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HomeMy WebLinkAboutweekly newsletter Date: January 13, 2012 To: Mayor & City Council From: Mark A. Rohloff, City Manager WEEKLY NEWSLETTER Subject: WITH WINTER RETURNING, A REMINDER 1.: Now that the city has experienced its first significant snowfall of the season, I wanted to brief you on the city's procedures for dealing with snow events. The city generally does not go out on major snow removal operations until st two to three inches of snow has fallen. Certain exceptions do exist, such as the January 1 snow event, which began with icy road conditions. In those cases, we salt major corridors, as well as intersections and curves in the city. As for regular snow events, our priority during the day is with major arterials (primary) and collector (secondary) roads. The Street Division has 22 snow plow routes through the city. Each route is required to hit its primary and secondary roads before it plows the rest of the city. There is no formal bare pavement policy, with the exception of these primary and secondary roads. Furthermore, we do not generally salt in residential areas, with the exception of intersections and curves in roads. Even when we have mild conditions throughout the first part of the season, such as we had this season, we do not "make up" for previous mild snowfalls by salting residential areas. We do this because strategically, we need to preserve our salt supply for snowfalls that may occur throughout the entire season, regardless of the frequency or distribution of these snowstorms. One of the reasons that we do not have a bare pavement policy is that the city does not have sufficient staffing, trucks, or a salt supply and storage to achieve a bare pavement goal. This is a great source of criticism, but these are some of the decisions that have been made over the years due to budget constraints. I do not see us changing this policy anytime in the near future given our current fiscal limitations. The storm we just experienced explains how we may ideally handle these events. The crews got the primary and secondary roads done to the best of their ability through the rush hour, followed by a couple of trucks to deal with those areas throughout the evening hours. The main crews went on their 22 routes at 12:00 midnight on Friday morning, and finished all streets by 12:00 noon on Friday. I went out and observed conditions on Friday morning, and found that there were still residential areas that had not yet been addressed. Those were taken care of by the time you read this Newsletter. In those residential areas that were plowed early, they may find some residual snow on the streets that the crews will not get to until they perform a second go-through in each neighborhood, some of which were done on Friday. With the moderate snowfall, the major complaints we received were about snow piling up on th the sidewalks because of limited terrace areas, such as Jackson Street and 9 Avenue. Our goal remains to get primary and secondary streets addressed as best as possible, and address residential areas after we have addressed the primary and secondary areas. If you have any questions regarding staff's approach to addressing our snow removal challenges, please contact Street Superintendent Kevin Uhen. Weekly Newsletter January 13, 2012 Page 2 PRELIMINARY FIVE-YEAR FINANCIAL FORECAST 2.: At Wednesday's Council Workshop on the Classification & Compensation Study, I provided Council with a graph, identifying a preliminary financial forecast prepared by Finance Director Peggy Steeno and Management Assistant Brian Chapman. This was staff's first effort in preparing a long range financial forecast, as recommended by the Long Range Finance Committee. This five-year forecast made some basic assumptions on the city's major revenue sources and expenditure needs for the next five years. Two scenarios were developed, one that represented a rather modest approach in terms of revenue generation, and a "worse case" scenario in which major revenue sources received cuts of anywhere from 1% to 16%. These scenarios were developed based upon the worst experience we have seen with revenue reductions in these areas for the past few years. The expenditure forecast in both models was the same, although the model does allow for assumptions as well. What the forecast showed was that the city's deficit could range anywhere from $2.5 million to $8.5 million by 2017, assuming that the city did nothing to address these revenue shortfalls and expenditure trends. Obviously, our goal, which we will achieve, is that we never run any type of deficit such as that proposed. However, I think it points out that we need to address the underlying issues that create the assumptions that we are putting into our financial forecast model. We will share this information with the Long Range Finance Committee again, and look at further refinements to this, as was suggested by Council Members at Wednesday's Workshop. I wanted Council to be aware that the city's fiscal condition is something that we need to keep in mind as we address how we are going to create savings in personnel costs over the next few years. REVISED AUTOMATED REFUSE COST COMPARISONS 3.: At last Tuesday's Workshop on automated refuse, Council Member Hall asked about the exclusion of fuel costs from the cost analysis, given the fact that we would be increasing our daily vehicle fleet by one truck. We confirmed that the analysis did not include these costs. As a result, please find enclosed a revised analysis, which adds $13,000 annually to the cost of operating automated vehicles. When this cost is added in, the average annual variable cost is just over $113,229, compared to $197,833 for continuing with manual refuse collection. As a result, switching to an automated refuse collection system will save us an average of $84,604 annually over staying with a manual system. If there are any other questions about this analysis, please contact Public Works Director Davis Patek. Meanwhile, staff is putting together a schedule of actions that will need to be taken by Council and staff if we are to implement an automated refuse system by this fall. We will provide this to Council shortly. My goal remains to bring this to Council for formal direction and authorization in early February. If there is anything else you would like to know in order