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City of Lebanon, NH Live Meeting Stream

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Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay.
Can we call this meeting to order?
Call to order.
Do we have to wait for, okay.
So, welcome everybody.
Thanks for your attendance today.
I think we'll just start by, I have just a little bit of, just to remind ourselves where we ended up at the last meeting.
And David had displayed some information I had sent him.
And I don't know, that might be useful to put up again if we can do that.
Well, I guess we should start with approval of the minutes.
Cynda, do you need a roll call of any sort here so you know who's here?
I would appreciate that just to be sure.
I can, well, let me just tell you who I see.
I make it real easy.
So, I see Tim, Chief Wheatley, Lori, Fran, Pelham, and Paul.
Is anyone else there?
Aside from you, Andrew, of course.
Cynda, Beth Baraldi, Director of Public Engagement and Communication.
Right, Beth.
Yeah.
Okay, thank you.
And Victoria Paquin, Deputy Finance Director.
Okay, thank you, both.
You should do the right name.
And George Blike, member, resident member.
Oh, that's right, George.
And I had written you down and was only looking at the visuals.
Thanks.
And online, Melanie McDonough, Chief Innovation and AI Officer.
Okay, thank you, Melanie.
Great.
You should probably do the 91A.
Happy to do the 91A as well.
To kick off here, this meeting is being conducted in accordance with New Hampshire RSA 91A.
It's being conducted in person in the Lebanon City Council Chambers.
This meeting can also be accessed through the city's virtual platform.
Instructions on how to enter the meeting remotely are available on the city's website,
lebanonnh.gov backslash live.
If there are any problems with the virtual platform, the meeting will continue.
It's the only legal requirement under RSA 91A is to have a quorum of members present in person.
Individuals participating remotely who wish to speak when public comment is allowed
can unmute themselves and ask to be recognized by the chair.
Individuals attending in person who wish to speak when the public comment is allowed
can raise their hand to be recognized by the chair.
Individuals attending in person should approach the podium and the presenter's table
to use the microphone so that everyone in the room attending virtually can hear
for all individuals speaking either remotely or in person.
Please state your name and ward of residence in Lebanon
or the name of the community where you live.
And finally, if appropriate, please be prepared to spell your name for the recording secretary.
Thank you.
Okay.
Having gotten all the business out of the way, do we have a motion to accept the minutes?
So moved.
Second.
Okay.
Everybody want to vote?
Yes.
All right.
Thank you.
And who seconded, Lori?
Chief Wheatley.
Chief Wheatley.
Thank you.
Okay.
So just taking us back to our last meeting on September 1st, we reviewed again and had discussion
regarding the vision part of our work in setting the recommendations for the future strategic planning
committee actions.
We also had, David had put up a document that had some very broad steps, and I will just run
through those really quickly, things that we will need to put the meat on the bone, basically,
is what is exactly the strategic plan committee, who should be represented on that committee,
what the budget might look like.
Again, and then we talked again about the citywide communication strategy.
So we have Beth here today and Melanie to help us with that.
And I understand you are available for the first part of our meeting, so we'll go directly to you after this.
Some of the action items may be things like identifying who would be the communications manager
and spokespeople for whatever the public engagement strategy ends up being.
Thinking about what, if any, role department directors, elected officials, and I would say ambassadors.
We talked about the Upper Valley Business Association and how they might help.
We did discuss that the target audience should be Lebanon residents.
And that we would need to initiate some sort of, what would the activities, goals, and positive reasons why community members should participate.
That was an important discussion point.
And how would we maintain over the course of several months, assuming that that's what the public engagement strategy would take.
How would we continue to keep that, the message alive and obviously needing to use multimedia approaches.
We didn't really get too far into actually the public engagement strategy that we would have to develop.
We did talk about the National Community Survey that Dover had completed as one of their approaches.
And the benefits of doing that, the benefits of doing that, in that it's a validated survey, there would be an opportunity to do some benchmarking.
It's a broad survey, a lengthy survey.
I think maybe the initial first step would be something like identifying with the National Community Survey Organization, whoever owns the survey,
what opportunities are for Lebanon to tailor it to something maybe more focused.
However, without losing the validation of the survey itself, we talked a bit about, but we'll need to talk more deeply about any external consultant support.
But we decided that first we should find out what Beth and Melanie would identify that already exists within the city of Lebanon for resources to help design and the engagement strategy and what has happened in the past and how we might use that.
So that was basically where we left off, and I think we'll just circle back now to the communication strategy portion and have Beth help us understand what tools Lebanon can offer.
Sure.
So I think that we have a strategic plan website, if you go LebanonNH.gov backslash strategic plan.
So that's set up.
Melanie did a dashboard, which is all there.
Everything's there.
To move forward, there's a lot that can be done.
It's the engaging piece for the public.
Like, are they engaged in being part of a strategic plan?
And I think that's where the struggle becomes, is getting people to actually do the surveys and participate and give the feedback.
So saying, like, coming to a strategic plan task force meeting, obviously not many people are here.
So it's like, you need to decide what are, how you want to start.
So if the campaign is to build the strategic plan, we want people to engage.
So what questions or what are the key points that you're trying to find out from the public?
Like, are you looking for, you know, what's working, what's not working, what the priorities are?
I think that's kind of the starting point.
And then from there, I mean, we can do the, I can do the lab news and I can make it a series.
So the first question maybe is a little broad.
And then I can say, this is the feedback we got.
And then we can dive down deeper.
We can do QR codes on postcards.
We can do flyers.
We can, we can even make a little kit if people are, like, if you're going to go into your specific neighborhood or host an event in your neighborhood.
We can make a little kit saying, you know, you guys come up with what is the strategic plan, what we're looking for, and kind of key talking points.
The important part of that, though, is that there is a way to gather that feedback and bring it back in a way that's kind of a common theme.
