“Please, won’t you fix my neighbor?”
with Traci Leach and Mindi Hurley of Coppell, Texas
In this episode Traci Leach and Mindi Hurley share with us strategies and best practices that they use in order to help build connection in their community and work with residents who sometimes try to use the city services to “fix their neighbor.”
You can watch it above or listen on your favorite podcast platform: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or Spotify
Transcript below:
Ron:
So Ryan, today we’re lucky enough to have Traci Leach from Coppell. She’s the deputy city manager there where she served for six and a half years. And prior to that was she was with a couple of other Texas cities serving in their communications functions. Anyway, you’ll love hearing from Traci. And we also have with us Mindi Hurley. Mindi is the Director of community development a role she’s had for several years. She also worked elsewhere in Coppell, but she was in Louisville, Texas for a number of years as well. the interesting thing about both Mindi and Traci is they both graduated with her MPA, master of Public Administration from North Texas University. So they have that in common. Anyway, I’m excited to hear from them.
Ryan:
Yeah, I think it’s gonna be a great, great podcast.
Ron:
Excellent. <laugh>. Well, hey Ryan great to have you joining us from Denver. Isn’t that where you are right now?
Ryan:
Yep, that’s right on the road.
Ron:
Oh, man. Ryan and his family are heading back to Ohio. Very cool, huh? To be with family. Yeah. well look, today joining us are two of two people I really appreciate working with. I have had the pleasure of working with Traci Leach from Coppell and Mindi Hurley from Coppell on a variety of surveys over the past year. And they’re joining us today on a very fascinating topic, and I’m excited to do it. the topic today is on “the city as an arbitrator” between neighbors and what happens in many cities, and I’m sure anyone listening on on us with us today has had the same problem. Somebody calls and said, can you fix a problem between me and my neighbor? it might be something going over the fence, or it might be a barking dog, or it might be cars parked wherever, and it might be a variety of things.
Nevertheless, they call and ask for help. And when I was chatting with Traci about this a little bit beforehand, and Mindi, I guess we got on a call too, she said, this is the topic I wanna cover. And it’s so, unexpected to me, to how do I fix my neighbor via topic that I thought this would be a great one to do. And thank you for joining us both of you today. Traci, over to you. I’d like to ask a question. So tell me a little bit about what it is that happens and that you’ve experienced when residents of your city ask you to intervene.
Traci:
Well, first, thanks for having me. <laugh>, and, you know, when we talk about this topic we recognize that is our whole purpose for being here, is to serve the residents. and when I started in local government, you know, 25 years ago we are all familiar and we all have those residents in our community that we all know by name. but when I started, it really was those folks would call in, they would have a complaint, we would address it, and then we would all move on. And it didn’t have this edge to it that it feels like it has now. around these complaints aren’t necessarily about resolving an issue in my neighborhood. It’s about, I I don’t necessarily get along with my neighbor themselves, and so I’m gonna use these whether they’re code complaints or noise complaints or barking dogs as a way to jab at my neighbor.
And I feel like you know, coming back out of Covid, the way in which people live in our neighborhoods has changed a little bit. And so we have, I think, more people working from home. And so they’re, they’re home more often and they’re starting to notice things that are maybe have been going on for years around, you know, well, my neighbor doesn’t bring their trash can up until four 30 that day, but the trash came at eight 30 and now I have to look at it all day. so I think there’s some of that on, hey, I’m now more aware of the things that are happening. And I think the idea that I can complain on my neighbor without any awareness around some of the things that may be on my own property. So when that neighbor gets mad and they look across the, the street to my own house there are things in which that neighbor then can be very angry about as well. And so I think we’ve just kind of had more engagement with our community in that fashion as opposed to there’s an issue, we address it and then we move on.