to make a more informed decision on this matter, please contact Mr. Patek or me. STAFF PARTICIPATES IN PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT SEMINAR 4.: On Thursday of this week, department managers and supervisors attended a webinar on performance management, sponsored by the International City/County Management Association (ICMA). The city is participating with ICMA's Center for Performance Management (CPM) to assist municipalities in creating relevant performance measures for their respective communities. Performance measurement is a priority goal in the city's Strategic Plan, and will certainly be a component of success in implementing any type of pay- for-performance plan that will likely be adopted by the Council as part of the Classification & Compensation Study. Weekly Newsletter January 13, 2012 Page 3 It is also my desire to incorporate relevant goals, objectives and performance measurements into the city's budget document, so that we may tie our goals and objectives to our budget, with performance measures being the bridge between the budget and our plans. We are planning to use collective knowledge of the 73 cities participating in the CPM Program to develop relevant performance measures across 14 service areas. Following our participation in the CPM Program, we will expand these performance measures across all departments. Additionally, we plan to work with Professor Nollenberger's class again this year to conduct our citizen survey. One of the recommendations from the CPM Program is to use citizen surveys to determine citizen satisfaction with city services. We are hoping to make some of our questions in this year's survey tie in more directly to performance measures related to the effectiveness and satisfaction of city services. We hope to provide the Council with more information on this subject in the coming months. st HEALTH CONSOLIDATION UPDATE 5.: In anticipation of our January 31 Workshop on the Health Department consolidation, I wanted to report to Council what staff has been doing in recent weeks relative to a possible consolidation of Health Departments. Our Health staff and staff from the Winnebago County/Neenah Health Departments have been meeting to review our policies, procedures, as well as ordinances that we follow in providing health services. We are working to reconcile which services will be standardized when a consolidated department takes place. We are also identifying what codes may need to be changed at which levels so that a consolidated department could most effectively operate. Meanwhile, we are going back over the Workshop that Council had last fall with Baker Tilly to identify concerns regarding the finances related to the health consolidation. Specifically, there is the concern that the tax rate for the city will actually go up as a result of the health merger. While this is correct, the comparison goes back to comparing the Health Department back in 2009. It should be pointed out that the levy for the Health Department has been reduced significantly in recent years, as we have used essentially a skeleton crew to provide health services. This level of service is not sustainable, and would not meet the state standards for a health department. The State Department of Health has been willing to accommodate our smaller staff and level of services in anticipation of the city consolidating its public health services with the county. Should consolidation not go through, we would need to increase our public health levy by approximately 70%, or $170,000. Because Baker Tilly was using the 2009 base year, it did not identify what had occurred in the Health Department during this st interim period. I will provide this information to the Council for discussion at the January 31 Workshop so that you are aware of the immediate financial implications should the Council choose not to consolidate. If you have any questions on items regarding the proposed Health st Department consolidation in advance of the January 31 meeting, please do not hesitate to contact me. DEPARTMENTAL REPORTS & UPDATES 6.: Other items I'm enclosing with today's Newsletter include a letter from the contractor for the railroad bridge over the Fox River, which includes their schedule of work for the replacement of the Canadian National Railway Bridge. I am also enclosing a letter to the property owners of several streets slated for reconstruction, which are included in our 2012 Capital Improvements Program. I am also enclosing the latest edition of the 2011 hotel/motel room tax. Weekly Newsletter January 13, 2012 Page 4 Insofar as minutes are concerned, I'm enclosing the following: The minutes of the December thth 20 Plan Commission meeting; the minutes of the December 20 Downtown BID Board th meeting; the minutes of the January 10 Traffic Review Advisory Board meeting; the minutes th of the December 19 Urban Wildlife Advisory Committee meeting; the minutes of the st December 21 Transit Advisory Board meeting; and the meeting notice, agenda and th background material for the January 18 Transit Advisory Board meeting. The last item I'm enclosing is the latest issue of the FOCUS newsletter, published by the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance, which features an article on the state's 2011 fiscal year. th UPCOMING MEETINGS 7.: Meetings I have scheduled for the week of January 16 include th the following: On Monday, January 16, I am meeting with representatives of Wisconsin Public Service regarding the possibility of Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) in city vehicles. At 4:00 p.m. on Monday, I am meeting with Council Member Poeschl and Sustainability Advisory Board Chair Margy Davey regarding their plans for the SAB under new Chair Davey's leadership. At 5:00 p.m. Monday, I will be attending the annual Martin Luther King Banquet at UW-Oshkosh. At 8:00 a.m. on Wednesday, I will be attending Leadership Oshkosh Business Day, at which time I will be addressing the group regarding the city's cooperative efforts with our economic development partners. On Thursday, at 4:00 p.m., I am meeting with City Attorney Lorenson, Mayor Tower, and Council Member Hall regarding the application of Robert's Rules of Order for Council Meetings. If you have any questions regarding my attendance at any of these meetings, please do not hesitate to contact me. MAR/jdc Enclosures