Minutes: Committee of the Whole: Sept 2012

Common Council Special Meeting as Committee of the Whole Saturday, September 15, 2012, 8:00 a.m. Masonic Lodge, 104 West Main Street, Evansville, WI MINUTES 1. Call to Order. The meeting was called to order at 8:05 a.m. by Mayor Sandy Decker. 2. Roll call. Members present: Mayor Sandy Decker, Alderpersons Mason Braunschweig, Jim Brooks, Barb Jacobson, Jon Senn, Ben Ladick, and Josh Manring. Others present: City Administrator Dan Wietecha, City Clerk Judy Walton, Police Chief Scott McElroy, EMS Director Mary Beaver, Water & Light Superintendent Mark Sendelbach, and City Attorney Mark Kopp. Absent: Alderpersons Cheryl Fuchs and Floyd Hayes and Public Works Director Dave Wartenweiler. 3. Approval of Agenda. Braunschweig made a motion, seconded by Brooks, to approve the agenda. Motion approved unanimously. 4. Deferral of Minutes. Brooks made a motion, seconded by Braunschweig, to defer the reading of the minutes of the September 11, 2012, regular meeting to the next regular meeting. Motion approved unanimously. 5. Citizen Appearances. Brooks made a motion, seconded by Senn, to approve Agreement with Oak Grove Church for Use and Occupancy of 209 South First Street. Council commented that it is a good use of the facility when it is empty. Council asked about looking into the utility cost for the city. Motion approved unanimously on a roll call vote. 6. Basics. Meeting preliminaries (timekeeper, break, a-ha sheets, and civility reminder) were noted. 7. Parking Lot. Committee briefly reviewed the status of parking lot items from April 21 and May 17. 8. Goals of Today’s Meeting. An opening round of goals for the meeting included: ways to attract businesses and people, employee recognition, capability of handling change, use technology to expedite service, clearer definition of top-notch service with metrics, sustainable growth, capacity to work, and vision for the future. 9. The Foreseeable Future. Discussion on the relatively near future (1-10 years) and the impact on city services. A. Change. We should recognize that change is going to happen. We need to understand the environment in order to try to shape it. Generally it is better to be proactive than reactive, but we still need to be able to react to unforeseen events. B. Top-Notch Service. A primary aspect of top-notch service is that it is customer oriented: it involves the services that our residents actually see, it requires courtesy and customer relations, and people tend to expect an immediate response. Another aspect of top-notch service is that we serve in the interest of the community as a whole, not some individual complaint; it is better to not act on a complaint basis; and we should be proactive and address issues before they can become complaints. A third major aspect of top-notch service is that it seeks continual improvement: examples include third-party recognition such as RP3 and police accreditation, efficiency and lean operations, and adopting best practices. It was noted that best practices can help to set standards, measures, or benchmarks to identify where and how we achieve top-notch service. C. Population Growth. Evansville (24%) and Union Township (13%) are the two fastest growing jurisdictions in the county. Anecdotally, Evansville has about a third of the housing starts in the county this year. The growth has been and will continue to be a factor in long-term planning and development decisions. D. Resident Expectations. With the population growth, there have been shifts in the politics and demographics of the residents. There has been a trend toward younger families with children; however, we also have a significant senior population. E. Acts 10 and 32. Last year, there were significant changes in the law regarding unions in the public sector; the law is subject to ongoing litigation. Much of the law does not yet pertain to the city, as our union contracts all run through December 2013. But management will be different as we go forward. The city has had some initial discussions about updating personnel policies in preparation of different legal parameters when the contracts expire. F. Tight Budgets. The city has maintained fiscal policies to limit spending to within our means and to provide stability over time. However we will continue to have tight budgets. Intergovernmental funds comprise close to a third of our general fund; additional cuts will be difficult to absorb. Similarly, payments in lieu of taxes from the electric utility provide reasonable revenue which would be difficult to absorb if cut. Spending restraints and levy limits do impact service levels. Development to add to the tax base, diversified or new sources of revenue (including grants), and continued efficiency improvements are essential. G. Intergovernmental. Intergovernmental efforts cannot be one-sided. We also need cooperation from other units of government, and they would need to pay their fair share. We need to talk with the rest of the Fire District about proportional representation. Other ideas that have come up in the past for collaborative efforts have included rail, tourism, lobbying, public safety office, and a bike trail. We should look at the county, school district, other cities, and neighboring townships all as potential partners. H. Technology. Technology can improve the service we provide (such as advanced or time-of-day metering) and in how we communicate with our residents and businesses (such as text messages or online forms). Technology also provides back-office support with email, webinar training, uploading reports, and mapping. It is important that we have adequate and reliable internet speeds to conduct our work. I. Succession Planning. We need to maintain capacity in our staff to maintain services; this means training. We have several employees approaching retirement age. When we have looked at department head positions in the recent past, we have taken a “clean sheet of paper” approach to review the position for current and future needs; this has worked well for updating position descriptions. This type of format will be easier to use for other staff positions when the legal status of collective bargaining contracts is sorted out. When hiring, we should look to the best candidate whether that is an internal or outside applicant. We can look to learn from outside the city even when we don’t hire from outside. 10. Beyond the Horizon. The Committee discussed providing city services in the future (20-50 years) and steps to take now to position us for the long-run. This recognizes a continued and heightened emphasis on lean government: not purchasing duplicate equipment or staff; streamlining and eliminating unnecessary paperwork, time and delay, costs, etc; and being effective from the customer point of view. Two innovative streamlining examples were to combine all public safety tasks (ambulance, police, and fire) in a single department and to combine all utilities (electric, water, sewer, and stormwater) in a single department. Another idea was to review our committee structure: some committees may be combined, other committees may be eliminated, or there could be new committees such as technology or lobbying. Technology was named as another long-term theme. It is important that the community have bandwidth to support economic development. Our services need to stay on top of technological advances. In the future, we may need to have an IT/communications person on staff; we could look at this being a shared position with the school district. 11. Next Steps. A. Top-Notch Service. Several elements were noted for a definition of Top-Notch Service: use of standards or benchmarks for measurement, communication, meeting customer expectations, a proactive approach, flexibility or openness to change and improvement, and accountability. B. Action Items. The Committee identified a number of action items going forward: (1). Fire District agreement with the townships needs to be updated for proportional representation. (2). Minutes from Beloit City/Town intergovernmental meetings should be reviewed for ideas about cost-sharing. (3). Minutes from Evansville/Union meetings should be reviewed for recent ideas about intergovernmental efforts. (4). We should meet with Union again about potential shared services. (5). A number of ideas will be discussed in staff meetings: customer service expectations, cascading messaging, resident request forms, and employee recognition. (6). We should review the existing committee structure over the winter, prior to the next reorganization meeting. (7). We should research better internet service. (8). We should talk with the school district about possibly sharing technology/IT service. (9). We need to monitor and ensure staff being able to absorb other work when we make changes such as the combined City Administrator/Finance Director. (10). We need to continue interdepartmental sharing. (11). We should consider an all city employee get together. 12. Check Out. A closing round was unanimous in a positive outlook for the city, noting: we are on the right track, discussions like this one produce great ideas to work towards, it is important for everyone to be informed, we can find ways to be more efficient, the departments do a great job with a tight budget, we keep taxes down without losing services, we should look to more intergovernmental work and ways to share services, and Evansville is a can-do community. 13. Adjournment. Braunschweig made a motion, seconded by Senn, to adjourn at 11:55 a.m. Motion approved unanimously.