Like, we're going to have discussion and notes and then bring it back and then analyze it.
But there needs to be, I guess, the interest and the, we, obviously, we can use the Upper Valley Business Alliance.
We have a good partnership with them.
The major employers we can use.
Obviously, they're not going to have only Lebanon residents there.
And then, I guess, finding some, you know, if you would call them ambassadors or what in neighborhoods to, you know, have a gathering or we can go to the library or a public place and have something there.
It's just getting people there.
So they have to be somehow a way to make it exciting.
Like, I can do a one-question survey.
I can do a whole-long survey.
We can do the engagement that way.
We can, you know, you guys have talked, or I think other committees have talked about going to the farmer's market, going to where the people are.
So apartment complexes, you know, but it's, again, you've got to have the people wanting to come.
So if anybody has any ideas on that, I'll gladly take them.
So let's just take that more so and think about it.
And this gets back to the discussion at the last meeting about how do we frame in words, you know, why this should be important to somebody.
What's in it for them?
What is the thing that they're going to get from this if they participate?
And I think we all agreed that would be a hook to get people involved.
So do you want to just do some sort of discussion about what some of those maybe talking points might look like?
Yeah, I'll just kick it off by saying that's maybe the most challenging thing is to give people a reason to participate.
It's one thing to design a process for them to participate in, but to even get them into that process is the first hurdle I think we have to overcome.
The easy way to do that traditionally is to find something that everybody's against, and boom, instantly you get a lot of interest.
I think how we frame it here is going to be critical to getting people engaged.
And that probably takes some creative writing skills that I don't have, but I think it would help us to be able to say to people, okay, here's where we are.
Here's why we're at a bit of a crossroads.
Here are some potential alternative visions for the city.
What's your vision?
What do you want to see in five years, 10 years, 15 years?
How does this impact you personally?
And I think that if we or our follow-on committee could come up with that strategy, I think that's maybe the most important thing.
You can always design a survey.
It's getting someone to participate that's difficult.
And I think I mentioned to you, Laurie, in the past.
One of the more successful locally designed surveys I've seen is the one we did several years ago with West Lebanon Revitalization Committee, where we had several.
I was astonished.
And Beth, may I remember the number.
We had, I think, over 300 responses to that online survey, something like 80% of them from Lebanon residents.
And I think we got that response rate because people were engaged with what they wanted to see happen in downtown West Lebanon.
That was an important place for them.
And how do we make that the case for the entire city?
Right.
Melanie had her hand up.
Yeah, I kind of wonder if I really agree with the premise that you're talking about right now, that people will engage when they see something.
And I think it's a little bit like if you open the door wide up and you say, what do you want to see for the city moving forward?
It's such a wide question.
I think anyone would stall out.
I mean, we spend a lot of time talking about that.
So if we use what we already had, if the strategic plan, if we took from what we already had and kind of took some talking points, like right now, our strategic plan says this.
Do you agree with that?
Or do you have a different idea?
And really focus in on some topics that we think that need to change.
But give them something concrete that they can look at already exists.
This is what we already have.
This is what the city is kind of saying.
And then what's your thought?
Do you like that?
Should we continue in that direction or not?
Kind of gives them something to look at that's already thought of, not just giving them a blank page and kind of come up with something.
Something that we already said we're trying to accomplish and then go from there might just be one way that we can kind of condense something so broad.
I thought I'd just throw that out.
Yeah, I would say I fully agree with that.
I think big, broad, open-ended questions like what's your vision of Lebanon in the next five years are pretty hard to get concrete engagement that you can also then turn into a quantitative thing to say 50% of people said this thing.
And I think especially as I think I was trying to emphasize this last week, or last meeting rather, trying to keep a differentiation between the work we're doing with the master plan versus the strategic plan here right up going.
The master plan is, you know, what do we see the broad, open visions of Lebanon being in 15 years and the strategic plan being, hey, what are our priorities right now?
I think it would be very helpful to go, hey, here's what the city has said its priorities are.
We know that a lot of people are saying maybe we're not steering in the right direction or Lebanon's not here.
Heading the way that we want, like, do you disagree with any of these priorities?
Can we, could you rank these priorities on which ones you think are most important?
Like, I think that would be a very helpful way for us to get some, you know, involved but relatively quick information and guidance about what we want to see from a strategic plan.
I think that would be very helpful.
I think it comes down to what's important to the people, right?
So, somebody might be very focused on housing and somebody might be, you know, recreation or finance.
So, like, one of the surveys that I've done that was, got an enormous amount of feedback was what time should a public meeting start?
Because it affected so many people in the community.
Like, it was just a basic, I mean, it was a basic question, but everybody has so much going on that they had a very strong opinion about when a public meeting should start.
So, I think that touching on Melanie and what Councilor Appleton said, the finding what people are interested in and kind of going from there.
So, using the strategic plan that we already have, it has the themes, so maybe the questions can be built, like, what makes Lebanon feel safe might be a little broad, but if you said, you know, which recreation arts, parks, trails, or community programs are most important to you, they might be able to be like, oh, I love, you know, the field at Eldridge or Eldridge Park or whatever.
So, I guess there's still a lot of tension around even in our group right now around setting a vision and how that promotes any kind of development of a strategic plan or just maintaining what is in or only considering the master plan as sort of the vision.
The master plan is not a vision, that's the problem.
The master plan does not come with a really well articulated vision.
In each section of the master plan, there is a vision statement, but there is not an overarching vision.
And I believe what really instigated this work was the 120 corridor public hearing where there was a lot of frustration about the build-out that had happened in Lebanon along, I think, Mount Support Road, et cetera, and the bigger issues that need to be addressed.
And, you know, I think trying to design a pathway to the development of a strategic plan, again, without getting endorsement from the community about what the vision of Lebanon should be,
is just going to, I don't think we're going to end up in a place that we could be as successful if we don't tackle the question of the vision part.
