Improve the outdoor patio with shade sail(s) (rather than umbrellas, as these are less effective).  

Purchase several City branded bikes for employees to use during work. Employees could check out bikes (and helmets) for use on breaks or lunch for exercise, lunch, errands or other purposes. This could be a pilot program to see how a bike share program could work in a corporate environment.

A very frequent and common complaint filed with code enforcement are dead lawns. I've talked with dozens of residents that have expressed frustration with their neighbors' front yards because of dead ugly lawns. The EGMC requires property owners to maintain their landscaping to avoid from it overgrowing but it does not require watering of their landscaping to keep it healthy causing lawns to dry out, become patchy or become dirt. 

I'm proposing that the City consider a turf reimbursement program that would encourage the replacement of lawns with drought resistant landscaping. The program would reimburse property owners of residential properties (specifically SFDs) that replace their sprinklers with a drip system and their lawns with drought resistant landscaping to reduce the use of water and beautify their neighborhood. 

I think we should consider cutting out paper business cards and offer employees and our contacts a digital business card option instead. This could reduce printing costs and spare the environment. I saw an example of such a thing here: https://www.mobilocard.com/

Paper towels are used to dry our hands and open bathroom doors around City Hall. A lot of paper towels are being used daily to open doors (which can be seen in a blue bin next to Public Works) and can also be found in urinals for some random reason. However, this was resolved with a blue bin next to the urinal.

The fact that people typically use at least two towels to dry their hands combined with the likelihood of pull out extra towels to open a the bathroom door and discard them can significantly increase the number of towels used. Towels must also be bagged and removed from the restroom on a regular basis, and any that have landed on the floor must be cleaned up.

Why not resolve it with a hand dryer and a "no touch door foot pull & commercial touchless door opener" tool for the two set of doors in the bathroom?

Driving through Elk Grove over the weekend I noticed a lot of homeowners blowing their leaves into the street. I've seen it in the past where people will place large amounts of landscaping debris or leaf debris into the right of way directly in front of their house. This is a problem because the City doesn't have a contract for leaf pickup. But maybe we should? Three or four months out of the year from October through January the residents of EG would benefit from having leaf debris removal as a City provided service. I also think encouraging residents to clean up their own yard waste by providing free green waste pick-up weekly would help some. The fact that so many residents are non-natives and are accustomed to this service makes an expected City regular function. I'm not suggesting this necessarily be a free service (maybe the weekly green waste during fall could be), but with the storm drain fees already collected, maybe we add this as a service?

The City is in need of a Bike/Ped/ADA Coordinator. The City is currently covering this role with a variety of staff from the City Manager's Office, Planning, Development Engineering, and Public Works. This creates a variety of issues as you have no one person that fully understands the needs of the community and can propose the appropriate action, or educate staff.

The nation's transportation system is changing with the advent shared autonomous vehicles and ride sharing services. Accordingly, traditional parking lot designs, parking needs, and bus stops designs are not equipped to handle these transportation system changes.

The City should allow for a reduction in required parking spaces if a shared autonomous vehicles or ride sharing services station is included in parking lots. The City should accommodate this same approach in its own projects at the Civic Center and Old Town Plaza. A standard detail should be developed for this approach.

The City should allow for on street stations that are either separate or a part of transit bus stops. On street station design would likely need to two designs one for low stress and high stress routes. On high stress routes where vehicle speeds and traffic volume is high more separation may be required from the traveled way. Standard details should be developed for this approach. The City should allow for a reduction in required parking spaces if a shared autonomous vehicles or ride sharing services station is included

According to our checkbook, in FY2017-18 we spent $25,768.20 on bottled water. It's estimated that approximately 80% of recyclable plastic water bottles end up in landfills. 80% would be somewhere in the ball park of 15,736 bottles purchased by us that potentially contributed to landfills in just one year.

Since 2014, the city of San Francisco has banned the sale of plastic water bottles under 21 ounces. San Francisco was also the first city in the nation to adopt a ban on plastic shopping bags, and the state later followed suit. It's possible the same may happen with plastic water bottles and it would be impressive to have our organization taking steps in the right direction in advance.

By replacing our drinking fountains with combination water filling stations/water fountains (at $800+ each, that should total less than the cost of one year's worth of bottles), eliminating single-use plastic water bottles from our meetings in the Chambers and conference rooms (instead offering water pitchers with glasses for guests), providing Water Monster hydration stations at events, if necessary, (as we did at Amgen) in lieu of giving out bottled water, and encouraging staff to use reusable water bottles, we would save money, help the environment and send a message to our residents that we are environmentally conscious, fiscally responsible and a forward-thinking city. This change would also be in alignment with the council imperative to serve as wise and responsive stewards of fiscal, physical, and natural resources.​