City Manager Provides Inaugural Performance Review

The following is a memo shared by City Manager Yi-An Huang to the City Council.

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To the Honorable, the City Council:

Cambridge is an amazing city and I’m so grateful to the Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Councilors for this opportunity to serve. This is the community that has shaped my life, cares for my three children, and aspires to be a shining light for other cities and towns around the country. We are a vibrant, diverse, and beautiful city and I hope to reflect our best aspirations and abilities.

The City Manager Performance Review is a new process, reflective of the greater accountability, transparency, and feedback I have enthusiastically supported– especially for myself! Over the last year, I have experienced the weight this job carries. Our operational responsibilities cover everything from sewer infrastructure to after-school programs for children, and we are continuously holding conversations with the Council and our community about important, complex, and often contentious topics including housing affordability, building height and density, bike lanes, climate change, racial and economic justice, police reform, and much more.

Our city today runs with significant shared governance and transparency. By the end of 2023, we will have held 38 City Council meetings with public comment on every facet of city government. While the legal requirement is only that agendas are posted in advance, we post all discussion materials 48 hours before Council meetings to encourage more informed and open discussions. These debates aren’t always easy, but there is a beauty to the working of democracy in our city – a search for political consensus and a hope that a professional city staff can help inform and guide us to better answers.

I recognize that the City Manager, as the City’s chief executive, holds tremendous power and responsibility. This performance review process is an important part of accountability. I began working with the Council on this shortly after I started. We held a Government Operations Committee meeting on November 22, 2022 to review a draft performance review process, reviewed goals at a Special City Council meeting on February 16, 2023, approved goals and the final process at City Council on February 27, 2023 and conducted a mid-year check-in with the City Manager Evaluation Sub-Committee on June 22, 2023. This next step, submitting a review of goals and performance by November 15, 2023 will be followed by the City Council’s formal evaluation delivered at a Special City Council Meeting by December 20, 2023. I’m looking forward to the conversation and feedback.

Thank you to the City Council for this privilege and to our community for their trust.

Very truly yours,

Yi-An Huang
City Manager

 

Summary of Goal Performance

The following goals were approved at the February 27, 2023 City Council meeting. This was my first year in the role and therefore goals were more focused on organizational and management transitions. We recognized that over time, we would like to move toward more measurable metrics. We also set goals recognizing that they should be both achievable and ambitious. I have used as a rule of thumb that goals should have an ~80% chance of success.

Strengthening HR has been a major area of focus and I’m thrilled that Rae Catchings, our new Chief People Officer, joined the City in June. A number of the goals not fully met fall within the HR area, and this represents both the longer-than-expected lead time to fill the position and a re-prioritization of work as Rae onboarded and provided me with recommendations informed by her experience and expertise. I hope that we can continue to set concrete and ambitious goals, while also recognizing that there is value in building in some flexibility for learning and adaption.

Area	Goal	Status
Leadership	On-track to implement universal pre-K by fall 2024 in close collaboration between City and School leadership teams	MET
	On-track with action plan to address police reform in response to the death of Arif Sayed Faisal in January 2023	MET
City Council Relationship	Implement city manager performance review process with finalized details before March 2023 and review delivered in December 2023	MET
	Work with Council to establish and finalize process for Council-City goal setting to begin January 2024 in new term	PARTIALLY MET
Management	Hire key senior leadership positions (e.g., Chief of Staff, Chief of Strategy and Implementation, Chief of Equity and Inclusion, Chief People Officer, Director of Emergency Management)	MET
	Create management and organizational structure that supports improved coordination and implementation of City priorities	MET
	Begin implementation of goal setting and complete annual performance reviews for the senior management team in 2023 and establish plan for annual performance reviews for all non-union City employees in 2024	PARTIALLY MET
Community Engagement	Hire Director of Community Engagement and update community engagement approach with greater consistency across departments and sharing of best practices	PARTIALLY MET
	Hold nine regular resident meet and greets across different locations and parts of our community	MET
	Resident survey performance of >60% Excellent/Good on 2023 survey for overall performance of City government	MET
Culture	Implement annual employee engagement and satisfaction survey	NOT MET
	Hold nine City staff meet and greets	MET
ADEI	Create an equity and inclusion framework and updated goals and workstreams that increase equity, access, and inclusion for City staff and community	MET
City Operations	Hire new Department Heads at DPW, ISD, Water and TP&T	MET
	Review and update hybrid telework plan 2.0, including staff survey	PARTIALLY MET
Fiscal Management	Implement greater City Council input during the FY24 budget development process, including the following Finance Committee meetings prior to formal submission of the budget: 1) City Council budget priorities, 2) Capital budget, 3) Operating budget, 4) Police budget	MET
	Maintain strong fiscal position and AAA bond rating	MET

