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HomeMy WebLinkAbout06/10/2013 Work SessionCity of Springfield Work Session Meeting MINUTES OF THE WORK SESSION MEETING OF THE SPRINGFIELD CITY COUNCIL HELD MONDAY, JUNE 10, 2013 The City of Springfield Council met in a work session in the Library Meeting Room, 225 Fifth Street, Springfield, Oregon, on Monday, June 10, 2013 at 5:30 p.m., with Mayor Lundberg presiding. ATTENDANCE Present were Mayor Lundberg and Councilors VanGordon, Wylie, Moore, Ralston, Woodrow and Brew. Also present were City Manager Gino Grimaldi, Assistant City Manager Jeff Towery, City Attorneys Mary Bridget Smith and Lauren King, City Recorder Amy Sowa and members of the staff. 1. Priority Based Budgeting Results Validation Workshop Finance Director Bob Duey presented this item. The City sought to move from its current traditional budgeting practice to a Priority Based Budgeting process. Over the next 6 months consultants from the Center for Priority Based Budgeting were expected to lead the City through a defined step by step process which would allow the City to identify our key programs, build result maps, score programs, and allocate cost and resources. At this first work session, the consultants would be on -site to listen and receive direction from Council concerning the adopted Council goals and the interpretation of how the success of these goals may be evaluated for prioritizing of resources. In 2008, the City of Springfield's 3 -5 year financial outlook was positive with aggressive plans calling for the retirement of a special levy for public safety and continued development growth. Since that time a prolonged economic downturn had resulted in the elimination of 60 positions at the City and only a slight sign of improvements to the City's revenue forecast. Management, needing better guidance on how best to recommend the allocation of limited resources, had selected a program being promoted by the International City/County Managers Association (ICMA) called Priority Based Budgeting to help gather data. First working with Council and its own goals, management was planning to spend about six months mapping City services and program costs to help identify which services were best able to meet those stated goals. Upon concluding this first phase of the effort, staff would report back to Council prior the preparation of the FYI Proposed Budget. The Center for Priority Based Budgeting (PBB) had a contract for $38,000 to assist the Finance Department facilitating this city-wide effort. Mr. Duey said staff realized they wouldn't be ready to use this program in time for this year's budget process, so had been working on a multi - phased approach over the last few months. The consultants would help the City through the next phase, which would take about six months. That piece could be used when preparing next year's budget. A possible future phase could be to take this.out to the community, but that was dependent on the outcome of the process with staff and the Council during next year's budget process. This process could also be beneficial in looking at things to add back into the budget when times were better. Feedback from Council tonight would help them determine how to conduct the workshop for staff tomorrow. He introduced the consultants Chris Fabian and Jon Johnson. City of Springfield Council Work Session Minutes June 10, 2013 Page 2 Mr. Johnson said tonight they would give an overview of how the process worked and answer their questions in terns of a high level overview of what would transpire over the next few months. They would end the exercise by working through a results validation so they could be ready to work with staff. He noted that there were a number of budgeting techniques and it was an evolution of learning. Budgeting should connect with strategic planning and priorities; it should match allocating funds to things that were important to the community. Mr. Johnson gave some background information on the partnership between himself and Mr. Fabian and Priority Based Budgeting. He had studied Budgeting for Outcomes and had some concerns about that particular process. Mr. Fabian, who came to work at Jefferson County with Mr. Johnson, had been working on implementation of Budgeting for Outcomes in Fort Collins, Colorado. They both had concerns about that process, and together they worked to improve on those things while still matching the way resources were allocated with the things that were important to their community. In Jefferson County, they developed two initiatives — Fiscal Health and Fiscal Wellness. Fiscal health was the foundation and fiscal wellness was the ability to sustain it long -term. That became priority based budgeting. Mr. Fabian said this tool had been used for organizations struggling with their budget and those doing well. He discussed how the program was used in Fairfield, California. The City Manager from Fairfield found that this was a different way to look at their situation and the budget. During stressful times, it was difficult to see clearly. Priority based budgeting was a tool to look more clearly at the situation and the budget. He noted the other cities they had worked with throughout the United States, some large, some mid -size and some very small. This program worked in all situations. Mr. Johnson said he and Mr. Fabian wrote about how they were progressing after using the program in Jefferson County. It caught the attention of the International City/County Management Association (ICMA), Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) and the National League of Cities (NLC). Those organizations had encouraged them to bring this to other communities. ICMA