The Blog from City Hall

This is what our City Center atrium looked like today. It was our annual Invasion of the 6th Graders. This happens once each year when Oak Point Intermediate School 6th Grade teacher, and Member of the City Council, Ron Case organizes a bike trip for the 6th grade students to see Eden Prairie.
He always includes a stop at City Center to show his students the seat of city government and the Eden Prairie Historical Society’s museum, which is also in our building.

After the students do a brief tour of the museum, they come upstairs and assemble in our Council Chambers for a briefer lecture on city government. This is where I come in. That’s Councilmember Case in the bike helmet and orange back pack.

I enjoy the annual Invasion of the 6th Graders. The students are interested in city government. They are polite and well mannered. And this is their building too. It’s good to share it with them and give them an early positive impression of city government.

The 2005 ICMA Conference wrapped up today with a closing session led by this noted Minnesotan:

Garrison Keillor regaled the audience with his storytelling centering on, of course, the people and culture of Minnesota. The assembled group of 3,000+ loved it. He was very entertaining, and ended it with a few poignant words about the importance of the work of a city manager in sustaining communities across the country.

It was a nice way to end the conference. Back to the office tomorrow.

I attended the annual conference of the International City/County Management Association (ICMA) today. It is being held in sunny downtown Minneapolis this year. It was perfect fall day. Minneapolis shows well on a day like today.

The conference actually started yesterday, but I did not get there until today. I guess I’ll chalk that up to having the conference in our own backyard this year. It’s easy to prioritize it under other work and family priorities when you’re sleeping in your own bed every night.

I was a guest speaker at this year’s conference. I spoke at two sessions today, one at 10 am and another at 11:15 am. About local government blogging, of course. The sessions were well attended, at least compared to what I was expecting. I’d guess there were 25 people at the early session and probably 100 at the 11:15 am session.

There still aren’t very many of my local government management colleagues that are bloggers. I met two of them today. We’re a tiny fraternity.

Prior to my speaking sessions, I attended the morning keynote address from Professor Robert Putnam. Dr. Putnam is a profesor at Harvard. He is the author of an influential book on measuring social capital called “Bowling Alone”. He gave a thought provoking lecture on what he sees as the downside of the decrease in the general level of social capital in American cities.

Following my speaking sessions, I attended a panel discussion on what city managers ought to know to be able to thrive (and survive) in the field over the next twenty years. I was reminded that I’ve got a lot to learn.

Back to the conference tomorrow, and then back to the office on Wednesday.

This is a sign coming to a city near you in the Twin Cities metro area:

The sign indicates that you are driving into a road intersection that is controlled by a Roundabout, or what others might call a Traffic Circle. The purpose of the Roundabout is to control the traffic flow in the intersection of two or more roads in a manner that is both efficient and safe. The Roundabout allows for the continuous movement of traffic safely through an intersection. The Roundabout allows continuous movement of traffic without the use of traffic control signs, such as stop signs, and without the capital and ongoing expenses of traffic signals. They are a much, much less expensive to traffic signals. The big question for Americans is: Will American drivers adapt to the Roundabout and make it work as intended? Roundabouts have been used widely in Europe for years, but they are just now starting to work their way into street projects here in the United States.

Here is a photo I snapped of a Roundabout in Rochester, Minnesota, earlier this week. This Roundabout controls traffic at the intersection of two streets that intersect in a park/recreational complex area. The signage is plain, but understandable. The interior of the Roundabout itself is also somewhat plain. It’s ordinary grass. You will notice the “wake-up” rumble strips that have been installed in the surface of the Roundabout. This reminds drivers to stay in their lane while rounding the circle until they are ready to exit.

This is a photo of a Roundabout in Medford. It was installed as part of the exit ramp system from Interstate 35 at the exit you use to get to the Medford Outlet Mall. I think it is also easy to understand when you’re in it. It has nice plantings and landscaping too in the interior of the Roundabout.

