welcome to spotlight i'm a poet i'm to banter in your city manager and today we have a special treat we're at lakeview commons for the quarterly town hall meeting of the city council today's guest will be member nephew and they'll be talking about the sit ins goals for two thousand and eleven two thousand and twelve and we'll be taking questions from the citizens of bread and also residents of lakeview comment so of the city goals and how did this come about and why are they important well i can speak to part of that city girls come about in that once a year the city council gets together and spend some time trying to determine what the goals for the upcoming it's really a one year to three year time frame that we set goals for and my belief and i believe the whole council belief is that if we don't have some goals established that we're not able to then focus on what's really important to us and so the process that we use involves i would council also involves a number of the staff members in the city and it's a brainstorming session to start out with to try to get all the different ideas of what's important to everyone including both the council and the staff are on the floor and then we have discussion them and it ultimately comes down to the council determining through either posting of color dots or in one where the other highlighting particular things are what are the  half a dozen basically most important goals to them and then once we have those established then it's much easier for the staff to lead us in that direction and much easier for the council to  able to focus continually on making sure that what we're doing is is working towards accomplishing our goals but you know you set your goals last year and now you've changed them again each year we sort of need to be looking at in certainly with the economic times that we are currently in there has to be more of an emphasis on making sure that we're making the correct decisions and in looking forward as we make financial decisions for the city i think that part of the reason that we thought that this was important is that we have been dealing as a council with a number of different issues over the last couple three years that to me are things that although they were put forward by the city in are good ideas there wasn't necessarily thought through about the long term effects they would have on the financing of the city and so as we move forward we want to make sure that as we're doing different things whether it's our road projects or work at the community center or we're talking about potentially potentially building some new fire stations or remodeling the police station that that we consider not just what it's going to cost us to build a building for example but that we consider what it's going to cost us in the future to maintain those buildings  one of my goals from the outset when i came into office almost four years ago was to see this kind of sustainability as part of the city the genda and early on you know we did some talk about about debt and what were the appropriate debt levels and one of my interest was to see us reduce the growth of the long term debt partly so that you have more flexibility to respond to the other needs besides the traditional you know easy to bond forestry projects and things like that the community center is a good example some of the fire station issues and stuff like that are good examples too and i think it is notable i was recently looking at the capital improvement plan that ha been passed in two thousand and seven and what it was forecasting for the city's debt and it actually forecast a number for the year end two thousand and ten that was one point eight million dollars higher than where our debt actually was at the tw and i think it's like seventy seven million right now and but really only a small portion of it i think is like four or five million is actually a pretty crude evolved to the full faith and credit of other community and you know from seventy eight zero to three or four million dollars a big shift how do you how do you explain that i bet that you can do a really good you have i think that the  three or four million dollars is the amount that's subject to the statutory deadline that and that that is things such as a referendum based bonding most of the other debt there is a portion that that we as taxpayers  large are on the hook for which is in the tens of millions i don't remember the number off and that's typically from st reconstruction projects the part of it that is being paid for by taxpayers across the whole city but then there's another very large portion of the debt that is actually bonds for special assessments so when we do a street project and a homeowner on a street is assessed several thousand dollars for for their benefit we don't require them to pay it's in cash but we do have to pay the construction company when the work is done and so what we need to do is use the city's credit to borrow that money to loan it to the homeowner and then the homeowner pays it over time as the assessment line on their tax  statements and so it's a little bit erroneous to look at that whole number and think of this as something that the city at large is on the hook for because a lot of it is really specified down to being passed through for some specific anstey whether it's a homeowner or it may be  commercial business or it or developer that was using the public improvement bonding process as a way to pay for improvements which of course also benefit us throughout the city you know most of these projects whether we are talking about putting together a plan to take your the deferred maintenance on the community center or whether we're building new streets when we build new streets in a complete reconstruction process we're not just replacing the asphalt in the curbs we're putting new pipes in for the sewer the water out of the utilities are being upgraded in so all of these things are investments that the city has made we we have in the past chosen to have that road or to have the community center and and so it is something that we bought and paid for  just like any homeowner you wouldn't want to buy your house and then just let it fall apart because it loses value and so we need to maintain our value make wise decisions and so with the fact that we're doing that the fact that we're controlling the amount of debt that the city has is a couple of the major things that the rating agencies look at and that's the reason that they have continued to improve our bond rating which basically means of course that when we do borrow we can be rating and the lower interest rates is that when homeowners do have a street project that they have a special assessment or we have a policy now where the rate that they're charged on if they think she's not to pay upfront the assessment but to have it paid assessed on their taxes over for fifteen years the rate they pay is directly tied to whatever rate the city gets in that bond sale so that good financial stewardship and high bond rating directly translates into dollar savings for people who are having their streets done in are responsible for that portion of the bill and i think that's one of many examples of what i think is a kind of good government practice because i think that it's reasonable to have a clear process like the good government is the process that is used in so that's another thing that when we had the