So I would, like, want to say to maybe the community, have you felt frustration about the direction that the city's gone to?
So if you have, here is a great opportunity for you to help us answer the question, what do we as a community want Lebanon to become?
And then we can use all of the things, sort of like, Kellen, that you are saying, you know, this more specific drive-down things.
But I wouldn't want to go to a place and say, what is the, just as an example, what parts of the rec department do you use most to start with?
It's like, where does recreation fall in the scheme of what you want Lebanon to be?
Is it your top thing?
Is it your top thing is, you know, like, just more broadly?
And then the actual, I think fundamentally this would end up, the process that we may want to bring back to the council would end up with some sort of,
we would have done this engagement and got all these inputs and analyzed where we think the themes are, hand that off,
and then this next group would then actually get down to the meet.
So this means what part of those big, broad things are going to be prioritized, because now we have some direction.
Our master plan has 13 chapters, but it doesn't have any priority setting within those.
I mean, within each one of those siloed chapters, there are some priorities.
But it doesn't say, is recreation the number one thing we want to do, or is landfill management?
I mean, or anything in between.
So I guess it's getting to that.
What is that grabbing soundbite you could ask people that would say, oh, I am going to pay attention to this?
So you're looking for more themes than the actual, to start, you're looking for what themes people prioritize, almost.
Well, I'm just looking for, really, what is the community think is important, as in themes, not as in...
Or maybe we get that.
We do more of this or that.
I think that will come with all the inputs, and then whoever, you know, however we design that process, that would be a group of people that would actually make, you know, some recommendations about where the priorities are set.
I mean, you do planning, and does that make sense?
Yeah, I mean, I think, and acknowledging that you have your hand up, so yeah, yeah, I think that makes sense.
And I think nobody in this room, I think, disagrees with the fact that the master plan that we currently have is hard to extract a comprehensive vision out of.
I think what I'm advocating for here is, and to be clear, I think we should do a lot of public engagement for this process.
I'm just trying to make sure that we are staying in our lane and sort of avoiding a little bit of scope creep here and acknowledging that, you know, the master plan and its vision chapter, which is the one that is required by state statute, like, acknowledging that that is supposed to be a product of the planning board and that there's no one from the planning board here.
We have a planning department that we don't have anyone from the planning department here.
I just want to make sure that we're, you know, if we want this to be a strategic plan that is the priorities for the city and its executive suite, I guess, I just want to make sure that we are not trying to sort of do a quick and dirty master plan before we start doing a strategic plan and instead making this a little bit more operationalized, I think, is my sort of goal.
Well, especially because there is a sort of, there is the beginnings of revitalizing this master plan, right?
Like, I'm going to go meet with folks this afternoon for the planning boards, like, subcommittee or, yeah, subcommittee on the land use chapter for the master plan and trying to get that sort of stuff going.
So I think there's a lot of work happening in parallel here, and I just want to make sure that we're, yeah, we're not creating two sort of, like, parallel master planning committees or these sorts of things.
All that to say, acknowledging that public engagement is an important part of this.
But, yeah, I guess it's the, like, very fine distinction between, like, what are our priorities for Lebanon and its operations versus what is the vision for the city?
And I think those are distinct but overlapping.
And I also want to acknowledge that it's frustrating that we're trying to do the strategic plan before we have a master plan that we can lean deeply on, just because that's, yeah, we're a little bit putting the cart before the horse here.
But that's the charge that we've given ourselves, and I think we should do that, like, to be clear.
Yeah, it's just trying to tease the nuances out here.
Don't disagree with what you're saying.
So I'm just going to run down.
Oh, yes, sorry.
So, yes, to echo what he just said about the connection, or what Kellen said, I'm sorry, about the connection of the master plan and the strategic plan, I feel like we've gone in circles a lot here.
And we've spent a lot of time continuing to come back to the master plan, and that's not our focus here.
And I understand there's a direct connection, but that's not our focus, and we also run a tight time frame to begin with here.
The second component is I like the broad question idea.
I don't want to focus on what has made you unhappy about Lebanon, because then you're focusing on special interest groups that are angry about certain things.
We need everybody's input, things that you're not happy with, and things that, like you said, that are prioritized.
So I think we need to focus on that.
To your point about how we get those people, I've seen the most engagement in this community at budget time.
These are the times when people come out and they have these comments, so maybe the timing of when we release these surveys needs to be when we're doing our budget work,
because that's what people seem to be paying attention to most.
Well, finances really does, that is what is in it for me, because at the end of the day, what's in it for me is my tax bill.
Yes.
I will say, if you want public engagement, say that you're going to raise property taxes 12.5% for five years consistently.
You'll get public engagement.
So I think that a lot of the people that are even on the various committees today were engaged because of that.
But I think there's a concern for rents, and there's a concern for property taxes.
And so that's a real hot item.
I mean, I talk to a lot of people every day and engage.
I do my own little personal survey, and it comes down to affordability.
So that's, and I know that we had originally, when we first started, we had talked about the master plan being outdated and needing,
and that it was under construction and reconstruction.
But we decided that that master plan was a 10,000-foot level project, and that this task force is to send a charge to the reformed strategic plan committee that will be formed,
and that will be more short-term, 2,000-foot level, and more operational, because we want to redo the strategic plan that is not working or hasn't worked for a few years,
and we should be focused on the more shorter-term things so that the department heads, through the city manager, will have a plan of where to go, how to go.
So I think, in my opinion, I would say that the charge should be how do we stabilize property taxes and affordability in Lebanon, New Hampshire,
and look for ways to do that, stabilize or reduce, which I think is probably a dream.
But I think that's a big thing.
So how does that all extrapolate to the department heads, and how do we get that to work?
So that's what I see.
I see that as probably the biggest topic.
If you wanted to get attention, that's your biggest topic right there.