This is a plan sheet of a Roundabout that might be coming to Eden Prairie and Edina. There are actually three intersections in this plan controlled by Roundabouts. This is the plan for the intersection of Valley View Road and Washington Avenue. This intersection is near the access ramps for Valley View to Hwy 169. The Roundabouts at the top of the access ramps would be in the City of Edina. The one at the intersection of Valley View and Washington would be half in Eden Prairie and half in Edina. This project is being considered right now for grant funding. It was originally developed as part of the Hwy 169/I-494 Intersection Redesign Project. Funding for that project has stalled recently, but the grant funding for the Roundabouts might still come through. If it does, we will coordinate a final design for the project with the Edina.

The purchase and installation costs of traffic signals at a standard four-way intersection can easily run more than $500,000. Plus, there are the maintenance and energy costs of operating the signals forever. If the American driving public can become more comfortable with Roundabouts, we can begin to incorporate more of them into our standard road designs, and have safe intersections with lower construction and ongoing maintenance costs.

It’s a nice addition to a City Council meeting when the Council can recognize and applaud special guests. We had two opportunities to do just that at last night’s Council meeting.

These are the ABC girls from the ABC House. The A Better Chance Foundation (ABC) is a charitable foundation that seeks to bring high school students from struggling urban school districts into strong urban and suburban school districts, like Eden Prairie, in other parts of the United States. These girls are all students at Eden Prairie High School. The girls all live together in group quarters and are supervised by two resident assistants. The chief of the operations is my friend Gardner Gay. If you ever met Gardner, he’d be your friend too. He’s a likeable guy with the right heart for this organization. He’s a great ambassador for ABC.

In no particular order, the ABC girls are: Rachel Wright (So) from Gary, Indiana; Avery Glover-Wright (Fy) from Oakland, California; Sheyla Soriano (Fy) from Bronx, New York; Hyunhi Chong (Sr) from Los Angeles, California; Carolina Ogaz (Jr) from Santa Ana, California; Magda Pastrana (So) from Santa Ana, California; and Kim Tran (So) from Santa Ana, California.

This is Carla Kress. Carla is a Recreation Coordintor for the City of Eden Prairie. Carla manages our Senior Center and our therapeutic recreation services. TR, as therapeutic recreation people like to call it, is something that Eden Prairie is a leader in around the Twin Cities, and probably the Midwestern United States.

Carla is receiving an award in this photo from Mayor Nancy Tyra-Lukens in a formal ceremony at our Council meeting last night. Carla received this award originally at the Annual Conference of the National Institute on Recreation Inclusion (NIRI) on September 9, 2005. The award is the 2005 Excellence in Inclusion award. One person in the nation gets this award each year from NIRI. Our Carla got it this year.

Congratulations, Carla! We’re very proud of your work for our citizens.

There have been a number of stories in the media lately about the future of employee pensions at Northwest Airlines and Delta Airlines. What will happen to employee pensions when the employer goes broke? When an employee dedicates their working life to a company and that company fails to live up to its pension obligations, tragedy is not too strong a word for that.

While it hasn’t grabbed quite as many headlines, the State Legislature took steps this past legislative session to shore up the strength of Minnesota’s public employee retirement association, more commonly known as PERA. Actually, there are two PERA’s. One for Police & Fire employees called the “Police & Fire Plan”, and one for everyone else in municipal, county, and state government called the “Coordinated Plan”.

Both plans had been slipping a bit in financial soundness since the boom of the 1990’s and were in need of changes to their contribution schedules. Currently, in the Police & Fire Plan, the employer contributes 9.3% and the employee contributes 6.2% of their gross pay for a total contribution of 15.5%. For the Coordinated Plan, the percentages are 5.53% for the employer and 5.10% for the employee for a total contribution of 10.63%. The Police & Fire contributions are higher on both sides of the equation because their benefits are different than those offered through the Coordinated Plans. For example, Police & Fire PERA members can retire at an earlier age than Coordinated Plan members.