representative recently at our meeting from the league of minnesota cities insurance trust that he had specifically mentioned that you know they pay attention to what we're doing and at least in their opinion we've gotten so that we are using good processes that include being transparent in what we're doing example is a sitting here today and having this discussion which will go out on the air to try to make it so as many people in the city understand what we're doing but so being transparent so that people can understand what's going on in the city and that they can participate in what's going on in the city and so it's really more about the processes used that creates good government then what the outcomes are third goal parks and recreation department i know this has been near and dear to both your heart would you care to elaborate on that well i mean going to toss this one to will because i think one of the most exciting things about our parks recreation program is the collaboration with  paul and some of the efforts to expand that to other cities and some of this many of these things fall under multiple headings one of the good government and sustainability issues for both of those categories is finding ways to cooperate with other  jurisdictions and levels of government to deliver services more effectively but i know will has gone out and actually met with members of other cities and given presentations and been a salesman on the road for the benefits of some of these cooperation collaboration's and i have thanks john in before getting to that kind of specific thing i do want to i guess make clear that the council as a whole has indicated that they believe that our parks and rec either you know the physical parks or the reparation programs or the whole program put together is really as important and as our fire department and our police department over the years certainly i know that through the comments of people have made and the things that they want us to focus on that that people expect a high level of service in the parks and rec area but in the setting of the girls you know it is important to note that our parks and rec goal is number three and so we have some other goals certainly below this but it's important to us and i think mr can eco who is the head of our parks department had made a comment to me after the goal setting session that it's the first time he can ever remember that in the goal setting run equal footing with all the other departments and so that's the council has indicated that they are very interested in making sure that it gets the attention it deserves now specifically  we had made an effort in i am a very much a believer in trying to regionalize a lot of the services that we provide it just doesn't make a lot of sense to me that each and every city has to do everything because that's the old way of doing it everybody has a parks department but as police everybody has fire everybody is public works and so so there's a real effort being made on our part to talk to our neighbors and look for ways that we can share services instead of everybody doing it on their own and so mr can ico again actually had brought forward year or so ago the idea of trying to  share some of our recreation programming services in so maplewood is in a great position in that we have some very good people who do recreational programming and then we also had invested not long ago in a software system that makes it so it's easy for us to do and in so anyway there are some of our neighboring cities north st paul specifically that had a situation where their people for their parks were going to be  departing i don't really know what that's circumstances were but the fact was that they were not going to be there anymore and so they needed some some help and also we went to oakdale oped dale has a similar situation where the parks director is opposed to be moving on later this year and we've also had some discussions with little canada they also have a similar situation where they really don't have a full time part director at this point and so we've spoken with all of them about the possibility of sharing services and allowing us basically to help them with their recreational programming and so at the moment north st paul is the one that came forward and said we want to form a partnership  it was an interesting process to get it set up because we wanted to do it in a way that it didn't suddenly seem to the north st paul residents that make what was now their parks department you know  there has to be some identity maintained for both of us but we went forward they've been very excited about it i know talking to their mayor that they've gotten some great comments because for them it gives their residents access to a much wider range of programs than they had in the past and it saves them a fair amount of money and i'm don't know that i can quote the number fifty thousand but one hundred fifty thousand and so they're they're paying us some money of course to provide the service but overall it's recreation and public safety issues with respect to the police facilities and fires facilities and so forth you know i noticed that at city hall this winter like a lot of our homes there was some some pretty serious ice jam action  going on that rough and i recall in the in the neighborhood room going in there one day and there was a whole lot of water that was coming in from the ice dams that are on the roof and i think i remember seeing larry that the building superintendent out  on a ladder trying to chip them off and knock him down and so forth we have a lot of buildings and structures and it's very important that we take the steps to maintain them and take good care of them because if we don't we face a bigger bill further down the line it's not just a matter of deferring the bill but you actually can wind up with a much more costly situation if you go from a small problem to a major structural problem of some type and so one of the things that we really want to be focusing on is not just capital projects of roads and streets and and and sewers but also the physical buildings that city government operates out of and in other aspects of the city's infrastructure that we need to make sure that we plan for appropriately and earlier when i was talking about the debt level one of the points that i was making is that it's generally much easier to borrow money for things like street projects of course then you have to pay them the money off in the future and that means that a big portion of your budget has to go to that debt service and that limits the amount that you may be able to devote to things like maintenance of other other functions and things like that so i want to make sure that that we're making the appropriate investments along the way and have the contingency funding available when unexpected things arise to make sure that we fire department has in a pretty short period of time really gone from what was a fully volunteer system that had five different departments that divided the city up and provided coverage for the city and that was a different era in fire fighting back then and this is a good thing but really instead to some degree the fire departments were social settings and so there was families involved there was picnics involved there was dances involved usually fundraisers to raise funds for the fire department and there was a lot of people that were