Roswell leaders say retreat aligned council, staff and pushed for measurable goals

Councilwoman Sarah Bon said the recent mayor-and-council retreat gave elected officials and staff "a sense of alignment" and practical, measurable goals to guide city work. "It was like drinking water through a fire hose," she said of her first retreat, describing how the sessions accelerated onboarding for newly elected members.

Mayor Pro Tem, who hosted the podcast episode, said staff organized the sessions and presented candid assessments that helped the council understand trade-offs and operational constraints. "They weren't there to perform," the Mayor Pro Tem said, praising staff for preparing material quickly and sticking to facts.

The retreat emphasized a bottom-up approach to setting priorities this year: council members listed priorities and staff then assessed feasibility and resource needs. Bon said that approach highlighted gaps and forced frank conversations. "Nothing was sugarcoated," she said, adding the format made it easier to balance resident and business needs against budget and operational realities.

Speakers credited long-tenured staff with providing institutional memory and practical context. That historical perspective, they said, helped avoid repeating past mistakes and shaped discussion of options such as public safety facility siting, parking decisions and economic development work in progress.

A recurring theme was measurement: Bon quoted a common management maxim — "you can't manage what you can't measure" — to argue the city needs benchmarks and realistic expectations for both near- and long-term objectives. The pair said those benchmarks will make future votes and policy choices easier to evaluate and defend.

The retreat’s top takeaways will inform a set of goals the council is scheduled to finalize on the 13th, the speakers said. The episode closed with a reminder that the city plans to continue emphasizing transparency and collaboration between elected leaders and staff.