But I’ll be winding my blog down over the next two months, because I’ll be winding my job down in Eden Prairie over that same time frame. I have accepted a new job with the City of Edina, Minnesota. I will be their new city manager, effective November 8.

I am grateful for the opportunities that I’ve had in Eden Prairie, including the opportunity to blog. It’s been a wonderful experience. I will throw a few more posts up here between now and my final day as Eden Prairie’s city manager, which is Thursday, October 28.

We lost one of our really good employees, and a really, really good person this past Saturday with the passing of Dona Rowland.

Dona worked in the City’s Support Services Division for the past 12 years. Her job here was what we call a “floating admin,” meaning that she worked wherever we needed her to work. She covered customer service desks throughout our organization for employees that were ill, on vacation, on long term leave, or simply attending a half-day training session.

Dona might work for a week at the Water Plant, and then two weeks at the Police Department, and then half a day at the Senior Center and then two hours in Engineering. She knew a little bit about a lot of things, and she had a bright and friendly attitude. She could get along with anyone.

Dona was a friend to anyone who knew her here. We are mourning her passing this week. She will be greatly missed.

There will be a visitation for Dona on Wednesday, Aug. 18 at St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church in Eden Prairie from 4:30-6 p.m. followed by a memorial service.

Goodbye Dona. We miss you already. You and your family are in our prayers.

OFFICE OF THE CITY MANAGER½Friday Report

DATE: July 2, 2010

TO: Mayor and City Council

FROM: Scott H. Neal, City Manager

RE: Friday Report for July 2, 2010

1. CenterPoint Energy Rate Increase – In November 2008 CenterPoint Energy filed a request with the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC) to increase its rates. The PUC approved a rate increase, effective July 1, for CenterPoint’s residential customers that will increase their base monthly fee from $6.50 to $8.00.

2. Workers Compensation Insurance Experience Modification – The City purchases its workers compensation insurance coverage from the League of Minnesota Cities Insurance Trust. Each year the LMCIT applies an experience modification rating to our insurance premium up or down, depending on the City’s actual claims experience. An experience modification of 1.0 means that we are experiencing losses at the expected rate. A rating above means that our losses are higher than average. Our experience modification rating for 2010-2011 is 0.79. This experience modification rating reduces our workers compensation insurance premium from $643,486 to $508,354 – a savings of $135,132. Credit goes to everyone in our organization who works carefully by placing an emphasis on workplace safety, and especially to our Risk Manager Wayne Estenson.

3. Loudi Visit – The delegation from Loudi, China, will be visiting Eden Prairie on Wednesday, July 7. I have included with his report the group’s itinerary for the day. Council Members are welcome to join the group for the day at any point in the day. If you would like to participate in the day, please coordinate with David Lindahl.

4. Meet & Greet – David Lindahl, Council Member Case and I did a Meet & Greet visit this week to Cigna. Cigna has over 1,000 employees in Eden Prairie and has plans to increase that number by as many as 200 more in the upcoming year, which makes them one of Eden Prairie’s top ten largest employers.

5. Music Man – The second weekend of the Eden Prairie Player’s performance of the Music Man was impacted by good and bad weather. Friday’s performance was canceled due to rain. Saturday’s performance started, but ended early at 8 pm due to rain. Sunday’s weather was spectacular and so was attendance – over 1,100. With two performances canceled due to rain, total attendance this year was 3,960 compared to 4,384 for Peter Pan in 2009. Donations, however, this year were up considerably over 2009: $6,963 this year compared to $3,208 last year.

6. Election Season 2010 Begins – Absentee voting for the 2010 primary election began on Friday, June 25. As of today, we have had three absentee voters cast ballots and we’ve provided absentee ballots via mail to 52 more.

7. Transmission Line Meeting – A group of City staff met with Xcel representatives this week to review Xcel’s plans to build a new transmission line from Eden Prairie to Chanhassen via Deephaven. The project replaces an existing 69kV transmission line with a new 115kV transmission line. The current wooden poles will be replaced with new galvanized metal poles. If the project proceeds on the best case timeline for Xcel, they will begin the project in 2013.

8. Money Magazine – City staff assisted a Money magazine film crew this past week gather video and still images of Eden Prairie for the upcoming Top Ten Places to Live in America edition of their magazine, which comes out later this month.