Ron:
That is interesting. So, so what do you think are some of the causes, so coming outta Covid, staying home, are there any other things that you think that are maybe a little different? Mindi, what do you think? What are some other causes that,
Mindi:
Well, in Traci and I have talked about this, you know, there’s, there’s a kind of a perfect storm. We’ve got just less connection between people now, I think is one of the problems at the root of this, because whether it is everybody has a busy life, or we did live through COVID and so people didn’t know how to connect, they purposely didn’t connect with each other. And so now it’s hard to re-engage in that connection. it makes it harder for them to have the same kind of relationships that we once had in the community. And, and what we find in our community in particular is there’s a lot of pride from those that have lived in the community for a long time. And so it’s kind of an evolution of the community. And so it’s kind of the old versus the new. And so the old has this sense of pride of how the city once was. And now if they feel that the people that are moving in don’t still have that same feeling about what it should be, there’s a little bit of disconnect, which causes a little bit of tension. and so it just has created, it’s kind of that perfect storm that has created the less connection between people.
Ron:
Hmm. Do you think there’s anything also to do with age old versus young? Or do you think there’s also race, you know new people moving in that weren’t here before? Is any of that happening?
Mindi:
I, I think that’s a potential, but really we try to break it down as our, our residents that have been here for a long time versus the new residents coming in. That’s how we really approached it
Ron:
Well, so what’s the city to do? I mean, tell me a little bit more about like, how are you handling this problem and what are some things that you think others might benefit from understanding?
Traci:
Well, and maybe we can start with how Mindi and her team handle those complaints as they come in. Because most of them are gonna be handled by her team when those complaints come in. And so there’s kind of a two-tiered support structure that we’ve kind of adopted for how we adjust to situations where it’s become clear to us that this is more than just our run of the mill complaint about something happening in my neighborhood. so maybe we can, Mindi can talk maybe a little bit about how the, the frontline teams, how she helps her frontline teams address those issues. And then I could talk about on our side, from the administrative side, on how we help support their teams as well as kind of educate our council, because at some point this does become an awareness issue that our council members are likely gonna get involved if it’s kind of a protracted back and forth between neighbors.
Mindi:
Okay. So I’ll start with, so first and foremost we do, we do receive a lot of the calls because they, a lot of times they do start as code issues, but then once we get out there, we really, we realize that it’s more about relationship issues between the neighbors. So each case is really unique because there’s different players involved, right? So it’s whether it’s the the issue that we’re dealing with or the individual players that are involved. And so we know that we treat one that’s, it’s not a cookie cutter answer that we have to treat each one on a case by case basis. And so first and foremost, our staff knows that they are here to serve the community. And so they approach everyone from a place of respect and kindness. That’s just kind of our expected behavior when we go out to deal with these individuals.
and in here, what we try to approach code compliance a little different, as you can tell, we call it code compliance versus code enforcement. So we are trying to reach voluntary compliance, and we do that through education, educating the community and then really trying to work with them to build relationships with the community and try to build relationships between community members as well. So we encourage them to reach out to their neighbor to talk to ’em whenever it’s something that we know that we cannot resolve through our typical code compliance process. The other thing is a lot of times code compliance is black and white, and we’re not black and white here. And so sometimes that makes it difficult when we try to operate in the gray, but really we’re operating in the gray for all of those reasons. We’re trying to reach voluntary compliance we’re, we know that each case is unique. and so we are trying in every possible way to build a relationship in the process between neighbors so that they can try to resolve this on their own when it is, when it’s a a true code issue. Obviously we can handle it through our typical processes, but first we try to reach that voluntary compliance.
Ron:
Your first step is just to say, we’d love you to work this out with your neighbors,
Mindi:
Yes, absolutely.
Ron:
Do most people do that? Do most people like, okay, I’ll give that a shot. You know,
Mindi:
Unfortunately that’s becoming less and less. But again, we still try to encourage it. We try to try, you know, help them to build that connection again so that they can resolve it. Because again, like I said, a lot of times it’s not really a true code issue that we can get involved in. It’s really more of a relationship problem. And so while we try to encourage that, there’s only so much that we can do and that but like I said, baseline, we always treat everyone with respect and kindness. And so that is just the expected behavior from our staff. And they know that and they do a great job at it. And so after that, after we have gone as far as we can go, then we will, I’ll turn it over to Traci.
Traci:
And so some of those issues, and I’ll give you an example. We have two residents who have been sparring with each other for two years now, maybe, maybe a little bit more than two years. So if I just give you an example of how this kind of manifests itself. So since November of 22, there have been, and I need some statistics here, 212 days from November of 22 until today, no, I’m sorry, until May 10th. There’s 212 days from November of 22 until May 10th. That’s how I’ve, that’s the timeframe that I pulled these statistics. Right. And we’ve got a situation between neighbors where in those 212 days, we’ve received 183 calls for service to our police department related to these two neighbors who are in conflict.