I would acknowledge that that could very well be an outcome of this process,
of our public input phase of developing the strategic plan, that we may very well learn from a consensus of citizens,
that we need to do that very thing that you just stated, Fran.
It could also be something completely different or a mixture of we would need to stabilize property taxes with maintaining quality of life,
with maintaining a safe community, with a lot of other things.
I think our primary objective here should be coming in here with leaving as many of our own desires at the door
and allowing the citizens to speak in as broad terms or in ways that they can speak their minds without our survey
or the ways in which we question or phrase these questions that don't lead them to preconceived outcomes.
That gets to, I think, what Chief Wheatley was saying, that we need to be very open-minded in this thing
and allow citizens to speak in a manner that allows us to actually use this data
and objectively be able to see this data come in in a way that we can interpret it
and not see it skewed one way or the other.
So, yeah, I'm definitely going to tip the hat that these might be the very outcomes that we discover in this process,
but we may hear people say other things that are not related to the tax rate, that are not related to other things.
We had a survey that sent out a 300-person response to a West Lebanon revitalization survey.
Fantastic.
Recreation.
We sent out a survey, 1,600 respondents within the city related strictly to recreational things.
It's clearly a very interested group of people who felt like there's something on the line that I want to be able to respond to
and that my voice is going to be heard and it's going to matter what I say in this thing.
And that's – I think this is taking a page out of what the entire U.S. Census does well,
where you need massive amounts of people to respond to a U.S. Census.
And there's motivation for people to do that.
And one of the things that they seem to do well is to say, if you do this, it benefits your community.
There is something on the line for you to do this.
If you don't do it, it could hurt your community.
And that's the – at least as I look at the way the census is brought about in front of us,
and we're going to be doing that in a couple more years, that's what's on the line.
I am motivated to do the census.
It takes a long time to fill out the census, but I'm motivated to do it.
I'm not saying – we don't have the things that the census has.
We don't have electoral college votes, and we don't have all the funding mechanisms that are necessarily there,
but we do have some of that, right, where our – what is on the line is where are we going to prioritize city funding.
If we have a limited – if we have a limited amount of money that's going to be going around,
and I think that's something we're all agreeing on here, then where are those dollars going to go?
What are we going to prioritize those things towards?
They need to know that that's what's on the line and that when they fill out this survey
and when they participate in a charrette or whatever else we're going to have as part of this process,
that their voice is going to be heard and that it's going to produce something
that's going to produce some meaningful – something that matters to them.
And so I think that's what we've really got to focus –
just sort of trying to get to what Beth was asking, like how are we going to get people to do this thing,
and I think that's going to be the carrot.
Once you get beyond that point – and as I said, I think that's the number one thing you've got to do
is how do you get people engaged.
And I hate to get people engaged saying, if you don't do this, your life's going to go to hell.
You know, that's just not the kind of motivation I think that turns out the response you want.
But once you get them in there and you find a way to get them in there,
to get an educated, informed opinion, there needs to be some data input too.
People need to know, well, okay, there's just not enough funding to have this and this.
Or, you know, here are – you know, we can't cut your taxes by 20% for this reason,
or here are the implications of cutting your taxes by 20% for this reason.
If it's open and a free-for-all, I'm not sure that you get informed opinions.
So I think that's sort of the number two task is without creating preconceived results,
how do you create that data, and what data do you give folks to work with in that discussion?
Because I just don't think you can do it in a vacuum.
Then you just get into a screaming match, and we've seen those.
How about if we did this – again, this is – we are just free thinking here, okay?
Something like, your council wants to stabilize property taxes.
That should be a message I think that this community has given us that they wanted
in the form of moving forward with the Finance Advisory Committee initiative
and voting on a tax cap.
I think it's pretty concrete that there is frustration around the direction that property tax increases has been going.
And we should just – we need to, you know, validate that.
Yeah.
As a councillor, I would like to see us figure out how we are going to stabilize our property taxes
to make Lebanon more affordable to everybody who lives in our community.
But we need your help, public, because you need us to understand
what is the most important things that Lebanon should be doing.
Please participate in a number of different events we're going to have over four months' time.
Everybody needs to, you know – would that be sort of a message if somebody could clean it up a bit,
to say this is – we are admitting to you all that we understand and appreciate
there is an affordability problem in Lebanon and we want to move to, you know, impact that in a positive way.
But without your help, we're not going to know where your tax dollars should be, you know, where you want your tax dollars focused on.
Some kind of cleaned up version of that, would that be like – I don't know.
Yeah, I think that feels right.
I think that – just kind of name where we've sort of coalesced here is, yeah, we're trying to find out what the priorities are here.
We're trying to find out what our balances are.
We know people want affordability.
We don't – we know that we don't want the city to contribute to unaffordability.
We also – I think we would have – it would not be super popular for us to get up and say we want to cut X, Y, and Z program.
No one wants to say that.
So I think trying to frame this in terms of priorities and frame this in terms of strategy to kind of get up there and say how are we balancing these different things.
I think one thing I would say in terms of messaging is I think everybody in this room can very clearly draw the line between property taxes and rents.
I don't think anyone here doesn't believe that, but I think for folks who are renting and may not receive a tax bill in the mail, maybe framing it as costs rather than taxes specifically might be helpful.
But I think that would help, and to Councillor McNamara's point, I think surveys that I've worked on in the past have – you want to avoid the sort of wish list phenomenon, right, of being like, of course, I want my taxes to be lower and all of these things, right?
And so if you can frame questions or conversations in terms of like we would like to have this service, this will mean this amount of cost, or like this will have this downside.
And if you can have those in like two comparing sentences, that goes a long way, yeah.
I'm not sure that it's reasonable to pitch the idea that if we develop this strategic plan that the end result is going to be a stabilization or whatever other area you'd like to put on property tax rates.
