two things in the key initiatives, which was also the work around the enterprise resource planning and to Councilor McGovern's point a little around like that work obviously as it says in the memo it's multi-year and it'd be really good to

Thank you. Fiscal, Claire, I just call you Claire, CFO Spinner, we talked about it. It's over five years, right? And so I think being very specific around What part of that is covered in this next period versus year and a half? That would be helpful because it's such a big piece of work. On the municipal property portfolio plan, I think there was some feedback that the council received from the community that they felt kind of blindsided about the storage tank. And, you know, I think...

that's an area I think as we move forward as we you know really develop this prioritized plan I think the council is open to what staff thinks should be there, but that decision shouldn't be made prior to the council saying, okay, it's municipal property, we want to... We think this is the best use, so I think there has to be a little bit more collaboration there. So I know there'll be a follow-up roundtable, but I think getting our feedback early is really critical there. So I wanted to highlight that. I wanted to echo on, I think we also landed on and amendments to the Community Benefit Ordinance, which was important, so I wanted to mention that, echoing all the positive comments around public programming and World Cup, and there's a lot of Other cool things that CDD is testing out.

I thought the housing CDD work plan was very helpful. It gave us kind of a better sense of where things go once they leave the chamber and I think it'd be Thank you very much. is helpful. Let's see. I think my colleagues mentioned most of it. Oh, I liked the note in your letter around the Recombinant DNA. I actually saw the play on Sunday night. I don't know if anyone has seen it. Jeevan and I actually had a chance to talk to the cast for a bit prior to, and what it brought up for me was

Thank you so much for having me. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for joining us. I think we talked about it last night, but to reiterate that really the council being a part of that is really paramount. And so figuring out how we do that will be really important. and then finally, let's see, I think There's work around the toddler care happening and there's a working group and so forth.

I think in general, when there are anything, in my opinion, that's policy related that the council will be involved in, I think it's really important that members of the council play an active role from the beginning. And so I think we are the legislative body. So anything as it pertains to legislation, we should be a partner with early and so I wanted to just bring that up generally as an area that I think we've We are progressively getting better at, but I think we can always do more in that area to have the council's role and voice be a part of and a lot of this important work that's happening. So those are my comments.

Through you, Mayor Siddiqui, I think just one quick note. I would definitely agree. I think there are more conversations we should be having about AI. and it's both something that's increasingly clearly an enormous economic driver toward the Boston-Cambridge region and the state overall. It is getting built into everything that we see in terms of our daily tools but also a lot of the innovation that's happening around the science and technology. This isn't just about AI chatbots, but really a lot of the research on cancer treatments, protein folding. Robotics, Nanotechnology, Quantum is all being driven by the explosion of AI tools. And I do think it's important that we are more engaged somewhere as you noted to The council playing a really important role in conversations about recombinant DNA.

We are in a similar moment right now. So I think that's something that we can start engaging on much more intentionally and I think even Doing something like a roundtable over the summer might be worthwhile. Moving a little more quickly given how fast Thank you so much for joining us. and really how we bring the community along. I think one of the biggest challenges that we see in these conversations is that the discussions that are happening in Kendall Square amongst the people who are driving this technology are moving so quickly and so many people in our community are just still trying to catch up and understand how this is going to impact people's lives. And that's something that I think is really our role to try and Simmons.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

To you and to the Chair of Government Ops, first of all, thank you for Thank you very much. that's served under five city managers and so I have a bit of a different perspective although I do appreciate a lot that has been said just to start to give a little history. I have worked with city managers that really strictly performed under the charter. And you might remember this, Mr. City Manager, when you first sat down and talked, I said you have to make a decision. What role are you going to play in terms of how you're going to work with the city council? And you took the most liberal one, and that's fine. If it works for you, it works for me.

But I remember there was a time where you would not dare go Thank you very much. Thank you very much. and what I would say is an incredibly demanding job and you often have to take a large amount of criticism in public and private from nine sometimes very opinionated bosses. I'm not opinionated, of course. To your credit, you often take this in stride without flinching or lashing out in anger, and I do appreciate that.

I do appreciate that even when we have our heated moments, it remains just that, a moment. and then we are able to set aside, move on and find ways to work together and I know that is much easier said than done and it's an important quality for a city manager to have if they're going to have measured success. And so that, I would say, is part of the good news or the positive parts. I think I find you reasonably easy to work with, congenial. I think you're reasonably favored in the community. And I say reasonably because if I move to the side of the ledger, one of the things I would point out is a bit more balance in reaching out to communities.

