2023 03 22 CC Minutes, Retreat Transcribed by Brian Moran
MINUTES OF THE RETREAT MEETING OF THE CITY
COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF BAYTOWN
March 22, 2023
The City Council of the City of Baytown, Texas, met in a Retreat on Wednesday, March 22,
2023, at 3:10 P.M. in Fire Training Room of the Baytown Fire Training Center, located at 7022
Bayway Drive, Baytown, Texas, 77521, with the following in attendance:
Laura Alvarado Council Member
Sarah Graham Council Member
Kenrick Griffith Council Member
Heather Betancourth Council Member
Jacob Powell Mayor Pro Tern
Mike Lester Council Member
Brandon Capetillo Mayor
Mayor Capetillo convened the March 22, 2023, City Council Retreat Meeting with a quorum pre-
sent at 3:10 P.M., and with all members present.
1. DISCUSSIONS
a. Discuss City Council's Strategy,Alignment, and Goals.
The meeting started with the Mayor's kick-off speech which was then followed by City Manager
Jason Reynolds's icebreaker to find three unique commonalities among the Directors and Council.
After, Mr. Reynolds introduced the strategy, alignment, and goals based on their FY2024 goals
and further explained the deliverables from the January 2023 Retreat. From that Retreat, the ob-
jectives described for Council regarding positive leadership from Consultant Chad Wright in-
cluded: a Relational Objective, Open Communication, Nuanced Conversations, Valuing
Leadership Health and Capacity, and Building Trust. Mr. Reynolds then relayed Council's con-
sensus that, as a team, they would continue to build trust and discuss uncomfortable things. He
emphasized the importance of being a collective unit that will successfully move forward together.
The current Retreat progressed with four discussion topics that had five minutes allotted to each
topic.The topics included FY 24 Priorities,Blunt Why, Strategic Overview(How will they do it?),
and the Big Ask (Priorities).
Council Priorities
Mr. Reynolds reminded everyone about the Council's FY2024 priorities from the January 2023
Retreat. Critical Infrastructure and Traffic Flow, Economic Prosperity, and Beautification and En-
vironmental Stewardship had been identified as top priorities from the five identified in the Bay-
town Strategic Plan.
City Council Retreat Meeting Minutes
March 22,2023
Page 2 of 2
Blunt Why
Mr. Reynolds introduced the Blunt Why discussion which identified the misalignment between
resources and ordinances as a significant concern.The Imagine Baytown 2017-2022 strategic plan-
ping process was discussed,and Mr. Reynolds concluded that it gave the organization purpose and
direction. However, core services and master plans were left out of the five directives for the
FY2023-2027 Strategic Plan. It was communicated that all those resources should work together
on the annual budget.
Assistant to the City Manager Carol Flynt and Mr. Reynolds facilitated the next part of the meeting
as they discussed the misalignment between their processes and plans. The Council Members and
City Staff shared their views and identified both citizen and Staff dissatisfaction as the impacts of
the misalignment.
Strategic Overview
In this discussion topic, Mr. Reynolds introduced their strategy model. The attendees discussed
their community vision, strategic goals, strategic plans and programs, implementation, evaluation,
and assessment. In addition, they discussed how those should be interconnected. The three ques-
tions asked to those in attendance were: What was one thing that stands out about the content
above? What was confusing, or what was missing? How could they maximize Council's value,
role, and contribution to the process?
The identified missing components were: evaluations/assessments, SMART goals,citizen engage-
ment, scorecards, real-time data, seeing/explaining the connection, communication, and realistic
timelines.Maximizing the Council's value,role,and contribution to the process was also discussed.
Big Ask
The meeting ended with the Big Ask discussion topic. In this section of the meeting,the organiza-
tion was requested to focus on identifying and understanding their priorities for the next 1.5 years.
Mr. Reynolds identified core services, integrated strategic priorities, and evaluations/assessments
as their top three areas to focus on understanding the priorities moving forward.
2. ADJOURN
With there being no further business to discuss, Mayor Capetillo adjourned the March 22, 2023,
City Council Retreat Meeting at 4:45 P.M.
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