Protecting community development, engineering, planning, and building staff during tough times

 

By Jay Corey, January 2009

You’re the boss and for years you’ve had to struggle to keep up with the demands that growth has placed upon your organization:

• Complaints to your city council regarding poor customer service
• Getting transportation, sewer, water, parks, and facility infrastructure in place ahead of demand
• Keeping current with your General Plan and Zoning Regulations
• Getting your engineers and planners to cooperate effectively and efficiently.

Now the housing boom has come to a grinding halt. California is suffering from a serious economic downturn that could last several years. Nobody knows when the housing market will turn around and construction will begin again. California home sales have already plunged well below levels experienced during the 1990-91 recession. Now what?

Question No. 1: 

What can I do as a local government leader to provide stability for my community development, engineering, planning, and building staffs?

Question No. 2: 

What can I do to take advantage of these tough times by building a better organization that is highly productive as it waits for the next up turn in the economy?

I speak from experience when I say, “These times are full of opportunity.” When I served as Acting Finance Director and then as Interim City Manager, my city was experiencing serious financial troubles a few years ago — so serious that Standard & Poor’s and Moody suspended their credit ratings of our city. The financial troubles were so overwhelming that we had to lay off hundreds of our employees, including some sworn personnel. The city was a mess financially. Morale was non-existent. The city’s financial situation was so bad our mayor was interviewed on NBC’s Today Show.

Quietly below the radar screen, during these tough times, we were able to keep our community development, planning, engineering, and building programs intact. Not only did we retain our staff, we actually did some hiring! The organization remains fully intact today and, in fact, is successfully working its way through a multi-million dollar General Plan Update.

What did we learn from this tough-time experience? We developed valuable “Managed Decline Principles” to get through it all in a way that strengthened and improved the organization.

Here’s a partial list of the How To’s we developed:

• How to stop the bleeding now
• How to stabilize the organization
• How to develop visible Quick Fixes that boost confidence and morale
• How to involve customers in revenue enhancement decisions
• How to address sticky personnel issues with dignity and humanity
• How to conduct 360 degree transition planning
• How to attract, develop, and retain talent in tough times
• How to reevaluate customer service policies
• How to take a fresh look at technologies
• How to take a fresh look at short-term and long-term facility needs
• How to update regulatory codes and systems
• How to reposition through training
• How to develop efficiencies by eliminating organizational silos.

Develop a 3-Year Financial Plan With Investment Strategies that Motivate Employees

We found that involving staff at all levels in order to build a consensus-based 3-Year Financial Plan was an essential part of organizational survival and regeneration. We developed financial stress tests in an open and transparent environment so that everyone affected by the plan had a meaningful part in developing it, understanding it, and believing in it. We developed effective revenue strategies, overhead strategies, and reserve strategies that were understood by staff in a way that provided private-sector-like motivations and behavior. Along the way we made investments in technology and training.

Develop a 3-Year Action Plan that Gets Real Measurable Results

During tough times it is important that community development, planning, engineering, and building staff know where they are heading individually and as teams within the organization. A 3-Year Action Plan that is in sync with the previously mentioned financial plan is an essential ingredient to make sure there are measurable deliverables that will keep the organization on a highly productive track. The Plan should identify the recommended action(s) to be taken by the teams, its priority, the anticipated benefits, the lead person responsible for results, the support team members, the milestones, and the reporting-out mechanisms.

Getting Ready for the Economic Turn Around

A smart leader knows that there is no substitute for preparation. Yes, it is hard to imagine right now that the housing slow down will bottom out, but it will. And when it does, those agencies that have planned for the turn around will be in a good position to take advantage of growth and all the wealth accumulation opportunities it provides. As long as California offers sunshine and jobs, housing demand will continue. It is a question of when, not if.

Sometimes you can benefit from the experience of others. If you are wondering whether Citygate Associates can help you in any of these areas, please call us. If we can be of value to you, we would like to help.

Please contact Jay Corey by phone at (510) 303-0327 or via email at jcorey@citygateassociates.com.

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City to rebuild planning program and streamline development review process

By Jay Corey, February 2007

“Citygate’s assessments solve organizational problems for cities. The tougher the problem, the better. We present practical, best practice solutions in ways that can be heard.”

