Transparency is the disclosure of material information to the residents about the governing of their assets and rights.   Efficacious practices in disclosure and candor allow residents to be trusted partners.

BASIC PRINCIPLES:  

1. If there is a problem, acknowledge it and fix the underlying issue so it is not repeated.

2. Utilize full disclosure and fact-based decision making with full disclosure to balance interests and achieve consensus and fairness

3. Govern with candor and address issues:  Be forthcoming and fix controversial practices such as contractor bonuses; “partnerships” vs. competitive bidding; side-letter agreements; closed door discussions of development of public land/buildings, etc.

4. Reestablish resident access to our self-serve transparency tools (Questys and OpenGov) rather than continuing the high cost of expensive record requests

Embracing Transparency

Transparency reduces the cost of storing documents and allows employees the ease of online search criteria to find documents

• July 2022: Staff acknowledged the loss of the city’s zoning records with no known back up. Today, we still do not have a zoning map.

• Our purchasing manager no longer has a comparative purchasing tool to reduce costs by selecting lower costs vendors.

• Employees must manually search and file paper documents

• Risks: We continue to store paper records offsite (monthly?), rather than use a nightly automatic offsite backup of digital records.