Leadership

Effectively carry out the vision and direction set by the City Council including through development of goals and strategies as well as work closely with the Council to lead the City through significant events and crises.

Goal	Status
On-track to implement universal pre-K by fall 2024 in close collaboration between City and School leadership teams	MET
On-track with action plan to address police reform in response to the death of Arif Sayed Faisal in January 2023	MET

We are on track to meet both goals in the leadership category. Our Universal Pre-Kindergarten program has been a long-standing City Council priority and will offer all four-year olds and prioritized three-year olds a high-quality early education. This is the largest FY24 financial commitment to new City programming and has required significant coordination between the City and Cambridge Public Schools. I’m grateful for the leadership of Superintendent Victoria Greer and her team, as well as Lisa Grant, the Executive Director of the City’s Office of Early Childhood (OEC). Lisa has brought best practices from around the country into our program design and incorporated an equity lens into key decisions. We will be ready for families to apply from December 1, 2023 to January 15, 2024 with classes beginning in September 2024.

This has been a heavy year with the shooting and death of Arif Sayed Faisal on January 4. Over the following days and weeks, I was in frequent conversation with the Mayor, Vice-Mayor, and City Councilors. Police Commissioner Christine Elow and I represented the City at a four-hour community meeting on January 12 and we met with the Council over more than six hours of public meetings on January 18 and January 25 to review our police department’s training, policies, and practices. Out of these discussions, we proposed a set of concrete actions to implement. On October 5, the District Attorney’s inquest process concluded, and a final report was issued along with transcripts, videos, and documents from four days of court proceedings across 29 witnesses and 53 exhibits. The court determined that Officer Liam McMahon’s action was not criminal and the District Attorney decided that charges would not be pursued.

This tragedy calls for continued commitment and the many actions we set out are on-track. We are negotiating with the police union and planning for the implementation of body cameras and a new policy to quickly release information following fatal police encounters. We have implemented improvements to our less lethal options and continue to explore additional tools, training, and policies. A procedural justice dashboard has been rolled out and we have brought in the Center for Policing Equity to analyze our data and provide recommendations. We have also hired 11 people into our Community Safety Department including two social work clinicians and six crisis responders who are in training and will begin providing a civilian response to emergency calls starting in 2024. Finally, we continue to work with the Police Executive Research Forum, an independent consultant, to review this event and seek out improvements in our policies and practices.

Over this year, I have tried to communicate transparently and clearly with the Council and community, and to act urgently in response to this tragedy. This has been the hardest work of my professional life and I hope that out of this heart-breaking tragedy, we will find meaningful changes to how we respond to these dangerous, complex events. I’m also so grateful for the leadership and partnership of Police Commissioner Christine Elow who has brought steadfast empathy, professionalism, and dedication to our community.

