City Council Retreat   1/9/2026

No, no, no.

Good morning everyone.

Yes.

Not props!

But the premise for those that are going to ask the question is really just to honor the very person that comes into your mind.

So we're just giving an answer?

Now, Joshua, tell me five things you should spell on purpose.

You want five actual things?

Really, really bad music?

Four.

One.

Cheetos.

5 things you need to pack if you're going to travel the country with your wife and car

Spices, 2, a warm Coke, 3, snacks, 4, and music, 5, 5 things, pretty easy, everyone got it?

Good question, y'all.

And for those that are in the gallery, please feel free to count with us.

Some of us may need some help.

Well, the whole truth is just honor the first thing that comes to mind.

All right, Natalie.

Tell me five things that should be on, five features for the perfect bike.

One.

Seat.

Candlebars.

Five.

Michael, tell me five names for a community event that doesn't currently exist.

Three.

It's watermelon past a little rich.

Lloyd, tell me five things you find, or tell me five things

What?

I'm thinking of medicine, alternative medicine.

Three, four, five.

Three.

Won't you call obtusious or something like that?

Mayor Wade.

They're very interesting.

My membership.

One full year.

Tell me five things that you have been surprised about while sitting on the dais.

The view.

The what?

I've only sat there once.

What was surprising about being up there?

How well behaved Sam and I were together.

Four!

I was surprised at my self constraint for not putting whoopee cushions in everybody's... Five!

We'll let you know.

I set him up perfectly for that, I know.

So, we'll turn it over to Josh.

OK.

Stimulate new thoughts.

But what words come to mind if I'm doing something for you?

Like in general or specifically for this?

Thank you.

That's like what someone does for someone, but not in this context obviously.

But in general, what comes to mind when someone does something for someone?

Generosity, I thank you.

What do I do for you?

Government, it's not done with you.

So if I do it with you, what words come to mind?

Partnership?

What do you think, Michael?

Again, especially with government, giving up some level of control over the outcome.

You all can throw some things out too, if that's OK. What happens inside of an actual workshop?

You kind of tinker.

What do you think direction setting is?

Wayfinding.

I think direction setting as a whole.

Setting, aligning goals and actions.

What is it not?

Inert

Do me a favor and take this document and fold it like this.

Origami is part of workshop.

What do you see when you see them as a whole?

So when I see these, it's like, yeah, this is our community.

Yep.

I see too big of a list.

Lloyd, what do you see when you look at that?

OK, all right.

OK, Natalie, when you look at that list, what do you see?

It's thorough.

Mike, what do you see when you look at that?

It makes sense that they're separate, but a lot of them are interconnected.

All right, so here's the thing.

Here's what I see.

That that's where work is actually happening?

Public Safety, Recreation, Arts and Culture, that's one, and Transportation.

And where can the public get this?

Cool, awesome, thank you.

What are those?

and Organizational Excellence.

What would it look like?

bringing the community in and making decisions and implementation in new ways.

Jen, what do you think?

What would the answer to the question look like?

With the outcome.

Visions come to life.

Natalie, what would the outcome of this look like?

So there's like a balance between hearing feedback and also providing education.

Yeah.

So that when people are providing feedback, they have a fuller sense of what they're talking about and what their decisions would lead to.

Sure, yeah, so the outcomes is something that can do both of those.

I guess part of the humans under design is giving people the information they need to make a decision that actually leads them to their goal.

Lloyd, what would an outcome look like?

because I thought that we had been trying to apply the notion of human-centered design when we developed this list in the first place.

You're a tinkerer.

Yeah.

And what we have is a beautiful list of strategic outcomes.

Frankly, the question is a series of buzzwords.

Yeah.

and how answering that question gets us out of anything other than more buzzwords.

Would we say there's a tension in there?

There's a difference.

Sure.

One tells us how we do the other.

Just thought I should, again, and you may not have an answer and that's okay because that answers the question of let's get clear, let's sort that, sort it out so it's clear, concise and maybe it's not a mixture of where and how and why and it's a clear, concise set of visions that drive, you know, invite education and can also drive direction.

So, for me, to tag on to that, I think it's important that

who not only come to council meetings and email us but the probably, I don't know, the 90% of the people that don't do that but have a voice but may not connect with us.

And the community might be like, man, that's a lot.

But in Charlottesville, where process is at least as important as policy, to not include the hows leaves people feeling like we haven't really talked about anything.

Another way to ask it is something that could potentially enter the room that works against this.

