Memorandum

City of Lawrence

TO:	Work Group Participants
FROM:	Mike Wildgen, City Manager
Date:	June 21, 2005
RE:	Outline of assignment – City Hall efficiency/effectiveness

In a February 22, 2005 statement to the City Commission, Mayor Rundle proposed the following:

“We have identified a range of issues and concerns about city government through a variety of efforts.  Those include Chamber of Commerce business retention report that was recently updated; employee survey; image survey’ and others.  I know that refinement of those issues continues to evolve just as new ideas will no doubt surface.  I would like to shift the emphasis from studying those issues to development of responses.

I would like to have the permission of the city commission to initiate a small work group to work with the city manager to develop action steps for improving efficiency and effectiveness of city hall.  That work group would serve as liaison to city and planning commissions.  It would build on the work to date and would focus on our employees’ role in change.”

The Work Group established by Mayor Rundle in March, 2005 has been meeting approximately every two weeks.  Discussion has focused on planning and development issues.  Our staff assignment was to provide an outline regarding proposals and ideas related to the development process.  To that end, we provide the following: 

Outline

Basic Philosophy

• Develop, enhance, and encourage a culture of continuous improvement, openness and communication, professionalism and confidence in the development process of Lawrence Municipal Government.
• Establish well defined development processes.
• Ensure strong internal department coordination and process certainty.
• Provide transparent public processes and community education.

Action Steps/Plans to Date

• Receive Business Retention Task Force (BRTF) report by City Commission (June 28, 2005).
• Start up of a number of the recommendations has begun including the BusinessLink and e-gov projects.
• Per the 2003 Virtual CEO Assessment, the Management Team implemented subcommittees to develop improvements in a variety of areas:
• Recommendations presented in May, 2005 Draft Customer Service Report
• Communication (internal) enhancements are being reviewed by Employee Relations Committee (ERC)
• Emphasis on employee training (new training specialist on board in July)
• Applicant surveys will be a future committee assignment
• Continue strong working relationships with Economic Development partners (County, KU, Chamber of Commerce Economic Development VP)
• Audits of processes and codes to eliminate paperwork and processing time (i.e., new development code will eliminate CC site plan approvals, temporary utility easements made part of plat process rather than acquiring CM approval)
• Expansion of e-government services to the development community:  trackable building permits, mapping/GIS services
• Budgeting in 2006 for a zoning enforcement manager position to allow for the conversion of an existing inspection supervisor position to a plans examiner position.  This conversion will result in more complete plan review, more timely plan review, and additional developer assistance in the field.
• 2004 Business Retention Report recommendations (03/28/05)
• Utilize C.H.A.T. program (completed in May 2005) for housing assessment
• Elected officials visitation program (starting July 2005)
• Identify capital funding sources – City and County providing $400,000 in 2006 budget for bioscience efforts
• Customized Assistance Program – underway by the Chamber
• KDOC International Resources – promote KDOC services and international assistance to local firms – underway by the Chamber

Additional activity is taking/will take place that is indirectly associated with the aforementioned philosophy and resulting from previous surveys and organizational assessments:

• Expansion of employee intranet to increase efficiency (paperless transactions) and enhance communication within the organization
• Increased use of employee committees to improve communication on a variety of important topic (healthcare, compensation, customer service, employee benefits, etc.)
• Reorganization to allow for training specialist position to address customer service training and other training initiatives (e.g. a supervisory training program)
• Training of specialty planners in the Planning Department on Microsoft Project software for use in tracking progress within the development process and ultimately to use in informing the public on the website of that progress.
• Continuation of employee satisfaction surveys to compare to baseline data established in 2002 Employee Satisfaction Survey
• Working with county staff on “one-stop permitting” (co-location of permitting and planning functions) concept
• Budgeting in 2006 for Human Resources Information System software (as recommended by GRI Research in the City of Lawrence Employee Survey Final Report – February 2003)
• Budgeting in 2006 for a consultant to review and analyze the City’s current development process
• Researching complaint tracking software options

In our attempt to learn more about best practices in the development process, this work Group will meet with planners from Lenexa and Olathe on June 27, 2005.  Doug Stephens identified both of those staffs as worthy of investigation.

As noted within this memo, there is an increased activity level by staff in efforts to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of City Hall.  Working together with the City Commission, Planning Commission, and a variety of interested stakeholders, there will be continued improvements in this important area of service delivery.