JANUARY 5, 2007: PRESS RELEASE
BY THE CITY OF MODESTO, CA

Acting Community & Economic Development Director Jim Niskanen today announced the City has received a 52-page organizational assessment report entitled “Organizational Assessment of the Development Review Permitting Process.” The report, prepared by Citygate Associates, examines and makes recommendations regarding efficiency and effectiveness improvements for the City’s Planning Division and the overall development review permitting process. Citygate is a municipal government performance auditing firm located in Folsom, California.

“It’s a new year and the department will have a new director coming next week,” said Niskanen “We’re excited and hopeful about it all. The report is coming at a good time for the City.”

The City’s Planning program has suffered from leadership turnover, retirement, and budget cuts for the past several years. As pointed out in the Citygate report “…the City’s Planning program was hit by a perfect storm.”

The City commissioned the organizational assessment in September of last year. The objectives of the report were:

• To provide an independent, third party analysis of the policies, procedures, management and operations of the Planning Division, as it exists, and to design a creative strategy to improve organizational efficiency and effectiveness, as needed.
• To discuss alternative operating models and make recommendations for changes in the Planning Division, if needed.
• To examine the development review permitting process model and make recommendations for changes, if needed.

“Fortunately, Citygate is telling us it’s more of a process and resource problem than a people problem” said Niskanen. “We’ve got work to do in the area of interdepartmental communication and coordination.”

Major recommendations in the report include:

• Breaking down the formal and informal walls between Planning, Building, Economic Development, Redevelopment, Engineering, the City Attorney, Traffic and Finance
• Flattening the Planning Division organizational structure and using squads and teams to increase responsiveness, flexibility and customer satisfaction
• Instituting “Unanticipated Service” practices to increase customer satisfaction
• Establishing a powerful Development Review Team (DR-Team) effective immediately
• Establishing a Development Services Fund for the Planning, Engineering and Building programs
• Establishing a long-term attraction, investment and retention program for planners hiring two (2) Senior Planners, two (2) Assistant/Associate Planners and support staff
• Re-establishing the Deputy City Manager/Development Services position.

In addition to the major recommendations listed above, the report includes 27 total recommendations to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the City’s development permitting process. The recommendations are set forth in a six-page Action Plan that contains the priority of each recommendation, the suggested implementation time frame, the anticipated benefits of each recommendation and the responsible implementation manager.

The rigorous data gathering process performed by Citygate included staff and managerial interviews, document review and discussions with customers to obtain their perspective on working with the Modesto’s development related departments. According to Citygate Partner Jay Corey, the level of cooperation, dialogue, and openness from City leadership, management, employees and customers during this process was exceptional. Corey volunteered, “We found a very strong commitment to public service among staff members…and a steady course of improvement already in place.” Corey had the opportunity to view activity from inside the City’s planning process as the Interim Planning Manager from July through December 2006.

“Since becoming Mayor,” said Mayor Jim Ridenour, “one of my top priorities was to find a way to improve the City’s development process. The Citygate report will bring all departments involved in the process together under one theme and one mission. The City now has meaningful and tangible recommendations for long-term improvement.”

Councilmember Janice Keating, Chair of the Economic Development Committee noted that, “for a number of years the Economic Development Committee has been concerned with the lack of efficiency, timeliness and accountability in the development planning process. Everyone involved in the process including the Council, the development community and staff has expressed frustration. I am happy to see that the Citygate report has clearly identified the bottlenecks in our process, but more importantly, it identifies solutions that will lead to much needed improvement.”

City Manager George Britton expressed his enthusiasm for the review, “I appreciate the fact that we have a third party validating what has been done and what remains to be done. Citygate’s value has been their ability to compare Modesto’s development processes to best practices and to make recommendations for ongoing improvements.”

Citygate Associates notes in their report that “…(they are) optimistic with regard to the outcomes that should result from this report. We believe the leadership team is dedicated to, and capable of, making the improvements detailed in the Action Plan. To be successful, they will need the active support of the City’s elected officials, both in terms of encouragement and the allocation of resources.”

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