In Part 5, the final episode, of our series on up-and-coming innovative city, Lancaster, PA., Director of public works, Stephen Campbell and Mayor Danene Sorace join me to share some final advice for those looking to follow in their footsteps.
In the past four episodes, we've taken a comprehensive dive into the innovative work underway in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. As new leadership has brought a wave of new ideas and philosophies, we can see firsthand what's possible with the right structure and people in place to make it happen. Our hope is that Lancaster's story will inspire other local governments regardless of size to work toward breaking down silos, focus on accomplishing citywide goals, and really foster a culture of innovation.
More info:
Featured government: Lancaster, PA
Episode guests:
Danene Sorace, Mayor
Stephen Campbell, Director of Public Works
Visit govlaunch.com for more stories and examples of local government innovation.
Lindsay: (00:05)
Welcome to the Govlaunch podcast. Govlaunch is the Wiki for local government innovation and on this podcast, we're sharing the stories of local government innovators and their efforts to build smarter governments. I'm Lindsay Pica-Alfano, co-founder of Govlaunch and your host. In the past four episodes, we've taken a comprehensive dive into the innovative work underway in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. As new leadership has brought a wave of new ideas and philosophies, we can see firsthand what's possible with the right structure and people in place to make it happen. Our hope is that Lancaster's story will inspire other local governments regardless of size to work toward breaking down silos, focus on accomplishing citywide goals and really foster a culture of innovation. Today, Director of public works, Stephen Campbell and mayor Danene Sorace join me to share some final advice for those looking to follow in their footsteps.
Lindsay: (01:04)
Thank you both for being here today for our listeners who are new, can you quickly introduce yourself or Danene? Can you reintroduce yourself and share a bit about your role? Danene, let's start with you.
Danene: (01:15)
Hi Lindsay, my name is Danene Sorace. I am the mayor of the city of Lancaster in Pennsylvania, and I have been in this role since 2018.
Stephen: (01:26)
My name is Stephen Campbell. I'm the director of public works for the city of Lancaster. I have been here since January of 2020. So I've been here for about 17 months.
Lindsay: (01:38)
Great. Well, a theme I see Danene we might want to touch on this a little bit is you have a lot of new leadership coming in and that might be necessary really for all the cultural shifts that you're trying to make. Perhaps we'll touch on that a bit later if it comes up, but, as mayor, would love for you to set the tone by sharing a summary of your vision for Lancaster. And then we can break down some of the initiatives more specifically supporting this vision.
Danene: (02:02)
The vision for the city of Lancaster is to create a stronger, more equitable city block by block. And we believe that as a city of 60,000, that we are small enough where we can do the kind of innovation that we've been longing to do and big enough that it matters and that the work that we're doing here is something that can draw from big cities and small cities and also inform big cities and small cities across the nation.
Lindsay: (02:40)
Stephen, this vision is not unlike those of other local governments I've talked to. The main difference is that Lancaster is really putting their money where their mouth is so to speak and letting this vision really guide the work across departments. We've talked with almost every other major department at this point. Now we're bringing in public works. From your perspective, what strategies have been put in place to ensure all this work aligns with your citywide goals?
Stephen: (03:04)
Thank you very much for the question. A key aspect of what we've been trying to do is to realign a lot of the work, whatever DPW had been doing before we've aligned it to be much more vision focused. So where we had several different construction entities, one serving wastewater, one serving water, another serving streets, often doing very similar work. We aligned all of those things under a construction division of the department of public works. The public right of way is what most people would understand as the transportation and the city engineering function. The sustainability and the environment is what many people might understand as stormwater, the urban tree canopy and green infrastructure, and then utilities, both wastewater and water are seen as a single entity related to how we deliver good water to the city, whether it's good, portable water and or deliver the wastewater away from the users and deliver good water back into the Conestoga river.
Lindsay: (04:21)
So you're saying that even within the department, it was relatively siloed before. Bringing it all under one group, if you will, is getting you more focused on the vision and able to, um, to deliver on, on some of those promises, correct?
Stephen: (04:36)
It's a very good question. There used to be about 12 silos and we've reduced that to four working entities. And it did mean consolidating things that were common in several of those silos under one division, so that we have the ability to manage the work and the resources differently to share resources where we can, we have the ability to do some self performance of the work of the construction work as we can. It also gave us a lot more control over the means of producing that work. When, where, and how do we pave certain of the streets, do some of the trenching, and which people and which skill sets were available to do that work rather than being stymied by these people are not available for that work because they're working under wastewater, not under water.
