Week 3

             Monday ~ The week started off with a 9:00 telephone conference meeting with Alan Shark of PTI to discuss integration and improvements to the city's IT system.  Attendees included:  Lunda and Tim (the Assistant City Managers); Brenda (our IT guru that everyone loves); and me.  You can imagine my surprise when I received the e-mail from the Alliance for Innovation entitled “Cloud Computing for Local Government,” which Mr. Shark will be speaking at.  Mr. Shark is an adjunct professor at Rutgers and made a slightly disparing comment about ASU when Lunda mentioned they an intern from ASU (so Alliance interns, set him straight when you see him).  From the conversation during and after the telephone conference, I believe the city will use PTI’s services to update and improve their existing systems.  PTI sends out a team to evaluate the current systems and make recommendations for improvements.  In addition to the obvious goals, key selling points included that the city will gain accessibility to a national network and that PTI does not sell anything so one can expect the recommendations to be unbiased towards a product or vendor.  Following the meeting, I started on creating bar graphs (2008-2011 and 2011 budget) and pie charts (current year) detailing revenues and expenditures.  Lunda is starting to accumulate financial data for presentation to the City Countil.  The city expects to complete its year-end close out of the books by January 31^st as mandated by Kansas law.

           Tuesday ~ The day began with a meeting of the department heads.  Barbara Burns and Erin McDaniel recently attended a seminar in which the Bleiker Model of Communicating Decisions was presented.  They shared what they had learned at this with the rest of the department heads.  Erin is the Director of Communications and Barbara is the Director of Community Advancement.  The following is their mission statement:  “Communications & Advancement oversees the initiation, implementation, and quality control of the following:  Public Information – grants and outside funding – Special projects that further the positive growth of the community.”  There are a number of steps to the Bleiker Method (if interested, http://www.ipmp.com/) which has the goal of creating Informed Consent instead of Consensus with the thought that there are usually winners and losers in many civic situations, so you explain why certain actions must to be taken.  I will be happy to scan and send the 2-page document to anyone who is interested.  The other topic of interest was the presentation to the City Council later that evening regarding the safety remodel of the first floor of City Hall with an explanation to show it is reasonable, sensible, and responsible.  Newton used to be a hub for the Santa Fe Railroad and City Hall is housed in their historic building and as such does not have many of the security measures seen in many more modern city halls.  Sometimes people are angry because of their water bill.  City Hall is also home to the City Attorney, City Prosecutor, and Municipal Court…and attendees are usually rather colorful.  These are for the more minor cases as higher level crime cases are held in the District Court in the Courthouse (4 blocks away…remember, this is Small Town U.S.A.).  In the afternoon, I started on a new project for Lunda involving longevity pay. 

Tuesday night ~ City Council meeting.  Last time, there was only one main topic to be considered, but this night was different.  Approvals for the Slate Creek commercial Addition Final Plat and the Presbyterian Manor Planned Unit Development were approved in the blink of an eye.  Similarly, an agreement for a road renovation project and the awarding of a contract for a new outdoor warning system were presented and approved.  All of these items represented major investments by the city and were approved in a matter of minutes.  What took up most of the time that night? ... discussion regarding an ordinance setting the dates and times for fireworks sales and discharge for July 4, 2012!  This even brought the public out – a fireworks vendor and the editor of the local newspaper.  Newton licenses fireworks vendors and receives $2,500. from each stand so it has an interest in making sure the vendors make money and keep coming back.  The editor of the newspaper came as a resident who has two small children and would like to see the times more restricted.  Having been in Newton on the 4^th, I can say that some local residents pay little attention to the ordinance which requires them to stop shooting off fireworks at midnight on July 4^th, but many stop.  This is very difficult to enforce as by the time the police get there, it is either over or they have moved to another location.  The Council did cut off sales at 10:00 p.m. instead of midnight as was previously done.  Surprisingly, both individuals came away feeling okay with that compromise.

Wednesday ~ The day started with a breakfast meeting led by City Councilman Willis Heck who is on the Governor’s Committee regarding proposed changes to the State tax revenue structure.  For those of you who might not have read this earlier, it was planned to be 1/3 property tax, 1/3 sales tax, and 1/3 income tax.  This was the same presentation I attended last week, but this meeting had different attendees…and what a difference that made.  The attendees at this meeting were all city and county administrators with much more in-depth knowledge of the tax structure and what it takes to keep their organizations running.  The caliber of the discussion was most impressive!  I will provide more details on this when I get the minutes of the meeting.  Later it was back to comparing Newton’s longevity pay with that of other Kansas communities of similar size.  Originally, it was thought this could be graphed, but I don’t think that it is possible after receiving information from about 15 communities.  Some cities have discontinued it altogether, some give it only to the police, and some cities give it only to those employees who were there for five or more years prior to December 31, 1998.   There were other variables too, but I think you get the idea that it is impossible to create a graph.  Next, I was to review the Executive Summary of the current Budget Book to use as a guideline for comparing the 2010 and 2011 actual revenues and expenditures for the General Fund only in a written format. (Thank you Dr. Miller!!)

Thursday ~ Most of the day was divided between the longevity pay project and determining how to put together the latest project involving the Budget Book.  However, I attended a 10:00 Finance and Human Resources meeting.  Assistant City Manager Lunda oversees both of these departments.  Much of the discussion centered on the logistics of moving the Finance Department and the Water Billing Department around due to the planned safety renovation of their areas.  We were all given copies of the 2012 Safety & Professional Development Training calendar.   Monthly, starting in February, there are training opportunities dealing with safety (of course), conflict resolution, hiring, communication, and leadership.  Some are rather job specific and attendance is required if it impacts those duties within your job description and other topics are geared for those in a management position.  I believe everyone must attend “Ensuring a Harassment-Free Workplace.”  As I was preparing to leave at the end of the day, Suzanne (the City Engineer & Director of Public Works) gave me a pile of data on fluoridation to look into when I had time.  Newton puts fluoride in the city water as most cities do, but she questions the benefits.  Fluoride is very corrosive to the city equipment and so one might wonder what it does to the body.  I am also wondering if it is bio-accumulative.  As I have just briefly looked over the data I was presented, I have my doubts also.  There will be more on this topic when I have had a chance to more thoroughly review the stack of papers given me.  However, it is an interesting topic to look into.  Randy Riggs, the City Manager, sent out an e-mail to all city employees (and me) urging them to take time to reflect on all of the city’s accomplishments over the past year…and the accomplishments he listed were 2 pages long…very impressive.  He is a great guy and a wonderful leader…he has his MPA from KU.

Friday ~ Well, for those of you who have made it this far, today was not spent at the City.  I left early this morning for KU to meet with Dr. Stacey Swearingen-White to work on research.  She has set out a program for me to follow-up on the progress small communities (under 100,000) have made on the NPDES, Phase II program.  NPDES stands National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System.  The EPA mandated this of the states and the states passed it onto the cities without guidance or funding.  Dr. White has published two papers on this and my research will be a follow-up to those.

End note:  This week I worked 27.5 hours on my internship for a total thus far of 84.25 hours.