Getting Projects Unstuck

A Role You Don’t Always See

One of the less visible parts of being Mayor is helping residents and business owners navigate City Hall when their projects get stuck. It happens more often than it should.

Someone follows the rules, submits plans, responds to comments, and then things slow down. Weeks turn into months. Answers become unclear. The path forward gets harder to see. Sometimes, people feel they need to hire an attorney just to move things along. We all know the feeling. I even have a name for it: WAYMISH or “What Are You Making It So Hard?” It was the subject of one of my columns last year.

What My Role Actually Is

My role in those moments is not to decide outcomes or bypass process. It is to make sure the process actually works. That means helping people get clear answers, aligning departments, and working through the City Administrator and department directors to give things a nudge when they stall. Most of the time, that’s all it takes.

Projects rarely get stuck because someone isn’t doing their job. More often, it’s priorities colliding, communication gaps, rules applied out of context, or simply the volume of work moving through the system. A quick check-in or a reset on next steps can often get things moving again.

Right now, I’m working with a homeowner on a long-delayed remodel, another trying to get final approval, a small business owner who has invested their life savings and is waiting to open their doors, and nonprofits caught in layers of process. In one recent case, progress on multiple properties valued at roughly $80 million came down to drilling into the details and getting alignment with PG&E.

Consistency Matters

In every situation, the focus is the same: clarity, accountability, and forward movement. I show up, ask questions, and work to get people the answers they need. I don’t decide approvals, cut side deals, or pick winners and losers. I help make sure the system functions the way it is supposed to.

Building a Better System

Stepping in case by case helps move individual projects forward. But the real goal is a City Hall that works without anyone needing to call the Mayor. That’s why the City Administrator, with support from the City Council, is developing a new customer experience program. It will establish clear, consistent service standards centered on proactive problem-solving and meaningful engagement with every resident and business.

The program will set practical expectations for response times, regular updates, and solution-oriented conversations, keeping the focus on outcomes, not just process. It is also designed to strengthen a culture of accountability, recognition, and continuous improvement across all departments. You’ll start to see this roll out over the coming months.

None of this is complicated. It is simply the standard Carmel, and the businesses in it, hold themselves to, now applied deliberately to how City Hall serves those who fund it, supported by better systems and technology.

Looking Ahead

As you’ve likely heard, I’ve decided not to seek another term as Mayor. That allows me to focus the months ahead on helping make sure we get this right. I’m also continuing work on ways to strengthen business vitality and infrastructure delivery that will carry forward after I leave office.

City Hall should work for the people it serves. If your project is stuck, you deserve clear direction, a real response, and a path forward that doesn’t require hiring an attorney to get one. If you need help, send me an email.

(To hear a podcast generated from this column, go to cli.re/stuck.)

Dale Byrne, Mayor Carmel-by-the-Sea

dbyrne@cbts.us