Kelly McAdoo, Santa Barbara's recently-arrived City Administrator, jokes that the 24/7 demands and turbulent urgency of running a full-service city align perfectly with the more perturbed portion of her personality.
"I call it the best job if you have adult ADHD," smiled City Hall's new chief executive. "Because no day is ever the same and you get to do a little bit of everything."
For McAdoo, the high-profile controversies and conflicts that dominate local media coverage and public debate -- State Street e-bike madness! Homeless encampments! Builders Remedy! -- represent only one aspect of an enormously complex, nuts and bolts, labyrinthine enterprise that operates largely unseen by most of the denizens of our glorious burg.
"What I love about the role is just the impact that I get to have on people's lives," she told Newsmakers. "People don't realize how much city government touches their day-to-day lives. You turn on your water, you have to call 911, you go through a traffic signal, the pedestrian crosswalk sign isn't working, the beach isn't clean. That is all run by the city.
"So making sure that that is all running smoothly and effectively means a whole series of services that I think people just take for granted," she added. "There are the special projects we see kind of up here, at the tip of the iceberg, and then there's all this stuff below, that just has to run, if you want your water to turn on, you want your toilet to flush, all of that stuff that just happens. And so making sure that there's enough resources, there's enough staffing and all of that, to make sure those operations run smoothly."
In her most extensive, public-facing interview to date, McAdoo checked in for a far-flung conversation with Newsmakers last week, as she described her personal and professional odyssey, waded into the weeds on key policy matters, and offered her early perspective on the city's most pressing issues -- from housing and homelessness, to the new sales tax proposal and negotiations over Paseo Nuevo. She also spoke at length about the latest iteration of the State Street Master Plan, including some breaking news about a stop-the-presses short-term "action plan" for the downtown corridor, which she will set forth to City Council this week.
The first chief executive hired from outside City Hall since 2000 (shout out Jim Armstrong!) the 47-year old McAdoo, who arrived just over three months ago, in many ways seems felicitously suited to the gnarly challenges and splendid opportunities confronting Santa Barbara, at a time when the city is struggling to invent its future,
Open and engaging, with a welcome sense of humor, McAdoo said the notion of working in Santa Barbara first occurred to her during roadtrips with her daughter, now a first-year college student back East, when the two would stop here overnight as they returned to the Bay Area from the Coachella Valley, where the teenager competed in equestrian events. She also talked about her own, protracted effort to find housing in Santa Barbara, before finally locating a sweet rental near Ortega Park, where she's now ensconced with Addison and Bailey, her seven-year old Corgi, and one-year old Dachshund mix, respectively.
Seasoned, confident and whip smart, McAdoo worked as a Bay Area local government executive for 25 years, the last 14 in Hayward, a San Francisco/Silicon Valley-adjacent suburb with a population nearly twice as large as Santa Barbara, the last eight of those as the City Manager, In her youth, she attended Mercersburg Academy, an elite prep school near Washington D.C., then earned her B.A. at the University of Kansas -- her parents' alma mater in the state where her family owns a farm she describes as "my happy place" -- followed by a Masters at the university's School of Public Affairs and Administration, the nation's top institution for Local Government Management, according to U.S. News & World Report rankings.
Innovative, well-traveled and well-connected in her career sphere, McAdoo decided that the first line of her Twitter bio would read, "Can we please disrupt the conversation about local government?"; as Hayward's chief executive, she sought and took advantage of nearby tech industry resources, which may have made her the first public agency leader to introduce the au courant management methodology known as "the lean startup." to help change City Hall culture and upgrade operations. She also chairs the International City Manager Association's International Committee, a post that's engaged her in trainings and collaborations with urban management types in Afghanistan, India, the Philippines, and Romania, among other locales.
"I think, in local government, a lot of times our staff are so scared to engage with the community because of negative feedback, criticism, we can't do pilot projects, we can't try things out, or experiment, because we're going to get criticized for wasting taxpayer dollars," she said. "And so it's sort of changing that dynamic. And I think the key for that for me is empathy...
