Thursday, June 16, 2022

June 16, 2022 Update

Well, we made it to Thursday!  Things are a bit hectic in the Mayor’s Office today; folks are in casual clothes and we are moving boxes and supplies to the new building today.  It is a little bittersweet to be going through 19 years of “stuff” and figuring out what to take and what to leave.  Like any other move, I suspect I will move some stuff that I will eventually send to recycling or the landfill.  But it has been a little bit of a memory lane experience for me.

I’m really excited about the new version of the update, which I am planning for you to see a week from today.  We have had some good name suggestions so far.  Keep them coming via email or on the form in yesterday’s daily update.  And we hope you will take our poll in today’s update to offer your ideas about what you would like to see in the new weekly email.  

Also, as we celebrate the new Juneteenth holiday, I wanted to make sure you knew about the event Monday evening at the Library.  If you can attend with us, I think you will enjoy some great music and other entertainment.  

UPCOMING CITY EVENTS

Movies in the Park: Hercules I June 20 8:00 pm
Provo Market I June 23 10:00 am
Ukulele for Teens I June 23 7:00 pm
Crochet Club I June 23 7:00 pm
Carillon Concert I June 23 7:00 pm
Clog America I June 23 7:30 pm
Children's Parade I June 25 10:30 am
The Tom Proctor Band I June 24 7:30 pm
Ammon and Liahona I June 25 6:00 pm
Freedom Awards Gala I June 30 6:30 pm
Freedom Days I July 1 - 4
Colonial Festival I July 1 - 4
Balloon Fest I July 1 - 4
Motown & More I July 1 7:30 pm
Stadium of Fire I July 2 8:00 pm
Patriotic Service I July 3 7:00 pm
Freedom Run I July 4 7:00 am
Grand Parade I 9:00 am
No Pressure Book Group I July 5 7:00 pm

NEWS YOU CAN USE

  • Zac Efron is now the "brand officer" for the Utah-based Kodiak Cakes. If you haven't tried them, they're delicious!
  • Yellowstone will remain closed for about a week, but the severely damaged northern section may be closed all summer.
  • Genomic analysis of 14th century remains originally buried in modern-day Kyrgyzstan suggests an outbreak in the region likely served as the precursor to the Black Death, researchers revealed yesterday. The discovery sheds light on the longstanding mystery surrounding the potential origin of the medieval plague.
  • Here is what thousands of students think about the new Utah flag redesign.
  • The Federal Reserve has approved the largest interest rate hike since 1994 in an effort to continue to slow down the economy and curb high inflation. The central bank increased rates by 0.75 percentage points yesterday, raising the range for its benchmark federal-funds rate from 0.75%-1% to 1.5%-1.75%. The increase means higher borrowing costs for consumers and businesses, including for credit cards, mortgages, and auto loans.
  • The State had a ground breaking on a $165M North Capitol Project as the old state office building comes down. 

PROVO SOCIAL MEDIA

YOUR VOICE

Our last highlight comes from Shelby OBrien:

"My daughter entered the Nebo District Title 6 Program Pageant and one Jr. Princess last night. She will now be the junior ambassador for the year 22-23. She will be representing the Title 6 Education Program for all Native American students K-12 in the Nebo School District."

Congratulations!! :)




MAYOR'S WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS

This week Mayor's highlight was getting ready to move to the new building, participating in the ULCT Board of Directors meeting, and serving on the Utah Lake Commission Governing Board, and participating in Budahful Mind Foundation's fundraiser for suicide awareness!

FUN STUFF

One final version of the weekly Internet memes.  











I hope the Daily Update has been helpful to you in staying connected to the city and your fellow employees, as well as to the Mayor’s Office.  I am confident that the new weekly version will do that and more as you get even more insight into what is happening in the city.  

Have an awesome weekend!  And enjoy the new Juneteenth holiday on Monday (or whenever you get to celebrate it). 