The City and the Council have also taken significant actions across several of our major challenges. On climate change, we have passed an amendment to the Building Energy Use and Disclosure Ordinance (BEUDO) to set a 2035 net zero goal for large commercial buildings, approved participation in the state’s Fossil Fuel Free pilot program, launched Electrify Cambridge, a new program to provide no-cost technical consults to residents on clean and green home energy upgrades, and rolled out accommodations for EV charging across sidewalks. On economic development, we have re-zoned the Alewife quadrangle after a robust and comprehensive community process. This re-zoning will help revitalize the neighborhood with improved infrastructure like a bike/pedestrian bridge, greater open space, and approximately 3,500 new housing units, including 700 affordable units. In all this work, City leaders have played critical roles in working with the Council and I’m proud of our collective leadership in getting important work done for our community in a way that has brought people together and honored our shared values and goals.

Finally, I have worked to build a greater presence for Cambridge in regional conversations. Over the last year, I have participated actively in Metropolitan Mayors, a coalition of the 16 cities and towns that form the urban core of Metro Boston. I’ve held meetings and visited with municipal leaders in Boston, Somerville, Watertown, Newton, Brookline, Malden, Melrose, Everett, Revere, and Chelsea. Recently, I testified together with Mayor Michelle Wu in Boston and Mayor Katjana Ballantyne in Somerville at the State Legislature Joint Committee on Revenue to push for approval of a local real estate transfer fee option which the City Council passed 9-0, first on March 16, 2020 and again this year on March 20, 2023. I have also been in touch with state leaders in the Healey Administration and had discussions with Secretary Kate Walsh at Health and Human Services, Secretary Ed Augustus at Housing and Livable Communities, Secretary Yvonne Hao at Economic Development, DCR Commissioner Brian Arrigo, and MBTA General Manager Philip Eng. Many of our greatest challenges and opportunities are regional and I’m committed to finding opportunities for Cambridge to be a key player as we seek to address homelessness, affordable housing, transportation, climate change, and economic opportunity.

City Council Relationship

Establish a collaborative and transparent working relationship with the City Council.

Goal	Status
Implement city manager performance review process with finalized details before March 2023 and review delivered in December 2023	MET
Work with Council to establish and finalize process for Council-City goal setting to begin January 2024 in new term	PARTIALLY MET

We are on track to implement the City Manager performance review process for 2023. I recognize that this is the first time we have gone through this together and expect that we will learn and find improvements for 2024. My hope is that we will establish an effective template and process that will endure and provide our community with accountability, transparency, and feedback for the City’s executive branch.

My original intention was to work with the Council over the summer to plan for how the new term would kick-off with Council-City goal setting in January 2024. I ultimately decided it would be more appropriate to begin these conversations with the Council-elect following the election. We have begun preparing for this, including contracting with a facilitator for a Council-only training and a Council-City training to begin building effective working relationships, setting norms, and developing a plan for shared goal setting and prioritization.

I have grown in appreciation for the relationship between the Council and the City. I have spoken often of shared governance and I believe this best describes our form of government. Political direction is set by the Council and it is the City’s job to bring data, analysis, and recommendations to the Council. The City is responsible for implementation and day-to-day operations and this provides us with a unique perspective on feasibility, constraints, and timing. This relationship is healthy when there is communication, collaboration, respect, and trust and I have worked hard on each of these fronts with the Council.

Management

Develop a strong City organization that has the people, processes, and systems to deliver on day-to-day operations and existing and new initiatives.

Goal	Status
Hire key senior leadership positions (e.g., Chief of Staff, Chief of Strategy and Implementation, Chief of Equity and Inclusion, Chief People Officer, Director of Emergency Management)	MET
Create management and organizational structure that supports improved coordination and implementation of City priorities	MET
Begin implementation of goal setting and complete annual performance reviews for the senior management team in 2023 and establish plan for annual performance reviews for all non- union City employees in 2024	PARTIALLY MET