Danene: (05:28)
I think that one of the things that you hit on was the fact that Stephen is new and has been with the city for 17 months. And it took us a full year to hire our director of public works. And Stephen has not only done this reorganization, but has been really addressing some of the cultural changes within the department of public works that is fueling the kind of anecdotes that are coming both from staff and residents about what they see as being different related to the performance of their jobs. And I think that the reorganization, you know, form following function, as well as the culture and the focus on culture are things that Stephen has really latched onto to elevate the work. And so, Stephen, can you just talk a little bit about the vision that you've created within the department of public works and the way that you're organizing, not just the teams and their performance and their structure, but also around a shared purpose?
Stephen: (06:33)
Absolutely. Thank you. So three weeks into my stay here, COVID visited us, but I was fortunate that before we were shut down with COVID, I was able to have several visioning sessions with our leadership. And we, as a department came up with a slogan that we are dedicated to your quality of life. It means that if you are in public works, we are about making sure that the infrastructure by which you live your life on a day-to-day basis, live work and play is supported by the department of public works. Cultural transformation is an integral part of that vision of being dedicated to your quality of life. And we deal with that in two or three different ways. One is we invite all team members to contribute. They are the subject matter experts on the street, in the work of the day-to-day.
Stephen: (07:27)
So the solid waste team has contributed great ideas for being revenue generators in solid waste. And to upgrade the adopt a block program. The streets maintenance people were the ones who said, you know what, if we are given the right support, we are able to self perform a lot of these streets. And that increases the pride of the work that we do, hopefully the quality of the work that we do, and our ability to be much more responsive to the needs of paving throughout the city. Issues of security were raised by all members. And so we were able to address those, and we were able to take on the ability to share resources so that instead of having these silos, people could say, I'm using a backhoe for this purpose. You need a backhoe for that other purpose. Let's think of it as a backhoe or a backhoe entrenching operation, whether it's for water, wastewater or other purposes, not siloed the way that it had been.
Stephen: (08:30)
Secondly, we invite participation from those that we serve, which is a huge challenge for all of us, because it means going out to the public and inviting them to tell us all the things that they think we're not doing as well as they would like us to do, and to find ways of being able to listen and respond to those. And one of the areas that we have seen very successful is the adopted program. The adopt a block program, which is frankly funded by the state under the key Pennsylvania beautiful program is one that provides resources, tools, bags, et cetera, for cleaning streets. But we found that many organizations, a bicyclist organization, just as a small community group, they are interested in adopting bike lanes or trash bins or other things, as long as it's helping make the city work better, where we're trying to break down the barrier that it's an adversarial, you serve us type of a relationship and it's more cooperative. We are Lancaster type of a relationship.
Lindsay: (09:43)
Yeah, that's fantastic. And sounds more cost-effective and much more efficient when you're sharing resources and you're able to meet the needs of your community a lot faster and more seamlessly. So great advice and Danene, thank you for that follow up question, um, to really draw out all of those great takeaways. And now this question is for each of you, what are some of the biggest challenges you've faced when keeping various departments and projects on track in line with this vision?
Danene: (10:10)
I would say that as a small city, we are biting off a lot. And in the process of doing that, we are constantly needing to reassess our priorities on the projects and anybody in city government knows that you can come in, walk into the office and think that you have a work plan for your day. And it can be up ended in a minute by an emergency or other crisis that takes our eyes off of the work we thought we were doing to what is right in front of us. And so I think that that's just a constant, constant struggle. I often think about being an elected leader means that you're walking across a swinging bridge and the wind is blowing, and there are all kinds of things that are trying to knock you off that bridge to get you to the other side.
Danene: (11:00)
And some of it is just, you know, how life works and some of it's politics and some of it has to do with financial resources. Some of it has to do with staff turnover and changes. And we're really excited about the new staff that are joining the city of Lancaster. You prompted this earlier in the conversation, Lindsay, with just Stephen being here for 17 months and the fact that we're bringing talent in from all over the country. We have a new city planner from Buffalo, we have a new chief data technology officer. Who's from Mobile, Alabama. We have Stephen and his counterpart, Chris Delfs, who we recruited from the District of Columbia. And so these are just a few of the people that we've been adding to our ranks, who are bringing to us experience from other larger metropolitan cities who want to have a hand in shaping a smaller city.
