Escanaba City Council Meeting January 11th, 2022: "Smart Zones"

Escanaba's townhall was a positive step in the adjustments needed to encourage this small town to be a place where people invest, live and thrive. It was also a productive meeting because it was informative to city council members in terms of how procedures work and why they exist. You will notice that from prior meetings until this meeting there is a higher sense of team cohesion and sense of direction (Go back to the Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing, and Adjourning stages and some of the exhibited behaviors of groups. Tuckman's Stages). There will naturally be differences throughout their time in office but if they focus on actionable steps to improve future prospects and how their choices impact the lives of residence they will be accomplish much of what they set out to do.

The good news is they are taking an additional step to increase personal-professional knowledge of how to manage a city and the ability to work together in a way that builds trust with community members (Notice in the presentation the focus on transparency and shared goals.) Newer and younger city council members would likely find it beneficial to be familiarized with official rules, regulations, and laws so they don't step in legal potholes. Sometimes when members enter into public life they may not have all of the experience needed to make difficult decisions in complex environments. This is where organizations like the Michigan Municipal League can be helpful to new administrations where ideas and resources can be shared among municipal members. 

Another step the team could take would be to take a look at personality attributes and area of interests and try and match that with roles and responsibilities. The benefit is that it can create increased engagement and motivation of team members because they already have the natural focus. One would want to of course keep in mind over interest in an area which could make someone blind. Where that might occur you may want multiple people working on that topical area. (See Personality Traits and Team Cohesion , Path-Goal Theory and Higher Performance Path-Goal)

As a side note. The speaker did a great job of connecting the concepts that universities can draw resources and provide an attractive draw for young people to move into the area. They also have the ability to use their intellectual resources to improve their communities and give "real life" experience (...thinking how things connect between different institutions and activities to create net positives community. The more you do that, according the a theory on innovative transactions, the higher the growth rate. It is also possible to also expand the system by new lines of "net positives" that come from efficient use of resources to create ROI in clusters.) That of course relies on the ability to attract and retain diverse faculty from a broad range of backgrounds that can help students prepare bright futures. While Escanaba is a small town nestled in the woods and lake in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan it has significant potential as an investment draw. (Small Business Online Success and Business Incubators)