Public Works – Study Session
November 1, 2011
The study session for the Public Works department was broken
out into their sub-departments with representatives from those areas. Jeff Johnson, the City Engineer, presented most of the material. He did use some of his staff to dive into mare of the details.
Most of the comments revolved around the topic of doing more with less. This statement was made a number of times – basically at the start of each of the sub-departments.
The first area was engineering. Jeff talked about personnel and how they have been reduced by three staff members. I thought I heard him say that they have gone from 9 people down to six since 2003 (the date is what I am unsure of). Jeff believed that they needed to hire someone for a GIS Position. I believe this refers to Geographic Information Systems. After looking it up, basically means that they will need someone to manage and analyze geographical data – if that is what the acronym that they used stands for (they realized about 2/3’s of the way through that they needed to explain the acronyms they were using). Some other requests that Jeff had was a new software system – they referred to a “Technology Roadmap”. Also they said they needed a new van and a copier.
The next area was the airport. This I was impressed with. The airport’s goal is to become entirely
self-sufficient and they have a plan to do so.
Much of that will rely on the fuels sales for revenue. I really liked the fact that they had a
separate strategic plan that the Airport Commission uses to evaluate where they are at and hold themselves accountable.
In my evaluation, this was the only area that resembled management similar to what we would see in any private business. I think this should be looked into and possibly expanded. Granted it has some similarity to private business, where there is actually a primary revenue source outside of tax dollars.
The street department became very lengthy as there was a lot of discussion about maintaining the roads and snow removal. Again, they were doing “more with less”. The issue is having enough skilled plow drivers to keep up with the snow removal. Mark from the street
department did not believe that it was possible. I did like that the idea of looking at
outside contracts was a possibility. It was not agreed to at this point, but I hope that they do look into it. This would show that they are looking at ways to be more efficient and maybe save some money by contracting it out. At least it would add in a competitive bid and really force the City to match up their actual costs of snow removal. Jeff did mention that they received $41,000
in state aid for road maintenance. He said this was received twice a year and I am not sure if the $41,000 was a total figure of if they got that twice a year from the state. There was also a brief mention of $1M in construction funds. The street department was also asking for a new street sweeper, tractor and loader as well as a new plow truck (this was their top three, they did have additional requests).
The last area was waste water. Jeff talked about the projects that have been completed and those that were still going on. They also discussed the process of how they dispose of the “sludge” and
the capacity limitations that could become an issue. Jeff said that we have a 5 Million Gallon a
Day capacity and have been running at around 4 MGD. If we see an increase in some of the industry in Owatonna, the capacity will become a bigger issue, but we are okay for now.
The meeting ran long and I did not get a chance to ask our three questions, however, Les Abraham asked me what I thought of the process. I explained that I was still trying to understand it as it is different than the way a business would set a budget. I explained to him that I was impressed with what I heard from the airport department and would like to see
that expanded. We are definitely making an impression and I feel that the city is recognizing that they need to be held accountable.
Mike Milstead
Ag Power Enterprises,
Inc.
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