This week represents the start of my second year as Mayor. Three questions present themselves: What did we accomplish in the first 12 months? What did we learn? And what are the next steps toward making Sacramento a world-class city? Here are some highlights from the first quarter of a four-year term:

Effective Government and Accountability

This past year, my office set a standard of “best practices” in transparency and accountability.

I hosted Town Hall meetings and Office Hours in all eight council districts, giving hundreds of residents access to me, my staff and managers from every city department. My daily schedule is available and posted on my website.

On Tuesdays, I answered questions from the traditional media – radio, television and print – for an unscripted, open and direct discussion. Moreover, I made regularly scheduled appearances on two morning TV news shows and four radio stations.

And my office embraced social media, making use of web blogs, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.

There were tangible results from these efforts at accountability and efficient government.

The city’s 311 phone service enjoyed a nearly five-fold increase in call volume. My office helped publicize 311 at every opportunity. Residents were able to visit the third floor “bullpen” at City Hall for direct access to my staff.

Working with my city council colleagues, we literally cut the number of council meetings in half, making our municipal government more streamlined.

Finally, communications and collaboration among regional mayors was enhanced when I played host to two meetings involving our neighboring civic leaders.

Meetings didn’t stop with elected officials. I spent time with more than 500 constituents and made myself accountable with evaluations of the benchmarks laid out while campaigning for office.

And to create more accountability at City Hall, I directed a campaign to gather signatures and place an Executive Mayor Initiative on the June 2010 ballot. The initiative received approximately 50,000 signatures from Sacramento residents.

Now, voters will get the opportunity to update their city charter’s structure and accountability. Currently, the charter reflects conditions of 1920.

Looking Forward/Lessons Learned:

In the coming year, I will continue to hold myself accountable while maintaining the openness and transparency that must be the hallmark of our city.

I look forward to giving voters a choice in June between a governance structure of “business as usual” or real, positive change and accountability.

And while I am grateful the city council finally agreed with my calls for an external operational review and audit, I regret we missed the opportunity to create the review process sooner and for less money.

Finally, I am still concerned about significant structural imbalances in our city budget, with insufficient cash reserves.

Public Safety

The current year has been tough for public safety budgets across California. Many communities have frozen or cut their ranks.

I am proud that in Sacramento, we have continued to welcome new recruits into our police academy. We avoided public safety layoffs.

Last December and again this past summer, our police chief pinned badges on 10 new officers, several of whom had been highly (and expensively) trained yet laid off for budgetary reasons by neighboring agencies.

When some of our neighbors were shut out of federal stimulus funds, we lobbied hard in Sacramento and Washington and came back with $12 million for public safety.

I kept my promise to make public safety a priority, and focused on areas of greatest need, especially the “gateway” crimes such as burglary committed by young people. I held two gang summits to help resolve our youth gang problems.

Avoiding layoffs in our police and fire departments, our public safety leaders made good use of technology. The city received a $600,000 grant for security cameras in high crime areas.

Looking forward/Lessons Learned:

I want to encourage our Chief of Police to continue his goals of lowering crime rates and raising retention rates and morale among his ranks. I will continue to lobby for more money for more officers.

My goal is two officers per 1,000 residents, with a higher percentage of the general fund going toward public safety.

And while I supported the “three strikes” rule adopted by Sacramento Regional Transit to allow repeat offenders to be banned from the system, we must continue to improve safety on public transit.

Finally, we must improve public safety coordination between our city and neighboring jurisdictions.

Economic Development

My administration organized three initiatives designed to enhance economic development: the Arts, K Street Corridor and the drive for a new Entertainment and Sports Complex.

The “For Arts Sake” initiative represents an unprecedented collaboration of artists and culture leaders from across the region, working to improve the funding, facilities and public recognition for arts in our community.

The Arts initiative won national recognition from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. when Sacramento became the first city to partner with the center’s “Any Given Child” program. The program will enhance opportunities for our children by bringing access to the arts into the classroom, at no cost to taxpayers.

As a special treat, world-renowned musician Wynton Marsalis visited Sacramento to help get the Arts initiative rolling.

On the K Street Corridor, my administration assembled a working group in cooperation with the city manager’s office. The group is creating a new vision for the J, K and L Street downtown core.

The group’s vision – called “Unlocking the Grid” – hopes to create a new gateway to Sacramento and make our city a regional hub for retail, entertainment, education and housing.

I have been working with top management at Westfield, looking toward the future of the Downtown Plaza.

Finally, my office worked with the city manager’s staff to organize two public Town Halls, where business owners, landlords and the public discussed their dreams for a new downtown.

The Entertainment and Sports Complex initiative is just getting started. I am certain it will become a catalyst for jobs and economic development.