I want to just kind of reiterate something one of my colleagues said in terms of areas of improvement, if you want to call it that, is how do we get better from a communication level? Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Let me speak for myself. I'll use I statements. I would like a better way of making sure we know things before we hear of them in other places.

So how can you, you know, we as a council, but you in particular, use the word transparency a lot. I don't know what that means to you, because it means different things to other people, but transparency for me. for me is sort of being able to forecast and let someone know. When I served with you when I was mayor, I felt that we had a good working relationship in terms of knowing Thank you very much. where I think you do a good job, the areas that I would love you to look at by way of improvement. is community engagement. Now, when I sat down with you when you first came here, I said, what's important? Two things were important to me, and you worked on both of them.

One was around personnel, and you got that done. and the DEI, and you got that done, although I don't know where I am about it now, but we'll save that for another time. But you did hire a community engagement person. I think my level of what I think community engagement should be and how we do it probably a little different and how do we get closer together on community engagement to coin a phrase by Congresswoman Presley, the people that are closest to the pain should be closest to the power. And I don't think we do that. And let me give you an example. You gave us a recommendation around turf versus grass. Thank you very much. I'll just say caved.

It wasn't a good moment for me, but we can talk about that. Another thing, employee support. As someone who has been on both sides of the aisle, and City Government and spend a good deal of time talking to people that work for us. I like to see you stand by, you know, to coin the song, stand by your man, stand by your employees. There's a lot of back and forth around what happened around the dissolution of the commissions. I'm not going to beat that horse. It's dead. I wish we'd let it go. But if we're going to talk about it, Thank you so much for joining us. So that's important to me.

And then going back to the thing about standing your ground, if you thought turf was a good idea, then we depend on you to give us good results. information so we can make a good decision. The last two things very quickly is I would like to see, I think you have a great relationship with Thank you. Now I'm still a member of the school committee. She's very good about giving us missives about what's happening on the school committee. But you know some things that we might not know. And when you talk about forecasting, I know the school department's having A conversation around the Kennedy School. What's going to be the impact about that? And I don't want to hear it at the 11th hour.

And then lastly, I would encourage you to recommend to us more roundtables, and I'll tell you why. I know a lot of people applaud the budget and this is not a criticism it's just folks want to know more around what departments do and that spills into the budget process and it makes it so the budget process becomes a dual Thank you very much. Thank you very much.

DHSB to a lesser degree, DPW. There's a lot of departments, mostly our larger ones, that it'd be great if we could hear more about them and so that we're not using the budget process as a part of that. So I'm looking for you to bring more of your creative ideas around how we can govern better. You say in your opening letter, I'm grateful for the partnership. I'm not going to go through that letter, but you and I can sit down. Thank you very much. These are some of the things that I would love to see you pay a little bit more attention to. And then the last thing I would ask, do you find these meetings here productive and helpful?

I think these are actually really helpful. I do think that it is helpful to be having a more regular conversation just to get things out. and I have actually found that these conversations you know not I would say like ideas come out that even if you may not be able to point to something incredibly specific to say there's been like a dramatic shift, I do think they help us understand how to work with the council as a body. and I think even in today's discussion, I've heard recommendations from counselors where you may be saying slightly different things, but I think we are hearing Simmons. I think having these conversations

you know I do find that this mid-year check-in which I think we actually had missed last year is helpful because again it's another touch point and so We're not going sort of a whole year before we say like, okay, let's sit back and talk about how are things going? How are we working together? What's sort of the itch in your back that you want scratched? And I think those are really helpful to hear.

Thank you, Madam Chair. This is hard. To you, Madam Chair, to the Chair, to you, that's helpful. I would agree, without being onerous. How do we have more opportunities to have these conversations? That's why I say roundtables could be one of them. But the other thing in terms of I know we call it goal setting, but I sometimes wonder if we're on the same heading in the Thank you very much. and you can't. So what's the plan and where are we going? I yield.

We have Councilor Zusy next.

I'm sorry, I spoke before, but I just wanted to add one more thing, which is I would really love it if all presentations that are going to go before the council were presented. I think legally they have to be posted two days before they're presented. No, there's no requirement. It would be helpful if they were posted. Two days before the council meeting so that we can prepare. Sometimes I feel as though we're being asked to consider major, major things, but we get the information sometimes the morning of. Sometimes it's just the day before. I feel like we can't do, I feel like, you know, it feels like we're being snookered a little bit or played. I know that's not the intention. I'm someone that works with deadlines, but we really need to have presentations posted at least one day before meetings, and so does the public, so they can respond as well.