There are an incredible number of variables that are involved in not only a property tax rate, but someone's effective property tax bill.
Certainly, I mean, the council sets the budget, and the city manager and city departments do their best to provide services within that budget and within the expectations of the council.
I do think there's a benefit to saying, like, obviously, there are costs associated with what we're planning.
I absolutely think that there's a benefit in saying like, hey, here's what we're planning.
What do you think is the most important?
So that as council gets to that place of saying we have to make cuts somewhere, there's some idea of, okay, like this is what the citizens find to be the most important thing that we should be spending these budgeted dollars on.
But I don't think it's necessarily fair to say, well, what do you want to pitch because you don't want to pay for it?
Like, I just don't think it's the approach that will get you to what you're ultimately looking for, which is some idea of what the city values and what they want their community to look like.
Because the reality of the situation is that we don't have an effective strategic plan right now.
We all kind of acknowledge that the master plan needs work.
Lacking those two things doesn't stop the work of the city.
Like, we still have Paul putting on recreation programs.
We still have the finance department working with FAC and working to develop a budget.
We still have CIP ongoing.
And right now, city staff, I mean, the department heads are excellent.
They hear feedback from the public.
To a certain extent, we have some information about what people think is important and what the priority should be.
But it's still very much city staff and city leadership saying, this is what we're doing because this is how we think we can best serve Lebanon right now.
And we're missing that component of the validation of, like, yes, we do want these things.
And if something has to go or if there's not enough capacity to do something, these are the things we think we could get by without.
Or, you know, hey, you're missing this area over here that we're really interested in and we would hope that you would pursue.
So I just, yes, everyone cares about their property taxes and their budgets and what it's going to cost.
But I'm not sure that it's appropriate in this instance to directly link the two things.
They do feed each other.
We know that they feed each other.
But I'm not sure that we'll get a functional strategic plan by pitching this idea of if you don't want your taxes to go up, come talk about a strategic plan.
Can I repeat back to you what I think I heard just for my understanding?
Yeah.
So I guess I was hearing you say that affordability is a sort of motivating thing in the city right now.
Now, we can and should tie the sort of strategy of the city to affordability because we know those things are linked.
We should avoid perhaps promising that the strategic plan sets the budget, which is something we know that's not true.
We know that that's a different thing.
Yes.
Cool.
I think it's really important to remember this is a strategic plan.
It's not a strategic property tax plan.
No, I understand that.
And I think we all can appreciate and people appreciate in the community that the more the city spends, the more it must collect in revenue somewhere somehow.
And I think we're acutely aware of that.
I also think that when it comes to this idea of stabilizing tax bills or tax rates, I think the city has taken two very bold steps forward to do so with the tax cap and with the Finance Advisory Committee.
It's also had a budget that reflects the desires of the community, particularly last year when we were at under 1% budget increase.
To Victoria's point, there's so many variables that we are just unable to control.
I cannot control the property values in this city.
None of us can.
It is driven by a private market, run wild based on a number of factors.
We can do the best we can to manage that and to make sure that it's equitable, our tax rate is equitable, and it's fair to our residents,
and also appreciate the fact that too few people are paying an awful lot when it comes to our infrastructure costs here.
But I think we need to pull back just a hair here to the extent that if the end result here is the council makes an informed decision and votes accordingly on the budget,
and that has a stabilizing impact, that becomes an aspect of our own strategic plan here.
That's the outcome that maybe the electeds are looking for, and certainly those are our marching orders,
and we totally accept that and understand it, and we'll execute it very well.
But I think our mission here right now is we want to have maximum engagement with our community when this becomes a committee.
And second of all, I think what we want to do is have some guiding principles of this committee.
I think saying anything to people that somehow this will result in a stabilization reduction of taxes, of property taxes, is a mistake.
But one of our guiding, we just have to have, I would suggest, four or five, six guiding principles of what we want this committee to do,
because ultimately they have to execute what we have helped design here.
And so we know we want to have maximum community engagement.
One of our guiding principles is the level of respect and appreciation for our community members, our residents, and the need for them to participate in this,
and that for a strategic plan to reflect the concerns of our community, I think somewhere in there, there is a guiding principle.
I think we can also come up with some others that make sure that we're getting the input from people,
and really it's now the charge of the next committee to gather the information, process it, vet it,
and lead us towards a sound, really sound strategic plan that everybody feels like they've got skin in its success.
Taxes are a natural, impact on taxes, we know they're connected, but focusing this as a tax, I think that's a mistake.
I think we've got two things in place right now that really are addressing property taxes, and they're going to work really well.
So I just want to bring us back, though.
That was a statement to...
Go ahead.
Yeah, no, I was going to do the same.
I think that the discussion around our communication and engagement with the community strategy,
I'll echo what the chief said.
We have been very circular on this, but what I would say is clear to me as I listen,
is that everyone wants as much engagement and input from the community as possible.
So our goal in this discussion, I think, was to start to get into the how we would do it.
And I think based on prior meetings and this one, we still need a broad, comprehensive view with an adequate sample size.
And I would come back to the national survey has been done a lot in a lot of communities our size and even one in New Hampshire.
We can see exactly what the output it is, and it's exactly that kind of broad diagnostic assessment
of all of the components of livability, including the cost of living.
And when you look at Dover, this last, most recent survey, the highest importance and the lowest performance,
the biggest gap was in affordability.
But we don't have that data on Lebanon, but I think this survey is a practical one.
It's proven, and it would give us that.
And it wouldn't be us leading the horse.
If we would actually have data, then the second phase needs to be a drill down.
And the talent in the room and all the ideas show that we and a future committee absolutely would have the know-how
to do those kinds of engagements on exactly what are the tradeoffs to consider, et cetera.
So I still think broad and then a drill down would be a good approach based on what I'm hearing.
Question and response?
So, Dr. Blake, I agree with you.
