Finance & Human Resource All Staff Meeting ~ 2/9/12

          Assistant City Manager Lunda Asmani arranged for this quarterly meeting.  Lunda meets with the Supervisors of these departments on a regular basis as they are departments that he oversees, but this meeting included all staff members as well.  The city's water billing and collections is related to the Finance Department and both are located on the bottom floor of City Hall.  Newton's City Hall is the only governmental building that I have been  in that does not have metal detectors or guards at the entrances.  As security and the safety of employees is a concern of management, this floor is scheduled for a security redesign beginning in March.  This will involve moving the Finance Department to another location while their area is remodeled for Newton's water billing and collections.  Once this is completed, Water Billing and Collections will move into this area and then reconstruction of their old area will be done to accommodate the Finance Department.  This process is expected to be completed sometime in July.  The staff was given a timeline as laid out by the City Engineer.
          Following discussion over the remodel timeline, Lunda provided updates regarding new staffing that affected the departments - a new management analyst for the Finance Department and a new utility billing clerk for the Water Billing and Collections area.  The next topic covered was organizational development opportunities which are available on-line to all employees.  Lunda then gave them a status update on the IT assessment study.  Following that, the head of HR discussed the progress made on the new Compensation and Classification study that the City has been working on.  The next major topic presented was the upcoming development of the 2013 budget.  Following that was a round table discussion updating other areas of happenings or concerns.  At the end, Lunda opened a Q/A session and asked for any process improvement suggestions.  With few exceptions, everyone in attendance has been employed by the City for ten or more years and has weathered many annual budgets.  Lunda encouraged all present to work together as a team with no in-fighting.  I asked him if there had been a reason for that comment later as everyone has seemed to get along very well.  He said that they all get along very well...perhaps it was his way of ensuring that would continue.