City councilors and city staff spent a day-and-a-half at a retreat workshop aimed at translating strategic priorities into direction for the city manager's office and the next budget. Facilitator Josh told participants the session was about ‘‘what is and what could be’’ and that the workshop would produce direction to inform staff rather than immediate policy decisions.
The retreat grouped discussion around three top-tier priorities—housing, education and transit—and used a structured exercise labeled ‘‘future casting’’ to compare present-state facts with possible future decisions, tensions and trade-offs. The facilitator said the work was meant to ‘‘inform and direct’’ staff, not to produce a final budget: ‘‘We are not deciding anything today,’’ he told the group.
Participants spent several hours identifying tensions (for example, neighborhood resistance to shelters and the costs of low‑barrier shelter), trade‑offs (for example, prioritizing new units vs. preserving existing affordable units) and opportunities (such as using targeted capital to preserve at‑risk affordable housing). Staff presented 10‑year budget framing numbers for comparison: $110,000,000 for housing, $225,000,000 for education and $63,400,000 for transit as planning anchors.
Councilors and staff agreed on next steps to bring the retreat material into the municipal budget process. The city manager’s office will package the retreat’s direction into the fall and winter budget briefs and present options to council in the upcoming budget cycle so elected officials can prioritize funding choices with an understanding of the related tensions and trade‑offs. The only formal action recorded in the transcript was a motion to adjourn at the meeting’s close.
The retreat emphasized process as well as content: organizers urged participants to treat the retreat as collaborative design work and to prepare for follow‑up budget briefings in October through December that will translate the ideas from the workshop into prioritized options for council consideration.