9. County PSAP Study – I received an invitation this week from Hennepin County Administrator Richard Johnson to participate in an analysis to examine the feasibility of the proposed expansion of the Hennepin County 911 Center to create enough capacity to serve all cities in Hennepin County. City staff will contribute Eden Prairie’s call volume data to the analysis. The County Board is expected to review the data and make a decision on the expansion question at its September 14 board meeting.

10. EPHA Meeting – Jay Lotthammer and I will meet with representatives of the Eden Prairie Hockey Association to review our ice rental agreement that serves as the revenue source to service the ice rental revenue bonds the City used to help fund the third rink project at the Community Center.

11. Nine Mile Creek Watershed District – You have probably received an invitation from Ms. Barbara Kaerwer and the Nice Mile Creek Watershed District to a meeting on Monday, July 19, to hear the District’s plans for the redevelopment of the Kaerwar home as a proposed Water Resource Center and District Office. The meeting begins at 6:30 pm in Heritage Rooms 1 & 2. The District has not yet submitted an application for the land use regulatory changes that will be required to enable the project. I will have a staff presence at the meeting to listen to the description of the proposal.

12. Metropolitan Council Affordable Housing Goals – I received notice this week from the Metropolitan Council that provides estimates of their goals for Eden Prairie’s development of new housing units in general and new affordable housing units in particular. The Met Council has established a goal that Eden Prairie should develop between 1,840-3,500 housing units during the time period 2011-2020. Of that total, the Met Council says that 1,198-1,843 should fit into the affordable housing category. I will be meeting with staff to learn more about these goals. I will organize a presentation or workshop for the Council to learn more about the goals and what our options are to react to them.

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I’m featuring Tammy in this post as a way to draw attention to our newest blog: the Eden Prairie Liquor blog. It will have multiple authors offering their perspectives on wine, beer and spirits. They’ll offer you the insider’s view of operating a liquor store, while highlighting specials and new products.

You can find the new blog at the City’s website at www.edenprairie.org

Enjoy!

For years of service recognitions, we start with 5 years and then recognize tenure thresholds in five year increments. This year we had four employees each 30 years of service: John Hobbs, Rod Rue, Fred Ziebol and Marc Thielman. We also had two employees who reached 35 years of service: Cliff Cracauer and Tom Tesch.

Our employee award winners this year include the following:

Carl J. Jullie Award for Excellence in Customer Service: Scott Berg, Fleet Maintenance

James G. Clark Award for Excellence in Teamwork: Dona Rowland, Customer Service

Jean Harris Award for Community Service in Eden Prairie: Steve Durham, Planning

Jean Harris Award for Community Service in an Employee’s Home Community: Lyndell Frey, Parks & Recreation

City Manager Quality Awards: Lori Creamer, Planning; Bill Sawyer, Parks Maintenance; Bob Olson, Police; John Conley, Police

It’s yet another great class of employee award winners this year. We’re fortunate to have them on our team!

In addition to lowering the levels of carbon monoxide the state department of health finds adequate from 30 parts per million to 12.5 parts per million, the bill would require arenas to install sophisticated detector systems that would automatically link to air exchange units.

I met with the City’s Parks & Rec and Facilities Management staff this week to talk about the legislation. If it is adopted in its current form, it would require the City to purchase and install new air quality monitors in our three indoor ice arenas. Depending on the final version of the new law, this could cost the City anywhere from $5,000-$25,000 per rink. We might also need to get new equipment for edging the ice. That might be $5,000-$7,000 per rink, if we get a new edger for each sheet of ice. We might be able to share one among the three sheets, but we’ll figure that out later.

The Facilities Management staff tells me that our current air quality measurements comply with not only the current air quality requirements, but would also be compliant with the proposed air quality requirements included in the new law. In fact, and I saw the information myself this week, it’s not even close. The air in our arenas can already meet the new standards, so we’ve been OK and we’ll be OK as far as our arena indoor air quality is concerned.

This new law, however, is going to have quite an impact on older indoor ice arenas around the state. We’re going to hear some howls when small town Minnesota sees the bill for the changes this law is going to create in their ice arenas.

We accomplished the Council’s goal. We went into 2009 with a General Fund budget that was planned to spend a little less and tax in little less than we did in 2008.

