Laserfiche WebLink
City Council Meeting Retreat <br /> Tuesday, February 17, 2015 <br /> Page 7 <br /> staff on board with neighborhood organizations. Mr. Bilotta noted that a typical silo <br /> mentality worked well from the top down,but led to problems as well. <br /> Police Chief Mathwig stated that 70% of his department's responsibility fell into the <br /> realm of core services (e.g. arrests, report writing, etc.) while the remaining 30% in- <br /> volved officers working with neighborhoods, individual citizens or organizations, with <br /> various building tenants or other ways using different paths intended to obtain the same <br /> results. Chief Mathwig stated that his goal was to have his Sergeants and other officers <br /> find meaningful purpose in their jobs as well as in figuring out to solve problems, while a <br /> Lieutenant may have gotten into the law enforcement business for some other reason, but <br /> they all shared those different paths to the same result. <br /> Public Works Director Schwartz opined that the difficulty was trying to move from that <br /> control top down in an outcome-based, lean organization charged with achieving effi- <br /> ciencies while meeting the programs/services provided. Mr. Schwartz noted that this <br /> didn't leave a lot of time to move outside that structure to get things done, at least not in <br /> the Public Works Department while it may be applicable in other departments. Within <br /> their day-to-day operations, Mr. Schwartz opined that they didn't have 30% down time to <br /> develop intimacy with customers. <br /> From their perspective, Parks & Recreation Director Brokke opined that their continuing <br /> standard was to achieve customer intimacy in meeting community expectations. <br /> Finance Director Miller opined that in the prevalently controlled environment of finance, <br /> there wasn't much discretion available, while staff tried to remain consistency from one <br /> circumstance to the next; with consistency and accuracy being huge in that arena. Mr. <br /> Miller opined that an employee going about their own unique way to connect with indi- <br /> vidual citizens had a tendency to create problems for that employee as well as undermin- <br /> ing public trust. Mr. Miller also noted the need to be consistent with other cities with <br /> driving sensibilities and maintaining control, to avoid losing the department's accounta- <br /> bility. <br /> Mayor Roe asked if Finance Director Miller found that any different in the Information <br /> Technology(IT) or License Center business models. <br /> Mr. Miller responded negatively, that IT was very structured and while having similar <br /> priorities within the department, opined that the License Center had even more structure. <br /> Mr. Rapp suggested a comparison between the Finance and Public Works Departments <br /> and ways to think about their roles. Mr. Rapp noted that Mr. Schwartz had hit upon an <br /> interesting point: with staff being so lean and continually performing the day-to-day <br /> workload, it was hard for employees to think about solving customer problems, let along <br /> having the time available to actually resolve them. Also, from the perspective of the Fi- <br /> nance Department, Mr. Rapp noted that their stock in trade is accuracy and transparency <br /> year in and year out. Mr. Rapp suggested customer intimacy and excellence may come <br />