Today Chapel Hill's Town Manager will be presenting his findings from "listening sessions" he held with community groups earlier this year. It's at Town Hall at 5:30 and if anything interesting happens I will blog about it here.
Town Manager Roger L. Stancil will hold a meeting with religious and business leaders, the NAACP, neighborhood activists, Town board and commission chairs, developers, and affordable housing organizations at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 11, in the Council Chamber of Town Hall, 405 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
The Town Manager will summarize community input for building a better Chapel Hill that was provided in a series of listening sessions that he held from February to June 2007. The summary will include areas of high performance for Town services, areas identified for improvement, and new ideas for consideration.
Stancil, who joined the Town of Chapel Hill in September 2006, held the listening sessions as part of his introduction to the community. He intends to continue holding similar discussions throughout the year. The Town Manager works directly with the Mayor and Council to enact and implement Town policy and to coordinate the policy agenda by providing management and administrative support.
Actually I wasn't in any of those listening sessions, so I am kind of interested to hear what people said, but I'm also hoping to hear what the manager plans to do about it.
Update: Thanks to Town Information Officer Catherine Lazorko for sending me a copy of the manager's report. It is now available at www.orangepolitics.org/wp-images/070911-mrgs-handout.pdf (92 kB)
Issues:
Comments
so far staff outweighs
so far staff outweighs citizens about two to one. Mike with the NRG, Scott Radway and few other usual suspects....
so far staff outweighs
so far staff outweighs citizens about two to one. Mike with the NRG, Scott Radway and few other usual suspects....
Wow, I am impressed with the
Wow, I am impressed with the number of people here! About 15 staff and about 30 "citizens." There is an agenda listing 5-6 topics in each of these categories: What is the town doing well, What does the town need to improve, What advice would you give the manager?
I hope this document will be posted online b/c I am posting this from my phone and I can't type that much!
Anyone know if this will be
Anyone know if this will be televised?
Oops, there are a bunch of
Oops, there are a bunch of staff I didn't recognize. It is more like 50-50 staff to citizens.
Roger - Cumulation of a one
Roger - Cumulation of a one year process starting with his interview..,
Talked to all Council, solicited 3-5 top priorities - Council agreed that fulfilling requirements this would serve as a measure of Roger's management...
Citizens filtered in towards the end... 5 new or interim staff management....
As the meeting started this felt more like a staff meeting than a public meeting - nicely informal....
Other folks participating
Other folks participating beyond Scott and Mike...
Eugene Farrar, RubyS, Fred Battle, Lynne Kane, Diana Steele, 2 media folks...
Matt Cz and myself are the only candidates...
Linda just popped in...
Linda just popped in...
Bus system - 2nd largest in NC, larger than Raleigh's or Durham's - 6 million riders last year...
Environment - stable consumption of water, production of waste to the landfill
Economic Dev. office - developing strategy with Council sub-group ( [comment: problem: no good notes or output on those discussions - hard to tell what direction they're going])
Reorganizing staff to be more strategic in meeting various needs - esp. affordable housing - build a system to address affordable housing...
Needs improvement - "how to
Needs improvement - "how to start a business in Chapel Hill", better outreach, better information flow to citizens...
One stop shopping for
One stop shopping for services - planning, inspections, fire and police interactions within a neighborhood working cooperatively with various neighborhood groups...
Look at whole Town in
Look at whole Town in recruiting business - not just Downtown - find leakage, identify strengths, sell best of Chapel Hill
Concentrate on the "Big Picture" - what does this community want to be? How do we manage our activities to meet the goals of our strategic plan [Comment: strategic plans at various time intervals are needed - we still lean to heavily on a "set it and forget it" type approach instead on an "evergreen" approach based on modeling and metrics]
Focus on strategic over
Focus on strategic over tactical planning - streamline boards and commissions [comment: maybe fill in the gaps??].
Staff development - Racial sensitivity, cross-training, more staff - staff accountability + meeting deadlines
Alternatives to street fairs. Butch last night suggested a Spring activity centered on the environment...
Quality of life
Police - work on West End, address potential gang activity [WHAT ABOUT NORTHSIDE! Are we going to wait until the millionaires living at Greenbridge whine about it?]
There are a lot of ideas
There are a lot of ideas here. I've been marking the list where I agree and disagree with the conclusions, and there are more check marks than Xes.
Multi-year budgeting
Multi-year budgeting [comment: hooray, after 5 years someone that wants to take up a process that straddles the yearly cycles]
Use technology to streamline service delivery - soon to take credit card payments for various Town payments/fees
Wow, that was the shortest
Wow, that was the shortest meeting I have ever attended in a government building! I am getting an electronic version of the report and will post here with more comments later.
Ends with a picture of the
Ends with a picture of the TOC ribbon cutting... Said that the TOC represented a respect for our employees - if so, why did the elected folks go first ;-)?
So, as an organization, NRG had the most reps. (JohnA was there) followed be the NAACP.
Ruby, I assume agree is a
Ruby, I assume agree is a checkmark? I'd say there were a number of "works in progress", some finished and some yet to be done but at least they're on a list and has some visibility.
Tying staff performance metrics to specific goals makes sense.
Had a good talk (though a bit short) with Dwight, our new EO, and Chris Blue. It was after hours for these folks, so nice to see a good staff turnout.
It would be great if Roger would have 2 or 3 open houses a year with the same staff so the public could meet with collaborating management arms.
Thank you all for attending
Thank you all for attending this meeting and keeping us posted! I would love to read the report when you are able to post it.
Dick Robinson, the Chapel
That's $700 each or between %1.75 and %2.8 of the bus employees' salaries ( "the bus system's employees, most of whom make between $25,000 and $40,000 a year.")
About %1 of the Town's median income, less by far if you make six figures.
Bruce Heflin noted that the lounge, which is quite nice, was a necessary amenity due to the down time the drivers have. I was wondering if they would've appreciated if we'd provided some arts opportunities during that downtime instead of blowing the whole wad of cash on a marble bench, while nice, that is poorly positioned for daily enjoyment.
Hilarious article on the art
Hilarious article on the art at the Town Operations Center (TOC) :
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/699912.html
I just wanted to let y'all
I just wanted to let y'all know that I got a PDF oft he manager's report and it's posted above and here: http://www.orangepolitics.org/wp-images/070911-mrgs-handout.pdf
I look forward to hearing your thoughts about it.