Annapolis City Hall needs an inventory check | COMMENTARY in Capital Gazette

At my hardware store, we review our inventory every year. Outdated light bulbs, shower heads, lawn mowers — we cycle them out and bring in newer models. If we add 20% new stock, we remove 20% of the old. Otherwise, shelves get crowded, staff gets overwhelmed, and customers can’t find what they need. The lesson is simple: If you keep adding without removing, everything becomes less effective.

Unfortunately, that’s exactly what has happened in our city government.

Over the years, City Councils, often with the best intentions, added new programs, policies and responsibilities to staff workloads without cutting low-priority or outdated tasks or bringing on the resources needed to keep up. The result? A stretched-thin workforce and frustrated residents facing delays and dropped balls.

If I’m elected mayor, I want to change that.

I’ll work with the City Council, department leaders and employees at all levels to take a hard look at what we ask our city staff to do and whether we’re setting them up for success. This isn’t about cutting employees. It’s about clearing the clutter so our workforce can focus on what matters most. That means identifying and eliminating redundant programs, inefficient processes and low-impact tasks that cost time and money without delivering value to residents.

When I served as Ward 5 alderman, I saw plenty of bottlenecks and overlaps. A single ordinance could take months, sometimes more than a year, to wind through committees, boards and reviews. Staff would attend multiple meetings and wait for their issue to be brought up, just to answer the same questions over and over. That time could be better spent helping residents, solving problems and improving services.

To fix this, we need to take a page from how successful organizations operate: with clear-eyed evaluation to establish solid priorities. That’s where strategic planning comes in.

Now, I know that phrase can make people roll their eyes, thinking of long meetings, paperwork and binders collecting dust. But the kind of strategic planning I envision is hands-on and focused on action. It starts with listening and bringing together city leaders, staff and residents to identify what’s working, what’s not, and where we can improve. 

Then we make a plan to shift resources and cut red tape so we can deliver better results without burning people out. We will tie that plan directly to clear performance metrics, with every department reporting regularly to ensure we’re not just checking boxes, but truly delivering on the priorities and goals shaped by our community’s voices.

Some ideas we could explore together include:

Reducing repetitive committee reviews by assigning legislation to only one committee, and inviting interested colleagues to that meeting.

Setting limits on how long legislation can sit in committee without action before it automatically proceeds.

Requiring clearer, more consistent draft legislation from the start.

These are just examples. It’s not about cutting corners, but about streamlining government while maintaining accountability and transparency.

Just like in my store, City Hall needs to manage its “inventory”: time, tasks and tools. If we add something new to an employee’s workload, we need to remove something old or give them the support they need to do both. That balance is essential for an effective, fair and responsive city government.

Jared Littmann and his wife own K&B Ace Hardware in Annapolis. He’s also an engineer, a lawyer, a former city councilman and a Democratic candidate for Annapolis mayor.

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