I read the community survey for Dover.
I think, I don't know how much that group will allow you to tailor it.
There are some things I might want to tailor specifically to this community.
What I like about, one of the things I like about that survey is that it's not siloed.
It's not able to be steered by, you know, special interest groups, folks with, you know, real interest in this or that.
And so I think it's very, very, it could be very, very useful.
I think what I hear you saying is that you would do that in advance of other public involvement rather than parallel to.
There's really two areas that pop or three in Dover.
We would probably have a similar result.
And that would give us the focus for the additional deeper dive with focus groups, et cetera, that, again, everyone, I think, has articulated various capabilities.
Clearly, the city has done a lot of these types of engagements.
But once you have the specific areas highlighted, you can then show that and say, hey, here's why we're going to talk about all of the aspects of affordability that are a real priority now.
And C, we know it's a priority because we have this comparison to national and Lebanon is doing a lot worse than other cities in the nation and in New Hampshire, you know, something like that.
So I agree.
You don't want to come in necessarily, even if you have a hypothesis that it's going to be stabilizing taxes.
I think this data would be very helpful.
And I think the sample size is big enough to be valid.
And just what you said and the chief said it before, the idea of not being driven by focus or special interests is super important.
So this methodology seems pretty egalitarian.
One thing I don't know and I should is how long after you engage that group, you know, does it take to finalize the survey, distribute the survey, get the results back, and provide an analysis?
I think it seems that there's consensus that we need to understand how that survey could be used in Lebanon and then make, maybe then make a decision about whether or not it would work for us.
So there's some homework there.
But I just want to make a distinction of what we're doing.
I was talking about, we're doing two conversations, which is fine.
Like, I was asking for what would be the soundbite that would get people jazzed about getting involved.
So, please do not take that I was trying to say, tax management is the most important thing.
However, I will say, your point, Fran, is true.
And your point is true.
Budget time, announce a big increase in taxes, and there was a lot of fury and engagement.
So, what is the right talking point that would engage people in a communication plan versus, also, what we need to do is what Dr. Blake was just talking about.
What is the tactics and methodologies of an engagement plan?
Like, how important is it to do?
I personally think the national survey would be a leg up if we did that.
I was hoping, though, again, now we're splitting the conversation between a communication strategy and an implementation of an engagement plan.
I would just simply say, if we could do things more in tandem to shorten the timeframe, it took Dover nine months to do their engagement strategy from beginning to end.
And we're trying to have this ready for a year from now, getting ready for budget season.
And so, it's going to be difficult for us to, if there was a way we could think about how, what kind of concurrent things could be happening.
But I do think the validated survey that has benchmarking potential would be a very essential part of the strategy itself.
But, meanwhile, the talking points of how to, how do we get people engaged, what is the key message that might do that, was what I was trying to put on the table.
Not that the outcome should only be, we're thinking about taxes.
But if that jazzes people up, then we ought to consider something that might have that.
Here's another option.
Your council wants to understand what our community values and how the council can best serve the needs of the community or something like that.
I mean, would that be enough?
So, I'm just asking for some sort of, we need to, in order to move forward with a communication strategy, we need to figure out what's the hook.
And so, you know, yeah, the outcome could be, maybe, you know, we won't have to worry about our property taxes going up, well, more than we want them to.
But that's all I was trying to do.
I was not trying to say that it's the work of this group is to lower the property taxes.
Do we know what the hook was that Dover used?
They did have, I don't have the Dover stuff in front of me.
I mean, I don't have it in front of me here.
They did the sample.
So, the two options I'm looking at here are, the two ways they'll do this survey are a sampled survey, which is randomly selected households receiving mailed invitations,
and then an open participation survey available online to all residents.
I thought Dover did the randomly selected households.
3,000 households, I think they did.
So, that's how they did it.
They literally, I don't know how they publicized it in advance, but it was sent out to several thousand randomly selected households,
and it takes 15 minutes to complete.
So, I'm sure they had fairly good participation.
One of the things Dover did, though, which may be useful to us, too, they actually got external help.
So, they did use a consultant, two different, I think, consultants.
Yeah, a company called Polco is the one who administers the survey, according to this.
And I was vocal in the beginning, and I know we have some skepticism about consultants and what the return on investment is for those,
but we need to make sure we get this right, and I don't know if using a consultant up front with this from the very beginning
to get the engagement is the right money maybe to spend on that.
You know, we're already indicating that we're under a timeline, we need to get this work done, and we need to get it out.
So, maybe it's worth reaching out to that to consult and seeing what the price is and what they can offer us for that.
Just a thought.
And the two that I saw in the Dover plan was CTW and then this other group called Resilience Planning.
Yeah, this says, Polco, in partnership with the National Research Center, which has 30-plus years of experience
in public sector survey research, the NRC maintains the largest resident opinion benchmark database in the United States.
That's for the national survey.
This is the, they call this the, this is referred to as the, hang on, National Community Survey.
Right.
I still call it P-O-L-C-O.
But then, in addition to that, they used external consultants to assist with the design of their additional approaches outside of the survey.
And those two names that I found in the Dover information was CTW and Resilience Planning, which I did look up online, both of those.
It would seem to me when we're looking for a hook here to get people engaged, the advantage of dealing with a company that's done this on a broad range across a number of communities would be they would have a sense of what type of language has been successful in engaging your public at the maximum levels.
So I think we're all well-intentioned here and probably somewhere here we've got the right idea.
Maybe we should trust a professional to offer us a little feedback and maybe a little guidance to make sure we do it because I think we all, I think our goal is the same for every one of us here.
We're going to take this information, it's going to lead us where it's going to lead us, but let's get it out to the maximum number of people to get the responses without any preconceived notions or put our own hypotheses aside and then let the data lead us.
But I'm happy to reach out to Polco, request a demo, and Councilor Kia, I'll keep you informed.