Hiring for key senior leadership positions has been an important priority and we have filled a number of critical roles since I started. This has included Owen O’Riordan as Deputy City Manager, Kathy Watkins as Commissioner of Public Works, Rebecca Fuentes as Deputy Chief Operating Officer, Brooke McKenna as Transportation Commissioner, Tom Cahill as Acting Fire Chief, B. Kimmerman as Chief of Staff, Deidre Travis Brown as Chief of Equity and Inclusion, and Rae Catchings as Chief People Officer. I’ve brought on Jane Licurse as Strategy Advisor and she has built a strategy team within the Executive Office which has supported key projects. I therefore do not plan to fill the Chief of Strategy and Implementation role. The Director of Emergency Management role continues to be an important job, though we have prioritized recruiting for other positions. This role will fit into the Deputy City Manager’s organization and we expect to post the job in 2024.

Within the City Manager’s Officer, I have announced Matt Nelson as Director of Administration and Operations and he has been invaluable in coordinating Council meetings, agendas, major City events like the Dance Party and Danehy Park Family Day, and constituent services. I’ve also hired Dominic Warren as my Executive Assistant, and I’ve been grateful for both Stacey Cooper and Francesca Gaines who have been vital parts of my onboarding and continue to do a fantastic job keeping the Executive Office running smoothly and helping residents navigate City services.

This year has also seen significant retirements: Assistant City Manager of Fiscal Affairs David Kale and City Solicitor Nancy Glowa. I’ve been grateful for their leadership, many years of service, and especially, their kindness and support for me over the last year, bringing me up to speed on City affairs. They each have so much to be proud of, including the strong and capable leaders they have developed in their respective departments and a track record of dedicated and excellent service to our community. I’ve appreciated Michele Kincaid and Megan Bayer for taking on acting leadership responsibilities. We have run a rigorous process for the Assistant City Manager of Fiscal Affairs, and I was excited to recently announce the hiring of Claire Spinner, who has been the Chief Financial OFficer at Cambridge Public Schools, and she will start in early January.

Creating a clearer organizational structure has been a key priority. I’ve formalized the Deputy City Manager’s role as the Chief Operating Officer for the City and consolidated major operational departments within that portfolio. I’ve also organized key equity and inclusion departments together under the new Office of Equity and Inclusion and I believe this will create greater coordination, visibility, and connection for these teams. My ultimate vision is for all departments to have clear reporting, regular check-ins with their manager, and a strong connection to senior leadership both for organizational guidance and support.

Creating meeting structure has also been an important area of work. I established a regular leadership team meeting to organize major initiatives, align on important changes, and receive feedback. This bi- weekly forum for organizational discussion has shaped key decisions, deepened my understanding of the City, and strengthened leadership relationships. We have also held quarterly Leadership Together meetings that include directors and managers across the City to bring together, get feedback from and train a broader group of leaders.

Goal setting and annual performance reviews are best practices for high performing organizations, and we are committed to doing this across all our non-union staff and managers. The goal for 2023 has been partially met. We did not set goals for the leadership team but are conducting formal performance reviews for senior leaders by the end of this calendar year.

In our current state, annual performance reviews have been implemented in several major departments but are absent in other smaller departments. There has not been a more centralized coordination of these efforts and we are committed to both honoring what is working well today but also implementing a consistent City-wide approach built on best practices. This will be a big change and we will do this work thoughtfully as we approach a plan for 2024 performance reviews.

A final note is that building more effective digital systems and tools across the City continues to be a priority. I expect us to have more conversations in 2024 as we develop a plan for prioritizing digital transformation projects across HR, contracting, procurement, record retention, and resident services.

Community Engagement

Proactively communicate with the community, and create a range of opportunities for all stakeholders and residents to provide input and feedback, particularly communities whose voices are not typically heard by City Hall.

Goal	Status
Hire Director of Community Engagement and update community engagement approach with greater consistency across departments and sharing of best practices	PARTIALLY MET
Hold nine regular resident meet and greets across different locations and parts of our community	MET
Resident survey performance of >60% Excellent/Good on 2023 survey for overall performance of City government	MET

One of my early decisions was to create a Director of Community Engagement role. I recognized that our community engagement work across departments could be more coordinated and consistent, and wanted to respond to the Council’s desire to strengthen outreach to people less engaged with City Hall.