Ryan:
Wow.
Traci:
And so in addition to Mindi’s team who’s handling some code issues, we have these other calls that are being made to our police department, and then we have other calls that are being made to various departments within the city to address various things because it’s now ballooned outside of just code enforcement to a whole host of issues.
Ron:
It’s like the Hatfields and the McCoys going after each other almost, isn’t it?
Ryan:
Hopefully they’re not using the emergency line, right? They’re calling..
Traci:
No, these are 911 calls. These are calls.
Ryan:
Oh my goodness.
Traci:
This is an aggregate total of the 911 calls and the non-emergency line calls. Yeah.
Ryan:
Unbelievable.
Traci:
And so just from a a workload perspective, it can be very time consuming. And so how do we then help our teams that are now all involved? So it’s more than Mindi’s team that’s involved, it’s all of our teams. Now, how do we help our teams communicate? How do we help our teams manage the time allocation? Because what can happen is you can spend all day corresponding back and forth with these two individuals, and you will have achieved nothing that day other than being very responsive to that resident. Right? So some of the things that, from our side that we’ve put in place to help our teams address these issues once we get into them is a couple things. So the first is we’ve set up and allowed, made sure that our teams understand that they have permission to kind of slow the pace of that communication. And what I mean by that is we have a response window. So from a service level standpoint, we have an expectation that anybody who contacts us, we are going to respond to them within 24 hours.
What typically happens in these instances is this person will send us an email in the morning, we’ll respond when we first get in, they’ll send us another response at 10 30, we’ll respond after lunch, they’ll respond to us at three, and then we’ll close out our day at five responding to them. So our teams then know that for these individuals, we are still going to meet the service level expectation, but we’re gonna slow the response rate down. And the, that really achieves two things. It frees up our teams to help them address some of the other concerns that are happening citywide. And it also removes a lot of the emotion around that immediate back and forth of, I’m really angry, I send this email in anger and frustration because they, they are, in most cases, they’re just angry and frustrated that these things with my neighbor continue to happen, and there’s a perception that nobody will help me. And so it is frustration, but by elongating that communication response window, it, it does eliminate some of the emotion once we respond back to them and help set a more realistic cadence around how we work our way through those issues. The second thing is we’ve kind of set up some structures around how we’re coordinated.
So once we get into this place where there are multiple departments involved and it’s just not strictly a code issue, then we kind of have, we set up a different communication structure where then our office in some cases really then becomes the primary clearing house for, Hey, when these people contact you, make sure you’re copying us on those responses. In some cases, we then become the primary communicator where we’ll pull our teams out of that frontline interaction with those team, those community members, knowing that that’s, that’s not been productive. and then our office will be the primary communicator back and forth with those individuals to kind of free up.
Ron:
Just, in essence, you create a single point of contact, you know.
Mindi:
It helps because unfortunately, sometimes these neighbors were contacting multiple people within one department trying to get the response they wanted. And at the same time, they were also contacting other departments. So no one was aware that multiple people were responding to someone on a single issue that was really more civil in nature anyway.
Ron:
Right. Right. So you just, in essence, you just, you slow it down, but you also make sure that it only comes through one channel and, and everyone stays informed.
Traci:
Right. And really the last piece is is around equipping our elected officials to be able to have conver informed conversations with these residents when they are contacted by them. So they’ve kind of escalated everything,
Ron:
Remember the city council or the mayor or whatever, right. And and you keep them in the loop then so that they know what’s gone on,
Traci:
Right? So we do have a, a daily, a daily email that goes out to the council kind of letting them know about either newsworthy things, so things that you might see on the news about Coppell or things that are, you know, important deadline driven information, or, Hey, we’ve been in contact with these two individuals. They’ve indicated that here’s what the situation is, and they’ve indicated that they would like to start calling you all as city council to make their case about A, B, or C that they’d like to see happen. And so we are able to put them in a position where they know what the backstory is. They’re, you know, council is very responsive, so they go, and they’ve, for this example that I just mentioned on the response with those two neighbors, we’ve had a number of council members go out onsite to meet with these two neighbors, to meet with each neighbor individually.
