"it gets uncomfortable for folks to do the community engagement upfront”
Kansas City, Missouri city manager interview with Kevin Jackson
Here is the third installment of my Kansas City, Missouri City Manager candidate reviews: Kevin Jackson of Long Beach, California.
Kansas City, Missouri is undergoing a critical hiring process right now. The City Council and Mayor are interviewing potential City Manager candidates. With our strong City Manager form of government, this hire is extremely important for future of the city.
I wanted to try and recap the candidates’ public interviews as much of possible. I realized I have my limitations so the recap/review I’ll be giving is based off of the public interview with the City Council and Mayor (there were two other public sessions) and a general glance at their bio. So not comprehensive but hey! I have a day job and a crazy toddler running around.
Watching the first interview, I realized there are really four big buckets that we should be evaluating these candidates on:
Revenue creation and fiscal management
Land use, physical development, and infrastructure
Business environment and economic development
Managing city staff and relationships with other organizations
All of these “buckets” should be layered with focuses on equity and sustainability.
What I’m Looking For
To be transparent, what I’m looking for in the city manager is someone who believes in a strong public sector that can deliver basic public services and create and execute effective policies that guide the city and its development. I also want them to be creative with the private sector and other organizations but to be tough and consistent in defending taxpayers’ interests. Big topics for me are housing, infrastructure, equitable development, and climate change.
Our third review is for Kevin Jackson of Long Beach, California, who interviewed September 28th. You can view all the videos and submit your feedback here.
Biography
Kevin Jackson, Deputy City Manager, City of Long Beach, California
Kevin Jackson currently serves as Deputy City Manager of Long Beach, California, overseeing Government and Community Relations and assisting with general oversight of the City’s operations. Prior local government experience includes serving as Neighborhood Services Director in Champaign, Illinois, Neighborhood Partnership Administrator in Glendale, Arizona, and as a project manager and inspector for the Neighborhood Services Department with the City of Phoenix, Arizona. Mr. Jackson received his Bachelor of Arts Degrees in Psychology and Sociology and his Master of Public Administration Degree from Arizona State University.
What He Said
Here are some quotes and paraphrased statements from Jackson’s interview with the City Council and Mayor. I broke them up in my four “buckets.”
Revenue creation and fiscal management
On the budget process in Long Beach:
He is an advisor to the city manager in budgeting process but as head of community relations he does much of the outreach to the community.
What is role with budget?
He supports finding the direction for financial forecast and working on budget priorities and establishing departmental targets.
He is involved in every aspect of process but is not the decision maker as that is the City Manager.
What would be his role in finding revenue and balancing competing council goals?
His ultimate role is to implement the policy by direction of the council
Priorities are critically important and his role is to identify ways to advance all priorities (to varying to degrees).
He would investigate potential revenue opportunities and work with council to pursue those potential opportunities; there may be limited opportunities to raise new revenue; he would look to create culture within the organization to find to partners outside the city government;
He made a point of maximizing access to federal and state government funding and grant opportunities.
Additionally doing a fee study to determine cost of services and tax burden study to better align revenue sources.
On COVID & the current budget crisis:
He would focus heavily on cost recovery effort, which would include maximizing opportunity to get grant resources.
In Long Beach, they had a baseline of accessing FEMA funding and then worked their legislative advocacy for more funding. Like Kansas City, Long Beach has less than 500,000 people, which prevented them from getting direct funding support but they were able to access $40 million in CARES act funding from California and an additional $80 million in grants.
He is currently looking at a $30 million deficit. To solve this, he would ask departments to look at efficiencies and innovation in addition to new revenue
He added that the cannabis tax, which continued to grow during the pandemic, became a critical revenue source. (I’m not sure Missouri will be super helpful.)
Land use, development, and infrastructure
On infrastructure:
Significant part of his career has been promoting and supporting reinvestment of infrastructure in neighborhoods
Currently in Long Beach, he is overseeing a $400 million bridge replacement and stormwater quality improvements.
He noted that making those investments are implemented in an equitable way is very important.
In Champaign, Illinois, he and the city made stormwater investments through a “pay as you go” method but then established a fee and that made more investments more equitable.
On creating an active transportation plan in addition to a neighborhood wellness plan:
Long Beach “has done a fascinating job” with active transportation, including investments in bike path infrastructure. This is important from a community health perspective and also good for the environment.