The initiative will focus on jobs and the principles established in my “Rules of the Game.” The rules will make sure Sacramento avoids mistakes by other cities.

Here are the Rules: Taxpayer Comes First. The City Won’t Be Used as Leverage. We Will Negotiate on Even Terms. We Will Think In and Out of the Box.

Looking Forward/Lessons Learned:

Recent months have seen our accomplishments somewhat diminished by issues both distracting and avoidable.

I am troubled by issues requiring an investigation into the city’s building department. Our city must encourage development, and we must follow established rules and protocols.

I was distressed by the political soap opera that erupted over the Nestle water bottling plant permitting process, and was embarrassed that the city sent the wrong message to the business community. We must let the nation and world know Sacramento welcomes business.

In the months ahead, I will work toward diversifying our economy with new sectors, including green tech, high tech, arts, film and health care.

We must develop our waterfront, build a new Entertainment and Sports Complex, and create jobs – and more jobs. Sacramento needs cranes in the air.

Education

The Mayor’s office has no official control over education. No matter, I will use every ounce of leadership to improve the quality of instruction for our children.

A city can’t dream of greatness without a great education system. And a city can’t sustain itself if it fails to educate its young people.

By many measures – including the achievement gap, the state’s Academic Performance Index and drop-out rates – our education system is in danger of failing in Sacramento.

We did have some success, notably our ability to bring U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to Sacramento for a Town Hall. We also held an Education Summit, attracting education and political leaders from across the country, including Newark, N.J. Mayor Cory Booker.

Our work produced an education white paper. And ideas were shared among the community’s school superintendents.

Finally, I was very proud of the work done by students at PS7 and Sacramento High School.

Both campuses exceeded state performance standards and proved the achievement gap between white and minority students can be bridged with hard work, dedicated teachers and devoted parents.

Looking Ahead/Lessons Learned:

We must put our children first. They are the key to our future. I have several goals, both long and short term.

For starters, we must strengthen relationships among regional superintendents and the community’s leadership.

Young people may belong to the schools during the day, but ultimately, those students are our children.

I plan to launch a major education initiative to create a portfolio of high performing schools. I also hope to establish a report card system for our schools.

I am eager to attract new, creative organizations such as Teach for America to Sacramento. I will work toward improving early childhood education and expand internships and work opportunities for older students.

In short, nothing is more important to the future of Sacramento than its children.

Volunteerism

I am extremely proud of our Service and Volunteerism initiative.

We set a goal of encouraging the Sacramento community to log 500,000 hours of service time this calendar year.

We crushed the goal in September, and pushed to 800,000 hours as 2009 neared its end.

Volunteers were present across the community. At the mayor’s office, we created a fellows program that brought top grad students from Harvard Business School to Sacramento.

The volunteer fellows became experts on key areas such as the K Street corridor, arts, homelessness and Sacramento’s quest to build a new Entertainment and Sports Complex.

And my various initiatives created multiple public-private partnerships. They gathered the “best and brightest” from the community – all volunteering their time at no cost to the taxpayer.

Looking Forward/Lessons Learned:

I want Sacramento to become a model city when it comes to service and volunteerism. Judging by the calls I receive from mayors around the country, we are on our way.

And I don’t want the community to stop volunteering. We will continue our service initiative in 2010, with an even higher goal.

If there’s one thing I learned this year about Sacramento, it’s that our residents are unmatched in their generosity.

Homelessness

The problem of people living on our streets and along our rivers is timeless. Many politicians avoid addressing homelessness, if only because they fear there is no solution.

I am not afraid of homelessness. And I would love to make the problem disappear by ignoring it.

That won’t happen.

So I organized community leaders and took a regional approach, with the immediate goal of providing winter shelter. Our long-term goal is more ambitious: provide transitional and permanent housing in sufficient capacity to end homelessness.

Homelessness in Sacramento became an international scandal when Oprah Winfrey sent her cameras to our “tent city” homeless camp. It was an embarrassment. And it pushed the community to action.

Today, we continue to fight against homelessness. But we built a coalition of county, state and federal support, plus support from the private sector and faith community, to provide winter shelter.

And we introduced “Sacramento Steps Forward,” an initiative to provide 2,400 permanent housing units for our homeless citizens over three years.

Looking Forward/Lessons Learned

We must redouble our efforts to help educate our neighboring communities in recognition that homelessness is a regional issue, not unique to certain areas of Sacramento.

It’s difficult to deal with a problem that’s as old as humanity and encompasses many components, from mental health to youth services to animal control services. We must have help from the private sector, the business community and faith-based organizations, plus government assistance from state and federal levels.

But we must remember, a city is only as a strong as its weakest residents. And a truly great city works for everyone.

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