Wayne

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Wednesday, June 15, 2022

Wednesday June 15 2022 Update

Happy Wednesday.  It has been a good day for me so far.  I met this morning with Dave Decker to chat about the airport and water issues.  I had a doctor’s appointment - nothing serious.  Just a periodic check-up following some surgery a few years ago.  And this afternoon I have meetings about several economic development projects, a request from a local HOA to consider the City accepting some of their private infrastructure, ideas for additional parking downtown and taking a tour of the new data center at City Hall. 

UPCOMING CITY EVENTS

Movies in the Park: Sing 2 I June 13 8:00 pm
Teen Lock-In I June 14 8:00 pm
Movies in the Park: Hercules I June 20 8:00 pm
Provo Market I June 23 10:00 am
Ukulele for Teens I June 23 7:00 pm
Crochet Club I June 23 7:00 pm
The Tom Proctor Band I June 24 7:30 pm
Ammon and Liahona I June 25 6:00 pm
Motown & More I July 1 7:30 pm
No Pressure Book Group I July 5 7:00 pm

NEWS YOU CAN USE

PROVO SOCIAL MEDIA

YOUR VOICE

Let's flood the blog with fun news from you all for the last day!!

UPLOAD PICTURES HERE!

EMPLOYEE / DEPARTMENT HIGHLIGHT

FUN STUFF

So, as we are nearing the end of the Daily Update chapter and moving to something even better next week, I wanted to hark back to a very early episode when I shared a movie compilation video set to Bruno Mars and Mark Ronson’s Uptown Funk.  This little video maybe bookends with that one - a movie compilation of favorite dance sequences set to Shut Up and Dance with Me from Walk the Moon. 


Wayne

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Tuesday, June 14, 2022

June 14, 2022 Update

As mentioned yesterday, today is kind of a milestone with the Daily Update.  It is hard to believe that this is our 400th edition.  It is a little bittersweet to think about moving to a new, less frequent format, but I really feel like focusing more on the work of the city in general and the Mayor's office specifically will have some significant benefits to all of us as employees.  

I had the pleasure of interacting last week with former Mayor Jim Ferguson - who was the first Provo mayor I had met about 40 years ago - and with my predecessor as CAO, Bob Stockwell.  We will be hosting them the week after next for a walk through of the new building and maybe the airport terminal, and have a chance to connect with them again.  There may not be anyone here that remembers working with Mayor Ferguson but there are still quite a few with the city who remember Bob.  



Thinking about the number 400, there are a few notable things that are about 400 years old.  Those include:  slide rules, compound microscopes and Cornish Yarg cheese.  So today, 400 is my favorite number (even though I have no idea what Cornish Yarg cheese is).  

UPCOMING CITY EVENTS

Movies in the Park: Sing 2 I June 13 8:00 pm
Teen Lock-In I June 14 8:00 pm
Movies in the Park: Hercules I June 20 8:00 pm
Provo Market I June 23 10:00 am
Ukulele for Teens I June 23 7:00 pm
Crochet Club I June 23 7:00 pm
The Tom Proctor Band I June 24 7:30 pm
Ammon and Liahona I June 25 6:00 pm
Motown & More I July 1 7:30 pm
No Pressure Book Group I July 5 7:00 pm

NEWS YOU CAN USE

  • Today is National Flag Day!
  • The Nature Conservancy and the Utah Office of Tourism have partnered to launch a digital guide to encourage visits to the Great Salt Lake - with ideas on helping the Lake recover. 
  • Veteran actor Philip Baker Hall, who lent his gravitas to everything from “Seinfeld” to numerous Paul Thomas Anderson films including “Magnolia” and “Boogie Nights,” has died at age 90.
  • US stocks fell into bear market territory yesterday after the S&P 500 dropped more than 20% from an all-time high in January (see 101). Investors are wary of an economic downturn, analysts say, after Friday's higher-than-expected inflation report showed inflation hit 8.6% in May—the highest year-over-year growth since December 1981.
  • Amazon plans to launch its first commercial drone delivery program later this year in the town of Lockeford, California, the company announced yesterday.