but they have the information around what have we done to try to assist these residents knowing that there’s a, there is a line in which things are a civil matter as opposed to a enforcement matter that we can, we can help with. So those are some of the things that we do to help support the teams. Knowing that, and Ron, maybe we should have said this up front, is this, this podcast is not we do not have the answers to avoiding these kinds of conflicts with residents, but I think the key is if they’re going to happen, how do we help support our teams to be able to respond to those in a way that maintains our level of service and the commitment that we have to the community around what are we, what are we here to do without like totally derailing all of the other work that needs to get done in order to serve the larger community, not just two people.
Ron:
Sure. How has this helped? Like, has it made an impact? What are the benefits of slowing things down, you know making sure everyone is involved, making a single point of contact assuring that the elected leaders are informed and, and, and, and know what’s going on. Like, what has been, are there positives that have come from this?
Mindi:
I think, without a doubt Traci said it really well that in the beginning when this particular instance, we’ll use that as our example it was truly consuming staff’s time. and then as a result it was the neighbors were frustrated. and so when we couldn’t solve their issue for them, they were frustrated with us. And then sometimes they were not very kind to staff. So I think it provided clear boundaries for our staff so that they could maintain the level of service that we expect them to provide. It also, like Traci said, it, it allowed them to be able to handle all of the other issues that they needed to deal with in the community because it was truly occupying all of their time in the beginning because these residents were demanding all of their time. And so I think without a doubt, it has helped free up their time to be able to handle the issues they need to handle throughout the community.
it has let them know that they are supported by the city manager staff and also our city council rather than feeling like they’re out there on their own trying to deal with these issues it’s kept them informed so that multiple people weren’t not necessarily providing them with different information, but dealing with the same issues. and so I think without a doubt, it has really provided our staff with the support that they needed in order to be able to continue to do their job at the level that is expected of them.
Ron:
I love it. This is really cool.
Traci:
Well, and from a council perspective on, on our side, I’ve yet to meet a city council that enjoys surprises and enjoys being, having things just thrown at them without any context. And so this has helped them be able to really engage in a way that is more productive than just having somebody surprise them at the grocery store. or, you know, it, it feels like a cold call when they call them and said, Hey, I’d like to request you come meet on site to talk about just my trash cans, my neighbors putting their trash cans in a place that makes it hard for me to get out of my driveway. And so it, it helps them know, okay, yeah, I heard about that. I know what the background story is. Yeah, I’ll be happy to come meet with you. Let’s, let’s talk about that. So it, it has helped eliminate surprises, which is always a good thing.
Ron:
No, I love it. Alright, well, so you, you spoke earlier about a shift in society, more people are home, more people are on edge simply because of the climate that is in, in our country that is sometimes a little less, you know, a little more combative and a little less neighborly and so forth. Are there other things you’re doing as a city to try to build that community feeling and to strengthen neighborhood ties so that these things are resolved more naturally?
Mindi:
Okay, sure. So that has been a, a big focus of the city of Coppel is working on connecting residents together. So community engagement. So it not only engages them with the city but it also engages them with each other. So trying to build those relationships again, that maybe we have lost over time. And so we have multiple initiatives that are going on right now to work on that. so I’ll, I’ll kind of talk about a few and then I’ll let Traci talk about a few. So one of the things we started last year actually, so we’ve had two, we’ve successfully completed two years of a, it’s called Coppell Connected, and it’s neighbors helping neighbors. And so this program allows residents from Coppell to volunteer for a day of service. And the day of service is, is to our residents in Coppel that are in needs.
So residents that have needs at their home can apply to be a project for that day of service. And so residents come out and volunteer to help with other residents’ needs. And so it’s been a great way not only connecting people when they’re working on a team together, because we pair them up to work on a team, and then it also connects them back to the community to another resident in town. And so it has done a tremendous job over the last two years, building some relationships that maybe wouldn’t have happened otherwise because they’re just, their lives wouldn’t have crossed otherwise. Plus it gives I think it provides a little perspective for some of those that are volunteering to realize that there are some needs in Coppell that maybe they weren’t aware of. So it’s creating relationships and some empathy. And so that’s that’s a program that, and like I said, we’ve completed it two years successfully and plan to continue that program. And it grew from the first year to the second year. So we’re excited that it will just continue. How many
Ron:
People are volunteering? Do you have quite a few who volunteer?