I feel like we've slipped on that and we need to start being better about that. It's really important.

I think we are one of the very few communities that posts everything for the Monday City Council meetings two days in advance. The legal requirement is simply that the agenda is posted. I think we have struggled more just because I think we haven't made the jump and said like we're going to start doing this for every committee as well. And I would maybe acknowledge and say this hasn't come up, but I think there is improvement that we could collectively find on how we organize for committee meetings. I do think that one of the challenges has been that we have a number of committees where there are two counselors who are chairs It's important that the chairs are talking to each other. And then I think between how we get organized around the agenda, who owns the agenda,

Thank you very much. It is something that actually gets worked out with the committee chairs themselves. And so, you know, I think we're all busy and sometimes things fall through the cracks. But, you know, having a clear set of maybe deadlines would probably help. I know that that's actually something that it took a while to get worked out for city council meetings and the clerk's office did a good job of finally putting your feet down and saying like this is the deadline and if it doesn't make it, it doesn't make it. It may be the case that we need to do something more similar on the committee side.

Yes, Councilor Zusy? I would just say, so we had a very important meeting that Councilor Nolan led about The Environment, Health and Environment Committee Monday at 11 a.m. where we were talking about the five-year report for the Urban Master Plan and updates to the Tree Protection Ordinance That wasn't posted until the morning of. And again, I want to congratulate staff on doing an outstanding job with that presentation. I do things to the last minute too, but I think it really, we owed the community, we owed the council, like we were talking about, important enough things. We could have had a much more effective meeting that was an effective meeting. And we could have maybe even moved towards making some decisions if we'd been given at least 24 hours to review that material.

I have Councilor Simmons.

Very quickly, Madam, to the chairs. I think that makes it the easiest. Just to follow up on something that Councilor Zusy said about presentations and... Acknowledgement and support in some ways about presentations and someone asked the chair of government ops is when we think about presentations, is that something that that the council should be leaning more into? And what do I mean by that? Thank you very much. I don't think that's a good way to do things. So to you, Madam Chair, to the Chair, I'm just thinking out loud, if you will. Is that something we should take up in council rules? Or do we believe as a council that's something under the purview of the city manager? and if it is, can we put that in writing?

Can we model some sort of way to tighten that up because some people bring in 20, some people bring in 60 and I think when we had tourism they had 75 and that was way too much. So it's important. I appreciate you bringing it up because I think it's important in terms of how well we work in terms of getting information. Getting it 48 hours should be a standard. Thank you very much. But I would really be interested in what do we do around that?

Yeah. No, thanks, Councilor Simmons. I'd be happy to speak to that briefly, I think. The way we've done it in the past so far has been to leave it up to the discretion of the committee chairs to get the presentations from city staff, look over it. For example, I'm leading a social housing task force meeting tomorrow. I got the slides from city staff yesterday, looked through them. They asked any questions about these. Can we get them posted? Does it seem about the right time length? I actually went through the timing of the meeting with them and said, all right, we're going to have X amount of time for City Staff Presentation. We have presentations from NYU Furman Center. That's going to take that amount of time and went through that with them, talked through it. Let's say we've left that up to the discretion of chairs working with city staff. We want to be more prescriptive about that. We can and say you cannot have more than 20 slides. Staff presentations cannot be more than 30 minutes. I'm open to having those conversations.

I do think that it sort of reminds me of the conversation about the license commission we just had last night, though, where Do we say you can only have a drink every 30 minutes or do we leave that to the discretion of the bartender to say, hey, I'm not serving somebody who's really intoxicated? What do we try to regulate and what do we try to leave up to the discretion and make sure the chairs are doing their job? I sort of lean to doing it the other one make sure the chairs are sitting down and some chairs do that really ahead of time some chairs maybe don't as much and then the staff have a presentation that's a little longer We could prescribe that a little bit more, or we could just try to make sure that the chairs are following up, but down to have that conversation to your general question.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. To you, Madam Chair, to the chair. I think I would love to have that conversation a little bit more. I understand... Everyone sort of walks to the beat of a different drum. But when we talk so much about transparency and expectations and involvement. Because we do have the meetings in the middle of the day, that does kind of clamp down on what kind of involvement. And that's something I'm all right with in some places because it's where we do our work and it always comes back to the floor at a council meeting, generally speaking. The variation of having such a wide range, I think it makes it hard for people. And I think it's a lot. So I'm going to yield the floor on this. Let's sit down and kind of talk about it and see what we can bring back to the council for everyone's benefit. Because it's like, this is my time to get my dissertation. I want you to hear every preposition.