PROVO SOCIAL MEDIA

YOUR VOICE

Have any exciting news? Birthdays, babies, weddings, fur-babies, graduations? Share about it in the section on the right --> and upload pics below!

UPLOAD PICTURES HERE!

TUESDAY TIP

How a bad job led this CEO to create good ones 

The downsides of an early job taught Alex Mortman, founder and CEO of JDA TSG, the importance of valuing employees and creating a vibrant culture that provides motivation for success. "Leaders should share with their teams the experiences that shape their perspective, so the team can trust the organization is headed in the right direction," Mortman says.

FUN STUFF

So, not quite sure how this happened without my seeing it, but one of our hometown celebrities, Donny Osmond, surprised actress Jennifer Garner on her 50th birthday.  You gotta love this video, and it says a lot about Donny that he honored the lifelong wish of one of his biggest fans.  



Thanks for all you do!  

Wayne

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Monday, June 13, 2022

June 13, 2022 Update

I hope you had a great weekend.  As predicted, we spent a lot of time working in the yard and garden, helping Julie’s mom move into assisted living, and trying to rest up in between and keep cool!  But we did take a little break and visit the Butterfly Biosphere at Thanksgiving Point with two of our grandchildren and their parents.  It was a lot of fun to be there with them and get some fun photos of the grands interacting with the butterflies.  

I also came in for an hour or so over the weekend to make some progress in preparation for the move to the new building.  So my walls, shelves and about half my file drawers are cleaned out and boxed up.  I’m still amazed at how much stuff I still have to deal with and how little time there is to try to fit it all in.    

UPCOMING CITY EVENTS

Movies in the Park: Sing 2 I June 13 8:00 pm
Movies in the Park: Hercules I June 20 8:00 pm
Provo Market I July 23 10:00 am
The Tom Proctor Band I June 24 7:30 pm
Ammon and Liahona I June 25 6:00 pm
Motown & More I July 1 7:30 pm

YOUR VOICE

Have any exciting news? Birthdays, babies, weddings, fur-babies, graduations? Share about it in the section on the right --> and upload pics below!

UPLOAD PICTURES HERE!

NEWS YOU CAN USE

  • The $20K treasure hidden in Utah's mountains has been found. For those treasure hunters among us, here's to hoping next year is your year!
  • “A Strange Loop” was named best musical at the 75th Tony Awards on Sunday, while “The Lehman Trilogy” captured the prize for best play. “Company” won best revival of a musical and “Take Me Out” nabbed the award for best revival of a play.
  • A community project has turned into a permanent work of art in downtown Pleasant Grove. Meant to commemorate the city’s history –and the ongoing, annual, week-long celebration — is a new wall of strawberries.
  • More than 80 million Americans were under heat advisories over the weekend as a stalled heat wave scorched much of the US Southwest. Phoenix and Las Vegas matched daily records Saturday at 114 and 109 degrees, respectively, while California's Death Valley saw temperatures reach 120 degrees. 
  • Lawmakers have reached a tentative agreement on a package of gun reform measures, a group of bipartisan senators announced yesterday.

PROVO SOCIAL MEDIA

HOT-BUTTON ITEMS IN PROVO\

Today, let’s talk about the daily update.  Tomorrow will be the 400th episode of the daily update.  For those who weren’t here when the daily update began, it really was started to help our employees who were working from home in the early days of the pandemic connect with their fellow employees and with the City’s leadership team.  Things were moving fast and furious as we were working to better understand and respond to the pandemic, and we thought the daily update would help employees see all that was happening.

I appreciate that the update has been a positive for many employees and it has been a great thing for me personally to be involved with.  But, as the pandemic has become less serious, we have also seen readership for the daily update begin to tail off a bit.  So, we have determined to shift the focus of the update to a weekly format, and to broaden and strengthen the content to make it more relevant for you.  