Neighborhood Wellness Program in Champaign was why he went to Champaign in the first place.
The program utilized a neighborhood based city services approach and utilized planning resources to establish indicators that point to community health solutions.
He helped lead the largest redevelopment in Champaign’s history and neighborhood wellness program was basis of the development.
On affordable housing initiatives:
guided by data; $90 million redevelopment
Long Beach on tenant assistance program for people facing eviction; regional partners in champaign in response to last recession
Had to relocate 150 people in a span of 3 days because of condemnation of a building; had to create “emergency tenant relocation” program and anticipate needs.
On development in distressed urban communities:
It is “important that you plan for it” as “plan is policy”
Jackson emphasized catalyzing resources and leveraging it since “city will never have enough money” to do everything it wants (or needs).
As the head of neighborhoods he believes in being proactive about community participation.
“it gets uncomfortable for folks to do that community engagement upfront” but you use that uncomfortable engagement in order to “plan to act together”
“you can make investments on a spot basis…but you’re not likely to have very much success”
Business environment and economic development
On the similarities of Kansas City and Long Beach regarding having a Port and a lot of federal employees — can you talk about the Port and growing the economy?
He sees an opportunity with the port as an engine for growth and the need to capitalize on the manufacturing and moving goods industry.
Kansas City has a lot of manufacturing, distribution, and goods movement but there is a need to link jobs to needs of the community and to do it strategically.
There are a lot of regional groups working on economic development but “it will be really critical [that] we actually have a clear identification of our strategic priorities” and do this in concert with regional partners.
On minority business development
One of the biggest challenges is getting to the point of doing a disparity study
Put in goals on every aspect of the project; intentionally putting in a program for WBE/MBE goals and participation.
Part of this is breaking up big projects to support small businesses.
On TIF usage beyond 15 years
Redevelopment tool should always pass the “but for” test and be aligned with council priorities and not a scattershot approach.
Managing city staff and relationships with other groups
On outsourcing
In Long Beach, the charter includes a provision where you have to justify outsourced services by cost first.
“You really have to evaluate the situation that it achieves the savings it appears to achieve” and you have to look at quality of service as well.
You often lose control when you outsource and don’t have a strong relationship to the community. You could diminish the quality of service even if you achieve a marginal savings.
If you are going to lose a service but contracting preserves some of that, then it might be worth it.
On working with neighborhoods as it relates to public safety
Works on police-citizen complaint process (not completely independent). There is a concurrent review process by internal affairs and citizen complaint commission.
Spent 18 months to create the Long Beach Values act to put in protections with immigrants and how the city operated with ICE.
He has a strong relationship with the police and police chief; positive and constructive relationships.
On internal workings of city hall, philosophy of management style
In Long Beach, he works closely with city manager to hire department heads and create a diverse pool and talent. This process includes a panel of experts and community panel.
Oversees several department heads and programs.
“we want to hire the best talent…it’s important to do effective outreach to create a diverse pool of applicants.”
Part of success is succession planning so you can grow employees from within from bottom to the top.
On violence prevention & police
Safe Long Beach plan — reexamining post-George Floyd and they have found additional funding to make it stronger.
They have addressed public safety from a place-based standpoint to do wraparound services
Police Department has been effective building relationships with community
Long Beach has been charged with creating a racial reconciliation process
What I Think
Kevin Jackson comes across as a “steady hand” that has a really strong knowledge base in areas that Kansas City lacks or is looking to shore up including: strong neighborhood outreach, active transportation, housing, and healthy communities.
He gave plenty of examples and was very direct in his answers and examples he gave. He appears to be the strongest housing candidate thus far (based on my scope of review) and is heavily invested in implementing plans.
He hasn’t held the “top job” in any municipality, which puts him in contrast to the three other candidates. And in the interview there was not a lot of elaboration on his experience with incentive reform or policy-making on economic development.
I came away impressed with his knowledge of Kansas City and his wide array of experiences and expertise. I would feel comfortable with Jackson taking charge but the bigger question for me is: could he shake up city hall enough to free some of the great, pent up ideas and energy of really great staff and citizens?
I’ll be reviewing candidate Brian Platt of Jersey City, New Jersey as soon as possible but in the meantime please subscribe and share!