established their Center for Management Strategies and said Priority Based Budgeting was a leading practice. They encouraged all of their membership to look at this as the next approach in looking at budgets. The NLC had been very supportive and Kathy Novak, a 19 year elected official in Colorado and former NLC President was also helping with their presentations from her perspective as a former elected official. Tonight they would be focusing on the process and sharing some case studies. This was a process and they continued to learn from every organization they worked with to improve the process. Mr. Fabian discussed the across the board cuts approach and how it could be ineffective. It was tough to show favoritism to some programs and not to others. Every program was important. The credit rating agency, Moody's, had recognized that across the board budget cuts could be a way to avoid tough decisions and had negative impacts. Communities that focused on values of the community were looked upon more favorably by credit rating agencies. Mr. Fabian and Mr. Johnson described the steps to success in PBB Determine Results. Look at what business the city was in as local government and what the community expected of the city. Look at the objectives and goals. This should be at a high level and include the outcomes the City should be achieving. The results should be something that were consistent over time, although could be tweaked over time as the community changed. Places to start could include vision and mission statements, and Council goals. These City of Springfield Council Work Session Minutes June 10, 2013 Page 3 would be the ongoing reasons the City existed and would take place over time. He provided examples from other communities. Some programs did not recognize internal functions that were important in keeping the organization running properly. PPB divided the results into community results (external) and governance results (internal) because both were important to the function of the organization. Clarify Result Definitions. Different things achieved each result in different communities; therefore the results needed to be defined to fit each organization. During the staff workshop on Tuesday, they would be gathering data to define each of the results which would be identified at the end of the work session. A results map would be developed. He provided an example and discussed the information presented. This exercise identified what was important to the community and then determined what good governance was needed to reach those goals. 3. Identify Programs. This determined the things the city actually did in a detailed list of all of the programs and services offered by the city. That would be part of the work done with staff during the workshop. That list was sometimes very lengthy for a city the size of Springfield. Each department would have programs that were critical to the organization, and each department would likely have programs or services that were less important. This would give an opportunity to look at what the city did and compare it to the results. 1 4. Score Programs Against Results and Attributes. There were other reasons programs were provided besides producing results, such as mandates and the reliance on the city to provide a program. Looking at these reasons provided an opportunity to look to partnerships to see if another agency could partner with the city to provide a service or if the other agency was or could take on a program. Cost recovery was another filter to use in scoring. Each program's relevance would also be considered. He provided an example of scoring for mandated programs. There were two parts to the scoring. The first was self assessment where each department scored their own programs and how well results were achieved. The second part was peer review which provided quality control. Through this exercise, they learned how to ask better questions. Mr. Fabian said that Kathy Novak had helped design a series of questions. Her perspective on PBB was that it helped bring policy questions forward that were often on elected officials' minds. Some of the questions included which programs were the highest priority in what was expected by the community, which programs were truly mandated, which programs were self imposed, and which programs were only provided by the community. Mr. Johnson said when answering those questions, they could look at other options and public or public /private partnerships. They could identify whether or not there were programs that were no longer needed or need to be enhanced. They could also look at programs that may no longer be helping the City achieve their outcomes, and asking how much they were spending to achieve outcomes. Many of these questions could be difficult to answer especially from a budgetary perspective only. Mr. Fabian said coining out of the peer review process a scoring scale would be developed. He displayed an example and explained how different programs fell into quartile one (highest), quartile two, quartile three and quartile four (lowest). This scale showed how much was being spent on each quartile. There were a number of filters that could be applied to view the information in a variety of City of Springfield Council Work Session Minutes June 10, 2013 Page 4 ways. Also, community and governance programs could be viewed separately, or together. One of the filters was by fund. Councilor Brew asked if they could show which services were included in the fourth quartile for each fund. Mr, Fabian said they could see those programs. He showed how that could work with the filters Mr. Johnson said that was an important piece of looking at this process. Core