So we're saying the problem is that this is not translatable, we are not aligned on this, and we don't have the language to talk about this with users, with the community?

Our conversations when it comes to the strategy of the organization starts there.

So is the problem there that it's too long and we need to shorten it?

Or is the problem we're trying to sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss

Why what things matter?

This list of strategic outcomes.

Denied.

Read one that you said could potentially derail the conversation out of keeping us in line.

Not that it's not important, but it really could, we could spend all day or a lot trying to do.

Michael, what do you have?

Natalie, what do you have?

I wrote Not Buying In.

It'll take about seven minutes to do that.

Each on a different sticky or?

Got some time on you to do it.

You wouldn't get paid if you don't understand, but you're being called.

Take a second and really reflect on that list and say, you know what, across all of these strategic outcome areas,

Start with a verb.

Make sure they start with the verb, that you're not naming any of the outcome areas, not mentioning any programs or policies.

Okay, hopefully you have your three.

Across all outcome areas the city needs to find funding.

Across all outcome areas the city needs to implement.

Across all outcome areas the city needs to build more residences.

across all African areas the city needs to measure impacts across different economic classes.

Jen can you do your beautiful mind thing and let's see like look at some grouping we can talk about group and just see what's themes clustering them together.

I'm gonna go crazy I'm gonna mess this all up.

And you can create as many as you want to, like as many groups as it's got.

In a moment, not yet.

I see you put it in close proximity of the other person, just for like that sake of relationship.

I see what you did there.

I'm consolidating again.

Try and have like, if you could do five or four, that's good.

Did you do 3 and a possible?

And when I'm talking out with the group, I want to get some agreement that these might be four different kind of things that have something to do with one another.

The city needs to, we'll say, like, know when

Show your work, read us those things and tell us maybe how you got there and then we'll talk it out as a group.

But really you could do that.

I was thinking that.

Maybe we want to put it over here for now.

Go parking lot.

Go out to the community for feedback on policy development.

Like we're talking about information here?

So this is go out to the community means engage.

Engage, got it.

On policy development.

Yeah.

So that all needs clarifying.

Yeah.

So this category is... And I'm sorry, while you're explaining this, Jen, also we're thinking about this too, right?

This is kind of, when you label, we're thinking about this as well.

I'm just messing with y'all name for a second.

This is the how.

Yeah, do the thing.

Yeah.

Find funding, implement, build residences, create, oh, why not, sorry.

Thriving wage.

Thriving wage, where's that?

Thriving wage.

Thank you.

Across all of it, Albemarle City needs to drive creativity.

Two.

Two and a half.

So look, we're about to go on again.

What would you, is it?

This is.

You can do sexy words.

The city needs to get better at internal and external communication.

Okay.

Okay.

So I'm good.

Because you can't educate anyone if they don't, like, you've got to be clear.

And what's important about that is it'll get better feedback for the... Do it all, right?

I hear that, say it.

Oh, the city needs to say

Are what you have up here as labels bigger than just one area?

By definition of the problem, yes.

to spend across all those areas?

That was the exercise.

It's checking our work is that the work that we just did, you would say those labels that we created are bigger than just one strategic alchemy area.

They apply to all outcome areas.

I want to break us up into...

Wait, can't we have an example?

We talked about measuring impacts.

Decide how to measure success versus failure.

Be willing to measure progress to pull the plug on things that aren't working.

Because I don't know exactly what that refers to.

Beyond every city thrive, you know, like all of those things, but for you, specifically when you write that, that thing that you're talking about shifting, why does that matter?

That's my day job.

I wasn't sure quite what the mission here was so I have two different ones.

And then the other one is celebrate achievements to encourage progress and confidence.

So if there was a goal, a strategic goal underneath no one is winning, what would you say?

So it's that we need to communicate to the public that we are building more housing because it's important that they see the impact of their tax dollars.

Yeah, I'm not sure if this is what we were going for, but I wrote down to the question

Measure if low-income residents are benefiting from policies to see if equity is being achieved.

I just asked you for the first time, did not anticipate asking this?

report out success, measured progress and success to, and there's a billion why it matters.

What you just read, why would that matter?

Foster Partnerships.

To know where we are and where we're headed.

Wayfinding.

What would a strategic goal look like?

I said to build a city where residents can get to a job that can sustain their lives.

Would you agree that that there's a lot of these outcomes that have to take place in and win it in order for that to actually happen?

What do you think about that?

Read it one more time.

Build a city where residents can get to a job that can sustain their lives.

Do the thing is yours.

Say what it means.

You're going to play with these and cook with them.

