 We are back in the Davis Media Access for another episode of The City Considerers. I'm Audemars Lab-A-Renau, and today we're gonna find out a little bit about what a city manager does. My pleasure to have Mike Webb as my guest today. Welcome, Mike. Thank you, Audemars. And Mike was hired by the Davis City Council back in December as our new city manager after Dirk Brazil announced his retirement. And you're the first person hired internally for this position in quite a while. You were on staff for about three years before this, right? Yeah, I was assistant city manager and community development director for about three years prior to my appointment by council. I've been with the city organization for about 20 years. Right, I thought it had been longer. I remember meeting you, paths crossed somewhere down the line. So what does a city manager do? It sounds important. I know it's important. And I know you have a lot of things under your purview, so I'm hoping in our conversation today we can kind of help the viewing public understand what's on your plate. Right, no, excellent question. And yeah, the city manager really is one of two positions in the city organization that are hired directly by the city council. The city manager is one, the city attorney is the other. And really the city manager's core mission, if you will, is to implement the city administration. And really oversees the entire city operation in all of our various departments and the staff associated with that. In total, we have about 356 or so staff on the city with all the departments. And so it's the city manager's role to oversee and help prioritize those functions of the city on a day-to-day basis. As you know, we chatted at the Chamber of Commerce State of the City luncheon recently. And there you kind of gave that overview of the city and you really did a great job lifting up some of the department heads who were also there that day. And that got me thinking about, as I said, a lot of things on your plate. And there's not just the infrastructure and the ongoing issues, but we have new issues like cannabis regulations and things like that in town. So if you can, give us a brief peek into what the hot items are right now and how you're gonna work on prioritizing those in the year to come. Sure, yeah. Well, there's many as you gleaned from the Chamber luncheon. Far too many for me to list here, of course, but some of the highlights, we have city council and the items, I think that the community sees are largely the items that the city council is dealing with directly at city council meetings and that staff comes to them with presentations on. A lot of it revolves around development review. We have quite a few development proposals that have been in the pipeline the last year. Quite a few still ahead for review. I was actually surprised by that. You shared a map of things that had been, they're various stages. And there were many more than I realized. Yeah, there's quite a few. I'd say in my 20 years with the city organization, I haven't seen this level of interest in private development activity certainly since the early to mid 90s. And so it's quite a lot of interest in primarily residential development right now. We're seeing a lot of multifamily housing proposals come forward. And that's been a core issue that's been before the city council is consideration of apartment housing. Some of it more student oriented. And just last week, the city council approved the Lincoln 40 apartment proposal, for example. So development projects is definitely a key area that's on the council's agendas lately and probably will be for the coming year as they consider other proposals that are coming to us and in the pipeline. Other issues, of course, include city infrastructure. And we have quite a few, what we refer to as capital improvement projects that are also underway. Largely having to do with road rehabilitation work. Yeah, I guess you. Yeah, definitely a very hot topic of interest, I think to the community is, how are we maintaining the infrastructure that we have? There's a fair amount happening with regard to parks, replacement of playgrounds and equipment, really focusing in, I think, our council and staff in our efforts are really focused on maintaining and upkeeping what we have as opposed to building new. And then I also think other key topics include cannabis, cannabis regulations. The city council has been a very assertive in establishing sound local regulations around the cannabis industry, which is emerging throughout the state. And we're currently in review of cannabis dispensary proposals. And then another key topic I would say is community policing, police oversight. We have some efforts underway that will be coming to the council in really the next month. There were recently a couple of opportunities for public input into police oversight. And I understand then the consultant is working with that input and will generate a report. That's exactly right. We have a consultant team that's been gathering community and stakeholder feedback on police oversight and community policing. And they're working with their way through their recommendations and report that will come to the city council in April, starting in April, right? You want to touch on the downtown because everywhere I go, city staff are talking to me about the charrette process that's coming up. And from the perspective of your office, where do you get involved with that? Yeah, so our downtown plan update. Our downtown plan hasn't been updated in well over a decade, almost two, really. And with direction from the council, of course, we initiated a downtown plan update effort, which we're working with. It's a multidisciplinary team, really. And that's how we approach just about everything that's a key policy undertaking in the city is as a team. So we have a multidisciplinary team on our staff that involves staff from our city manager's office in terms of community engagement and communications. We have our community development staff, of course, from a planning and zoning point of view. We have staff from other departments included in the effort from public works, from finance, and on down the line, so to speak. The effort, combined, the staff effort, combined with the consultant team that we've brought on board that's really very expert in helping develop downtown plans is part of that. And community engagement is a huge component, as you can imagine, of a downtown plan update. Seeking input from the community. We have our advisory committee on the downtown plan update that was appointed by the city council a few months ago. That's a key component. But seeking community input on what's the community's vision for the downtown in the next five, 10, 20 plus years. What do we want our downtown to be and how can we facilitate that happening? So there is a charrette that is coming up in April. And we have information on the specifics of the time, date, place on our website, on the main city