services were different in each community depending on the results of each. Mr. Fabian said they could look at the departments separately. Councilor VanGordon asked what the City of Boulder did with the information from this process._ He asked if they changed programs, worked to move quartile 4 programs to quartile 1, etc. Mr. Johnson said it was combination of looking at the programs from all different angles, asking a lot of questions mainly about quartile 3 and 4 programs. They looked at partnerships and different ways to do things. In their third year they were expecting some new revenues so looked at adding new programs for one of their results. Unfortunately, the revenues didn't come in so instead of stopping the programs, they looked at how they could shift resources to the higher priority programs. They used the tool to determine what should be changed in order to provide the higher quartile programs. Over time, they had shifted resources and reduced in some areas. Councilor VanGordon asked if the city used this process every year. Yes. He asked if resources were moved from quartiles 3 and 4 up to quartiles 1 and 2, if the programs moved there as well. Mr. Johnson said in many cases the programs changed and resources were moved to supplement other programs. Some programs were looked at to determine if they could be done differently to better achieve the results. Councilor VanGordon said in theory they could make a management change in programs in quartile 3 and 4 to bring them further in line with the council goals and up to quartiles 1 and 2. Mr. Johnson said it had been used in different ways depending on the community's needs. He referred to the score chart and noted that it could also be used to show the community how the City was doing. Mayor Lundberg asked if this was all done at staff level. Mr. Johnson said Council would determine the result staff needed to use for the exercise. After the workshop, staff would bring the result maps back to Council. Staff would then craft the inventories and go through the evaluation process. Once that was complete, staff would ask Council to assist with policy questions and framing the recommendations so they were clear. Councilor Ralston asked who thought we needed to do something like this. He felt the City did a good job prioritizing services. He asked why we were spending $38,000. City of Springfield Council Work Session Minutes June 10, 2013 Page 5 Mr. Grimaldi said the City did a goodjob of establishing community priorities. As we faced more difficult times in terms of the budget, it was very difficult to balance the budget without getting into cutting some of the higher priority services. This provided a tool to help with that process. Councilor Ralston said that was the Council's job. They knew the priorities and took care of them. Mr. Grimaldi said this was an additional tool to help them with that. He provided the example of the last budget cycle when there was a lot of discussion about Lane Regional Air Protection Authority (LRAPA). This tool would have helped them discuss where it fit in their priorities to make a more informed decision. This would provide a different lens to look at that issue. There were many other issues that came up in the budget. Councilor Ralston said this would be taking a lot of staff time that could be used for something else. Councilor Brew this looked at what the city already did, and seemed to make the presumption things were being done at the right level. The City may be mandated to do certain things, but it didn't look at the level we were doing that service. In some cases, we could be exceeding the requirements and could scale it back and still meet the mandate. They needed to look at the scale of services. Mr. Johnson said they would be providing them with several ways to look at the information. They had the information on what was mandated and sometimes mandated items were also helping achieve the results. The tool included filters to allow them to pull out information that opened the door for additional questions, such as the level of mandate. Through the process, they would ask questions about all of the programs. For all programs, the question of whether or not there was a service delivery problem should be asked. This was a guide to start someplace and then talk about all of the programs. Not everything would happen in the first year, but was a process adopted to change the way the budget was done from now into the future. Mr. Fabian said other filters could be used for programs that were in quartile 3 or 4 that citizens relied on the City to provide to determine whether or not other agencies offered the same service. This opened it up for questions about partnering or turning the service over to someone else. Councilor Moore asked if the mandates could be broken down by who was mandating the service. Mr. Johnson said those could be set up to make the best sense. The City of Boulder put State and Federal mandates in one grouping and the City and Code mandates in another. Councilor Moore said if they had that information, they could perhaps speak to the legislature about the impact of unfunded mandates. Mr. Johnson said this helped identify those mandates Mr. Fabian the filters were very powerful. He provided examples of how they could be used for City mandates. Mr. Johnson said it focused communities on the appropriate conversations that were needed. It wasn't something that could be analyzed in one -year, so a starting point needed to be determined. Looking at things that the City was doing that weren't helping accomplish the community's results was a great place to start. The City of Boulder looked to see if they were doing