Maybe we can do it online together if it's a virtual and just get some sense of what it looks like and see cost, validity, whether we'd like to take a step forward.
Because it certainly would be nice that if when the committee comes into existence and really gets up to working speed, in some respects, wouldn't it have been nice if we had done this like a year ago with Polco and had this nine-month plan in place already?
So by the time the committee takes hold, they've got all the data, all the information they need to sort of put, as you say, meat on the bone.
We don't have that, but I'm happy to reach out.
Go ahead.
And they also have a couple of – so there's a couple of levels you can do of the NCS.
So the NCS survey, sort of like what – apparently what like Dover did, is sort of the highest bar.
They also have – they offer what's called an RTG, ready-to-go benchmark survey, which is a lighter version, streamlined.
Benchmark survey is not only more affordable.
They're also fully digital and can be activated instantaneously.
But maybe we ought to look into that, depending upon what our goals are.
If we do choose, as Dr. Blake said, to sort of do this initial survey that would lead us then to a more detailed conversation with the community,
there may be some different ways to do this.
And maybe it needs to be a lighter touch to get us to that next step.
Maybe it needs to be a heavier touch, but I agree, whether it's Polko or whoever, we ought to have some conversations with the consultants,
because it sounds like they've all – that I can see here – addressed a lot of the issues that we have in outreach in a lot of other communities.
So I think that if we could shorten the time between conducting this initial survey and then the more comprehensive outreach to the community,
if we could shorten that time up to work within, you know, a year or less, that to me would be a potential win.
I think that dragging it – I suggest – I agree with you that Dover, by their own choice, you know,
has sort of dragged it out over a longer period of time, and maybe that works for them.
I don't think we, in this instance, in this one instance, have that time.
So the extent we could shorten the time frame would be helpful.
I'll let you know, I did just put a request into Polko to request a demo.
I'll wait for them to get back to me, and I'll share it with the group.
Yeah, great.
So that's done right now.
Should we also look at the other two groups?
Yeah, I think so.
And that is resilience and –
It's – the first one was CTW, and the second one was resilience planning.
I believe both of these groups are in New Hampshire.
And my read, and I may have gotten it wrong, is that one of the groups helped more with the retreat,
and the other helped more with focus groups and more data gathering from the community.
So I don't remember which was which, and maybe I got that wrong.
But two different kind of focuses of consultants.
Yes, that is true.
But I don't know what the – that's how Dover used them.
I don't know what the particular expertise is of those two groups for what we're looking for.
So, I mean, we just don't have the time to try to – we're not going to be able to develop the talking points.
We do need – we need somebody to help us.
And we're going to sit here every meeting, and we're not going to make movement forward.
I also think that in the administration's outreach, a call to Dover Planning Department or whoever administers the survey would be helpful, too.
As I mentioned – and I should have done this last week, and I didn't – I've met the head planner there,
and a very capable person who's been in Dover forever.
I think they could give us a lot of important information of did they consider a Polco-type survey?
You know, why did they pick who they picked to do their NCS work?
That would all be very interesting.
Because if they are, in fact, the only community in the state that has done the NCS,
they're the ones we should logically be talking to.
It seems like they've experienced.
Yeah, and I think both those other consulting groups had resumes that I – or who they have worked with in the state,
and they both had examples of other people that they –
For some reason, I thought we'd worked with resilience in the past, but I may be getting it completely wrong.
Our planning department would probably know.
So I'm hearing from Beth, there's a lot of opportunity to execute on some – like the website and stuff we have here,
which is great, great news.
You secure our quotes, flyers, whatever.
Of course, we need to know what the message would be on such flyers and all of that.
And one thing I think a deeper dive would be the way to analyze the feedback.
Is that a true – do we have the capability to do that, or is that something that we would need help with an external consultant to do?
In the West Lab Revitalization Online Survey, we should take a look at that.
And I don't recall who did the data analysis for us on that.
We may have done it internally.
It was well presented because it was a very graphic – the results were presented very graphically,
so you could quickly and easily understand the direction they were headed in.
I think our internal availability of technology has even improved since then.
We may have the ability to do that internally.
Yeah.
So for next steps, let's think this through.
So we already have the city manager working on outreach to the survey.
Please, Andrew, take a look at the CTW and the resilience, whatever.
Make sure that you think that that would be something we might want to send us.
You were working on – did I see this in the – are the requests for proposals samples like other people had used?
That may be a great place to –
I don't have them at my fingertips, but I did before I left.
Yes, I did work on that.
I'll get those out.
Okay.
So is it true that I'm hearing consensus around?
More work on the national survey.
So that's on the table.
More work on some consultants to help with the messaging.
And then –
I think there's consensus on the timeline, and I haven't heard six months, but it has to be less than the nine months of Dover, so we could probably be specific about that.
And I don't see a problem with us or our follow-on group continuing to plan for how to do the community outreach while we're garnering this data, while we're gathering this data.
I mean, I wouldn't wait for the results of this to work on how we engage the community for the next step.
And I think we can – you know, our work ends with giving them some real – I think – we will have worked through a lot of this – how to engage doing this work that we're doing.
And I think we will have some good talking points for recommendations because I don't want the strategic planning committee to have to do a lot of planning.
I want them to do the action, I think.
I think we all want them to actually be activating a plan.
They'll have to do some – I'm sure there's always some modification and et cetera when you try to actually do stuff.
You have to make some modifications or whatever.
But I don't – because if we want them to get this done, say they can start their work January 1st and you want to have the strategic plan ready by the end of the summer, right?
You would want the strategic planning committee to have completed their work by the end of June maybe.
And by – by September, we would have a strategic plan.
I – ideally, that would be great.
You know, whether that's feasible or not, yet to be determined, but –
Yeah.
Ideally, that would be –
And say if they could hand off all of the information from the – you know, the engagement work,
then it's a matter of do – what – you know, how do we actually – do we have a retreat, you know, whatever.