Danene: (11:52)
So finding talent and recruiting talent, definitely have impacted keeping projects on track and in line with the vision and things that I thought we were going to be able to quickly knock out. Like a 311 system has taken us like this is my fourth year in office, and that was a goal from the beginning, but we have to build our data capacity and technology capacity and we just don't have it. So that has really slowed us down. So I would say staffing, capacity and just the bandwidth to advance the projects that we're all hungry to advance to the benefit of our residents.
Stephen: (12:32)
Some of the things that are challenges for the department of public works. And I think the larger city are the issues related to communication. Communication with the public and being able to develop and build a level of trust where we can continue to build on that sense of goodwill. I believe the city of Lancaster is one of those places that leads with its values and trust is a very fragile element, no matter how well you're doing for a host of different projects, the moment people feel that their trust has been violated is when the slings and arrows of you are not listening to me. You're not doing what I need you to do come back and you have to rebuild again, those levels of trust. I think part of how we're doing it is with our engage Lancaster platform through the department of neighborhood engagement, a renewed sense of being empathetic to the people that we're serving, and also being empathetic to the people who do the serving, honoring the efforts of our staff who contribute their time, effort, and talents to the work that's necessary to get done and often go unrewarded or unnoticed.
Stephen: (13:53)
And a key element to all of this is trying to build, continue to build on a sense of shared vision, a vision that is shared not only by the people who do the serving, but shared by the people who are being served. These engagement activities via engage Lancaster, each of our initiatives is something that invites the public to be part of the design, development, decision-making process. We're not always as successful as we would like to be, but it's an invitation that's very important.
Lindsay: (14:27)
Stephen, you brought up engage Lancaster, which is really important. Something we touched on in previous episodes. You've obviously as a city spent a lot of time and put a lot of resources behind more transparency for your community and ways for them to engage Lancaster. Engage Lancaster is a great platform. It keeps your team accountable because now you have this easy way of sharing projects. Are there strategies that you've tried that have been more successful in keeping all of your teams internally really zeroed in on this vision? I know that that can be a little difficult. Danene, you brought up in a previous episode, you know, you get your eight people in executive leadership on the same page. Well, how you get the people that work for them on that same page. And it tends to become a game of telephone when you have a lot of employees. So what strategies have you really taken that have made the communication and sticking to this vision successful?
Danene: (15:22)
I think that what I said previously sums it up in a lot of ways. It is both internal and external communication to keep everybody on the same page. I'll also just say that the way that our engagement team and communications team is now operating across the city and working so hard to build that has been really, really key. Last fall we did an engagement survey of our employees, and we learned a lot from that process. And part of that was that one of the key learnings was we needed to build better relationships between our departments. And so certainly that starts right at the top with the executive leadership team and the ways in which they are meeting and engaging and talking to one another outside of our weekly staff meetings and our strategic planning retreats that we hold on a quarterly basis.
Danene: (16:21)
And also our communications team, working through the internal communications that are necessary to keep all the wheels on the tracks going all in the same direction. It can't be understated how important the communication is and the engagement internally, as well as externally. And we've really moved away from any individual department doing one-offs and going it alone and doing engagement activities or, um, events, because we know that we are stronger when we do the work altogether and that we are better meeting the needs of residents by breaking down those silos so that when you're coming to an event you're seeing and talking to, uh, folks that are in the know about what's happening, not only in their department, but can at least connect you to another resource within the city for an issue that you may be bringing to bear.
Danene: (17:18)
And the most wonderful example of that Lindsay was neighborhood week in June. And we had an opportunity to bring all of our departments out for a series of evenings. Monday through Thursday, we, we visited each of the quadrants of the city. All of our departments set up tables. We were really pushing engage Lancaster so that people knew where to go to find out about information, about projects that were happening today, as well as those that are coming up, uh, in the future. And so that was just a wonderful opportunity. The first objective in this was to connect with residents, but the secondary objective that was, you know, we kind of hit out of the park unwittingly where the connections that staff made to other departments when they were walking around seeing what else was being tabled and who else was there. And so it was a great opportunity for our staff to connect again, especially coming out of COVID when we were all working remotely and everybody sort of scattered back into their respective areas, and there were fewer opportunities for us to get together.