However, as I interviewed candidates, a couple of dynamics became clear. First, the vision for what community engagement represents was more complex than I realized. Engaging the community with human service programs looks different than designing a new park or receiving feedback on a bike lane. Second, I hadn’t articulated how this role would interact with our existing community engagement staff and departments heads. And finally, I hadn’t done much work to build buy-in across the organization. I ultimately concluded that none of the candidates were going to be set up to succeed, and it was important to pause.

Instead of the top-down approach of hiring a new leader who would have to define the role as a first task, I decided on a more inclusive, bottoms-up process that brought together our existing community engagement leaders and staff. We held more than ten meetings to understand the history of community engagement in the City, our current state, what is working well, pain points, and action steps for improvement.

We are planning to hire for this role but now with a clearer picture of the work, buy-in from our community engagement staff and department heads, and a stronger confidence that the position will be successful. I’m looking forward to sharing a fuller update at the upcoming November 20 City Council meeting. I believe this process reflects the values that I want to instill in the City – a willingness to make adjustments, pause and start over if something isn’t working, and commit to more inclusive and shared decision-making.

I have also made it a priority to hold more resident meet and greet events to hear directly from our community. I have exceeded the goal of having nine events and I have held 12 events from December 2022 through November 2023. This has included events open to all members of the public as well as more targeted outreach to segments of our community such as seniors, non-profit leaders, neighborhood associations, students, the disability community, and faith leaders. I’ve been so grateful for feedback during these times and I’m looking forward to continuing to do this going forward.

Finally, one of my goals was to maintain a high score on our 2023 resident survey for the overall performance of City government. We have met this goal, achieving a 69% Excellent/Good rating for 2023 compared to 64% in 2022, 66% in 2020, and 63% in 2018. This year, we experimented with adding several new questions and obtained benchmark data so that we could compare our results to other municipalities across the country. We will discuss the initial results at the November 20 City Council meeting and I’m looking forward to a fuller conversation about this important tool for incorporating greater representative data and resident feedback.

Culture

Define and establish a healthy culture across the City that fosters collaboration, trust, empathy, and effective and efficient decision making.

Goal	Status
Implement annual employee engagement and satisfaction survey	NOT MET
Hold nine City staff meet and greets	MET

Our new Chief People Officer, Rae Catchings, started in June and there have been several short-term priorities including moving the department to 689 Massachusetts Ave to create more space, filling key vacant positions, and addressing core HR operations. Rae has also been a critical partner on a number of goals, including the City Manager performance review process, hiring key leadership positions, senior leadership performance reviews, and telework 2.0.

Implementing an annual employee engagement and satisfaction survey remains an important priority, but it was not one that we were able to meet for this year. We reviewed options including utilizing existing state contracts, but ultimately decided that we could implement a higher-quality baseline if we moved this work to 2024.

While measuring our employee engagement and satisfaction will happen next year, our efforts to strengthen the City’s culture and support staff have continued. I have met the goal of conducting nine City staff meet and greets. From December 2022 to November 2023, I have held 13 events for employees. This has brought me across the City to all our major departments and included open Q&A and time to get to know staff and hear their concerns. One of the key desires I heard when I started was that staff wanted greater connection to leadership. I have tried to communicate more frequently and have sent 20 All Staff emails over the last year to announce important changes, process major events, and celebrate important dates.

In my first 90-day report, I talked about moving toward a culture of focusing on the right answer, setting realistic goals and delivering on them, asking for resources and elevating risks, believing in possibility, and valuing work/life balance. These continue to be important themes and reflect my desire to make an impact and act urgently.

