Joe Patterson was elected to the Rocklin City Council for the first time in November 2016, and served as Mayor in 2019. Joe serves as the Treasurer for the Rocklin Public Safety Foundation which is dedicated to enhancing public safety, serves on multiple charity and non-profits boards, is a member of the Rocklin Area Chamber of Commerce and coaches T-Ball for Rocklin Little League. He graduated with a BA in Government from Sacramento State and was admitted to the post-graduate Jesse M. Unruh Assembly Fellowship where he began his career working in the state Legislature. After several years as a legislative staffer, Joe left the state Capitol for the private sector. Joe recently launched his small business, Provident Strategies, where he works with associations, non-profits and businesses on regulatory compliance, legislative policy and public affairs.
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Narrator
We're in an era of rapid change where resilience is vital. The Davood for Thought podcast dives into the most important topics in government and technology today. Our host, Davood Ghods, sits down with his vast network of colleagues to dish on the tech challenges that affect us all. Follow this podcast on your favorite platform and join the conversation by sharing it on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook.
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Davood Ghods
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Direct Technologies, the Davood for Thought Podcast. I'm Davood Ghods and I will be your host today. The way I stay up with the pressing topics of tech and government of today is to tap into the panel experts I've had the honor of connecting with over the years. Today we have Joe Patterson on the podcast.
00;00;48;24 - 00;01;20;12
Davood Ghods
Joe is currently a council member with the City of Rocklin. He was elected to the Rocklin City Council for the first time in November of 2016 and served as mayor of Rocklin in 2019. He graduated with a B.A. in government from Sacramento State University, the Hornets, and was admitted to the post-graduate Jesse Andrew Assembly Fellowship, where he began his career working in the state legislature.
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Davood Ghods
After several years as a legislative staffer, Joe left the state capital for the private sector and launched his own business, where he works with associations, nonprofits and businesses on regulatory compliance, legislative policy and public affairs. Joe, without sharing any more of your background, I want to welcome you to this episode of Davood for Thought podcast and ask you to tell us about yourself. And for someone who doesn't know about your background, please give us an overview what you have done and what you're working on these days. Welcome.
00;01;51;25 - 00;02;16;05
Joe Patterson
Oh, thanks. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. I don't consider being on the city council as sort of my day job. That's something I do because I love my community and, you know, I want to make sure it's better.
00;02;16;05 - 00;02;37;29
Joe Patterson
And I saw some issues, so I decided to run. But I really do love, you know, I guess, government in influencing public policy and obviously I can do that directly by being a member of the city council and, you know, influence what happens here in Rocklin and and to some extent on some other boards and things like that that I sit on.
00;02;37;29 - 00;03;06;06
Joe Patterson
But, you know, my real passion lies with doing that on the private sector side. You know, how can you how how can associate oceans and businesses and things like that influence public policy outcomes? Sometimes there's political implications. There's all sorts of ways to do that. So that's really what I love doing and that's what my business does. We work with associations.
00;03;06;08 - 00;03;31;14
Joe Patterson
I'm also a registered lobbyist, although that's not my primary function. And then like I said, like I think you said, I used to I used to work in the Capitol. But you know, personally I have four children and my wife works actually in the technology sector. So, you know, we're just it's crazy busy out here. So our kids range from two months to eight years.
00;03;31;21 - 00;04;04;22
Davood Ghods
Wow. Yeah. You got your hands full. Yes. Yes. Idea. So thank you for giving us some more aspects of your family and your life. What emerging trends are you seeing, Joe, in your in your field, in the I.T. or in the business fields that we all should be paying more attention to?
00;04;04;24 - 00;04;28;21
Joe Patterson
Well, I think, you know, let me answer that from the the city perspective. You know, I you know, because that's kind of I think sort of an interesting component is that and I think a lot of opportunity is out there. Basically, what I see happening out there is that there are vendors that create technology solutions and then try to sell it to cities, sell their product to cities and I think that works in a lot of ways.
00;04;28;23 - 00;04;59;02
Joe Patterson
But I'm not so sure that companies basically ask cities what they need. You know, collectively and then develop a solution for that. And I'll give one example, just streaming of city council meetings for example, you know, getting that set up for a city and integrated with our agenda system and our records and, you know, to make it publicly accessible.
00;04;59;04 - 00;05;27;13
Joe Patterson
You know, there are like two or three vendors out there in the state that do that. But I they do you know, they they do what's supposed to be done. But when I look at systems like that, you know, there's so many improvements that can be made. I think we all know about transparency just generally from a government standpoint and people desiring to have more interface with their government, but they don't necessarily have the time to come to city council meetings.