We've got to do this thing.

And then some of the words below.

OK. Just to clarify, it feels secure to engage again and to go out to the community for feedback or on policy.

policy development

So it's like... Is that the last word?

Oh, that's fine.

That's implementation.

This is how we go about achieving that.

Correct, yeah, you're still standing on the same task.

I just wanted to throw you that little statement of, you know, you're still kind of stuck on it, I wanted to throw you another statement.

But it can, you know, are we doing just engagement?

So we were doing all of these things right.

Well, no, because this is the duty right here.

So we don't live in plans world.

We actually found the funding, we're implementing, we're building houses, we're creating thriving buildings.

It's an engagement, an education.

The one we just did.

The verb in that goal form is to maintain engagement, facilitate engagement.

So this goal would be achieving our plans to fulfill our promises.

Something like that, right?

That's why I think this

So we've got to figure that out.

Totally, totally.

I think it might be something like, is there a way to achieve what this means?

The most people's daily lives.

I mean, if we're implementing...

Sorry, I'm going to get really nerdy now.

That is our sentence.

That's the name.

The thing is such a mean chapter and why it matters to play, to meet the needs and to achieve our goals.

And listen to what they have us say so that we can create a policy.

Lloyd said that we would be delivering this information in a way that could fit and connect to it.

So we're not shooting over the dead.

That's usually made a podcast about him.

So what would that connection, what would that be?

We can't necessarily know what it would look like, but what are we doing to ensure that we can?

We're not using buzzwords and all that stuff too much.

If we're not getting things done, what are we here for?

Our goal is, but we don't need...

But that's some of the how and all that we don't need to do.

Because I'm trying not to define the goals for you.

We don't implement the goals that we have.

I'm here to implement your goals.

Connect with our residents?

And then one of the things is like,

So that they are encouraged to provide feedback.

What didn't happen is a certain class did get better.

They're stoked.

It covers all of our achieve,

The communication from us is they won't see where their tax dollars are going.

I mean, do the thing means.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

I'm scribing what I'm hearing you say, and then I'm going to give it back to you as you tell it.

Not justice, because that's not solely on us.

Other people could do that, too.

But allow it to be building.

Well, plans are all we can, that's all we can do.

But I'm also hearing saying, don't just go do the thing, but make sure you're doing it with the actual plan.

Well, this assumes we've had the plan, now we're doing the thing.

That's the goal, is to turn our plans into reality.

And where the tax dollars are going.

Like this is a task.

The goal is turn our plans into reality.

Plans.

Why it matters is... Why it matters, I mean like... Is making the plans real.

To meet all residents.

Okay.

No, that's great.

Nicely done.

Michael, how are you thinking about this?

You said that.

I mean, this is the pithiest we can get.

Even these two words right here are super.

Yeah, yeah.

And then the action verb is?

I am not actually contributing.

And I think it's important for me about education is because we have a

Like our press system is much weaker than it used to be.

So people aren't as tuned in to not just what's going on in the community, but like why it matters.

But not everybody has read the books that we've read.

Not everybody has.

We want to maintain accessible public engagement to educate and connect the community.

To educate and connect the community or to educate and connect and inform the community.

The reason we're about that is because that's meant to the ED.

So that's engaging them in the decision making.

So it matters because of this.

So it could be, are you struggling with tax dollars?

I think I'm just wondering.

And I would, I definitely agree with that and I would say the reverse of that to like and connect the community members with their own knowledge and their experience in educating us.

And so that's the feedback solicitation for where people are better informed.

What do you think?

I think it's like my research.

So if we can, across the board of that list, if we maintain accessible public engagement to educate and connect the community, to educate and connect the community.

Goal internal and internal.

Maybe it's to inform, educate, and connect the community.

So a goal would be

I think what I'm showing you is us getting into a specific area.

That's what I'm saying.

It's just decision-making.

Because that's across the board.

So maybe it's to inform decision-making.

And cooperation.

So when you look at, those are great, we look at the main

This drives a lot of ways of how we talk to our

Lloyd, I have to hold his in a separate hand.

And I trust.

I mean, it's collective.

I think trust is good, too, because you've got a theory and you want to ask somebody about it, you have to know that there's a safe space to put an idea out there about it.

You get in trouble for something when you were just like, what if we did something like this?

Lloyd, when it propped his up, it's just special on that brownie right there.

So I want you to talk to me.

I remember there were a number of people who were like, oh my god, it's an R word where it's like,

If I suggest something to you, that you do something bad for me, that's the word.

