Mayoral Transition Team Wades Into Weeds:
By Jeremy Morrison
During its second convening, mayor-elect D.C. Reeve’s mayoral transition began to orient itself to the task of formulating a path forward for the incoming official, with individual team members beginning to discuss the specifics of their process.
Rev. Lonnie Wesley, the pastor of Greater Little Rock Baptist Church, told the group he had already begun the process of seeking community input on his assigned focus area of community engagement. He prompted the conversation by asking his congregation if anyone had anything they’d like tell the incoming.
“The responses have already started coming in,” Wesley laughed. “This is going to be fun.”
Reeve’s mayoral transition team is divided into sub-teams of two or more members, with each sub-team exploring a different area of focus. Due to Florida’s Sunshine Law, team members may not meet and discuss their topic outside of a public meeting, though individual members can take meetings on their own.
Some team members have already scheduled focus area meetings in order to not only engage the public but also to begin to jointly discuss their respective areas of focus. This week, one group will begin taking a look at how the city measures achievement, while another will begin discussing environmental issues as they pertain to the municipality.
According to Kelly Hagen, who is focused on the environment, she and fellow team member Christian Wagley will use their first meeting to map out how best to proceed with their work.
“Just kind of come up with a general plan on how to move forward,” Hagen said.
For the group focusing on educational needs within the community, team discussed dividing up the work. While Dr. Kim Thomas, principal of C.A. Weis Elementary School, said she would be engaging educator and hosting public meetings, Rusty Branch, vice president of community engagement for Innisfree Hotels, said he’d cover different ground.
“If you’re going to have town halls, I’ll probably have more service-providers type meeting,” Branch said.
Tosh Belsinger, vice president of development at Catalyst Healthcare Real Estate, said much of the work involved in assessing how the city could better accommodate construction and development will consist of one-on-one meetings with industry players who may be disinclined to discuss business pressure points in a public forum.
“To really sit down with them one-on-one is going to be more impactful than in groups,” Belsinger said.
Some team members raised the issue of how some areas of focus could potentially intersect, with team members thus benefiting from discussing the issues together and hearing the public input from each focus area.
“One tactic to alleviate that,” Reeves suggested, relaying experience from his time serving on the staff of Mayor Robinson’s transition team. “Four years ago we had joint meetings.”
Throughout the process of conducting their work, Reeves told his team members, they should keep track of who they are meeting with and how many members of the public they reach through input sessions.
“It’s kinda nice to know what your scope was,” Reeves said.
Transition team Chairman Tim Kinsella also told team members to lean on the work of previous municipal reports, or on other municipalities that appeared to be addressing a particular issue successfully.
“Plagiarism is not a dirty word here,” Kinsella laughed.
The mayor-elect’s transition team will next meet in two weeks, after members have had some time to dig into their individual areas of focus. A draft of the team’s final report, complete with recommendations from each team member is due Nov. 20, about the time Reeves is entering office.