02-27-2023 City Council Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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MINUTES OF THE ORONO CITY COUNCIL MEETING February 27,2023 6:00 o'clock p.m. Switching back to highlights of the annual report,Edwards noted the Council has made no change to the City mission,vision and goals over the last year. He gave an overview by department. The biggest organization change we had in 2022 is the creation of our fire chief position and the hiring for that. Operationally, it was our first full year for the Public Works Department to provide public works services to the City of Spring Park and that went fairly well.Also, operationally in 2022,we transitioned the responsibility for facilities maintenance from the Public Works Department to the Parks Department. There was not nearly as much turnover in personnel as we had in 2021,but we did bring on nine new full- time staff members. Senior staff updated the personnel handbook which the Council approved last summer. The City renegotiated all four three-year union contracts in 2022. The administrative department headed by City Clerk Anna Carlson had no changes in personnel. The number of data request didn't increase but the extensiveness of some of those data requests may have gone up.He showed the numbers of various permits and licenses issued which increased over 2021. Seals complimented the City Clerk on work done with communications including emails and social media,noting the high"open rate"for emails sent by the City. Edwards said the administration department is also responsible for elections and did an excellent job in the 2022 election period,recruiting and training election judges and running the primary season, early voting and then the November election. That depaitnnent also created an organics program for the City and 147 residents have signed up for that program. The Finance Department also stayed steady in personnel and maintained a Triple A credit rating. Edwards said Orono is one of the few municipalities of its size to have that rating. The workload stayed fairly consistent and workman's comp went down a little. The City brought payroll back in-house which has improved efficiency and also our internal customer service to our own employees.Billing was an area of focus because the City has had some issues in the past with utility billing errors. That has been cleaned up a lot and they've done a great job. In the Community Development Department the biggest change was the hiring of Laura Oakden as the new director.Edwards said it was a smooth transition,noting that in 2021 the department has some major personnel changes bringing a building official and inspector back in-house.He said the City did a relatively large code amendment regarding ADUs(Auxiliary Dwelling Units)and started the process of recodification including the zoning code which has been forwarded to the City Attorney. The Police Department submitted a detailed report,Edwards said. The biggest challenge that we had in 2022 with our police force was recruiting,however,we were able to overcome those hurdles and recruit, and we're currently at full strength within the police department. He said with negative comments about policing at the national and state levels,cities are seeing a drastic reduction in the number of young people coming up through development programs to become police officers,which raises the competition among departments to recruit quality individuals. Walsh interjected it was just in the news recently that the City of Golden Valley went through a very big change in their City Council and went to,I guess we'll call it more of an anti-police defund woke. They've Page 10 of 22