The State Legislature approved annual incremental increases in the contributions for both the employee and the employer starting in January 2006 and running through January 2010 on the Coordinated side and through January 2009 on the Police & Fire side. When the phase-in of the new contribution percentages in completed, Coordinated Plan employees will pay 6.00% and their employers will pay 7.00% of gross pay into the Plan. For Police & Fire, the employee will ultimately pay 9.4% and the employer will pay 14.10%.

We have calculated that this change in PERA contribution rates will increase our pension costs in 2006 by about $100,000. It’s a cost for us, so it’s a cost for our taxpayers. But it’s a necessary cost of doing business and of keeping our pension commitments to our employees.

Question: So how do you cure a pension deficit disorder?
Answer:
1. Do not expand or liberalize the plan’s eligiblity criteria.
2. Have a conservative investment policy.
3. Keep benefit levels stable.
4. And last, but certainly not least: Add money to it.

Eden Prairie Public Works Director Gene Dietz and I had the opportunity to host a group of nine municipal Public Works Directors (and one municipal CEO) from Australia yesterday. Here we are in the group shot photo in our Council Chambers.

The Australians were in the United States to attend the annual International Public Works Association conference at the Minneapolis Convention Center. Prior to coming to Minneapolis, the group had toured public works facilities in Hong Kong, Calgary, Edmonton, and Minneapolis. They were interested in visiting Eden Prairie because they wanted to see how a small community handles public works issues.

We toured our Street Maintenance Facility. Showed them a snow plow, a fire truck, and police squad car in the process of having its radios installed. We showed them our dump trucks, our traffic signal maintenance equipment, and our wood shop. They asked lots of questions and took lots of photos.

You might be interested in how they found us. It turns out that the Chief Executive Officer of the Institute of Public Works Engineering Australia Limited (IPWEA), a fellow named Chris Champion, has been a loyal reader of my blog for quite some time. When he figured out that Eden Prairie is suburb of Minneapolis, and that he was going to be taking a group of his Public Works Directors to the conference in Minneapolis, he e-mailed me to see if he could bring them into Eden Prairie. I said “yes”, of course. And the rest is history.

That’s Chris in the middle of this photo. He and the President of the IPWEA are shown accepting a Key to the City of Eden Prairie:

The members of the group are probably at Heathrow Airport in London right now getting ready for a very, very long plane ride back to Australia. It’s almost 24 hours in the air from London to Sidney. They told me that they’d be looking for their smiling faces in the blog.

So, G’day mates to my new friends from Boroondara, Victoria; Stonnington, Victoria; Hobart, Tasmania; Bayside, Victoria; and to my colleague Mr. John Bonker, Chief Executive Officer (aka City Manager) for the Town of Victoria Park, Western Australia.

Thanks for visiting us and travel safely.

I am as human as the next person and I’ve got a pet peeve: Dirty Medians. I hate dirty medians. I am referring to medians in streets. And the “dirt” in this case is our eternal human nemesis: The Weed.

Here’s what I’m talking about. This is a dirty median that I drove by yesterday in a neighboring community:

Now here’s a “clean” median that I drove by today in Eden Prairie:

Again, a dirty median in another community:

And, one more time, a clean median from Eden Prairie:

I think the reason it bugs me to have weeds growing in the street medians is that I think it makes the community look unkempt and ugly. It makes it look like we don’t care. I think that our Street Maintenance workers do a pretty good job of keeping our street and highway medians attractive and free from weeds. We make an effort to do it every year. I think it’s starting to pay off.

We’re not perfect. I’ve seen a weed or two in our medians, but most of them look pretty clean. I like it that way. I hope that our citizens do too.

This is The Honorable Steve Sviggum (R-Kenyon), Speaker of the Minnesota State House of Representatives. Farmer. Former math teacher. Graduate of St. Olaf College.

This is The Honorable Dean Johnson (DFL-Willmar), Majority Leader of the Minnesota State Senate. Chaplain - U.S. National Guard. Lutheran pastor. Graduate of St. Olaf College.

