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.
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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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