00;05;27;16 - 00;06;01;15
Joe Patterson
And so being able to understand the budget, you know, without having and there are also companies out there that make, you know, sort of these budget transparency software solutions for companies. It's one of our four cities as well. And I think they're all you know, they're fine, but I'm starting to see more and more flexible arrangements come out from companies where they say, hey, look, we have this product, but we can modify it very easily to do all these other things, you know, if you want those things done.
00;06;01;17 - 00;06;24;01
Joe Patterson
And I think that's kind of an interesting solution. But I think the world is going to move very quick now because now you're having people get elected to office and also become into the staff positions that grew up with technology. And they more or less demand it and they demand that quick access to your government, something that didn't exist, you know, five years ago.
00;06;24;01 - 00;06;46;20
Joe Patterson
And now people are really demanding the access the government, but they don't want to go to city council meetings. I mean, I don't even want to go to city council meetings, you know, I mean, people want to be able to zoom in, for example, right? I mean, just something simple like that. That can only happen. By the way, zooming in a city council meetings only happens because there was an executive order by the governor to allow participation in that manner.
00;06;46;24 - 00;07;18;15
Joe Patterson
That needs to be a permanent, permanent thing. But sometimes it took the pandemic, you know, it took the pandemic to make people realize like, gosh, we should just allow this to happen. So sorry was kind of a run on answer. But, you know, those are just some of the things that I'm seeing right now. Yeah, public private partnership and flexible arrangements by the vendors is a good trend that we look forward to working with our public sector partners on.
00;07;18;17 - 00;07;44;15
Davood Ghods
I think you would agree, Joe, that adjusting to the pandemic was challenging for many organizations, almost all. And now everyone is thinking of what the next major disruption like the pandemic is going to be and how we can be better prepared for it. So raising audience is a big topic of conversation these days. We are offering resilience as a service. What are some examples of resilience you have seen in your business? What is the one thing that businesses should be doing to improve resilience in your And just just to clarify, I mean, from resilience, you mean, you know, just the ability to still do what you need to do, continue the business of the organization?
00;07;44;17 - 00;08;34;11
Joe Patterson
Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, again, from from a city standpoint, it's so important that in the middle of a pandemic or a fire or or anything, I mean, you have to continue to provide services to people in the middle of an emergency and in one hand, on one hand, the pandemic, while it's obviously a public health emergency, you know,
00;08;34;11 - 00;09;08;27
Joe Patterson
it didn't spark into that. You know, we didn't need public safety officials coming from outside the area to help. Right. And I think so there's sort of this old model where if there's a fire or there's a flood, you know, you use mutual aid and you bring in, you know, outside agencies to help when there's an issue. But, you know, looking forward, the pandemic kind of showed people that, hey, look, emergencies and the need for continuing to provide services is in just on natural emergencies.
00;09;08;27 - 00;09;40;07
Joe Patterson
There are other types of emergencies that could happen. And I mean, we haven't really seen this on the city level or, you know, really, But I mean, your major data breaches, for example, I mean, you do kind of see that here and there. But I mean, you know, this those these days in in 2021, I mean, somebody could conceivably hack into our streetlights, for example, and cause havoc on cities, you know, And I mean, that's something, again, that's just changed, you know, in the last decade or so.
00;09;40;07 - 00;10;09;24
Joe Patterson
So so I think what, you know, it's important for a city because it's you know, these are critical, critical services that are provided. I mean, police and fire. I mean, yeah, you know, parks are obviously important to a lot of people, but, you know, the critical services that are provided in the event of an emergency and just being able to drive on to your streets, you know, having systems set up to ensure when things go crazy that those continue to operate.
00;10;10;02 - 00;10;35;19
Joe Patterson
Again, something that only can come from the technology sector. And I mean, truthfully, you know, cities themselves, unless you're Los Angeles or you're a major bureaucracy, you're not going to have that. I mean, the city of Rocklin has less than 300 employees. We have 150 of them are sort of in the public safety sector, you know, and then the other 150, you know, my be planners or builders or things like that.
00;10;35;19 - 00;11;00;25
Joe Patterson
And, you know, I was so we have a very small I.T. department, I mean, the great people. But I think, you know, that's trend with other cities as well. You know they don't have the you know, the technological expertise to really build in a resiliency themselves. And honestly, I don't think a lot of cities even know what to look for.
00;11;01;01 - 00;11;21;21
Joe Patterson
You know what that even I mean, you kind of think, oh, I got to keep police and fire up. Let's make sure we have walkie talkies or something. But and let's make sure our data is secure. But I don't think I think there are a lot of things that, at least as a policymaker, I can tell you, I don't even know what I should be thinking about unless somebody else brings it up to me.
00;11;21;23 - 00;11;53;08
Davood Ghods
Thank you for that. The Leader. We have a service that we do business continuity planning, consulting for organizations. And I was really happy, though, to hear from a council member of a city that you have things like data breaches on your radar, things like streetlight vulnerabilities on your radar. And so that's great that we are getting that at the city level.