As you can see, these two fellows have at least one thing in common.

The Eden Prairie A.M. Rotary Club hosted both gentlemen this morning as our special guests. They each gave about a five minute address to the club and then stood for questions. The main issue they discussed this morning was sports stadiums, both college and professional. Both Rep. Sviggum and Sen. Johnson expressed support for another special session this year to address the stadium issue. They both expressed their concern that the special session agenda be worked out in advance of the Governor calling a special session. Sen. Johnson said that he wanted the pre-special session agenda agreement to be in writing. Maybe that’s not a bad idea, judging from the way the last special session turned out.

The Star Tribune online afternoon edition carried this report about Johnson and Sviggum’s comments.

Sen. Johnson and Rep. Sviggum both spent some time speaking with Mayor Nancy Tyra-Lukens.

Both of these gentlemen are in demand as speakers to groups like our Rotary Club. It was an honor to have them join us today. For all the power they hold in this state, they’re still just a couple of Ole’s trying to do the right thing for the people of Minnesota.

Thank you, gentlemen.

I find the recent controversy regarding the resume of the Director of the Federal Emergency Management Association (FEMA), Mr. Michael Brown, to be really interesting. It’s interesting to me because it centers on the organizational nomenclature that we use in city government. That’s not a subject that you see discussed much in the national news.

A September 8 story in Time magazine’s online edition raised a number of questions about Mr. Brown’s resume, specifically about Brown’s bio on the FEMA website. Here’s a paragraph from the Time story that seems to be creating the most heat for Mr. Brown:

Before joining FEMA, his only previous stint in emergency management, according to his bio posted on FEMA’s website, was “serving as an assistant city manager with emergency services oversight.” The White House press release from 2001 stated that Brown worked for the city of Edmond, Okla., from 1975 to 1978 “overseeing the emergency services division.” In fact, according to Claudia Deakins, head of public relations for the city of Edmond, Brown was an “assistant to the city manager” from 1977 to 1980, not a manager himself, and had no authority over other employees. “The assistant is more like an intern,” she told TIME. “Department heads did not report to him.” Brown did do a good job at his humble position, however, according to his boss. “Yes. Mike Brown worked for me. He was my administrative assistant. He was a student at Central State University,” recalls former city manager Bill Dashner. “Mike used to handle a lot of details. Every now and again I’d ask him to write me a speech. He was very loyal. He was always on time. He always had on a suit and a starched white shirt.”

So what’s the big deal? What’s the difference between someone who is an Assistant City Manager and someone who is an Assistant to the City Manager?

Well, I’d say there is a difference. But I’d also say that the magnitude of the difference depends on the individual organization. There is very little standardization in municipal position titles in this country. The same can be said about organizational structures of municipal governments in this country. Not much standardization there either. I’d argue that there shouldn’t be either, but that’s a post for another day.

Typically, an Assistant City Manager reports directly to the City Manager and acts as City Manager when the City Manager is absent. Sometimes the Assistant City Manager has a the same bureaucratic rank as the senior department directors or department heads in the city government. Department heads are people like the Public Works Director, Police Chief, Fire Chief, Community Development Director, and the Parks & Recreation Director in our organization. In some organizations, however, the Assistant City Manager is a rank above the department heads. This particular distinction in the bureacratic positioning doesn’t really matter that much because, in most cases, it is clear that the Assistant City Manager is the #2 person in the organization behind the City Manager.

An Assistant to the City Manager is, typically, a bureaucratic rank (or two) below the department heads. An Assistant to the City Manager is not expected to assume the organizational reins when the City Manager is absent from duty. “Assistant To’s”, as they are often referred to as in city government, are usually people that are new to the field of municipal government or they have a specific expertise that is important to local government, but might not involve supervising any employees or specific city functions. For example, an Assistant To might be charged with managing a city’s cable television franchise or it’s cemetery operations or its policy research functions. Assistant To’s generally do not settle into the Assistant To position for a career. Some do, but most do not. It is a more common path for them to move up to an Assistant City Manager position; up into a department head position; or out of local government altogether.

