Summit Dinner

Registration and Breakfast

Welcome and Introductions

Rob Lloyd, Executive Director, Center for Digital Government

Teri Takai, Chief Programs Officer, Center of Digital Government

Harry Black, City Manager, City of Vallejo, California

Matt Hawkesworth, Acting City Manager, City of Pasadena, California

Leading Cities Through Greater Change

City managers today are asked to administer many things at once: tightening resources, generational infrastructure investments, piloting a six-generation workforce, and addressing rising constituent expectations. All this while public trust in government erodes faster than any can seem to rebuild it with unstable elected councils.

Instinct in moments like this may be to address the loudest issues fastest: smart tools, quick wins, the opinion currently dominating the room. But is that leadership, or is it a coping mechanism, while the harder work and judgment go untended?

The opposite can be true. When leadership turnover is high and election cycles grow more volatile, communities don't always need faster answers. Should City Managers listen harder, go slow to go fast, and align their leadership teams and people, policy, operations, and delivery around what matters and makes a difference long-term? They use the same perceptive judgment and community connection that have defined the profession for generations.

The real need: What is city leadership, right now, in this moment?

It’s No Longer Doing More with Less— Recasting a City for a New Fiscal Reality

"More with less" implies a return to normal once pressing needs are addressed. That return isn't coming. Access to Federal dollars is diminishing. ARPA balances are spent. Inflation has permanently repriced operations while political and community expectations were permanently reset during the period of federal generosity, even though the funding has ended. This is a structural reset, not a seasonal one. The decisions cities are making will need to hold.

This is a practical playbook session to discuss how to stop stretching and start redesigning resource allocation. How are our best City Managers creating long-term financial plan that turn "we have to make cuts" into a structured choices Council can see coming and own, rather than crises that land on them and departments? What are the multiplier and innovation investments that City Managers must make to create needed capacity and capabilities? There is great discipline that keeps an organization stable while it changes shape.

Threaded through all of it is the hard task of building a shared sense of fiscal reality, so that elected officials, staff, and residents are working from the same picture of what's actually true about the city’s money. The goal: Not to cut sharper, but to recast the organization for economics, aspirations, and future we have.

Break

Redesigning How We Work, Show Results, and Demonstrate Care

Transformation rarely arrives as one sweeping initiative. Cities showing greater progress are making deliberate, sustained investments in how they learn and reshape service delivery, tying that work to Council and community priorities, connecting it to performance and customer service metrics, and anchoring it in the budget process. The pattern: multi-department design, community engagement, and unifying systems and data that deliver on the promise of customer care and follow-through. Customer service, 311, and homelessness response have been used as tip-of-the-spear projects by cities to prove their approach, before scaling citywide.

We’ll review how the best City Managers are doing this— e.g., pulling leadership teams out of their silos, rethinking organizational structure, and setting the measures and signals that get these decisions right for the long haul. The right interplay between policy, operations, and leadership is key when the answer isn't the traditional department-by-department path. The cities getting this right aren't just fixing one service. They are building the people and systems capacity that make the whole organization stronger, and that allow them to do their next priorities better.

Values-Based Approaches to Use of AI, Drones, and Surveillance Technologies

AI, surveillance cameras, drone programs, and license plate readers now touch communities at a scale no security or privacy checklist anticipated. More residents are expressing distrust to their cities and Councils. Experts and advocates telling people what's best for them no longer works. The public is demanding clarity before deployment and ongoing confidence afterward that the technology is protecting rather than harming them.

Two recent cases show what's at stake when that voice is missing. By mid-2026, 50+ cities had cancelled contracts with a major license plate reader provider after national outcry over unauthorized data access, prompting new state and local laws in response. Meanwhile, drone-surveillance items have drawn mass turnout at Council sessions in city after city, as civil liberties concerns collided with officials' privacy rules and transparency dashboards, leaving Councilmembers caught between expressing seeing real public safety value, real risk of harm, and no staff process built to resolve the tension.

This session is a primer into building that process ahead of the need. It starts with assembling the right leaders early— often the technology leader, police and fire chiefs, and communications and engagement staff. Openly working with community, building the city's values into technology settings, publishing human controls and audit processes, and structuring real Council review demonstrates what communities demand and vendors can show. Done right, this gives staff confidence that the city is using technology for good reasons, gives residents assurance solutions are in their interests, and gives the city a vendor accountability framework that goes beyond old-fashioned security and privacy compliance.

Lunch

What Matters Most: A Working Exercise

A kinetic exercise where attendees will connect on approaches, similar interests, priorities, and urgencies.

Facilitators:

Rob Lloyd, Executive Director, Center for Digital Government

Teri Takai, Chief Programs Officer, Center for Digital Government

Rebuilding Our Civic Connections and a Working of Democracy

Cities have successfully increased digital access but see

less civic connection. Is the transactional government services part of the

problem? How do cities engage with their residents in those moments to

offer civic connection as part of the relationship?

This session is grounded in what political scientists and city leaders have documented for a generation, from Putnam's original warning about collapsing civic association, to newer work on how digital-first political engagement crowds out the harder, slower work of talking with people who disagree with you in person. City Managers hear a version of this regularly: residents who are caring and thoughtful one-on-one, and almost entirely disconnected from their city and even their own neighborhood.

The conversation is not abstract. Cities across the country have rebuilt civic infrastructure and seen it pay off, in reinvested public space, in participatory budgeting that puts real dollars behind neighborhood decisions, in parks and rec centers redesigned as deliberate third places, in structured neighbor-to-neighbor dinner and dialogue programs that scaled citywide. This session asks what is actually working, what a City Manager can do with the levers they have (parks, recreation centers, libraries, permitting, public meetings, procurement), and what “civic competency” looks like as a thing a city can build back rather than just mourn. And what are the signals the community is on the right path?

Break

New Economics: Re-Revitalization, Technology, and Partnerships

Most cities continue to redefine their fiscal foundations post-pandemic. Commercial and retail space use, residential mix, and a wave of small businesses and gig workers now move in patterns that didn't exist six years ago, and storefronts sit vacant as commerce moves differently. At the same time, business and sales tax revenue has a new interplay with online sales, social discovery, and reputation that local governments are beginning to master— a business's visibility, foot traffic, and tax contribution increasingly hinge on digital reach as much as physical location. Cities have more business activity that is mobile and virtual.

The state-of-the-art among cities shares a tried-and-true structure: pairing capital with a nonprofit or business-improvement-district intermediary to move faster on storefront activation, using data-driven insights to match available space with businesses ready to fill it, and timing investment around real demand signals rather than open-ended subsidies. The best programs also treat online and reputation activity as part of the tax and vitality picture, not separate, recognizing that a thriving digital footprint is now part of how a city supports a thriving storefront.

We'll close with the fiscal foundation question every City Manager is trying to answer: what innovative investments aligned to these goals are City Managers seeing work, what are the best measures of success, and how does a city build a partnership structure durable enough to survive multiple budget cycles rather than expiring with the grant that funded it.

Open Forum: Where are Cities Going?

Closing Remarks and Next Steps

Summit Adjourns

Conference times, agenda and speakers are subject to change.