00;11;53;10 - 00;12;33;16
Davood Ghods
And you know, you mentioned also other emergencies that are not necessarily natural disasters, things like major power outage. It could happen. It could happen that a state or a region, Western region, for example, could be without power. It is possible. And are we ready for that? Another emergency that's not necessarily natural is major technology outage of some sort, or because of the civil unrest that we experienced in January, that downtown Sacramento offices were closed for a period of time.
00;12;33;19 - 00;13;11;05
Davood Ghods
So, no, all of those that's what organizations, I think you would agree, that need to be prepared in order to be resilient and be able to continue the business of the organization. So thank you for that answer.
00;13;11;05 - 00;13;34;16
Joe Patterson
Yeah. And I mean, if you don't mind me going on a little bit more on that. I mean, when you think about the data outage, I mean, in the city of Rockland, one of our one of the data, you know, Internet providers in the city a few years ago, there was a line cut in like San Francisco or something like that, you know, And there unfortunately wasn't redundancy So, I mean, everybody in Rockland who use this particular provider was out of the Internet. And the city is a huge by the way, all our traffic lines are connected using this provider. You know, So the city was, you know, just people, you know, were out of you know, out of luck basically, for an entire day. Imagine people working from home now because of the pandemic.
00;13;34;22 - 00;13;52;24
Joe Patterson
Right. I mean, this is a this is the kind of stuff where, I mean, it isn't even a really a city question. I mean, yeah, the city's got to become resilient, but just, you know, more broadly, how how is, you know, society, you know, as a group of people is a collection of people going to deal with this?
00;13;52;24 - 00;14;17;07
Joe Patterson
And and some of the stuff we talked about the lights the that you know obviously natural disasters and things like that, data breaches. Those are the easy answers. But as technology becomes more and more within cities and in just people's lives, there are going to be other my kids can't even go to school these days if Zoom goes out, you know, I mean, that's something that didn't exist. One year ago. You know, like technology's just changing how how we interface all the time. And I mean, you just constantly have to keep up with this stuff. It doesn't change, you know?
00;14;17;07 - 00;14;41;24
Davood Ghods
Exactly. Thank you for those additional insights of the technology. We always talk about how we're going to get something done if it's a project or if it's an internal effort. But we also ask ourselves, why are we doing what we are doing? What's your why? In other words, what motivates you in your work?
00;14;41;26 - 00;15;10;03
Joe Patterson
Well, I mean, two things on my sort of volunteer job on that city council is that, you know, I really I love my community. And selfishly, you know, I want to make sure it continues with the quality of life for my family and myself.
00;15;10;03 - 00;15;36;17
Joe Patterson
But also, you know, because I am selfishly motivated in that regard, you know, the benefits of that thinking go more broadly to all the residents of Rockland. And I take very seriously, you know, I mean, I get emails every day from people on a you know, there's a crack in my sidewalk or this or that. And, you know, I want to help every single person who reaches out to me.
00;15;36;17 - 00;15;59;18
Joe Patterson
I mean, it just I can't get an email. You know, if you email me, I get it on my phone right there, just like every other email. And I respond to all of them. And I want to help every single person. And, you know, so that kind of motivates me. But I think also, you know, in my in my private life, my day job, you know, that I want to do things that I really love doing.
00;15;59;18 - 00;16;27;11
Joe Patterson
You know, City council is one of them. But on my day job, I love doing stuff that influences public policy because how awesome is it if there's a problem and you actually are responsible for dealing with it? You know, I mean, we have an issue with one of my clients that in the state budget right now, I mean, trying to influence and get what we want in or out of the state budget is that's like that's exciting stuff to me to be able to influence at that level.
00;16;27;13 - 00;17;01;21
Davood Ghods
Excellent. Well, life for family and community and quality of life. That's great. Those are great motivators. I think this would be a good plug for all public sector employees and especially volunteers to thank them, because this week, I believe, is the week of Public Employee Appreciation Week. So here is the thanks to all the public sector employees that I know and also the volunteers like yourself working on various issues at the city level. So what inspires the innovation at the city level or in your business or in your team?
00;17;01;23 - 00;17;26;17
Joe Patterson
You know, it's very easy. I think in any job, this is not regarding the city or just in any job to become. I mean, I grew up, my parents 9 to 5, worked, got off work and didn't think about work at all at that point.
00;17;26;19 - 00;17;53;14
Joe Patterson
And obviously the world has changed for a lot of people and a lot of people still sort of work in that in that world. But, you know, now we're in sort of a 24 seven cycle of just everything, just always being on, you know. And I think you know, it's it's kind of interesting because I think what sort of inspires innovation or what, you know, brings it along as people people want that contact.