In Eden Prairie, I do not have an Assistant City Manager. When I am absent from the City for an extended period of time, I appoint one of my department heads to be the “Acting City Manager” until I return to work. I usually rotate the designation among them. They are all very capable people. I do, however, have an Assistant to the City Manager. His name Is Michael Barone. Mike’s duties, among many things, include policy research, citizen advisory commission management, departmental performance management, and strategic plan development.

I don’t know if Mr. Brown pumped up his resume or not. He’s having a tough time right now, so I won’t pile on. What I will say though is that the difference between the two positions - Assistant City Manager and Assistant To The City Manager - is much more than just the words “To The”.

When the City decides to do a project, we go through a lot of work just to bring the project to bid. There is usually some kind of public process to get ideas about design. Then there’s process to through with one of our citizen advisory boards and sometimes the City Council. Then we typically hire an architect or engineer to do the design and prepare a cost estimate. Then, we go through all the necessary legal steps to publicly solicit and evaluate competitive bids. It’s really quite a process.

So it’s always interesting to see what happens when a city government goes through all that process and then gets bids that exceed their cost estimate. With all the time, money, and energy put into just getting the bids, it can be easy to justify a little extra construction cost just to avoid the bidding costs again. If it is truly is just a “little extra cost”, I can see that. But it’s what happens when it’s more than a “little”, but maybe slightly less than a “lot” of extra cost that challenges the decision-making skills of government officials.

For example, see this intersection:

Here’s a view with no cars lined up:

This traffic signal faces cars that are leaving the SouthWest Station area and turning on to Technology Drive. In the master plan for the Purgatory Creek Recreation Area, which lies directly south of SouthWest Station on the south side of Technology Drive, there is going to be a road that would connect to this intersection. The new road would go into the green grassy area right under the traffic signal you see in this photo. So, instead of seeing this traffic signal and being forced to turn either left or right on to Technology Drive, you would have the choice to go straight and drive into the park.

At our City Council meeting this week, staff presented the Council with four competitive bids to construct this new road to access the park. The bids were generated after going through all the process I just rambled on about above.

So, what happened? Staff recommended to the Council that all four bids be rejected. The engineers estimate for the project was $311,000. The lowest of the four bids was $357,172.28. We want to do this project, but the difference between what we budgeted for the project and what the low bid came in at was more than the “little extra cost” that we could justify to ourselves to award the contract.

The Council accepted our recommendation. They rejected all four bids. We will put the project back on the shelf for now and put it out to bid again early next year when we believe the bidding climate might be more competitive and more apt to yield lower construction prices.

Patience and prudence ruled the day.

Yesterday afternoon about 2:00 p.m. I sat down for meeting with Police Chief Dan Carlson and Deputy Chief Rob Reynolds to review our police pursuit policy. The three of us sit down from time to time to review our Police Department operating policies, mostly for my benefit. Later in the afternoon, Lino Lakes Police Officer Shawn Silvera was killed by a suspect fleeing a police pursuit in Anoka County. Officer Silvera was trying to disable the fleeing suspect with “stop sticks”. The Star Tribune explains the situation in more depth than I can get into here.

Officer Silvera was trying to prevent innocent citizens from being killed by the reckless suspect who was trying to evade the police. It’s tragic when a police officer loses his or her life in the line of duty. Officer Silvera’s death creates a wife without a husband and two small children without a father. All caused by a guy trying to run away from the police in his car.

Our police officers put their lives on the line everyday in Eden Prairie. We should all give that some thought today, and pray for the family and friends of Officer Silvera. May he rest in peace.

And then there was one….

Young Ethan Neal is excited about his first day of the 10th grade. He’s the last of my three boys still at home.