webpage. There's a button to click on for downtown plan update that has all the details. I just shared on our social media about that. It's happening in April and for those who don't know, a charrette is a fancy word for it. A particular kind of design process that is involving a lot of different people and a lot of different stakeholders, if you will. That's right. And so there's gonna be lots of opportunities to plug in in April. All the events will be held at Davis Community Church and again, cityofdavis.org, where you can find out more information about that. Boy, if there's one thing people are passionate about in this town or have opinions about, it is our downtown because it's hooking into those other issues that the council has been dealing with, homelessness, parking, the perennial issue, and then pedestrian access, bi-access, livability, density, all of that. Absolutely. All those issues really and more converge geographically in our downtown in some way, shape, or form. So it's absolutely a critical effort of the cities to do that visioning process. And the charrette is actually a very exciting opportunity for people to engage and come out and spend as much or as little time as they can engaging in that. And it's done in a concentrated period of four days. It's like four half-day sessions. And you don't have to go to all of them. You just, you can drop in and chat with people. Exactly. So no excuse for us to not participate on. And there's other tools. There's other tools that we're really, we recognize that people have busy lives. And so throughout our community engagement efforts, we try to provide as many different ways and means and methods of people to engage in our processes as we can, whether it's someone from the comfort of their home online participating or coming out to a charrette or attending the advisory committee meetings, or going to pop up workshops that we're doing a whole different variety of ways to engage. Right. So what else is on your near-term agenda? Well, I said that isn't enough for me. Lots going on. And I'd say what I've been working on the last, the first couple of months of my tenure as city manager is really establishing what I call the cornerstones of our organization. And each city manager has their own approach and their own leadership style and management style. And so I've been spending a fair amount of time working with our staff and it's really, I mean, Dirk, I think did a very, very, very good job. And I had the pleasure of working with him the last three years. And he was there for about three years. About three years, yeah. And he really set a good tone. He set a very good stage for the organization, turned a lot of things around that needed to be turned around. And so a lot of my efforts are a continuation of that with my own flavor to it. And some of the cornerstones include in setting the organizational culture and or continuing that, which is one of mutual respect, professionalism, balance in people's lives. We could all work 24 seven if we tried, but we need to keep balance. You all have those Tuesday nights to contend with. I see the staff at the meeting. So yeah. Right, right. And we had one last night that there was a lot, a lot that the council worked through last night. It was very good in a culture of creative thinking and good communication. So those are all keys. Also, the other cornerstones just briefly include customer service. That's something that's very important to me personally and professionally. And I think it needs to be reflected in our organization and how we interact with one another internally in the city, but also how we interact of course with the community, our commissions, our council, and being mindful of being timely, professional and respectful. And those are core to my values and what I bring to the organization. Briefly, the other cornerstones include, and I mentioned it before, the communication. If there's one thing we as a city organization do and can always improve upon, it's our communication with the community. And as I said, utilizing a whole variety of means and methods to communicate and get feedback from our community. And so I'm actually working on some things with our organizational structure that will bolster that and bolster our capabilities there. Economic development is another key area. That's almost, it gets more into a policy realm of council, but economic development is I think a very important cornerstone. We need a whole hour for that a lot. We can talk for that and then some staff development, developing our staff, our best practices, again, that professionalism aspect of things, always staying honed. And then lastly, technology, but not least is technology. There are a whole lot of things that we as an organization can and should be doing to bolster our technological capabilities with an eye toward providing more efficient and more effective services to our community with limited resources. I think the city's actually done a fair amount on that the last couple of years. The website overhaul, the use of Nextdoor, the regular info going out, I noticed, has stepped up a lot, especially under Stacey Winton. Yes, and we have made some really good strides in that and there's more to do. Right, and we're always here for you too. Last question for you. Is there anything that's really surprised you so far? Oh, let's see, other than the question. No, no, surprising question. No, the surprises, not unpleasant surprises, I'll tell you that. One of the advantages that I had coming into this role as an internal hire, so to speak, is that being with the city for the last 20 years is that I come into the role with a very good understanding of the community, of stakeholders in the community, of the issues, of the things that are of interest to the community. So one of the luxuries that that experience brings is minimizes surprises, to me, but I guess one of the pleasant surprises, if you will, of coming into this role is the vast outpouring of support that I've had because I can't do it alone. Of course, we function as a team, having that cohesiveness, that camaraderie as a team is critical to me being a successful city manager and us being a successful organization. So, somewhat surprising, although not totally, is just the outpouring of support I've had both internally, within the organization, but also from the community. Well, it's good to hear, and prior to Dirk, I think we all know that the city manager office went through a lot of upheaval for a long time. There was a lot of change there, so we hope that you're 10 years along and successful one. I just want to thank you for making time to come into DMA here and speak with us today, and you have been watching The City Considerers here with city manager Mike Webb. You can find this online at our Facebook page, Instagram, and Twitter, which is at DMA feed, and the show will air Tuesdays at 6.15 p.m. on DCTV, channel 15, Comcast. And Davis, and we'll see you next month. Thanks.