Mindi:
Yeah, absolutely. We had over a hundred volunteers this year, and we had, yeah, and we had close to 30 projects that they were split up on teams to go volunteer to do work at those homes. So what, what
Ron:
Types of projects?
Mindi:
they, they are all exterior projects. So we don’t send anyone inside anyone’s home at this point, but it’s things such as rebuilding a fence or repairing a shed working in a yard. just, it varies, but they’re all projects that are exterior to the home. Right.
Ron:
Very cool.
Mindi:
Yeah, so, so again, we’re very proud of that program and we’re excited about it continuing to grow as, as we go into the future. Then another thing we started we created a block and roll party trailer. and so neighbors can reserve that trailer for free, and we have put in that trailer everything you would need to host a block party. And so again they can come reserve this to hold a block party in their neighborhood. So once again, it’s just getting residents out that you, you’d be amazed at how many people just don’t even know their neighbor anymore. And so this is an opportunity for someone to rent the trailer and then host a block party so that everybody can get together and know each other. And so that’s available all year for people to reserve, to host block parties in their neighborhood.
Ryan:
Now, have you ever had a noise complaint, noise code complaint from one of your block parties?
Mindi:
Not yet. I hope you didn’t jinx us!
Ryan:
I hope that continues <laugh>.
Traci:
That sounds good,
Ron:
Ryan. Just jinxed you guys.
Traci:
Yeah, I know.
Ryan:
No, no, no. <laugh>, That’s a great idea.
Mindi:
I’ll let Traci talk about some of our others.
Traci:
Yeah. And so then we, I’ll talk about two initiatives. So, and so the, the two that Mindi talked about really are specific to, to our community at least one of the ones I’m gonna talk about is kind of a nationwide community engagement effort. So that’s the national night out. And so for, for our community that’s, that’s one of the biggest nights of the entire year. And so we have upwards of 83 or 84 block parties throughout our community that will be planned. So our police department, this event is hosted and organized by our police department, and they’ll host a block party captain meeting in August. knowing that that will be hosted the first weekend of October, I think because it’s, the heat index here is 120 heat.
So through the summer, August is really not an optimal time to do anything outdoors. So we shift Texas to October. but we’re really proud of that event because it’s a, it’s a community. It’s one of the few community events that the entire community participates. all of the city staff, so the leadership teams and the, the staff members for the city will go out and we’ll be assigned three, two or three block parties, and we will all go out and meet our, our neighbors. The people that we’re serving. we’re obviously not as popular as when the firetruck show up to the block party <laugh> but you know, our police and fire teams are all assigned out. So everybody who’s on duty, those folks are all out meeting the people that we serve. And so we, we always have a really high level of participation for that event, which we’re, we’re really proud of.
the other program that we have is it’s called Allies and Community. And it’s, the purpose of that is really around this concept of belonging. And Mindi talked about it earlier around the idea that if I have lived in Coppell for 40 years, I understand what the unspoken rules are around, what are the, what’s the culture of Coppell like, what are the expectations around property maintenance, around engagement, around the kinds of events that we host? all of the things that are just, it’s the air that we all breathe if you live here for a really long time. And everybody who always contacts us, that’s what they start with. I’ve lived here in Coppel for 25 years or I’ve lived in Coppel for 30 years, or I, you know, I’ve raised my family in Coppel. And so the idea then, if I have, if I’m new to Coppell, I don’t really, I know what I see outwardly, and that’s why I move here because the community is, is beautiful.
The school district is top-notch. And so I know why I’ve moved here, but then I don’t understand kind of what the unspoken rules are on how I can effectively engage with the people who are in my neighborhood because I literally just got here. And so how do we make those unspoken rules spoken and visible so that those barriers are broken down for our newer residents? And so allies in community, that is a program that purposefully mixes those categories of residents to help us find that place of belonging, find the places where we have commonalities as opposed to just, well, you’re new and I don’t know you. And so what you’re doing with your lawn is not the expected behaviors of how that should occur. Well, this program can help build relationships, so you can have that, that conversation.
