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The community forum was split up into two sections, with ICMA representative Chuck Schwabe presenting the ICMA findings for city services, and ICMA representative Thomas Wieczorek presenting findings for emergency services.
The ICMA was contracted to analyze Boone's organizational structure, level of staffing and methods used to deliver city services in April of 2008. In November of 2007, the city moved forward with a hiring freeze in an attempt to cut a predicted budget deficit of $757,000, saving $492,000 a year with a 16 percent reduction in staff across the board for the community. ICMA was hired to find a way to reduce even more of the expected $757,000 deficit.
"This is a phenomenal number for a community of our size," City Administrator Luke Nelson said at the meeting. "I don't know what's going to happen to our community. We're facing some rough times, and the bottom line is we're going to have to adapt quickly, we're going to have to learn to find a way to make changes to accommodate for what's coming down the road."
Schwabe presented a brief summary of the ICMA findings for the city services, which focused on four steps: refocusing city services on the most important areas that need to be accomplished; reshaping what city services will look like; resizing the organization and re-equipping the workforce; and re-informing the citizens as to what the city does, what problems the city is faced with, and what solutions are available.
In the 187-page ICMA report, specific recommendations for city services included: keeping Director of Public Works John Rouse as Director of Park and Urban Forestry; combining the Park/Pool/Cemetary and Public Works departments; continue the hiring freeze on vacant positions; review the Park/Pool/Cemetary, Public Works, and Utilities/Water-Sewer organizational structures, focusing primarily on the five foreman positions involved and whether or not these positions can be consolidated; combining the utility billing function with the duties of the Finance Director; filling the City Engineer position with a contract employee; examining whether median mowing services, and potentially vehicle maintenance services, could be provided on a contract basis; using an outside labor attorney when negotiating labor contracts; assessing how information technology is currently used and having an outside resource prepare a multi-year plan for maintaining its hardware and software systems, and for expanding the use of information technology; beginning to build the skills of current staff members to fill future vacancies as staff either retire or leave city employment; continuing to explore potential state or federal grant funding; continuing to emphasize economic development to build Boone's property tax base; creating an annexation strategy and updating current development regulations to position the city for future residential, commercial and industrial growth; creating an inventory of all properties located outside of city limits that are receiving city services and review the agreements to ensure the full costs required to provide these services are being reimbursed by the property owners; creating an inventory of all current fee and rate structures that result in revenue coming into the city, and target time frames for reviewing fee and rate structures; starting a low-cost program for residents to learn more about the city and the services it provides; creating a strategic planning process to set a clear vision, mission and values for the city; and building a performance management system to result in a set of strategic and department performance measures.
In the second part of the forum, Wieczorek presented the ICMA findings and recommendations from the emergency services section of the report. In the report, it is noted that the fire department "is not capable of aggressively fighting a single family home structure fire requiring multiple hose lines for interior attack without calling for assistance," and notes the shortage of staff within the department. The report also states that, "with the fire chief looking at retirement, along with the Assistant Chief, one of the immediate solutions should be the creation of a Department of Public Safety."
A Department of Public safety, the report notes, would involve amending the city code to eliminate the separate provisions of police and fire and instead charge the functions to one common department. In this situation, a Director of Public Safety would be appointed to oversee both the police division and fire division and look at how to best blend or merge the two functions.
Additional recommendations from the report for emergency services include: A policy recommendation that meetings between the Boone Fire, EMS, and Police along with Central Dispatch should be undertaken with the goal of creating time stamps that can be retrieved and analyzed for performance measuring; a policy recommendation that based on time stamps at dispatch, all should utilize the radio system or other system as directed to record the times for quality control and improvement purposes, as well as for performance measurement; a policy recommendation that time targets should be adopted for dispatch that state that 95 percent of calls should be answered in 15 seconds, 99 percent should be answered in 30 seconds, and units should be alerted to a call for service within 60 seconds 90 percent of the time, and within 90 seconds 99 percent of the time; a
policy recommendation that all personnel should be directed to record their times on duty and all activities that take place on shift with central dispatch to allow for a regular performance review basis; a policy recommendation that an "Integrated Risk Management Plan" that contains standards of service delivery should be adopted by the city council; a policy recommendation that turnout time for responders to Police, Fire or EMS should be within 1:30 in 90 percent of cases; a policy recommendation that equipment and other tactical decisions necessary to achieve the strategies adopted by the city council should be formulated into a goal and objective strategic plan for the department; a policy recommendation that all persons hired to work in the Boone Department of Public Safety have the following qualifications: they must be certifiable and have attended training qualifying them as a police officer under the applicable state of Iowa training standards, they must have completed a Firefighter I training through the state, they must have hazardous materials operation certification; they must have a Medical First Responder or EMT license from the state, they must meet the general standards, and they must be able to pass the tests that Boone currently uses; a policy recommendation that all persons meeting such qualifications be categorized as PSO I and shall be eligible for all promotional opportunities that arise in the Boone Public Safety Department; a policy recommendation for training for different PSO levels; a policy recommendation that all personnel demonstrate that they are competent and capable of performing the duties and functions of their classification annually; a policy recommendation that all PSOs shall achieve and maintain at least a Medical First Responder level of certification for medical response; a policy recommendation that all fire vehicles that are replaced in Boone should be designed with the concept of a sole operator driving and pumping; a policy recommendation that all new fire vehicles for the Boone Public Safety Department should be equipped with a compressed air foam delivery system; a policy recommendation that all PSO I vehicles should be equipped with thermal imaging camera systems; a policy recommendation that a specific deployment pattern should be adopted by the Boone Public Safety Department; a policy recommendation that additional personnel hired in the second, third and fourth years should be assigned to patrol functions to allow for shorter travel times; and a policy recommendation that fire fighters should be trained in the use of geographic information systems and keep the systems current.
Much of the public questions and input came from people concerned with the creation of a Department of Public Safety and with cross-training police, fire and EMS departments.
The creation of a Department of Public Safety would involve creating an administrative structure headed by a director that would oversee both police and fire divisions. In such a situation, once current Fire Chief Ed Knight retires, the position would not be replaced, saving the city $68,877.84, which would be used for cross-training responders.
Cross-training would involve educating current city employees, beginning with the police department, to perform EMS and fire functions to supplement and diversify the response base. The personnel would not displace existing full-time employees, the report states.
"We are not eliminating a full-time fire department," Mayor John Slight said. "We assured every full-time firefighter that they will have their job as long as they want. We have to maintain what we have, backfill with volunteers, and also offer more people crosstraining...so now we've actually got more people trained in fire than we actually have. We're not taking the police department and lobbing them over here with the fire department and just having one shift."
The report and recommendations now go back to the city council, where Nelson will take feedback from the community forum and bring additional information to the council. Nelson anticipates that the council will identify a few of the recommendations, and encourage staff to fill in some of the details and do further research, he said.
"There are so many options of what we can do," Nelson said. "We're doing the best to operate within the confines of our budget."
The full, 187-page report is available online at http://www.boonegov.com/pdf_files/BooneFinalReport-FINAL01-23-09.pdf.