However, over the last year, I have also recognized the need to emphasize creating a healthy and safe culture that is welcoming of feedback and treats everyone with mutual trust and dignity. Recently, Rae Catchings, our Chief People Officer, and Deidre Travis Brown, our Chief of Equity and Inclusion sent a joint message to All Staff to reiterate this commitment. I’m looking forward to partnering and supporting them in these efforts.

Anti-racism, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Advance anti-racism, diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts across the City, including strategy, organizational culture, HR, policy development, and service delivery.

Goal	Status
Create an equity and inclusion framework and updated goals and workstreams that increase equity, access, and inclusion for City staff and community	MET

The City has made significant investments in anti-racism, diversity, equity, and inclusion. We have signaled the values that are important to us and devoted resources to seminars, trainings, and major initiatives focused on revamping policies and procedures from an equity lens.

Over the last year, I’ve sought to recommit ourselves to this work. I created a new senior leadership position and Deidre Travis Brown is our first Chief of Equity and Inclusion. She assessed our existing efforts in early 2023 and we added budget for new positions within her team for FY24 that she is now hiring for. We have also established stronger working groups with HR to collaborate on strengthening existing policies, developing employee resource groups, and better addressing staff complaints and grievances. I’m excited about the work that has been done to create an equity and inclusion framework, updated goals, and workstreams and these will be presented at the November 20 City Council meeting.

Deidre has also led us toward a more inclusive planning process for employee events. We invited people from across the organization to lead the planning for Hispanic Heritage month and had 13 diverse staff design the event. This included food from three Hispanic and Latinx-owned restaurants, music and dancing by one of our amazing local artists, Fabiola Mendez, a showcase of employee stories on how they celebrate their heritage, and a trivia quiz. Participation in these events has increased and our recent Disability Inclusion Panel Discussion had 84 people in attendance.

Finally, we have also sought to create space within the organization to process difficult events. We held an employee forum at the main library on April 6 with in-person and virtual attendance to discuss the fatal police shooting of Arif Sayed Faisal with myself and the Police Commissioner. This was a difficult and raw conversation but also an important opportunity for City staff to ask questions and bring their perspectives forward, understand how we are approaching this tragedy, and see the actions we are taking. We also held a follow-up employee forum on October 26 to discuss the inquest report and update our staff on next steps and how we are seeking healing within our community. We had about 100 staff attend each of these events.

We have a beautifully diverse community and as a City organization, we are committed to both reflect that diversity and more openly engage with how we create an anti-racist, equitable, and inclusive culture. This is a journey that is uncomfortable at times, but I hope will lead us to a stronger and most just community, better and more equitable decisions, and greater trust among those who have not historically been represented.

City Operations

Oversee effective delivery of resident services including day-to-day operations, maintaining city infrastructure, and major capital projects.

Goal	Status
Hire new Department Heads at DPW, ISD, Water and TP&T	MET
Review and update hybrid telework plan 2.0, including staff survey	PARTIALLY MET

I have been thrilled to have Owen O’Riordan, our long-time Commissioner of Public Works, step into the role of Deputy City Manager and he has been a steady hand in keeping the day-to-day operations of our city running. We have met the goal of hiring new department heads including Kathy Watkins as Commissioner of Public Works, Peter McLaughlin as Commissioner of Inspectional Services, Mark Gallagher as Acting Managing Director of the Water Department, and Brooke McKenna as Transportation Commissioner.

The City is a complex technical and operational entity, and I have appreciated Owen’s deep experience on several fronts. He led us through a switchover to MWRA water and installation of new filter material in the Water department following a spike in PFAS readings in Summer 2022; implemented major changes to our Electrical department including a significant budget increase to address repairs and replacement of electrical infrastructure across the city; and reorganized staff to form a new Capital and Facilities Planning department which will both improve our ability to properly maintain our municipal buildings and support major decarbonization efforts in the coming years. These efforts have shown his ability to manage through crises, proactively reduce risk, and establish foundational capabilities for our future needs, and I'm thankful for his partnership.

