07-12-1999 Council Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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D istrict Communication , Outreach and Coordination The District has undertaken several activities to improve communication, outreach and coordination with its constituent cities and residents. Most notably, the District now has an active citizen advisory committee and the District hosted a city and watershed District staff round table. The citizen advisory committee has worked with the District board and staff as the District completed its revision to its erosion control and storm water management rules. The District committed to resolving outstanding issues related to these rules by April 1999. The District board and staff accomplished this by holding regular meetings with city representatives, consulting engineers and the advisory committee. This rulemaking process achieved two goals. First, the District developed consensus that the new rules will protect the District’s water resources and will not be locally burdensome to implement. Secondly, the process reinforced lines of communication between the District and its stakeholders. Recently, District and city staff met at a round table forum to begin the discussion of how to find ways they might work together to meet their respective short- and long-term resource management goals. The District’s goal is to find ways to build on the respective strengths of the cities and District staff to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of all parties. DISTRICT Financial accountability There have been adjustments made in how the District looks at engineering services and legal services. This is, in some respects, a District management issue, but is retained in the discussion of Financial Accountabilty for consistency with the original report. The District continues to work with one firm for general engineering services and permit revdew assistance. The District has pre-screened an engineering consultant pool to draw on for capital improvement projects. The list of firms in the pool include six environmental engineering or landscape design firms and one technical/laboratory firm. As new projects are conceived where there is no compelling need for the firm to have a “District memory”, the District requests proposals from the pool. The District board may then select the most appropriate firm for the task. To date, five of the seven firms have been assigned work. District legal fees have decreased each of the last two reporting years. However, they remain the highest for Metropolitan area watershed districts. The District should continue to review this expense to determine why the District incurs these expenses and ensure the cost effectiveness of the service. A quick benchmarking study of the other metropolitan watershed districts would be one possible way of providing context. June 15,1999 BWSR Report to the Hennepin County Board of Commissioners on the Minnehaha Creek Watershed District Page 3