08-03-2004 Council Work Session - Laserfiche WebLink

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c c Superintendent position, a number of new priorities in the water and sewer areas have been identified. If we want to make day-to-day park maintenance a higher priority. \ e need to assign that responsibility to a specific person. Since park maintenance is largely a seasonal need, it is most cost-effective to address this need with a seasonal maintenance position. New Public Works Staffing With the elimination of the Public Works Superintendent position, the Public Works Department has been operating with a Public Works Director and two interim working foremen. This structure has facilitated much discussion about priority public works maintenance needs. It has also facilitated substantially increased productivity. The needs in the areas of stormwater drainage, improved maintenance of the water system (i.e. initiating a regular program of hydrant flushing and repairs of water shut-off valves) and improved maintenance ot the sewer system (i.e. increased monitoring of lilt stations, and increased cleaning and televising of sewer lines) arc well beyond the capacity of the current staffing level. At minimum, an additional full-time maintenance position is needed. The cost of a full-time maintenance position, and of the additional pay level of the two working foreman positions, is equivalent to the cost of the former Public Works Superintendent position. The additional maintenance position can be added without increasing costs. I.T. Training As the management team has met to develop priorities, tlic number one identified need is to strengthen our information tecimology capabilities. As indicated above, one key to this is to provide more time for the I.T. Coordinator to deal with I.T. needs. Another key is to provide training to increase staff's I.T. capabilities. Several years ago, the City purchased a software system to provide a broadly integrated information system based on a property data base. The system has been very effective in automating a number of manual infonnation systems. However, we are cunently using only a small portion of the system’s capabilities. In order to expand our use of the system’s capabilities, we need to obtain additional training regarding how the data base is structured and how the data screens are formatted. This will allow us to customize the system to our needs without paying a consultant. In addition, the City’s applications all run in a network environment. Currently, wc rely on LOGIS to troubleshoot network problems. Although LOGIS charges a reasonable rate for this service, the costs do add up. It would be more cost-effective and more timely to have this capability in-house. The proposed budget includes network training for the I.T. Coordinator to broaden his network administration capabilities. Highway 12 Turnback Consultant The Cities of Long Lake and Orono ar. w orking through a joint task force to develop a plan for the design of current highway 12 when it is turned back from Mn/DOT to Hennepin County. The turnback is an opportunity to re-thirik the function and design of the roadway. The task force has detennined that it needs the assistance of both a transportation planning consultant and a landscape dcsiga'urban planning consultant. These consultants will first assist the task force in addressing the key issues