"At root, we are public servants, and have to remember that we are a public service agency first," she added. "So that means I want every employee, when they're dealing with a business owner, a homeowner, thinking about, 'if this was my grandma, if this was my dad running this business, how would I want them to be treated?' And how can we work together to try and find solutions? We may not always be able to get to a hundred percent 'yes,' but even if we get to 50%, we're doing better than we were before."
Check out our full conversation with Kelly McAdoo via YouTube below, or by clicking through this link. The podcast version is here.
JR
Whither State Street?
Here is a partial interview transcript of City Administrator Kelly McAdoo discussing details of a new proposal about the short-term and long-range future of State Street, which will be presented to Santa Barbara's City Council on Sept. 17. It has been lightly edited for clarity.
JR: The city council is going to get the latest iteration of the State Street master plan on Tuesday. Going through the agenda, there's a couple things notable for all of us with State Street fatigue, One thing that jumps out is that it looks like you're proposing to open up to traffic from Carrillo Street and above, or at least to one way traffic. Is that correct?
KM: That's correct. And I think what I would say is a little different about this iteration of the master plan is, it's coupled with an action plan.
And I think we've seen, at least in my observation, there's been a dichotomy between the master planning process and these...monthly interim operations updates that have come to council where we're like, 'let's try this, let's try that.' But it hasn't (worked) because we haven't coalesced around what the long-term vision for the master plan is. We haven't been able to really do anything on State Street that is moving us towards that vision.
And so I'm hopeful that on Tuesday the council will say, 'yes, we like what the State Street Advisory Committee has brought forth.' Here's a few tweaks here and there on the longer term vision of the master plan that can go off and get its technical analysis done, the circulation, the economic feasibility. There may be some tweaks that need to happen, but then the next thing people will see is the draft (action) plan. And then in the meantime what I have heard loud and clear is we need to do, something needs to happen on State.
I think everyone has (said), 'please just do something.' And so that's where you'll see the attachment to the staff report is this action plan. It's a sort of compilation of things that I've heard, things that staff have heard, and have already been working on, put in one place so that we have - here's some things that are going to help move us towards the vision in the master plan.
So that includes reopening the blocks above Carrillo to traffic, trying out some different sidewalk layout concepts in the 500 block and putting some timelines around those. And so what we're hoping will happen is now, monthly or every other month, we'll come to council and do an update on this action plan and the things that are happening in there. So that's the goal.
JR: So the 500 through to 900 blocks, essentially the Promenade in the new master plan, you would be trying different things out there in terms of, dare I say it, bikes and bicycle traffic. What does that look like?
KM: So I think bike safety has been a key concern. We have heard. I think the e-bike situation is out of hand on State Street, and I think part of it is, there's just not enough other activity and the bikes have this very wide space to, they don't just stay in the little center bike lane to go down the street.
JR: Yes, I've noticed that.
KM: Yes. So looking at things like, how do we create, or even physically separate the bikes from where the extended sidewalks would come out, creating some different surface material on the street, creating that physical separation between the bikes, potentially creating walk your bike zones on the weekends. So it really is pedestrian only.
And I think the long-term vision is that these streets would become kind of this flat and flexible surface, so it's all unified, but you'd have texture differences and you'd have material differences. So here's where the bikes belong, here's where the pedestrians belong.
Right now. it's very confusing I think, to everyone. And so I think that's the long-term vision. And then obviously that still allows for public safety access and getting rid of the concrete planters at the end of the blocks and actually installing the automatic up and down bollards, potentially, that could allow easy public safety access, vehicle delivery, truck access. That's kind of the longer term vision for how those streets would operate
JR: And how much of that is what you just described is, how much would be in this sort of short term experimental phase?
KM: So most of that is sort of a longer term. Obviously there's some capital costs. A lot of it will be dependent on Paseo Nuevo and how that redevelopment comes along. So we can talk about that in a little bit, but what are their needs in terms of circulation that'll help determine what happens on the 900 block.
And I think in the meantime, it's an opportunity to try some stuff out. It's like if we put different surface treatments on where the pedestrians are supposed to go, does that help slow the bikes down -- and trying out some sort of temporary things to test out this theory about how to slow bikes down.
JR: What about this issue of the cost for the stormwater runoff, which a big deal for development of housing, obviously. Where are we on that?
