City of Alexandria, Virginia
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MEMORANDUM
DATE: OCTOBER 17, 2023
TO: THE HONORABLE MAYOR AND MEMBERS OF CITY COUNCIL
THROUGH: JAMES F. PARAJON, CITY MANAGER /s/
FROM: DANA WEDELES, STRATEGIC INITIATIVES OFFICER, CMO
DOCKET TITLE:
TITLE
2023 City Council Priorities Initiatives Updates.
BODY
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ISSUE: Receipt of the Council Priorities Initiatives Updates and Quarterly Newsletter.
RECOMMENDATION: That City Council receive updates on the COVID-19, Housing, Youth and Families, and Community Engagement, Economic Development, and Compensation Philosophy Business Plan Initiatives.
BACKGROUND: On January 29, 2022, the Alexandria City Council held a retreat to develop expectations and priorities for its work program. City Council subsequently approved the priorities, as follows, and directed staff to develop business plans for each.
1. Recover from the COVID-19 Pandemic: We will advance the policies, practices, and resources needed to ensure a healthy, resilient, and equitable recovery for all residents and businesses.
2. Provide Diverse Housing Opportunities: We will reconsider our zoning model and pursue other tools to facilitate an Alexandria housing economy with the necessary range of price points, safe and sustainable housing options, and the associated services to meet the needs of a thriving city.
3. Define our Community Engagement Approach: We will use both new and traditional outreach methods to ensure that engagement is efficient, effective, and accessible to all stakeholders, creating a clear connection between community input and its impact on policy decision, infrastructure needs, and financial considerations.
4. Support Youth and Families: We will explore how to expand academic, social, and emotional services and physical supports to all youth during the out-of-school time hours.
5. Foster Economic Development: We will seek out and consider budgetary, land-use, and regulatory tools to foster sustainable and equitable development, diversify revenue, and allow greater investment in our infrastructure.
6. Develop a Compensation Philosophy: We will establish a new compensation philosophy to ensure we are the preferred workplace of choice and that our employees feel valued.
City Council expressed that the priorities must be consistently viewed through the lenses of equity, environmental justice, civility, transparency, respect, and service. In developing the initiatives for each goal of the plans, staff has asked:
1. Equity: Will these initiatives identify and overcome intentional and unintentional barriers in our City’s systems and services?
2. Environmental justice: Do these initiatives provide equitable access to a healthy environment and take proactive measures to mitigate and adapt to future climate change?
3. Civility & Respect: How do we ensure that all interactions associated with these initiatives are done so in a way in which there is a healthy exchange of ideas and perspectives?
4. Transparency: Are we operating in a way that is easy for others to see and understand what is happening in these initiatives?
5. Service: Do these initiatives put the public’s interest first and make a difference in the community?
Staff have since developed business plans for each of the priorities, which they then presented to Council throughout 2022. The business plans provide the framework for an interdepartmental approach to achieving city goals. By consolidating recommendations and planned initiatives with key indicators, the business plans describe how the City will ensure each priority area is well run and the community receives quality services.
In addition to the business plans, each quarter, staff provide an update to Council on the initiatives in the business plans. This also includes updated indicators and a newsletter that highlights specific initiatives with stories of how initiatives directly impact the community and the city’s workforce. City staff provide these updates on the plans in Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter.
The current priorities will be re-considered at the November 2023 City Council Retreat.
DISCUSSION: This City Council Priorities Update includes three parts: 1) updated indicators, 2) a quarterly newsletter, featuring stories from the initiatives, and 3) an update from each of the initiatives.
Updated Indicators
Each of the six business plans track indicators that demonstrate how the city is, or is not, succeeding in meeting its goals. These indicators change infrequently from quarter to quarter, however, this quarter there are three updates to highlight:
Over the last year, Alexandria’s commercial vacancy rate dropped 1.6 percentage points. Vacancy is lower than it was in 2019 (15.6%) due to office conversions which removed obsolete office buildings from our inventory, and added the recently delivered and fully occupied, Class A build-to-suit for the Institute for Defense Analyses.
Over the past fiscal year, all planned Flood Action Alexandria Spot Improvement projects were completed. This is an improvement from the previous fiscal year and meets the City’s goal of completing all planned projects each fiscal year.
Tracking of all indicators from the six business plans can be found on the City’s website here:
<https://www.alexandriava.gov/performance-analytics/city-managers-business-plan-indicator-dashboard>
Newsletter
Each quarter, the Office of Communication and Community Engagement (OCCE) develops a newsletter highlighting a story about an initiative in each of the six business plans (Attachment #1). This quarter, the newsletter and accompanying social media communications includes the following stories:
• Community Engagement
Highlighted Initiative: Community Compost Outreach (Goal 3.1)
• Compensation Philosophy
Highlighted Initiative: Summer Hiring Successes (Goal 3.2 and 3.5)
• Economic Development
Highlighted Initiative: Five Guys and Dot over Dot Recruitment (Goal 1.1)
• Youth and Families
Highlighted Initiative: Youth Support Network (Goal 1.1)
• COVID-19 Recovery
Highlighted Initiative: ARISE (Goal 3.4)
• Housing Opportunities
Highlighted Initiative: Senior Housing Initiatives (Goal 1.4)
Initiatives Updates
Attachment 2 provides an update on each of the initiatives listed in the six business plans. This update is also available on the City’s website, with a real-time display of the database, here:
<https://www.alexandriava.gov/city-council/city-council-2022-priorities>
FISCAL IMPACT: N/A
ATTACHMENTS:
(1) Newsletter
(2) Initiatives Updates
STAFF:
Josh Ferguson, Analyst, Office of Performance Analytics
Ebony Fleming, Director, Office of Communications and Public Information
Justin Thompson, Creative Communications Manager, Office of Communications and Public Information
Jael Zaballos, Writer, Office of Communications and Public Information
Nick Zazulia, Senior Communications Officer, Department of Transportation and Environmental Services
Liz Bolton, Vice President of Strategic Communications, Alexandria Economic Development Corporation