The new update will come from the Mayor’s Office staff and will probably replace some segments of the daily update like “news you can use” and “social media” with more details about what is happening in city departments, more topics of interest to more employees, and an opportunity to hear from others in the Mayor’s Office besides just me.  I think you will be excited to see some of these changes, and to help decide what we include and don’t include going forward.

So, later this week we will request your feedback in a poll about what kinds of content you would like to see and also about what we should call the new weekly e-newsletter.  I am planning for next Thursday to be the last edition of the daily update, and the new newsletter to debut the following week.  

Thanks for reading my musings four times a week for the last two plus years, and for indulging my strange sense of humor, my musical tastes and my favorite sports and teams.  

FUN STUFF

I suspect we have all seen the "gender reveal gone wrong" videos.  But this one from Studio C shows what can happen when it really gets out of control.



Hope you have a great day!

Wayne

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Thursday, June 9, 2022

June 9, 2022 Update

It is the end of the work week for many of us today, and a weekend will be welcome!  Some of my recent meetings have included discussions on water rights and the drought, which is certainly top of mind for all of us.  

I appreciate all you do, and enjoy so much my association with you.  I hope you have a great weekend, and look forward to getting back next week to continue to serve our residents and especially to engage with our Mayor and her team on the critical issues facing our community.  

UPCOMING CITY EVENTS

Jive Spring Concert: Riverton I June 10 - June 11
Provo Touch-A-Truck I June 11 11:00 am
Movies in the Park: Sing 2 I June 13 8:00 pm
Movies in the Park: Hercules I June 20 8:00 pm
Provo Market I July 23 10:00 am
The Tom Proctor Band I June 24 7:30 pm
Ammon and Liahona I June 25 6:00 pm
Motown & More I July 1 7:30 pm

NEWS YOU CAN USE

PROVO SOCIAL MEDIA

YOUR VOICE

Have any exciting news? Birthdays, babies, weddings, fur-babies, graduations? Share about it in the section on the right --> and upload pics below!

UPLOAD PICTURES HERE!

MAYOR'S WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS

This week Mayor's highlight was getting to visit Rocky Mountain University, and meeting with her directors.  I am always impressed at the level of energy and devotion that she brings to her important role in our organization.

FUN STUFF

This week's memes.












Thanks again for all you do.  Look forward to seeing you again next week.

Wayne

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Wednesday, June 8, 2022

June 8, 2022 Update

So, last evening the Municipal Council voted unanimously to hold what is called a "Truth in Taxation" hearing in August to consider a property tax increase for the first time in at least a decade.  Their concern is that our City's reliance on sales tax (which is now 35% of general fund revenues) has become so significant and that it is the revenue source that is most likely to suffer in the case of a recession (as we found in 2008 and 2009).  Property tax, which is only 7% of the general fund budget, is the most resilient to economic swings.  Their interest is to begin to gradually reduce our dependence on sales tax and focus on more resilient revenue sources like property tax - to get back to a healthier balance.  

So today I am doing something I try to do about every three months, and that is to do a personal half-day "retreat" to step away for a few hours from the thick of the work week and think more holistically and strategically about the city, the community, the organization and what I see coming down the pike.  It is refreshing and overwhelming all at the same time.  But I come away feeling more focused and energized on things that matter most.  As some of my thoughts take shape, I hope to share with you some things that I feel I need to tackle in the coming months and the news few years, and enlist your help in making some of those things become reality.

UPCOMING CITY EVENTS

Jive Spring Concert: Riverton I June 10 - June 11
Provo Touch-A-Truck I June 11 11:00 am
Movies in the Park: Sing 2 I June 13 8:00 pm
Movies in the Park: Hercules I June 20 8:00 pm
Provo Market I July 23 10:00 am
The Tom Proctor Band I June 24 7:30 pm
Ammon and Liahona I June 25 6:00 pm
Motown & More I July 1 7:30 pm

NEWS YOU CAN USE

  • Utah researchers have found snail venom could be used as a fast-acting insulin for diabetics.
  • About 48,000 Americans have signed up to sponsor refugees under Uniting for Ukraine.
  • The United States and South Korea launched warning missiles as the North Korean nuclear threat continues to loom.
  • British Prime Minister Boris Johnson survived a no-confidence vote yesterday, securing enough support from his Conservative Party to remain in office.
  • Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk signaled he may walk away from his potential $44B acquisition of Twitter, according to a letter sent by Musk’s legal team yesterday. Musk said the company has not provided adequate user data on the platform’s spam and fake accounts, as required by the merger agreement. 

