Nine city employees received certificates Tuesday after completing a 15‑week management training delivered on‑site through a partnership with UCSB Professional and Continuing Education and a State of California grant.

The cohort’s capstone, titled "Let’s Talk, Santa Maria," recommends enhancements to the city’s language access policy to improve residents’ access to services and information in multiple languages, including Spanish, Tagalog and Mixteco, the presenters said.

Linda Lee, chief human resources officer for the City of Santa Maria, told the council the alignment project — a multi‑phase effort launched in 2019 to standardize and modernize internal processes — was reconceptualized in 2022 to emphasize training, performance management and succession planning. Lee said the GROW program brought UCSB instructors on‑site for one day a week over 15 weeks and reduced the program cost from $5,000 to $500 per participant through state funding.

The inaugural class included nine employees representing the city manager’s office, finance, community development and public works, who Lee said together contributed 78 years of institutional knowledge. Each learner completed at least 120 hours of instruction that covered project management, team building, negotiation, budgeting, leadership, human resources foundations and ethics, and produced a capstone project applying Lean Six Sigma principles to an administrative problem.

The cohort’s capstone team said an employee survey identified more than a dozen languages spoken by staff and recommended a coordinated language access plan that pairs internal translation resources with external interpretation and outreach to communities with limited English proficiency.

Lee recognized Cheng Wu as co‑project mentor, Don Jackson as a cohort mentor (identified in the presentation as library director) and Nikki Plata as program coordinator. The council presented certificates and members praised the participants for investing time outside normal work duties to complete the program.

No formal action was required from council on the presentation.