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BACKGROUND The City provides a full array of services to the community, through departments with externally focused activities such as Operations Services, Library and Recreation, Economic Development, Engineering, Police, Community Development, and Fire. Internal services which support the delivery of those activities include the City Manager's Office, City Attorney's Office, City Clerk's Office, Human Resources, Finance, and Information Technology. In addition to the day-to-day operations of the City, a variety of new ideas, projects, and services are continually brought forward to the Council for consideration. Instead of approving new initiatives and activities throughout the year, the City Council uses a priority-setting process to assist in strategically leveraging limited City resources to meet the emerging needs of the community it serves. The current Council priorities-setting process has been in place for more than 17 years and was created to assist the Council in considering how to allocate City resources based on broad themes and categories. The Council worked collaboratively to constrain new projects and ideas to this two-year process, and typically did not add projects mid- cycle unless it was deemed essential. Through this biennial process, the approved Council priorities were presented as a work plan that guided staff and financial resource allocation decisions. DISCUSSION Existing Format— Work Plan Overview & Process The broad themes and categories in the Council's current priority-setting process have remained largely unchanged over the years, except for adding a COVID-19 Response category in 2021. The process has provided the Council the opportunity to engage with City commissions and committees, and community members, to learn about items of importance to them. Additionally, the process engaged City staff to provide input on emerging needs and allow the Council to consider prioritizing those items. These positive aspects of the current process should be retained. Over time, this approach has unintentionally created a dynamic in which the public believes that if their item is selected as a Council priority it is going to be resourced and completed within the two-year timeframe of the work plan; however, in practice this is not the case as there are more priorities than can be achieved in the two-year timeframe. The current Council priorities work plan has 78 projects that are in addition to the day-to-day operations, programs, and services provided by City staff. Historically, if projects were not completed in the two-year time frame, they were carried over to the following two-year work plan. At each 2-year interval, and sometimes in between, new projects were added in response to community and staff input. The list has been created with little consideration of available staff time or financial analysis at the time the work plan is approved. Page 2 of 4