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Health & Fitness

So Much to Blog About-- So Little Time

Santa Cruz Mayor Don Lane explains what keeps him busy...and makes excuses for not blogging very often.

So much to blog about—so little time

I got a lucky break as I began my one-year term as Mayor of Santa Cruz.  I took office on Tuesday, December 13 and City offices closed for the holidays (a cost saving measure) on December 16. The offices didn’t formally re-open till January 3.  So I was able to focus on setting myself up in a new office space, catching up on emails, doing some “meet the new mayor” meetings and interviews, attending some holiday events on behalf of the City, catching up on some paperwork for my other job (with a local charitable foundation), putting some extra attention to various projects related to homelessness, and hanging out with my immediate and extended family. 

Okay, you can see where this is going… that’s a description of an unusually “quiet” period.  So what changed when the City returned to normal business on January 3?  As mayor, I have quite a few extra demands on my time on top of my regular duties as a city council member. (you can read more about those duties in an earlier post here: )

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I get invited to attend even more events, sometimes including invitations to “say a few words.”  I go to a lot of these events and I thoroughly enjoy most of them-- though I can’t get to all of them due to simple time constraints.

I work with the City Manager to develop and plan the agendas for each city council meeting. City staff does much of the work on this but I still have to manage a few of the details.

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I get called by the news media to comment on something pretty much every day.  This one is particularly challenging because I rarely get a lot of advance notice and am constantly scrambling to fit this into my day. (I’m writing this on Sunday and I’ve had four news media communications come to me today.)

I get stopped on the street even more to talk about potholes and the world economic crisis and everything in between.  This is another element of the job than can throw my schedule off pretty easily.

I try to respond on behalf of the city council to just about every letter or email the council receives. This is another one where city staff helps a lot—but I still try to put a personal touch on these responses.

I meet with people who have business with the city and would like to speak with me informally for guidance on how to navigate through a city process. (Sometimes these people are under the mistaken impression that I have a lot of power as mayor when, in fact, the formal job is primarily that of  presiding over city council meetings, performing ceremonial duties, and representing the City in a variety of situations.)

I work on special projects and opportunities… meeting with someone looking to locate a business here, helping arrange a special day to recognize a local figure (for instance, X Factor star Chris Rene), or encouraging a group working on a new idea for a festival.

So that’s the form of the job… then there’s the substance.  The city council has a lot of "food" on its plate.  Here are a few of the many issues we will chew on over the next several months.

The City Budget: There has been some good news here with the economy improving a bit and with many cost saving measures in place.  But the longer term picture is still challenging because the upward trend on costs is steeper than the revenue trend.  And who knows what the State will do to us this year.  The Council will try to build on last year’s “Budget 101” workshop and increase community involvement with the budget even more.

City Government Reorganization: Because of budget concerns and a desire to be as efficient as possible, City Manager Martin Bernal and the City Council decided to undertake a formal organizational review with assistance from an outside team of experienced city management professionals.  That review resulted in a huge menu of possibilities for the city to consider adopting.  We will adopt some of them very soon and consider the rest of them over the next several months.

City Strategic Plan: the City Council has spent a fair amount of time over the last year developing a strategic plan for the City.  Formal strategic planning is a relatively new approach for the Council and we’ll spend a fair amount of time this year working on implementation of the objectives in the plan and we’ll update the plan from time to time. (The five focus areas of the plan: economic development and jobs; environmental protection; community safety; city infrastructure; and healthy fiscal management.)

Water: Drought measures, the ongoing desalination study, conservation programs, water rates, water demand as it relates to new development. These will be all be hot topics over much of this year.

Economic Development and Redevelopment: With so much uncertainty around the future of redevelopment law at the state level, it is difficult to know which way our local efforts will go.  But economic development is a high priority for the Council and we will continue to find ways to improve our local employment and business climate.

The General Plan: The City has been working on a new General Plan for about 5 years.  The General Plan is primarily the blueprint for the City’s physical development and a broad range of policies guiding growth and resource protection.)  After 5 years, it looks like the Council will adopt the new Plan some time this year.

Climate Action:  The City has a continuing robust environmental program across virtually all our city departments but the focus this year will be adoption of our Climate Action plan.  We intend to continue our leadership among California cities on smart policies to reduce our carbon impact.

Those are some of the big ones…among the others are:  continuing public safety efforts, street and infrastructure maintenance, affordable housing projects, new transportation improvements; enhancing community involvement in all aspects of City government… oh, and did I mention homelessness?

Then there are all the smaller things and the things that pop up unexpectedly (For 2011, think Occupy Santa Cruz, James Durbin mania, and the controversy over Native American human remains found near Branciforte).

And then there’s finding time to post to this blog!

Happy 2012. 

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