At coming planning session Actions, not Goals are needed for 2012

Let's convert this year's long-range strategy session into a 1-year tactics session. Instead of coming up with goals, let's recommend some actions.

You've got a lot of brainpower with elected and appointed city officials sitting there.
Except for introductions and housekeeping details, put the agenda aside, and open by asking each attendee, without revealing their identify, to write on identical pieces of paper the answer to "Describe what departmental or city issue you would like addressed today?"  Those replies will create an agenda containing matters which our leaders think need immediate or short-term attention -- whether or not those items relate directly to Royal Oak's financial problems and to the need or not for a millage increase.
Rules of procedure might include:

• Role-playing, both in plenary sessions and in breakout groups: Pretend you have the authority of an Emergency Manager,
• Waste no more than a few minutes discussing symbolic moves like the cost-saving and increased productivity of replacing paper clips with sticky notes.
• No recommendation is off-the-table. (The list of unused suggestions should appear as an appendix in any published report of the session.)

Participants in the planning session will feel a sense of accomplishment from publicly generating recommendations for CITCOM to consider. Residents will be pleased to see the time and talent spent in this day-long meeting of its elected and appointed officials generate more than statements sounding too much like mission statements.

From all that assembled brainpower, voters will be expecting to learn whether one or more task teams will be established to recommend, or not, a millage on the November Ballot. What a waste of time and talent it would be if this planning meeting ends without recommending some action about the major problem facing Royal Oak.
Versagi Voice, which looks forward to approving a properly developed and presented millage increase, suggests a handful of topics we hope the planning session addresses.

1. Our Fire Department made 95 fire runs in 2011; that's 2.4% of the 3,851 runs, the rest being EMS. Consider that fire departments are bragging over earning accreditation from the "ambulance industry." Nationwide, construction code changes have drastically reduced the number of fires. What if EMS service was privatized or separated from fire-fighting, so that different wage/benefits structures might be established? Whatever approach is taken, or not taken, recommend that any increased millage goes to the General Fund. No dedicated Public Safety Millage. Get started quickly, so we have potential options in mind re collective bargaining. During the 10-month informational campaign re a millage, make the case for removing the mandated staffing amendment from the City Charter, as other cities have done.
2. Establish a task team, made up of Department Heads, to review the Police Department. Is it necessary to reinstall The Traffic group? The detectives? Or does the excellent work done solving the recent murder and the experience with not responding to fender-bending accidents prove the Force is not undersized?
3. An easy one: Recommend that CITCOM rescind or repeal whatever action has been taken about establishing a Public Art Ordinance.
4. Going further, recommend that no new commission or committee be set up, without simultaneously dissolving an existing commission or committee. Relatedly, look at the 20-plus existing commissions or committees and determine which ones may properly operate without an elected official present. Look at which of the groups can be immediately dissolved or merged with another.
5. Then examine revenue sources - more than just increasing user fees (including parking rates). Sale of assets (which? when?).

Don't involve residents on task teams. You've got a lot of in-house brainpower in city hall. We would only slow things down, and you hear from us all the time, anyway. Set some guidelines which assure transparency, without insisting on purist interpretation of the Open Meetings Act. These sessions can be the equivalent of departmental staff meetings, where operational decisions are made. After all, recommendations from whatever task team would have to be acted upon by CITCOM, whose members are accountable to the voters.

Back at the Commission Table, address budget/financial matters at every meeting.Summarize the work of the task teams; avoid the eye-glazing tabulations. Don't redo the team's work. Attend their next meeting, if you have information or opinions you think must be addressed. Guard against devoting excessive time to feel-good issues, to the detriment of substantive issues. And please don't take more  time arguing about the location of a Stop sign than about the purchase of new software, to demonstrate your concern "for the residents."  You know, as many in the education community do to assure us that whatever they propose or oppose is "for the kids."

2012, by any definition, will be a pivotal year, nationwide.

The 46th City Commission will determine which direction the pivot turns in Royal Oak.

Frank Versagi is the editor of Versagi Voice.