But is that the best place to do it or way to do it? So I will yield the floor on that. Let's determine is this under the governance, under the jurisdiction of the city manager, and then we can say city manager, could you do thus and so? If it's under the jurisdiction of the council, then let's propose. And if it stays the way it is, fine, but if we can modify it to make it so it's not so much, I certainly would appreciate at least having that discussion. I yield the floor.

Councilor Nolan.

Thank you. Just on this question, it does seem it depends on the subject of the committee and the status of it. So the hearing that was done, I think it was a little bit of a staff oversight because I reviewed the presentation Thank you for joining us. I think the timing is something we should all be working on. I just want to follow up on a couple of the points made and something I didn't say. I think some of the timing of responses is, and through you, the chairs to this, it seems to be that we request a lot of every single department. But in the last couple of years, or even just a year and a half, we realized this warp speed of what has been thrown at the city. The legal department has been totally overwhelmed.

We had all the normal work of it and then every couple weeks we get a list of every single one of the reports that the legal department is involved in because we're trying to protect the finances of the city. joining amicus briefs. We just got another notice yesterday that there's a new amicus filing based on some other. So I appreciate that and wonder while... We definitely, and I am totally in favor of keeping the budget. The one area Cambridge should rightfully be a little conservative is in our budgeting because that allows us to continue to do the work. I do wonder if There's some way that we may need to beef up or understand the overload of the legal department. Because as I think about it, we're all totally thrilled that maybe curb cuts is going to come forward. I also understand that's a shared responsibility. I think six months to a year that delay was actually fully on the council that it had been referred to committee that never met. So I want to understand and

Acknowledge that while there are times when we're waiting for the city, there are times when the city is waiting on us and we should own that as well. on the short-term rentals, which we finally got last night. I mean, that started in 2023, and yet it wasn't until May of 2026 that we actually got the ordinance language. Again, I consistently nudged and pushed and tried to be nice about it, but it was certainly getting somewhat frustrating because I know, you know, checking out that it was literally... People had raised issues with us. We passed it in 2017. There had never once been a report on it. The council didn't ask for it until I asked for it in, I think, 2022. And then in 2023, we worked on it. But that's an example where I also appreciate the departments involved have a lot on their plate. So part of this is one of the things moving forward is we should consider how is it that we can ensure that priorities are set in

In a very unusual circumstance, if the stop is the, I don't know how many thousands of hours, city solicitor, or hundreds certainly that have been added to the workload because of Thank you very much. I'm just putting that out there that I'm certainly open to it because it has been challenging. I know on AI as well. It was two full years ago that I came back from NLC saying we need to be doing more on AI. So again, that's another initiative that's kind of moving at warp speed, as I think the mayor knows from having communicated with other We need to beef that up and do more because it may also help us in so many ways

I will say one of the things people have talked about is what we hope to and expect to see, whether it's in social housing or the expansion of the CPP or the supportive housing. I also think, well, it's not necessarily the budget that requires it, but on sustainability, we are way behind on goals as a community. The city has stepped up and done all of its work. and yet as a community for 10 years now we've really been stagnant on many of the actual outcome of all of the amazing plans that we have and regulations that we have. We've stalled on, it's one thing I'm working on with staff on getting residential included in so much of our work, but I want to... Make sure that we understand while it's not necessarily one of the budget priorities, because it may not require that, it's certainly something that across all departments, it goes at public health, at environmental justice, at so many different ways. and the development as well.

We've made real progress because of steps this council has taken and the city has taken is really where the only progress has been made. The city and the council working together and so now we need to include the community in that as well and I think there's ways that we can budget for that. Not budget for that, but in terms of include that in some of our work going forward as a team. I yield.

Any further comments from the body? I'll pass it back to the chair of GovOps for next steps.

Thank you to counselors for participating today and for the city manager for giving the overview. This has been a really productive discussion. We have some next steps in terms of conversations coming out of it. Following this though, we will come back in November for the full year review and I will be collecting Individual reviews from city councilors there and then correlating them into the city council review of the city manager and we'll have another discussion at the end of the year about the full year evaluation of the city manager. But that's it, I think, for my side today.

All right, well, we are going to adjourn on a motion by Councilor... Sobrinho-Wheeler. Actually, we can just do a voice vote because no one's on Zoom. So all those in favor say aye. Aye. Those against say no. The ayes have it. We're adjourned. Thank you.