Instead of meandering from one week’s meeting to the next, Jim Clarke believes “it would be important if the City Council could develop a strategic plan like this:

“What do we want to accomplish in the next two years?”

That way, he says, staffers throughout City Hall “could focus their energies, their work plan toward an overall goal rather than some individual task.”

One of the driving reasons that idea maven Jim Clarke was elected to the City Council was his broad experience in party politics in the last four decades in Washington and in big-city governing.

He brought insights and motivations to the dais that distinguished him.

Here is Mr. Clarke’s latest light-bulb idea.

“To give an example, let’s assume – and I am not putting this as a priority for myself, but it comes to mind – that our goal is to make Culver City the greenest community in Los Angeles County. What are we doing?

“We want to ramp up our recycling programs,” says Mr. Clarke. “We want to ramp up our energy conservation programs, our water conservation programs.

“We want to ramp up energy efficiency – efficient lighting.

“We want to encourage more people to walk, more people to use public transportation. We will work on improving our sidewalks, our street-lighting so it is safe for people so they feel safe.”

Mr. Clarke wanted to be inclusive. “It could be any number of things,” he said. “But you would have an overarching goal. Then you would say to each department, ‘What are you doing to help us meet this goal?’”

Councilman Clarke said the subject has arisen now because 13 months ago, when Meghan Sahli-Wells became mayor for the next 12 months, she made the statement she wanted to make Culver City a great place for raising kids. That was her goal.

“There wasn’t really an opportunity to say ‘Okay, this is a Council priority. And so you would ask departments, say Public Works, ‘What are you doing to make Culver City a great place for raising kids?’”

(To be continued)