00;17;53;14 - 00;18;18;24
Joe Patterson
They want that easy access they want. And people love information. I mean, data is so valuable out there, You know, I mean, from license plate readers on, you know, for people that might be committing crimes in the city, you know, to traffic signaling, I mean and so I just think about even though people might get in, hey, look, I can work 9 to 5, get off work.
00;18;18;27 - 00;18;42;29
Joe Patterson
I mean, my thing is, how can we do things? Maybe we got to spend a little money, but to improve the livelihood of people here in Rocklin in easy ways and maybe cheaper and more affordable? I mean, we have a we have sort of a traffic issue in Rocklin and one particular area where where it's actually kind of an infrastructure issue.
00;18;42;29 - 00;19;07;04
Joe Patterson
I mean, we got to redo the road and I mean, we're talking millions of dollars to do this. So what are some other things? And I think that's where you I am a big fan of our staff members in Rockland going to continuing education so they can learn other ideas, you know, specifically on the technology front to help solve those problems that don't require such enormous outlays of money.
00;19;07;04 - 00;19;31;18
Joe Patterson
You know, maybe we got to spend, you know, a couple hundred thousand on some consultants or something, but we don't have to spend, you know, $5 million rebuilding the road. Right. So so, you know, I think the innovation piece is really cost not only giving people access to information and what they need, but also reducing the cost on city as cost pressures rise because of retirement and things like that. Pensions, you want you have to innovate to make things actually cheaper for for the taxpayers.
00;19;31;21 - 00;19;59;04
Davood Ghods
That's very true. And I'm glad that you guys are looking for innovative ways of doing things better, more cost effective, more modern than, you know, that has been done because it's only because it's always been done this way.
00;19;59;04 - 00;20;30;01
Davood Ghods
No, that's great. Direct technology, Our motto is we are the human side of tech. So I'm going to ask you a couple of personal questions. What is something that would surprise people about your background, their interests?
00;20;30;03 - 00;20;53;01
Joe Patterson
I don't know. I mean, I think people look at city council members is sort of like a I mean, there's really two falls. One, people people are just straight up disrespect, full to elected officials because they think you don't really you're not really existing, You know, I mean, you're just some email address out there. And then also, I think that, you know, people are sort of look at it, you know, with a high level of respect. But I think from from my which I appreciate, you know, both angles, but I think what I think is very surprising to the average person that I talk to, whether it's my neighbors or just somebody I see on the street, is that, you know, I'm very accessible.
00;20;53;01 - 00;21;14;03
Joe Patterson
My colleagues are as well. You know, and again, I mean, I hate to say this, it sounds like a weird club, but because of technology these days, you know, you got to write me a letter. I mean, my cell phone's online. I mean, anybody can call me. My cell phone number is online, you know, And so just my accessibility, I think all of our accessibility, you know, it's not too personal.
00;21;14;03 - 00;21;43;17
Joe Patterson
But the reason why I wanted to say that is because it's I think it's like, is it surprising to a lot of people these sensibility that they can have with their local governments if they just reach out, you surprisingly will get a response from your city council member.
00;21;43;17 - 00;22;03;25
Davood Ghods
That's great. Wow, I wish I was a Rockland resident. And where can people find you and keep tabs on what you're working on Joe? How can people support your work?
00;22;03;25 - 00;22;30;19
Joe Patterson
You know, I always like to stay in front of issues and so, you know, Google Joe Patterson and my contact information comes up and pretty much what I am up to is up there. I got my my websites. Joe Patterson dot com but I mean that's just my campaign website so I don't really update that that much. But you know, usually there are issues going on and if there's an issue going on in Rockland, I have a a loud mouth. So almost always people can see what I'm up to. But also Facebook, Facebook.com, slash Joe for Rockland. You know, I post a lot of things on there about what I'm working on in the city. One of the things I've been working on a lot is our electric our electricity system here.
00;22;30;19 - 00;22;56;26
Joe Patterson
I mean, we have PGE, which, you know, is it's is what it is. But, you know, next door, Roseville has a Roseville Electric, which is significantly cheaper and I mean ridiculously cheaper. And it puts us at a competitive disadvantage. And so I talk you know, I talk a lot about things that I'm working on in regards to issues like that on my Facebook.
00;22;56;28 - 00;23;18;18
Joe Patterson
I think it's a good way to communicate with people, even though a lot of people aren't on Facebook. You know, if you don't have a profile, you can still sort of search my page because it's public, you know,
00;23;18;20 - 00;23;38;21
Davood Ghods
Very good. But that was my last question. Thank you so much for joining us today, Joe. Thank you to all the listeners out there for joining us as well. We will see you in the next episode of the of Davood for Thought podcast, where we will shed more light on the human side of tech.