Restructuring plan to go before council
Published 12:00 am Sunday, October 26, 2003
Restructuring proposals developed in closed meetings during October will be presented to the Albert Lea City Council at Monday’s meeting.
Greater Jobs President Brad Arends had indicated that one prerequisite of a discussion with the council was that he present Greater Jobs board members with the proposals.
This presentation occurred Friday morning at the Albert Lea Business Development Center.
A quorum of voting members attended that meeting and the board unanimously approved the proposal.
Arends would not provide details of the restructuring ideas until the council has discussed them. &uot;Because it affects the city council and the port authority, Greater Jobs wants to present to them before it gets out&uot; to the public, Arends said.
The proposed changes would make &uot;economic development in Albert Lea more efficient (and) streamlined,&uot; Arends said. &uot;We want to make citizens and the outside world understand (Albert Lea’s economic development structure) better.&uot; He also said the changes were an attempt to make the city more attractive to businesses.
The words &uot;efficient&uot; and &uot;streamline&uot; often connote budget and/or personnel cuts. When asked if such cuts would be made, Arends said, &uot;I am not at liberty to say.&uot;
Arends said, as he has before, that within the four major economic development organizations in Albert Lea, the two with the most money are the port authority and Greater Jobs.
The former has over $8 million in assets, the latter has $1.6 million.
The restructuring concerns the &uot;relations&uot; between those two organizations.
Because the changes affect the port authority, the city council, which also serves as the port-authority board, will have to vote upon any proposals that would alter the structure of the port authority.
The port-authority board recently approved a resolution that would instate City Manager Paul Sparks as its full-time director. Arends said that though Greater Jobs did not initiate that specific resolution, they had discussed the conflicting roles Sparks had as both city manager and port-authority director.
&uot;We endorsed the separation,&uot; he said.
The only comment that board members would give was that Arends is the spokesman for the group.
Arends expects public forums regarding the restructuring to be held soon for discussion. Although no dates or locations for the forums have been set, Arends said that he thinks such discussions should occur before the city council votes upon any changes.
The city council meets every other Monday in the City Hall Chambers at 7:30 p.m. The next meeting is Oct. 27.
(Contact Benjamin Dipman at ben.dipman@albertleatribune.com or 379-3439.)