We have partially met our telework goal. Our telework policy was finalized in Summer 2022 and has provided many City staff with greater flexibility for work-life balance. Over the last three years, we have learned to both take advantage of remote and virtual work as well as the importance of being together in- person. We are also on track toward revising our telework policy and expect this to be complete in December. The staff survey component of this goal will be included as part of the scope of the annual employee engagement and satisfaction survey to be conducted in 2024.

Finally, I’m proud of the work we have done with the Council to purchase new municipal lots. It has been a long-standing Council priority for the City to acquire more land. These new plots present opportunities for addressing our affordable housing crisis and providing sufficient space for critical Public Works operations. I’ve been grateful for Owen’s leadership as well as the work of our Law and Finance teams to guide us through these complex acquisitions which will help us meet our shared goals.

Fiscal Management

Provide effective financial management and oversight of the budget, ensuring fiscal stability while allocating resources to meet community needs.

Goal	Status
Implement greater City Council input during the FY24 budget development process, including the following Finance Committee meetings prior to formal submission of the budget: 1) City Council budget priorities, 2) Capital budget, 3) Operating budget, 4) Police budget	MET
Maintain strong fiscal position and AAA bond rating	MET

The City’s FY24 Budget was submitted on May 1, discussed during public hearings with the City Council on May 9, May 16, and May 18, and adopted on June 5. This year, the City adjusted the process to increase transparency and engagement with the Council and we met our goal of providing greater Council input in the budget process.

The City worked closely with the Finance Committee Co-Chairs and held public hearings prior to budget submission. The proposed budget reflected the Council’s goals and priorities, and we made significant commitments across affordable housing, homelessness and housing stability, early childhood / universal pre-kindergarten, climate change and sustainability, and safer streets. I worked closely with the Finance team to tie our overall spending to these major areas and provided a clear view in the Consolidated Spending section of the budget presentation.

We also engaged in substantive discussions on the budget and the City Council made formal requests for budget increases for affordable housing and for the Public Health department. The City worked to meet these requests and built in additional funding in the final adopted FY24 budget. I believe this collaborative approach is a good foundation for us to build on and continue.

An area of improvement is to build greater community input to our budget. We already have a robust Participatory Budget (PB) program and I’m excited about expanding this as we enter our tenth year. We have announced an increase in the funding available and expanded eligibility to ideas that would require operational funding. The PB program is an amazing opportunity for residents to shape where City funding goes, and a chance for people to understand what programs exist across the City and how the budget process works.

We have also met our goal of maintaining a strong fiscal position and AAA bond rating, which we achieved from all three major bond rating agencies. A high bond rating is not just a financial advantage that provides us with lower borrowing costs, but also a sign that our fiscal policies and management are secure, and that the City will have the financial strength to accomplish our long-term goals.

As we enter 2024 and begin planning for the FY25 budget process, I’m humbled by the strength of our financial position while also cautious about the overall economic environment. There are several economic headwinds that we are monitoring including persistently high interest rates, office and retail vacancies, an oversupply of lab space, struggling public transit options, and high construction costs.

While many of our major indicators were strong in 2022, we have seen slowdowns in 2023 and while we have significant resources, we will need to prioritize across both our operating and capital budgets given the number of existing commitments that we have already made. This will be an important discussion with the Council and I’m looking forward to bringing greater transparency and longer-term planning to these conversations.

Closing Thoughts

This has been an incredible year of lessons, trials, and joys and while I have grown so much over the last 14 months, I know there continue to be opportunities for feedback and learning.

A final note is that this amazing city is run by an amazing team. I’m so grateful for all the department heads, directors, managers, supervisors, and staff who show up every day to serve our community. The passion and dedication that I encounter inspires me and the successes we see are also theirs.

A final thanks to the City Council as we come to the end of this term. You have each brought an incredible dedication to our community and it shows in every conversation that we have had. I have been thankful for this opportunity to serve and the opportunity to work together with each of you.