PROVO SOCIAL MEDIA

YOUR VOICE

Have any exciting news? Birthdays, babies, weddings, fur-babies, graduations? Share about it in the section on the right --> and upload pics below!

UPLOAD PICTURES HERE!

EMPLOYEE / DEPARTMENT HIGHLIGHT

Koby Johnston, Utility Billing Editor, just graduated with a Bachelor of Accounting degree! Congrats Koby!


FUN STUFF

A couple of days ago I was in a meeting with one of our employees who asked what I really thought about Top Gun:Maverick.  He commented that it was one of his favorite movies ever.  I tend to agree.  So, whether you have taken the plunge to go see it on the big screen, or whether you are waiting for the streaming version, stop and listen to this OneRepublic song from the soundtrack - including a few scenes from the film - and enjoy a little taste (or a memory) of the movie.



I hope you have a great rest of your day.  And thanks for all you do to make the City such a great place.

Wayne

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Tuesday, June 7, 2022

June 7, 2022 Update

Happy Tuesday.  It is City Council day, and budget review is the order of the day.  Council members will be looking at lots of stats today including comparative data on general fund expenditures, tax and fee rates, various key budget issues, and their own priorities.  This ends up being one of the most important meetings of the year as they work to solidify the budget for the new fiscal year.

This morning we met in our monthly meeting with department directors and took at look at some policy revisions related to safety and accident review and investigation.  We also previewed the plans for the grand opening of the new city hall, and heard a report from Gene Nelson about the library's new "outreach van" which will help bring library resources to residents in every neighborhood in the City.  So many exciting things happening!

UPCOMING CITY EVENTS

Steel Magnolias I May 5 - May 28
Utah COPA POP Concert I May 23 7:30 pm
Studio K Dance Recital I May 24 7:00 pm
Studio 1 Solo Showcase I May 26 4:00 pm
Studio 1 Spring Recital I May 26 7:00 pm
Provo Pioneer Village I June 6 5:00 pm
Movies in the Park: Shrek 2 I June 6 8:00 pm
No Pressure Book Group I June 7 7:00 pm
Jive Spring Concert: Riverton I June 10 - June 11
Provo Touch-A-Truck I June 11 11:00 am
Movies in the Park: Sing 2 I June 13 8:00 pm
Movies in the Park: Hercules I June 20 8:00 pm
Provo Market I July 23 10:00 am
The Tom Proctor Band I June 24 7:30 pm
Ammon and Liahona I June 25 6:00 pm
Motown & More I July 1 7:30 pm

NEWS YOU CAN USE

PROVO SOCIAL MEDIA

YOUR VOICE

Stephanie Jenkins got married and is now Stephanie Bailey!! Congratulations to the beautiful bride!

   

Have any exciting news? Birthdays, babies, weddings, fur-babies, graduations? Share about it in the section on the right --> and upload pics below!

UPLOAD PICTURES HERE!

TUESDAY TIP

How "optimistic realism" can improve communication 

Improve communication with your team by using positive words, especially during stressful situations, and practice "optimistic realism" that remains open to others' perspectives "without blindly believing everything they say," writes Kate Nasser. "If you are closed off from the start, you have little chance of uncovering anything new," Nasser writes.

FUN STUFF

I think you all know that I really enjoy musical theater, and especially those that are well written and with great memorable music.  If you aren't familiar with the Pirates of Penzance, you should be.  This is one of the best numbers in the musical.  Just a little sample of how awesome this musical is.





Hope you have a great day.

Wayne

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