City View by Chad Adams

On Sept. 25, I had the opportunity to outline recommendations for a restructure of the city organization to the Albert Lea City Council in a work session.

 

The full report and recommendations are available on the city’s website at www.cityofalbertlea.org, and I will present the recommendations more formally Monday at the City Council meeting.  There have been a number of questions raised recently in response to the recommendations, which warrants additional clarification to the residents of Albert Lea.

One of the primary questions has been, “Why now?”

Over the past few years, the City Council and I have established a top priority goal to build and develop the organization. The organization has made great progress in the areas of integrating new technology, process improvement, replacing outdated fleet vehicles and equipment, updating current facility systems that were at or beyond their useful life to provide more efficiency and better customer service to the community, while reducing strain on staff due to previous years’ budget and staff cuts.

Leading up to the recent recommendations, we have made some previous organizational adjustments in the areas of the Fire Department by creating a deputy fire chief position and eliminating a fire captain position, along with restoring a full-time five-person, three-shift crew.

Additionally, we created the assistant city manager position in place of the retiring community development director, as we had not been experiencing much community development activity, and which I have primarily assumed the duties of in the past few years, along with a team approach to being more proactive in enhancing community and economic development.

Despite these changes, there remained a need to improve community services in a variety of areas and provide cross-training and succession planning (particularly in the areas of where only one person was serving as a department or division head).  We have a great number of talented staff fully committed to providing the best services possible, but we have been limited in reaching our highest potential due to some of the items noted above and due to a need for more long-term planning, innovation, and collaboration both within the organization and with other organizations in the community.

Exceptional services, planning, innovation and collaboration are some of the pillars of our mission statement and values as an organization that must be integrated into our day to day organizational culture.

Lastly, as explained in the report, there is no consistency among our City Code that defines departments, our adopted organizational chart and previous appointed positions that have been labeled as “departments.” At minimum, it was necessary to provide consistency among the City Code, organizational chart, expectations and lines of authority for staff directors, managers and supervisors.

The other primary question and concern that has been raised is the elimination of the Parks and Recreation Department. I recognize the Parks and Recreation Department has a long history of success and achievements in the community.

However, there is great opportunity now and for the future to ensure our parks are maintained and enhanced by stronger collaboration with the Public Works Department, where similar talents, resources and equipment exist. The City Council, public (as demonstrated by our 2012 citizen survey) and I all highly value our parks. I believe they can be better enhanced through more day-to-day partnership under Public Works along with improved long-term planning for all of our infrastructure and amenities.

I also believe, through great discernment, that the community will benefit by stronger partnerships and collaborations for recreational services (i.e., with the YMCA, Community Education and various youth recreational associations).

In short, I have found there to be confusion, duplication and lack of awareness or communication on recreational opportunities that are available to our residents and those visiting Albert Lea. Combining and sharing many of our current resources and staff will improve the quality of recreational services that will include more accessibility and convenience for learning about or registering for recreational programs and opportunities.

I look forward to addressing additional questions or concerns in the next several days, prior to the Oct. 13 council meeting. The City Council is required to have two readings of a proposed ordinance to restructure the city’s departments.

Thus, the council at earliest would be voting on the second reading of the ordinance on Oct. 27 at their regular meeting in the City Council chambers.  The city encourages you to ask questions or provide feedback on these changes with your council member, during the meetings or by contacting my office directly.

We appreciate hearing from you on how to provide and prioritize services to you and the community.

 

Chad Adams is the city manager for Albert Lea.