Trust so there's not a fear of retaliation.

Come back, come back.

So you all basically pretend like a group already wrote the strategic goal for the November meeting and I want you to walk through them because some of them need to understand the verb, what's being said and why it matters.

products that we see that show that they're...

I guess our verb is communication.

Interdepartmentally to achieve clarity, efficiency, collaboration in a safe space.

Coverage.

If we do all that stuff, then our goal internally is everyone knows everything.

Communicate.

And we've got to communicate.

But also efficiently.

Yes.

Oh, I love that.

I know it's all you're working with.

It's like what all this means, right?

You're talking about knowledge and I heard you say information and things of that nature.

I know you don't have the rest of your ingredients, but that would give you more to cook with.

But I get it, I get what you're saying.

So it doesn't start to sound like some of the other ones.

Right, and so I think that when I see a measure in analyzing, that it really kind of goes around measuring, you know, how we are doing.

Because that's really what it is.

This is kind of organizational.

Our ability to synthesize community feedback in a way that does this.

Let the community know what's going on.

Know why it's important.

And also hear from the community about stuff that they know.

But given them the information, does that change their feedback?

I think this also includes the budget forms that are more interactive.

It's participatory budgeting.

We're measuring, that would be the, the program or the policy isn't just overall, you know, we're looking at policing, it would be, you know, homicides, planning it would be, which is today approved, so, so,

and to stay above.

Give enough of what we three have all talked about.

We chose to measure out of all those, measure or identify because the measure is really going to give us the best assessment on if we're doing something or not.

We're trying to figure out what to shift.

Again, it goes back to, um, which is, well, before, you know, when we were using the HACS, you know, the importance of people knowing what, and like, things are less chaotic with the amount of people who I feel like...

So then, what we're saying is, no win is winning, so we got accountability.

This is about reaching broadly.

Decide how to measure success versus failure.

To pull the plug on things that aren't working until that's part of a success.

And to figure out how to measure progress.

So there's a plus and a minus?

They've lost faith, and so they just tune out.

Because if we were successful, every meeting, you'd lose a lot of faith.

Because.

Or to do what?

because I think if the goal was I never ever hear I didn't know that, that means we made our information accessible which means not only did I hear you, I understood it and I learned something and I could attend that meeting and I got it on my terms and I digested it in my way and I understood the outcome

It doesn't mean you have to like the outcome, but you understand it.

I think that's...

I think we would drop success to your point.

And then we're reporting the why, is what I'm still looking for, on the why it matters.

Why would you feel inclined to do that as a politician?

Well, because this says, to no one, we're winning.

That's a positive.

Definitely let them know about the positive things that we're doing.

I'm with you on that.

Drop success.

What is the benefit that they get by us telling them?

Active and informed participation with the residents.

to ensure that people are aware of what's going on in their own community, to ensure that we implement, to ensure that this is about getting to hear, to ensure awareness, to ensure they will have more confidence in their elected officials.

Too much, too much.

Encourage active and informed participation.

And this we need to make encouraged stronger.

Does driving make us seem to control it because we're the drivers?

Are you liking where this is going Michael?

This is part of it.

This is how we know we got better at external communication.

So I would say, encourage informed participation in government with justice to ensure awareness and activity.

Like, the activeness policy or the idea of engagement.

I think a lot of them, they don't

Not that they won't have any part of the government, they just want to note the folks that we put there, that ultimately us and the entire, that they can have confidence in.

I mean I think it captures, I think it captures the importance, I think especially for our communities that have been the victims of city decisions, never feel like something would do you.

All residents feel like they were part of the solution.

That's not a verb in all that stuff.

This is a goal without a verb, Starr.

I thought so too.

We can do this, we can combine these two and say whatever, drive, inform, participation, so all residents feel like they are in this solution.

He was wordsmithing.

This is how we get better.

Informed participation is key, but also all roles.

To me, that speaks to what Lloyd said.

That's not really a concern for Greenbrier.

The reason I thought about it was because of what Lloyd said.

We've got dry, informed participation.

Are you all over there semantically writing?

No, we're doing good.

I hear word choice change.

Addiction is important.

I'm hearing it.

I know this too, we need to say the solution.

Who knows, but I doubt it.

All residents, and why did the person with the worst kid already get the job?

It was their value.

And you need to leave a note for the kids to tell them what to do and they need to be able to read it.

There's a practical application.

when you make something go to foster collaboration and efficiency.

Collaboration, efficiency, and trust.

for too long the left side has gotten I know now you guys are top of the charts

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