COMING OFF the resounding approval of a ballot measure to boost the sales tax rate by 1 percent, and with the city’s recent AA+ rating from Standard & Poor’s, Carmel Mayor Jason Burnett is “feeling really good” about his job as the city’s top elected official. But since he took office in April, he’s had to learn a few lessons about the complexities and demands of his new role the hard way.

“You don’t have time to do everything as well as you would like, so you have to prioritize,” he said. “It really helps me, and I think it really helps the city council, to have the discipline of laying out key projects at the beginning of the year and then keeping that focus.”

Major goals for this year, for instance, included passing the budget, getting approval of the hospitality improvement district to raise more money for marketing the city to visitors and convention groups, and convincing voters to decide in favor of Measure D, which will help the city refinance some $6 million in retirement debt. All of those have been accomplished.

The smaller things are important, too, especially when constituents are always bringing up this or that, but it’s important to not get sidetracked, Burnett said. The trick is acknowledging the importance of various matters for the people closest to them, and trying to work them into the system he’s established.

“That’s one of the big challenges of the job: When someone approaches you with an idea or a problem, you want to treat it as a key issue, because from their perspective, it is,” he said. “But you don’t want to distract from the goals the full council has set. I think we have a good system for that.”

For example, people who approach the city about potholes, cracked sidewalks or run-down buildings are advised the capital improvement projects list is reviewed each spring, “so they don’t have an expectation we’re going to get to it in the next month.”

Repeatedly reinforcing that system and structure will help the council operate more efficiently, according to Burnett.

“I want to really work on making sure we’re putting in place the right expectations for the culture we want to have,” he said. “And how I operate as mayor and how we operate as a city council — that the people are comfortable with that and there’s a common set of expectations.”

Soon after Burnett took office, he established workshops held in city hall for an hour on the Monday before each regular council meeting. They serve as more casual forums for discussion between elected officials and the public on particular matters, such as parking, a farmers market or disaster preparedness.

(Initially, he also said the workshops might help the formal meetings operate more smoothly and efficiently, but they have continued to run between three and five hours.)

“The concept of workshops has been going fairly well, but I think there’s room for improvement about publicizing them,” he said. “We’ve started to lay out a longer term calendar for them.”

Keeping people informed about future council business, even several months down the road, has also helped constituents feel more connected with their city government.

“We’ve put in place an agenda calendar so anyone can look at when we expect to get to any particular item,” he explained. “They can look out over the next six months. There’s always an item that comes up at the last minute, but by and large, we’re trying to avoid that.”

Overall, Burnett said he’s pleased with the current council and its ability to amicably discuss matters even when opinions differ.

“I feel like there are different points of view represented — different ways of approaching a problem or an issue — but I think we genuinely like each other and benefit from each other’s thinking,” he said. A recent council retreat at Il Fornaio, in fact, focused on how council members communicate with each other.

“Looking around at how some other councils operate, I think we’re lucky,” he said. “It’s not that we all share the same point of view, but we are good at sharing those differences.”

Balancing time

Burnett also contends with the demands of business beyond the city limits, such as representing the city on the Fort Ord Reuse Authority board governing how the former military base is developed, playing a key role on the mayors group tasked with the monumental effort of trying to get a reliable water project, and supporting efforts to widen Highway 156.

“How important are those decisions, relative to dedicating my time to Carmel-specific issues?” he asked, describing the balance he has to strike. “How do you allocate your time between water issues, FORA issues, the Highway 156 project and Carmel-specific issues?”

And then he’s also a new father who wants to spend time with his 1-year-old son, often leaving him wishing he could be in more than one place at a time.

“When you’re a council member and you’re invited to an event, if you’re able to go, that’s appreciated, and if you’re not, hopefully there will be some other council members there,” he said.

But there’s only one mayor, and if he’s invited to an event and doesn’t appear, people notice.

“It’s nice that people want me to be there, so I need to do a better job of explaining to people that I can’t be in two places at once,” he said. “And we on the council need to do a better job of making sure someone can make it. That’s one thing I didn’t fully realize.”

He also has to be mindful that he’s never off duty.

“The other thing is that I have to remember that what I say in any context, I am representing the city,” he said. “And so you have to just be aware of that — it’s still an adjustment.”