Lindsay: (18:33)
I love it. It's like a city road show. So Stephen, back to you, let's talk about some of your work more specifically. I want to talk about the safe streets initiative. Can you explain what this is for our listeners and really how this ties back to the vision we've been talking about?
Stephen: (18:48)
Yes, I can. So the safe streets initiative is something that had been started a few years ago, as a means of recognizing what is necessary to keep pedestrians, bicyclists and, vehicles safe on this city streets. It addressed things like speed, the speed of the vehicle intersections, how people interact with each other. Shortly thereafter, there was this national, and if you will, international movement called vision zero, which uses best management practices internationally, to try to determine how to make streets safer, specifically how to ensure that there are no deaths or serious injuries on the streets of any particular municipality. We adopted vision zero as a means forward. We've had a lot of outreach to the community about what are the areas that are most concerning to them.
Stephen: (19:42)
We've identified a high injury network, including the types of intersections and interactions that are problematic, where there are truck routes or state routes versus local routes, lack of vision to be able to see around an intersection or to see around the corner, et cetera. So the safe streets initiative has blossomed into a multifaceted aspect of how to address vision zero. It is addressing speed control, parking, bikes, and alternative modes of transportation. And it's also addressing the needs of neglected communities, communities where they may have similar traffic or speed concerns, but these are communities that may not have had the focus in the past that we are now able to do in a spirit of diversity, equity and inclusion. So one of our largest projects, as a matter of fact, is the South Duke Street corridor, which goes straight through, um, the Southeast quadrant of the city of Lancaster.
Stephen: (20:48)
And it is although key funding is from the state of Pennsylvania. We're using that as a spearhead for reaching out to the community to learn about other aspects, how do they safely get to school to the supermarket, et cetera, which intersections are problematic? What kinds of bus lanes or bus routes or bus shelters are problematic, et cetera. Um, and into the very types of community engagement opportunities that the mayor was talking about, we continue to bring out the street opportunities and the bike lanes and elicit input from the people who are likely to use it. We don't rely only on engage Lancaster, which is a data and internet based platform. But we reach out in hard copy door hangers, private and public meetings, so that we can get as much input from a variety of different sectors as possible.
Stephen: (21:46)
But vision zero, we hope will be the way forward in creating a safer, more pedestrian friendly city. One that, that accelerates the utilization of bikes and bike lanes, and allows us within the rubric of safety to re-examine issues that may have been problematic in the past, such as what are the better ways of parking or enforcing our parking regulations and how do we address, um, connectivity between one park and another. If we think of the park system as a network of parks, rather than individual separated parks, then how one passes from one park to the next, as a pedestrian or as a bicyclist becomes critical to the design.
Lindsay: (22:34)
Danene this question is for you. Can you talk a little bit more about the strategic plan and how you're fitting that into your everyday work, goals for delivery on that strategic plan, et cetera.
Danene: (22:46)
The strategic plan really was born out of my campaign for mayor and just the opportunity to knock on thousands of doors across the city, and really think about what I was hearing at the doors with what I was seeing in my time on city council and hearing from staff and also what the data were showing and the four strategic priorities of strong neighborhoods, secure income, safe streets, and sound government have really shaped the direction of all of our work. And, uh, the question now just automatically comes up, okay, how does this initiative fit within the fourth strategic priorities? And if it doesn't fit, it doesn't have a place, uh, because we are so lean in terms of what our operations are and how we're doing the work. And so it's, it's been incredible in terms of an organizing document and focus. And also at the same time, when I look back on our strategic plan now after four years, and we're in the midst of refreshing it now, I think, wow, it was so quaint.
Danene: (23:59)
And so horse and buggy and now we're like getting into a car because we've come a long way in the last four years both in terms of building our team, learning and understanding what we need to do, and also just the changing conditions in the community. And certainly COVID has a lot to do with that. And so I would say that the strategic plan has really evolved and a really specific way that it has evolved is taking the safe streets concept and aligning it with vision zero, which I had never heard of vision zero before. And so when our staff brought that to me and I was like, this is exactly what I mean by safe streets, that there are no fatalities and that serious injuries are significantly reduced in ways in which children walking to school.