Then, in late January, staff began to see early stages of a very significant problem coming at us. We had budgeted to collected about $2.5 million in development-related revenues (building permits, engineering fees, etc.) in 2009. But by the end of January we had seen a complete collapse of that revenue source. What’s more, when our Planning Division staff called around to all of the developers and builders who had received City permits to do projects in 2009, we learned very quickly that this revenue source wasn’t going to produce anywhere close to what we needed to make our already tight budget work.

Staff went to work in preparing a solution to the problem. We produced a revised budget that included personnel reductions, expenses reductions and service level changes. The revised budget projected our 2009 General Fund revenues at $35.6 million and our expenses at $36.8 million, which meant that our budget had a $1.25 million operating deficit. We planned to cover the 3.5% operating deficit from our General Fund reserves. It wasn’t our favorite plan, but given the difficulty in raising revenue, it was the best we could do.

Well, the early results are in for the City’s 2009 General Fund audit — and the results are pretty good. Instead of ending the year with a General Fund operating deficit of $1.25 million, we actually ended the year with a positive balance in our General Fund of just under $160,000. Not bad.

How did we do it? It was a fortuitous combination of good fortune, hard work and sacrifice.

The City’s tax collection rate came in at 100.4%. We plan our budget around a tax collection rate of 98%. How can a tax collection rate be more than 100%? When a City collects uncollected taxes from a previous year, the taxes are credited in our budget for the year they are collected. We collected around $300,000 in delinquent uncollected taxes from previous years. This is the good fortune part of the story.

The hard work part of the story is that staff pressed on through the year to be creative, frugal and good stewards of our budget. We spent 97% of our General Fund in 2009 instead of the 98% we spent in 2008. Spending 1% less from one year to the next may not sound like much, but it can make a big difference when you’re talking about 1% less of a $36 million dollar budget.

Finally, there was sacrifice in 2009. The City eliminated 12 fulltime positions. Seven of those 12 positions had fulltime people working in them who lost their jobs. They sacrificed a lot. We did not decrease our service levels much when we eliminated those 12 jobs, so existing employees picked up more work without more pay. And even though we did not decrease our service levels much, we did make some changes and the residents who liked things they were before lost out a little bit too.

In the end, turning a $1.25 million deficit into a $160,000 year end fund balance was a team accomplishment. The Council, representing the will of the residents, set our spending and taxing parameters. Staff created and delivered on a budget that decreased in size from 2008 to 2009 and did it in such a way that we achieved a budget surplus when we had planned to have a budget deficit. Not bad.

We will have a similar challenge to take on in 2010 and 2011. We have a 2.7% operating deficit built into our 2010 General Fund budget and a 5.1% operating deficit planned for our 2011 budget. While we may have more budget reserve now than we had planned to have, we still want to take on the challenge of achieving a balanced budget this year and next.

It’s a daunting challenge, but it’s one worth taking on.

The Police Department blog is about a year old. It features a variety of topics and people in the Police Department and was developed in order to keep residents informed about the many things the Police Department does to keep the City safe. It serves as a good tool to communicate safety tips, department news and police information. We’ve got to engage the community for the community’s sake because there really is no way that 65,000 people (the number of people in our city) can be policed by 95 people (the number of people in our Police Department) unless the 65,000 trust and respect the 95. There are many ways to develop that level of trust and respect. One of them is to communicate. That’s really what this blog is all about.

In addition to postings attributed to specific members of the Department, there is a Project Coordinator named Sonja Ritchie Roy, who has really taken on the responsibility to write, edit and research the majority of the blog posts. She does a great job with it. A natural. If you’ve never dropped in on the EPPD blog before, you can do it right here at this link: Click here to check it out!

To read Justice City, USA’s thoughts about the blog, click here.

Congratulations!

OFFICE OF THE CITY MANAGER   Friday Report

DATE: January 15, 2010

TO: Mayor and City Council

FROM: Scott H. Neal, City Manager

RE: Friday Report for January 15, 2010

1. MLC Regional Breakfast Meeting – The annual Municipal Legislative Commission breakfast meeting for west metro cities will be held on Friday, January 22 7:30 – 9 am. If you wish to RSVP for this event, please contact Lorene.

2. State of the City 2010 – Mayor Young delivered the debut of the 2010 State of the City address at the Chamber of Commerce’s January luncheon meeting this week. The presentation was videotaped. We will do some editing and then get it into frequent rotation on EPTV-16 next week.