Ron:
Are they, are they like a mentor for a new move in?
Traci:
You know what, that is one of the initiatives that the, so if you graduated from allies and you’re now an ambassador within our community those are one, that was one of the things that they talked about is helping people when they first come to the community. If I don’t speak English and I need to come to our utility billing window to activate my water account, well that can be kind of a daunting experience if I don’t speak English. So how can we connect with people who are moving into our community? So yeah, absolutely. That was one of the barriers that was identified on how we could help people feel more at home, like they belong here through the entire experience of their resident when they move here to call Coppell home. Yeah.
Ron:
So is this something that you proactively do? Somebody moves into the city, you become aware of it as city leaders because of course things are signed, set up and everything, and then you put them into the program. How does it work to become part of the allies and community program?
Traci:
Well, so maybe I should take a step back. So pre covid we would we had teams. So the utility billing signup is the first kind of touch point that we have once somebody moves in. And so pre covid we would have kind of welcome teams of staff members. the utility billing team would give us a list of new accounts, I think it was every quarter, every month. Was it every month? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Okay. So every month, and we would all take our sheets and we would take a welcome packet and we would literally go to their home to welcome them to Coppell. it was representatives from all of the different departments. So you may have somebody from the city manager’s team, you may have somebody from the police department. and so then kind of once Covid hit and part of the challenge that we were facing, so Covid was part of why we stopped that.
And part of it was folks, there were very few times that we actually had an opportunity to talk to the people that we showed up at their home. Because people don’t want to answer the door for total strangers <laugh>, which is what we were total strangers showing up unannounced at your front door at random times of the day. And so that was just part of the challenges around what sounded like a really good way to connect with the community. Right? Right. and so the, the allies, they don’t have anything specific in terms of infrastructure set up. but the beauty with allies is they have the way that that’s intended to work. So you think of them as seedlings within different parts of our community and they live in all different parts of the our community. they run all in different social circles.
And so helping, it’s, it is just creating awareness of somebody new moved into my neighborhood. They are equipped to kind of engage with those folks to welcome them. they have a number of I’ll call ’em affinity groups that the alumni groups have created themselves around different interest areas so that people then can, you know, maybe I’m not interested in environmental advocacy, but maybe I’m interested in kind of the faith-based outreach and service to the community and opportunities there. And so allies is kind of sprouted in different parts of the community to help have folks at different places. Because there’s only so many of us out there. And a lot of times that message is always, and, and then it becomes more organic and grassroots, right? Rather than it being a forced, we’re here.
Ron:
If someone signs up to become an ally, is that what happens? And then, and then they are kind of like to kind of look after people who are new to their, their own neighborhoods and so forth. Is that what an ally is?
Traci:
So all it that’s part of that. So the Allies program is we’re actually in the application process right now. So the, if you live in Coppell, it is open to all residents and essentially what your commitment is there. So there is a set program in terms of what is what I sign up and I know we’re going to spend half a day on Saturdays between now and the end of the year. And each of those sessions is going to have a different subject matter discussed around this concept of belonging and what does that look like in our community. and then in between each of those sessions, there are kind of these assignments that my group is going to get together and we’re gonna do a service project or we’re going to share a meal together, or we’re going to share our family histories and get to know where, where we have all come from to land in this place here in Cop Hill.
so that’s the kind of the, the program itself. And then once you have completed that program, you are, you’re now a graduate and you, you’re what we call an Ally’s ambassador and kind of your role within our community is now that you kind of have these skills around having conversations, breaking down some of those barriers, what does that look like? Here was the process that you went through here you have a new neighbor, invite them over for dinner. Here’s some strategies. Right? And so they’ve talked about events like the, the community conversation dinner table where you have like the long table that’s stretched out in a street and everybody kind of like a block party but with food as opposed to, you know, the beanbag toss, <laugh>. and so hosting something like that, so I know that’s on their radar for this upcoming year. and that would be new. That would be one of the things that, you know, they’re, they’re kind of looking at. and so they’re the, they’re the folks that we’re hoping from an organic perspective start those conversations within the community.