KM: Well, first a couple things. One, once we know what the plan is for the street structure, and that'll help us define a magnitude of cost for the stormwater infrastructure, I think there's a secondary piece of the stormwater infrastructure that's also helping support businesses and property owners along State Street who actually can't install mitigation measures on their property.
So part of the action plan, there are two things that we're going to start initiating. One is looking at an enhanced infrastructure financing district, which is kind of like redevelopment 2.0, but it only takes tax increment from the city and potentially the county's property tax. And that basically could enable a mechanism basically to finance against the future. Improvements in property tax from the redevelopment, that's loosely how that system works. And so that could be a way that we finance some of those public infrastructure improvements that would help both housing (and) from a business owner's perspective.
The other piece is, we're looking at the stormwater requirements. It is interesting -- I've gotten way in the weeds on this now -- but when you look at the state, everyone says, 'oh, Santa Barbara has the really strict stormwater requirements.' If you're at the highest tier, we're actually the same as the state. The state requirements and the highest tier at Tier Four and Santa Barbara are the same.
Tier Three is where we differ. So Santa Barbara has adopted more stringent stormwater management requirements than the state requirements at Tier Three. So if we want to incentivize businesses and redevelopment on State Street, do we look at those requirements?
That's one piece. I think the second is, is there an opportunity to do an in lieu fee program where businesses or property owners can pay into the stormwater management program as a system, versus having to spend thousands of dollars on their own property trying to figure out how to meet the requirements. So we're exploring all of those.
Those will come back to council for further discussion. There's a lot of ideas around that. So, super excited. The staff team has been really creative in some of the thinking around it and just excited to continue that conversation.
JR: Is there a price tag attached to any of this yet?
KM: Not yet. We haven't. And that's the sort of second piece is, once we've landed on the master plan concept, is doing the cost analysis of what the infrastructure improvements would cost, and then not just the street changes, but also the stormwater management pieces as well.
JR: No Fiesta Parade?
KM: I think there's a lot that, as I understand it, there is just a feeling that that parade is not appropriate given the scale of State Street. And I think the city recommends continuing that on Cabrillo. We are looking at reopening State Street to some other maybe just pedestrian only parades potentially.
And I think one of the ideas that has come out in the conversation is creating some pre-designated parade routes. So each organization that wants to do a parade, it's like, 'okay, what do you want to do in your parade? Who's going to be in it? Do you have cars? What will it end?'
And so it's like, 'oh, that kind of fits in this route over here.' We already know what the public safety plan is. We already know what the access plan is. And so, really having a staff team work with some of our special event organizers and laying out a few different preset parade routes that could be leveraged in the future.
JR: Okay. this is kind of a broad question, but what about retail on State Street? Obviously there's cultural and macroeconomic trends, other things affecting retail, but how does any of this fit with...bringing retail back, or not bringing retail back? What's your general perspective on that?
KM: Well, I will say, and I've said this at a couple other settings, most other cities in California would kill to have the downtown that Santa Barbara currently has. I mean, we still have a Lululemon, we still have an Apple store on State Street, and there's...
JR: Two cultural markers of the 21st Century...
KM: I think if you were out on State Street over Labor Day weekend, it was packed and it was great. So I think the frustration is for locals -- where do we shop? How do we get there? How does the circulation work? And so that becomes all part of the puzzle.
And it's interesting talking to some folks, the retailers that want to come in, they just want certainty. They just want to know 'what is the long-term plan? What's going to happen here? If I invest in doing tenant improvements in this building, you're not going to come in and basically totally mess up the street.' And so as long as there's certainty around what's happening, people can adapt to that. At least that's what I've heard in my conversations with folks.
I think the stormwater mitigation discussion is also really important because we've heard that as restaurants are coming in.. not national retailers, but smaller retailers who want to come in, those permit requirements can be pretty cost prohibitive. So looking at alternative means of compliance and how do we help small businesses?
So one of the parts of the action plan is really to do a deep dive with some of our retail, real estate community, some of our property owners, and what are the one to three worst pain points that your future tenants are having as they come in? Is it the permitting process? Is it the stormwater requirements? What is it? And so trying to identify what those are and then come up with some action plans to start to address those.
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