Danene: (24:48)
Uh, other pedestrians walking around our city, which is very walkable, as well as cyclists and drivers of cars are able to travel through the city safely. And that means education. It means engineering, and it also means enforcement. And so that's all really good stuff and it all is coming with the support of other communities who've adopted vision zero. So we're not doing this on our own, and we're aligning our efforts with what other communities have done, what they've learned and applying it here in Lancaster. So for me, it's just elevated the safe streets platform to the next level of engagement and engagement in a global way, because there are cities across the globe that have adopted vision zero.
Lindsay: (25:35)
Yeah, we've covered quite a few on Govlaunch. People have come on and share different initiatives and technologies that they're using to help drive that goal. You all in Lancaster have talked about a lot of great initiatives and your work to develop the strategic plan and to talk about your vision more holistically. And the takeaway for me is that I've never talked with a team in local government that is so united on this vision for Lancaster and how you're bringing the community in to really help shape the future for the city is inspiring. And something that we're really excited to be able to share with this global community of local governments who subscribe to the podcast. But in closing would love to get one final piece of advice or a sentiment you'd want to leave our listeners with. Stephen, let's start with you.
Stephen: (26:24)
Thank you very much for that.I do feel that it is palpable, that this is a place that leads with its values. One of the key things that attracted me to it after people had made me aware that the city exists and there are such, uh, such an opportunity as department of public works was that it it's the values that it leads with. To borrow from Simon Sinek. If we start with why this is what the city of Lancaster is doing, it's why is it important for the people of the city of Lancaster to be served in this way to be part of the solution, to be part of the, the discussion, and sometimes when it's not as successful as we would like to, to be part of how we recover from missteps is an incredible part of what municipal management and municipal government can be about. I think that that's the nature and the strength of the block strength index of the, of the block by block, strategic planning effort and, uh, something that has been inculcated in all of us as the, uh, executive leadership team. And hopefully we'll continue to instill in the broader government system of the city of Lancaster.
Lindsay: (27:40)
Danene, what would you add?
Danene: (27:41)
I am so humbled to work with this team. My take away and all of this is that the leadership really, really matters and rooting yourself into the values and the vision, it makes decision-making so much easier and it's like it's our compass and spending the time to do that has been painstaking and hasn't moved as fast as I would like it sometimes, but the reward of it now that we've planted and tended this vision and these values for four years, I think the momentum is really evident by the amount of work that our city is doing and the alignment among our team to do the work. And I just, I'm really humbled to work with this group of people. And I pour myself into their success because their success is this community's success. And I know that in my role as mayor, I'm going to be here for a time and the things that we are doing to institutionalize the changes that we are making such that they can continue to yield dividends in the future for our city residents to make the city stronger and more equitable is what the work is about. And I'm really clear about that. And that keeps me on the bridge regardless about what's coming at me.
Lindsay: (29:19)
Yeah, those are great points. And I want to thank you so much for being here today, Stephen and Danene, and then also Danene, for sharing all of your staff with Govlaunch the last few weeks to do this series. This is the first time that we've really taken a deep dive through this podcast series the innovative work of a local government. It's been so refreshing to go through the last few weeks and talk about innovative things that are happening in every single one of your departments. So being able to have all of this going on at the same time, I commend your efforts. Lancaster, you are officially on the map as a local government innovator. So we really look forward to sharing more of your work through the Govlaunch platform down the road. So thank you again so much for everything the last few weeks, this has been fantastic.
Danene: (30:02)
And Lindsay, thank you. I really I'm honored that Lancaster city is being profiled in this way from Govlaunch. And I really appreciate you helping us to elevate our work and hopefully this can help other communities.
Stephen: (30:17)
And I thank you as well. It's very exciting to see what work that Govlaunch does and the way that it is helpful and inspiring to those of us who are in the trenches, trying to get this work done. Thank you very much.
Lindsay: (30:31)
I'm Lindsay Pica-Alfano and this podcast was produced by Govlaunch the Wiki for local government innovation. You can to hear more stories like this, wherever you get your podcasts. If you're a local government innovator, we hope you'll help us on our mission to build the largest free resource for local governments globally. You can join to search and contribute to the wiki at govlaunch.com. Thanks for tuning in. We hope to see you next time on the Govlaunch podcast.