anything that wasn't City of Springfield Council Work Session Minutes June 10, 2013 Page 6 accomplishing one result. They found that $21 M of their budget was being spent on programs that were low priority in terms of achieving the community's results. The presentation was meant to give them the perspective that the tool led to the conversations that helped them decide whether or not they were allocating resources to things that were important to the community. Mr. Johnson said they would ask Council to complete an exercise to help the consultant determine where they would start during the staff workshop on Tuesday. Council had already done a great job in establishing goals. Some of the goals combined some major concepts, so had been listed on the exercise in a slightly different way. Mr. Fabian handed out the exercise for Council to fill out. For the exercise, each Council member had $100 of fictitious money to allocate to each result. There was space for additional results if they chose to add some. Mr. Johnson said these were just the community results. He was aware that they had a financial sustainability result for all of the internal functions, but that was not part of this exercise. That would be discussed more during the staff workshop on Tuesday. Councilor Moore asked how the community goals had been incorporated into the exercise. Mr. Johnson explained how they separated out the goals into the community results listed. These were suggested results, but could be interpreted differently. Councilor Moore asked if infrastructure was governance. Mr. Johnson said transportation and wastewater were in place to benefit the community so were part of the community results. A component of that could address the internal facilities, but this result was the part that benefited the community. Councilor Wylie asked if managing well - planned growth would be in the new areas. Mr. Johnson said as defined, it would be that component. The definitions would be critical. The information provided by staff would be used to make sure those concepts were included in the result maps so it included all the components of managed well planned growth. Councilor Ralston asked how hometown feel had anything to do with environmental quality and livability. Mr. Johnson said that was what they were asking Council to help them define. If they would prefer those to be separate results, that was their choice. Mayor Lundberg said during the exercise, they could cross one out they didn't like and rewrite it how they would prefer it to read, or just mark that they would like it separated. Councilor Ralston asked about the dollar value for each item. Mr. Fabian said the dollar amount was not necessarily monetary, but rather a way to identify importance. City of Springfield Council Work Session Minutes June 10, 2013 Page 7 Mr. Johnson said they could weight certain things towards the scoring. He explained. Councilor Moore asked if they were supposed to finish the exercise during this meeting. Yes. Mayor Lundberg said this exercise was to give staff direction and was only the beginning. Mr. Johnson said it was a chance for the Council to let the consultants know if there was something that should not be there or something that was missing. The exercise sheets were gathered by the consultants Mr. Duey said the consultants would like to tabulate the sheets from the Council. They could move on to the next topic and come back to review the results after that discussion if the Council chose. Councilor Brew said he didn't feel comfortable because they hadn't truly defined each result. Mr. Johnson said this would be the starting point and results maps would be created. They could then re- evaluate these once the detailed definitions were drafted. The exercise could be re- administered after they saw the results maps. Council chose to go to the next topic and then hear the results from the consultants. 2. 13 "' Street Right of Way (ROW) Development, Public Outreach Results Follow -up. Civil Engineer Michael Liebler presented the staff report on this item. On May 20 "', City staff held a work session with City Council to review public outreach results in reference to improving the un- improved right -of -way (ROW) on 13`h Street from L to N Street. Council requested more information on the area in terms of the possibility of vacating the ROW to adjoining properties and clarification of the areas characteristics and usefulness as a pedestrian and bicycle connection. Staff was seeking Council direction on how to move forward in relation to the upcoming I O'h and N Street Sewer project work within this unimproved area. In accordance with provisions of SDC 5.20- 120.A, the City Council could adopt a resolution to initiate a vacation of public right -of -way and then proceed to adopt a vacation Ordinance. Staff would perform the appropriate research and investigations into the sites vacation/dedication history, utility conflict and considerations, and transportation needs as laid out in the attached Memo (Attachment 2 of the agenda packet). At this time, City of Springfield staff recommended retaining the ROW for public transportation/utility needs and capitalizing on the cost savings related to performing the work to install the bike /pedestrian path with landscaping as part of the sewer project and as supported by the results from the public outreach. Mr. Liebler reviewed the vacation process. He described the area and where the utilities were located. The area would not allow development. He displayed a map showing the usefulness of the area as a bike /pedestrian path and the connectivity in this area. Mr. Grimaldi said the other question Council had asked was regarding crime