Today is the First Day of School across our great state. Schools are getting back into full activity levels, and cities are there to help. It’s an exciting day for kids and parents alike.

The City has a very good relationship with our School District here in Eden Prairie. We also have bits of two other public school districts in our city (Hopkins and Minnetonka), but over 90% of our households are in the Eden Prairie School District.

The City works with the School District on many things ranging from bus routes to school security. We have school liaison police officers that work in both the High School and Central Middle School. We sell parking permits to High School students to park in our excess parking stalls around the Community Center. We work with the District’s activities staff to coordinate the use of city athletic fields for fall sports practices.

The School Board and the City Council meet twice each year to discuss issues of mutual interest. The fall meeting is coming up on September 20. The School Superintendent and I talk frequently about issues that intersect on the agendas of our respective organizations. We work well together and so do our respective management staffs.

It’s (almost) my favorite day of the year: The First Day of School! Welcome back kids.

Earlier this week I wrote about an upcoming meeting that City officials were planning to have with officials from the Metropolitan Airports Commission (MAC). We had the meeting on Tuesday. I promised a follow-up blog entry about the meeting. Here it is.

It was a very positive and productive meeting. I think we learned a lot about the current management and future development of Flying Cloud Airport (FCM). For those of you unfamiliar with Flying Cloud Airport, it is a MAC owned and managed reliever airport located on 800+ acres within the city of Eden Prairie.

Here’s a sampling of the issues we discussed:

1. We learned how the MAC enforces the voluntary restrictions on landings and take-offs at FCM between the hours of 11pm and 6am. If the MAC receives a complaint about a landing or take-off during the restricted time period, the airport manager figures out who the offending pilot is and sends the pilot a letter that informs the pilot of the complaint, reminds the pilot of the voluntary restriction, and asks the pilot not to violate the restriction again. So far, no pilot that has received the letter has recorded a second violation. We also learned from the MAC that 50% of the reported landings or take-offs that violate the voluntary restriction are for Life Flight flights heading out to pick up a human organ somewhere and bring it back to the Twin Cities for an organ transplant operation in a Twin Cities hospital. We’re not going to get in the way of that kind of flight at FCM. I can promise you that.

2. The 2002 Final Agreement between the City and MAC that allowed MAC’s plans for the development and improvement of the airport to move forward also contained a provision that is designed to discourage the owners of heavy/noisy aircraft from basing them at the airport. The provision gets at this issue by targeting the weight bearing capacity of the runways. The provision seeks to limit airplanes weighing over 60,000 pounds from using the runways based on the fact that the runways were not constructed to regularly accommodate aircraft weighing more than 60,000 pounds. Of course, the runways could accommodate an occasional landing or take-off of an airplane of that size, but not on a regular basis. There are some citizens in Eden Prairie who believe that this provision is not strong enough in our Final Agreement and that MAC will not enforce it. MAC officials told us the provision is desirable from their view and defendable with the FAA. They committed to defend the provision if it is ever challenged by a recalcitrant pilot.

3. The Final Agreement also contained a provision that gave the City new access and use rights to excess land that surrounds the airport. The City wanted this land to develop new parks and recreation facilities, primarily soccer and baseball fields. Northwest Airlines challenged this provision of the agreement because they felt that the MAC was not getting enough money or concessions from the City to justify their transfer of the land to us for public recreational use. Northwest Airlines’ challenge of this provision has held up the City’s plan to develop the land. We don’t want to put almost $1,000,000 into developing the land only to have the FAA or a court tell us to vacate it. The MAC officials gave us some advice on how to pursue the issue through the FAA. We’re going to do that.

There’s a lot more I could write about, but it would exceed the length of a typical blog post. If you’re a resident of Eden Prairie, you can read more about our meeting in the local newspapers. If you’re not a resident of our fair city, look for more comments about the City’s relationship with the MAC in this blog. I’ll get back to this sometime.

Enjoy your Labor Day holiday weekend. Drive safely, if at all.