3. Advisory Commissioner Recruitment and Selection – We are in the midst of receiving applications for our advisory commissioner selection process. The key dates for Council Members to keep in mind are: Application Period Jan 11-Feb 12; Interview Night Feb 23; Appointment Night Mar 9; and Orientation Mar 25.

4. Prairie View Liquor Store Opening – The new Prairie View Liquor Store will open for business on Monday, January 18 at 9am. The staff will be complete the transfer of inventory from the current store to the new store by Sunday. The Grand Opening for the store is scheduled for 4pm on Thursday, February 11.

5. Development Revenue Data – We are seeing the start of a potential turnaround in development revenue for 2010. In 2009, the City received $12,457 in development revenue in the period Jan 1-Jan 13. For the same period in 2010, we received $20,518.

6. Art Center Cost Recovery – We are pulling together our unaudited financials from 2009. For the Art Center, our cost recovery expectation (CRE) was 30.0% for 2009. It looks like its actual cost recovery for 2009 is going to be right around 61%.

7. Employee News – Fire Chief George Esbensen was appointed by Governor Pawlenty to serve on the Governor’s Fire & Rescue Shared Services Task Force. The task force will hold its first meeting on January 27.

8. JAZB Meeting – The next Joint Airport Zoning Board meeting will be at 4pm on Thursday, January 28. Staff plan to meet with the City’s representatives to the board (Council Members Aho and Duckstad) next week to discuss the City’s position on several issues that will be discussed at the meeting.

9. Cummins Grill House Agreement – Staff are working with representatives from the Eden Prairie Historical Society on an agreement that would transfer working control and management of the Cummins Grill House to the EPHS. I have tentatively scheduled this agreement to be reviewed and potentially approved by the Council at your February 16 Council meeting.

10. Police Blog is Recognized – An organization called Careers in Criminal Justice has recognized our Police Department’s blog as one of the Top 50 Criminal Justice & Criminology Blogs in America.

11. Conservation Commission – Commissioner Dan Trebil has resigned from the Commission. We can fill this extra vacancy during the upcoming selection process.

12. Goose Management – The final Goose Management report for 2009 is out. Our program collected 205 geese in 2009 – down from 392 in 2008 and down from a high in 2005 of 792. The cost of the 2009 goose management program was $13,764.

13. MLK Holiday – City Center offices are closed on Monday, January 18 in observance of the Dr. Martin Luther King Holiday.

end

What I found particularly interesting at the debriefing session, which included both police officers and fire fighters, was the different approaches these two professions take toward training events. The example that best highlights the difference is each profession’s approach to simulating real-life situations on the training ground. In other words, how valuable is the element of surprise in a training session?

In a police training session, the trainer wants to simulate reality for the trainees by presenting them with surprise factors and then watching how the trainees react. The trainee would approach the simulation knowing some of the facts, but maybe not all of them. After entering the situation, the trainer might throw in an unexpected detail to see how the officer will react. The trainer then can intercede into the training session at a crucial “teachable moment” to create learning that will benefit the officer somewhere down the line. The downside of the training session surprise is that sometimes officers are injured, or even killed, in training because they were not expecting a surprise or because the surprise introduced into the training exercise was not appropriate for the exercise or because the surprise didn’t come off as planned. You can see examples of this at this link: Officer Down Memorial Page website. Teaching police officers to expect the unexpected may keep officers a little jumpy in a stressful situation, but it will also help keep them alive.

Fire fighters do not generally value the element of “surprise” in their training exercises. In fire fighter training, the trainer will design a training exercise from start to finish, including all details of its safety. Then before it starts, the trainer gets all the trainees together and runs through every detail of the exercise from start to finish. No surprises. If they are simulating a car fire and want to simulate the explosion of an unexpected air-bag at 14 minutes into the exercise, everyone will know to expect that to happen at 14 minutes into the exercise. They will, presumably, prepare for it to happen. Then it will happen. Ideally, nobody gets hurt in the training session because they knew what was coming and were prepared for it.

Do police officers expose themselves to potential personal injury in training sessions as a result of introducing unexpected training elements into their training exercises? Do fire fighters fail to develop quick reaction time and protective instincts because they do not experience the element of surprise in their training exercises? These are two key questions we must grapple with as we train the public safety employees of the future. I don’t have the answer right now, but I’m thinking about it. A lot of people are.