information in the area City of Springfield Council Work Session Minutes June 10, 2013 Page 8 Mr. Liebler distributed information about police activity in the area which was minimal. Discussion was held regarding why the Police report had been requested. Mr. Grimaldi said they were at a decision point for this project. Councilor Woodrow said creating connectivity was a great idea. She didn't see it as a troublesome process in order to get it done. Councilor Ralston asked how much would be spent for the bike /pedestrian path and grass. Mr. Liebler said there were cost savings in adding this in with the sewer project. It would be about $20,000 for the path and $13,000 for the grassy area, making the total cost of approximately $33,000. Willamalane would mow the grassy area on a regular basis at no additional cost to the City. Councilor Wylie said it sounded like a good cooperative project. The connectivity for walkers and bikers for safety in the neighborhood was a good thing. Councilor Brew said his first choice was to pave the path and his second choice would be to vacate it to the property owners. Councilor Moore said she saw the long term benefit to the neighborhood and felt it would improve the value of the adjoining neighbors' properties. She was in favor of connectivity. Councilor VanGordon agreed. Mayor Lundberg said part of the Springfield Transportation System Plan included connectivity to get people to walk, bike and get around off the street if possible. This provided connectivity in a neighborhood that could use it. General consensus of the Council was to put in the path and the grass. Mr. Liebler thanked Councilor Moore for attending the public meeting and being involved in the process. 1. Priority Based Budgeting Results Validation Workshop - resumed Mr. Duey resumed the Priority Based Budget topic. Mr. Fabian said before they moved forward with the definitions, they wanted a level of agreement with the results from the exercise. He displayed the results. Almost everyone put dollars into everything. Some had less than others because they had been broken out. The total amount invested under each result was important to help them identify the highest priorities. They did have the ability later in the process to weight the results. The results definitions would be brought back to Council before they made any decisions about weighting the results. From the exercise, the consultants felt good about moving forward with the results listed. The one question that remained was whether or not to break out 'Environmental Quality' and the `Hometown Feel' into two separate results, or keep them as one for the staff workshop. Councilor Woodrow said she broke out environmental quality because she thought of it as more of a regional partnership than a stand -alone result for the City. City of Springfield Council Work Session Minutes June 10, 2013 Page 9 Councilor Ralston said it was more of an unfunded mandate. Mr. Johnson said they wanted to make sure all were in agreement before moving forward. Councilor Ralston said he felt they were separate. Hometown Feel was something the City wanted to have and was more of a package of many things. Councilor Moore said she felt environmental quality and small town feel related to community livability. She would prefer to emphasize community livability. Councilor Brew referred to the result `Desirable Place to Live and Work' and said that all things led to that result. It was similar with `Hometown Feel'. Mr. Fabian said they would see some overlap Councilor Wylie said environmental quality, community livability and hometown feel meant to her that we had clean water, clean air, streets laid out, sewers functioning properly, etc. The result of `Diverse and Inclusive Place to Live and Work' came about to address treating all people fairly in our community with our mixed population. They needed to go back to when they first came up with the goals. Mayor Lundberg said there was so much overlap on all of them that they could spend all evening rearranging everything. If each one was separated to become their own result, that brought on more work to be done for each. She asked if everyone would be comfortable leaving them in the same category to make it easier for staff to move forward. Councilor Ralston said that was fine, but he still felt they were completely separate. He would score environmental quality different from hometown feel. Mr. Johnson said when they moved forward in the result definitions, they could watch to see if `Hometown Feel' was showing up in the result definitions of the other results. Councilor Brew said Councilor Ralston did have a point. Council didn't develop the goals to look at the budget so they didn't work well. He was fine with the result left as one or split in two. Mr. Johnson said they would go forward with the results as listed on the sheet, but taking into consideration that they would want to make sure they were articulating those definitions with those thoughts in mind. If there was still a feeling that more work needed to be done after the definitions were created, they could make some adjustments. He felt they would still be able to see those areas whether separated or together. Mayor Lundberg said they would be looking at these along with programs so the results would be broken down many more times. Mr. Duey thanked Council for their time in going through this workshop. Staff would be coming back to Council sometime later in the year with the definitions. ADJOURNMENT City of Springfield Council Work Session Minutes June 10, 2013 Page 10 The meeting was adjourned at 7:23 p.m. Minutes Recorder —Amy Sowa Christine L. Lundberg Mayor Attest: // ACW-AI- Amy Sow City Recorder