willing to serve they lived in the city they worked in the city when the fire alarm went off they were available to get their to go out and answer the call and that over time has changed you know we use in modern day society talking about soccer moms and that type of thing everybody is involved in doing a lot of things and a lot of our residents no longer work within the city and so the ability of people to make it to the call has dropped a lot and also the number of people who are willing to come for to promote provide that type of service has also diminished and this isn't just a maplewood problem there are articles that you can read it's really a nationwide problem in so we've done some different things to try to keep those people involved as as we go and so we started bringing on some full time firefighters a few years back to supplement them mostly during the day time and and then that has deteriorated further and so now in the proper process we had before when the alarm went off people would come but you never knew who would come in so sometimes you had the people necessary sometimes you didn't the end so what we've done now really in continuing to try to use those people who are willing to essentially volunteer their time is to allow them to schedule themselves in so rather than them being at home in the call goes out and they come into the fire station and then go out to the call they're going to be at a fire station and due to that we don't have to have as many fire stations because it was important before because they used up any where up to maybe about five minutes just to get to the station but now they're there and so they can be on the road within the first minute and can still meet the call times that we need to have which is really in the four to five minute range  in so thus it makes it so that even with a smaller group of people participating we can provide the same type of coverage but the benefit overall for the whole city is that we will be able to have fewer fire stations three instead of five and so it will give us in the future fewer capital assets to take care of and provide us the opportunity to in you know it looks like we're probably going to partner with three m for a new self fire station and that's going to also be an emergency command center three m will also have some facilities within that building and so all the way around it's a plus for maplewood we get a new station we get a great partner and three m in we have are putting together this program which allows fewer people to do the work over more so you know something i just want to add on that is that folks who might have had an interest in being paper call firefighters but because of their personal circumstances they they worked or lived too far away from a station or it was the nature of their family and job obligations made it possible it's a really good time for them to look at again under this new type of system because now you don't actually even have to live in a neighborhood because even if you live in a far flung corner of the city or in a different city entirely it would be possible to drive to maplewood to the fire station to work your shift and then drive home again afterward without having to have that you will be you know within a certain response range of a particular neighborhood fire station as a requirement for it so i'm hoping that  we'll see some recruitment of some new folks that maybe had long had an interest but that for logistical reasons had never been able to do this in the community before and just take a quick better but the police department we have behind same paul the most active police department in the section of metro area and so we have a lot of sworn officers they have a lot of case loads they're working out of a building that was built for them thirty years ago and then they just you know it's the type of thing where you're now cramming stuff into corners of the of the building because you don't have a proper space to put them into and so there is some riot gear that hopefully we'd never have any reason to you but it's stored in such a way that it would take well even get to it and so so we're taking a look at what would be needed to give them a proper space and then after that the be a discussion about can we provide that space within the existing buildings or whether we need to add honor or you know a long long shot in my mind we can we did we build an additional or a new building so i don't i don't think the building a brand new building is likely to fly with our counseling or our financial concerns but it's probably an important exercise to get a ballpark idea what that would cost in order to have a comparison to the other options which but let's hear it from the council perspective on the environment going green well i would start out by saying the fact that this is down head goal number six really doesn't have much to do with how important maplewood views the environment i think it maybe is a little bit more reflection of the fact that we have such a long history of being environmentally concerned and friendly city that you know it drops down a little bit on on the list when we're listing things as goals because i think that the council just kind of assumes that we're going to do everything we can it's really integrated into every other aspect of city operations at this point redevelopment plans for a two or three different neighborhoods in the city but unfortunately the economy changed and so really developers are not developing and we're very lucky in that we do have a project that's going to move forward in the gladstone area and i think it's maybe important people understand that redevelopment and or development brings a lot of money into the city and allows us to do  improvements in a neighborhood around redevelopment and provide additional amenities and so it's something that every city wants to have in these tough times every city now has an economic development authority because they want to do whatever they can to get people to come to their city and so we have something moving forward and will give us a project but i think the council just really realized and kind of said you know what we're not going to have a lot of activity in this area for the next couple of years the economy is just not going to allow it and so we want to concentrate more on these other areas our first six goals in it's not that we're going to forget about it we have several opportunities that are out there for us but you know it's not going to happen so let's give it a little lesser priority yet it's it doesn't have the same sense of urgency as as other goals but it is one of those things where you have to have the ground work ready for when the situation changes when the economy turns around you don't want to be starting when the economy turns around you want to be ready to take advantage of opportunities when that happens so that's i think the basic logic behind it but at the same time it's not something that we  excessive resources in because there are other priorities that are going to have more action in the short term and i you know i think you hit it right on and i suspect that what i'm seeing is things are moving a little bit i don't know how many years we were down at it now that's going to be starting construction this spring or summer and there are a number other projects but anyway i see we're almost out of time and so what i want to thank