Ron:
What a fascinating thing, I mean it, and it all started from you guys talking about, I got a neighbor who’s complaining about their neighbor, you know what I mean? And, and what can we do? And, and it does, it’s, it’s such a fascinating thing to think that a city could proactively mend relationships that are pretty fractured work on that because it doesn’t happen any other way. You know, it used to happen organically, but it needs to happen in a different way now. And I just think this is the most fascinating case study of how a city can help build community. And all cities I think, struggle with similar things. I just look forward to seeing what other cities do. Maybe we can share that, you know, with everybody, right? But this is a real beneficial thing to explore it. Any final words? Mindi, anything you’d like to say in conclusion?
Mindi:
No, I think, I mean, I think the main thing, and I think you can tell from everything we’ve talked about that that is really a primary focus is just building relationships. And again, I think it’s just, it’s just the way of the world now that unfortunately that that art has been lost. And so I think we realize the importance of what relationships do, both from the city to the residents and then the residents with each other. And so that really is, we’re all about education and building relationships so that, that way hopefully we don’t encounter some of the same problems that we have.
Ron:
Right, right. Any final words, Traci?
Traci:
well I hope, I hope all of the listeners have found this useful. yeah, you know, I, this is, this is something, you mentioned it earlier, that every community can point to a situation in their community that is different than your regular complaint that you receive. and so for us, these strategies have, they don’t solve that issue necessarily in terms of, okay, now this neighbor gets along with this neighbor and we get to move on. But what it does do is help provide support to the folks as we, as we’re navigating through that entire situation. because relationships, they’re, well, they’re complicated and, you know, if we, it would, it would be much easier if we could just mandate, you’re gonna get along with this person and you’re gonna get along with this person because we’re not coming back out here. but that is, no community gets to pick who they serve. And so that is completely the antithesis of how we would approach that. And so if we’re gonna serve, how do we help our teams do that without losing their minds? these things have at least been helpful for us to kind of preserve a little bit of our sanity as well as you know, a positive outlook on how these things, how we can approach these things. Because they’re difficult. They really are.
Ron:
I love it. Ryan, any like, final questions or thoughts?
Ryan:
I just love how you’ve come at this from two different angles of the, the mitigating the problems that already exist and proactively trying to avoid problems in the future, building the relationships on the front end, and then when things do inevitably break down in some area, you have these plans and procedures in place. And I think it really can’t be overstated how important it is to free up your staff’s time because you know, a lot of research in productivity and, and workflows has shown that, you know, it seems harmless to just answer an email for five minutes, but being pulled away from an a meaningful and important task 4, 5, 6 times in a day, it’s like the emotional residue of thinking about that problem and having it come up over and over again can completely destroy an any chances of doing meaningful work. And I think your dedication to serve the residents of Coppell Coppell has really shown through in saying, you know, it doesn’t just ruin my day, it ruins my ability to serve these residents. And I think that’s impressive and, and an important takeaway for other, other cities to follow that example. Yeah.
Ron:
And I’d like to add just a final comment and that is Traci and I are working on a survey about happiness within the city, and it’s that like nobody, yeah. Like where else would you expect this to happen? But in Cop Hill <laugh>, and it’s so cool. Like, we haven’t done it yet, we have nothing to brag about, but we’ve been giving it some real thought. And I just think, you know, not only do they want to do these things, they want to track and improve and, and explore how this evolves over time. And anyway, one day we might have a great story to tell about that
Traci:
And I think we will, right? So for context, our community is over 41,000 residents. And so the, the by percentage or just by gross numbers, the the number of residents who fall into this category that we’re talking about is so very small. And so our, that’s part of what we can help our teams with is understanding the broader perspective of this person. This one individual person’s taking up a ton of your time, but there’s 41,000 people who love what we do. They enjoy calling Coppell home. They like the services they’re being provided. And so there’s a, there’s a reason for how we’re asking everybody to serve because it is serving the broader purpose of our community. We can’t just lose sight and just go so myopic that we’re only serving these two people because that will that will crush you.
Ron:
Well, Traci, Mindi, thank you. what a pleasure. And maybe we can talk about something else one day. I’d love that <laugh>.
Traci:
Okay.
Ron:
All right. Happy hot Summer in, in Coppell <laugh>.
Traci:
Yes. Yes. Thank you, Ron. Thank y’all.
Mindi:
Thank you. Okay.
