Monday, January 26, 2015

City Council
Jan 27th Meeting
Budget Priorities Public Hearing

Good evening Mr. Mayor and Council members, thank you for allowing me to speak to you.

I’m Lee Dibble and I have been a resident of Santa Rosa over 50 years. I am a member of the Steering Committee of Santa Rosa Together.

Our group has reviewed the open government task force report and applaud them for their efforts.

I am here to reinforce several of their recommendations.

First: We would like to see the city hire a Community Engagement Director. We feel that this is doubly important at this time now that we are moving forward with the Roseland annexation process. We would encourage you to find a person to fill this position that has the experience and skills needed to lead the work to improve community involvement. In addition, we recommend filling the current vacant position of Community Engagement Coordinator and consolidating all of the city staff working on community engagement into a new Office of Community Involvement.

We have reviewed the Scope of Service/Roseland Annexation Community Engagement and feel that it does not contain enough opportunity for community input.  In addition to other deficiencies, it needs considerable expansion of the community meetings component. A Community Director and a Community Engagement Coordinator would make this expansion of meetings possible.

Our second recommendation to you is to create a Community Involvement Board/Commission with both community leaders and city staff with the following responsibilities:

A. Engage the community and the city staff to develop principles of community involvement to guide future work.

B. Develop a long-term plan for improving community involvement and implementing the recommendations of the Open Government Task Force.

C. Present the principles and plans to the Council for adoption within six months.

D. Provide ongoing evaluation and oversight of the community involvement efforts of the city government.

This would be a permanent board.

Santa Rosa Together stands ready to help in any way to implement these suggestions.

Thank you very much for your consideration of our suggestions.


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