But this group could make some recommendations around that as well.
The good news is on this, the NCS National Community Survey they've done,
National League of Cities is a group that we partner with here in the city.
So it's familiar with us as well as ICMA, which is a city manager's association.
So there are some familiar groups that are involved – were involved in Dover's that we are connected to pretty well.
So –
Good.
Optimistic we can get a little guidance here from Trusted Voices.
Very good.
Not to push this too hard, but it's interesting that one of the three things that you can read from this particular website,
one of them is titled, Start Your 2027 Strategic Planning Cycle from a Diagnosis, Not a Witch List.
Yeah.
And it divides – this is a community survey – it divides things into on-track, needs attention, possible access.
Right.
Which is probably worth a read for all of us.
It's a five-minute read.
Whether we use these people or somebody else, I think the premise here is very interesting.
Can you send the link to where you're –
Sure.
Sure.
I can – I will send that – I will send that out.
Okay.
Great.
So I think we're making some headway if we can – so we have a little bit of time between now and the next meeting
because I think there's an extra week in the month.
Am I right about that?
I believe so.
The first Tuesday of October is something.
I won't be here for that meeting.
You know what I could look for, too, is to see if – whoops.
The first Tuesday of October is the 6th.
Yeah.
You know, it would be great if maybe in talking with these either Resilient CTW and or Polco,
maybe that's when they can do a demonstration for us here for all of us.
It might be kind of interesting to see.
And so I'll shoot for that.
Okay.
So we'll – yeah, we'll try to make that our agenda.
Yeah.
We are making progress.
Which will really push us forward, I think.
We are making progress.
I don't think we are.
Okay.
Other ideas?
Tim's going to send the –
I do want to interject that the way you framed the two conversations we were having was really helpful.
And around the communication discussion, the idea of broadly communicating that there is going to be work done to sort of revalidate what was done in the past
and refresh and get current so that we have this really timely information for things that people care about, how the money is spent, et cetera.
I do think something like that broadly creates readiness.
We've seen this in other campaigns around medical performance improvement work where if you campaign an area about, you know, a new lipid-lowering issue or, you know, then when hospitals are reaching out, the community's been kind of primed.
So creating readiness for the surveys, the focus groups, the what have you, we know we're going to be recommending some combination of those.
I do think if there was a way to get going on this kind of – I don't know what the message is, but I do think leveraging the great communication capabilities I've heard about would create readiness for people to kind of be hearing this is going on, be ready to respond if we reach out to you.
Yeah, I totally agree with that.
I'm just making my cell phone note.
Polco is willing to do a demonstration for us.
They sent me three dates within the next week or so to do something, so maybe I can start that conversation and line them up for something more formal in a second.
But I'll let you know what the dates look like in my schedule and see what works for you.
Okay, counselor.
That's terrific.
Andrew?
Yes.
Andrew, what is the spelling of the name?
I hear Proco, but I want to get it right.
Sure.
It's P-O-L-C-O.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
Good question.
Yes.
No, I must have said good question.
You said I have a question.
Okay.
So I have been, as I said in the background, just taking notes.
It's sort of in a way that could be an early draft of what we hand off to the council for their consideration of the things.
And what I've tried to do is just get what I think had been consensus points.
But it does include in the beginning what the strategic plan outcome should be.
It's like, I guess the way I wrote it, the strategic plan will be written in such a way as to get to your point early on, earlier in the meeting, like what are our directives or whatever.
So reflect meaningful community input, establish clear city council strategy direction, provide the city manager and departments with an understandable framework for implementation, establish a limited number of meaningful priorities,
identify measurable desired outcomes, inform annual operating budget recommendations, inform capital improvement planning and prioritization, guide department work plans and resource allocation, create transparent accountability for progress, establish flexibility and achievable process for annual review and adjustment and remain actively used throughout its three to five year planning horizon.
So what the outcome of the engagement work would be would allow all of these things to be would allow these things that I just wrote to have the strategic plan be based on those and or and or what the outcome of the strategic plan in a usable fashion would look like.
So I took some step from your list.
Like you had said, Andrew, the city's objective is to establish an enduring strategic management process, not simply to publish a strategic plan.
So what we're trying to do is make sure the strategic plan is based on those principles that were in that list, basically.
The other piece was, you know, the strategic plan committee is tasked with creating a strategic plan.
We are not creating a strategic plan in this group, but it's a roadmap that we are creating that will, and again, and this is, these are sound bites from these meetings.
So the proposed roadmap was designed with the following characteristics, articulation of an overall vision of the city that was reflected in and aligns with the, in quotes, updated master plan, because we're in this process of updating.
And the things of the master plan, the main things are land use regulations, non-regulatory initiatives, and investments, and reinforces preferred patterns of development identified by Lebanon residents.
So that's not our work, but that's what we want to be in alignment with.
Does that make sense to people?
It does.
Councilor King, would it be possible for you to send that out to what you're sharing with us right now?
It's a lot of good stuff in there.
I just want to make sure I understand it.
I'll send it out to everybody, but this is completely just a draft trying to keep pace with what I think we're making these consensus-driven decisions in this group and what that would actually look like in a proposal.
So I'll send it out and, you know, it has some stuff that we haven't even talked about yet.
It actually took the framework from the original article of some of the things that we would need.
So that I will send along to Andrew and you can get it out.
Thank you.
And hopefully that, at the end of the day, helps the end work of this is to put it all together and document that can be useful.
Dr. Blake, I see your hand is still raised.
Do you have something else before we move?
Nope, forgot to take it down.
Okay.
All right.
So do we want to call it a day?
Second.
Second.
All in favor?
All right.
It will be October 6th.
We'll come together and hopefully we'll have some exciting things to learn.
Thank you, Cindy.
Thanks.
My pleasure.