City Staff Presents Duties and Accomplishments for San Marino’s Administration, Parks and Public Works
As the new year begins, it’s obvious the word ‘efficiency’ is on the minds of San Marino’s leaders.
The Ad Hoc Budget Committee met for the first time on Tuesday, Jan. 5, where they received reports of duties, accomplishments and challenges in Administration as well as Parks and Public Works. This committee is comprised of Mayor Allan Yung, Councilmember Steve Talt, Planning Commissioner Susan Jakubowski, Hal Harrigian, Stefan Dietrich, Al Boegh and former mayor Bob Twist, who was absent Tuesday.
Talt reminded everyone that this is not just a negative critique at what doesn’t work, but also a positive critique of what does work. The management audit is meant to go hand-in hand with the new budget process beginning on Jan. 20.
City Manager
San Marino City Manager John Schaefer began with the organization of city administration. He explained all departments answer to members of city council, who answer to its electorates. The city manager is directly under the city council with a myriad of responsibilities, specified in the city’s municipal code.
Some of the city manager’s duties include enforcement of laws, control of employees and over departments, preparation of budgets, personnel policies and standards, attendance at various board and council meetings and much more.
Numerous projects were accomplished this past year under the direction of the city manager such as the installation of Centennial Field at Stoneman, there model at City Hall and the street light conversion project. Most recently, the Circle Drive bridge was reopened and the Lacy Park inner loop was repaved.
Schaefer said a lot of the projects seem easy, but end up being very complicated.
Human Resources
Lucy Garcia, assistant city manager, is one of two people managing the Human Resources Department. Both Garcia and Administrative Analyst Amy Tseng can’t dedicate all their time to HR. Tseng is split between HR and payroll while Garcia’s time is split between the library, public works and HR.
This creates a challenge for Garcia as she tries to juggle all the responsibilities of each of these positions.
The city has already tried twice to recruit a Public Works director to no avail, she said. Staff has thought about restructuring the position to be Public Works and City Engineer, but that may make it even more challenging to recruit someone.
Additionally, the library departmant was restructured recently and Garcia now oversees that department too.
The municipal code also describes the duties of the Human Resources position. Some of the main responsibilities include recruitment, employee benefits, labor and employee relations, employee contracts, workers compensation, labor laws and employee training.
Workers compensation claims in the city often come from public safety or public works. By frequency, police makes up 30 percent of claims, fire is 29 percent and public works is 17 percent. By cost, police makes up 28 percent, fire is 59 percent and public works is only 6 percent.
In the past 10 years, there were 144 claims amounting to $2.9 million.
General claims, losses or injuries incurred by the public while on city property, have been typically very low for the city in the past. The city contracts with the California Joint Powers Insurance Authority for General Claims Authority.
From 1997 to 2014, there were 252 claims amounting to $5.5 million. None of these costs came out of the city’s budget. San Marino pays approximately $353,000 a year to be part of this insurance pool, allowing CJPIA to handle all claims against the city.
City Clerk
“The department is small, but mighty,” quipped San Marino City Clerk Veronica Ruiz, who is the only person in her department.
She is responsible for maintaining custody of official records, preparing the city council agenda and following up, maintaining the current municipal code and custody of the city seat, administering oaths of office as well as administering general and special elections. Ruiz has many other responsibilities not mentioned here.
Ruiz said she has several goals for 2016 that should help efficiency. These include creating a records management program and retention schedule, imaging the city’s records on Laserfiche, an electronic records management program, and updating the conflict of interest code.
The records management could take a great deal of commitment and staff time though.
Finance Division
Lisa Bailey, finance director, has the help of just one other full time person (Lisa Carlson) plus part time help from Administrative Analyst Amy Tseng. Major reports created as part of the Finance Division include the budget, mid-year review and five-year projection, financial statements, state controller’s report, tax reports and others.
Major performance measures are budget size ($27 million) and investment portfolio size ($20 million). These are two standards to use when finding adequate comparison cities. Palos Verdes Estates, San Gabriel, Sierra Madre and South Pasadena are a few examples of similar cities to San Marino.
Each city is unique, however, and it is still difficult to compare cities accurately, Lucy Garcia said.
San Marino has around 132 full time equivalent employees now. It’s decreased in the past five years partly because the Recreation Department and library personnel has shrunk in an effort to make them more efficient, Bailey said.
The city’s unrestricted funds varied slightly since 2010 ranging from $21.7 million to $25.5 million. Bailey noted the budget hasn’t been “growing out of control.” She explained the most recent fiscal year increase was 5.2 percent, but a majority was because of pension costs. City council chose to pay its $20 million pension obligation into the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) over 20 years instead of 30. Without the $700,000 CalPERS cost, the 2015-16 fiscal year increase would have only been 1.4 percent, she said.
Parks and Public Works
The Parks and Public Works Department has nearly 20 full time equivalent employees functioning at five levels: administration, streets, garage, parks and grounds plus emergency response. Just a few of the responsibilities for the department include strategic planning, capital improvement program, pavement management of streets, sewers, vehicle inspections, facility maintenance and improvements, park and grounds maintenance, tree trimming and removal as well as emergency training, planning and communication.
Quality customer service to the community is one of the main purposes of the department, Lucy Garcia said. Respond, maintain and improve is their motto.
To help accomplish their goals, staff is required to attend a number of trainings for first aid, environmental safety and more. Several training programs are optional, but department staff attempts to attend them all. It’s not always possible with the small staff, she said.
Many projects are contracted out since the city staff cannot maintain everything themselves. The bigger projects contracted out are civil engineering services, traffic engineering services, street sweeping and tree trimming. It costs about $800,000 annually (excluding capital projects) for these contracts, Lisa Bailey calculated.
Operating costs (excluding capital projects) for the overall department are $3.5 million. This number does not fluctuate much, said Garcia. Total costs for this fiscal year, including personnel, services and supplies and capital outlay, are $7.5 million. Overtime is controlled pretty well as most of the overtime is specific to emergencies.
Personnel numbers have been stable over the years. However, Garcia said the more people there are, the more the department can do.
Many of the tasks performed by the Parks and Public Works department are reactionary. Staff always has a plan for the day, but there are a number of unexpected projects that come up every day that take staff off of their regular schedule such as water leaks, emergency sidewalk repairs or broken bulbs.
“All our guys are proactive. If they see something they will fix it,” said Park and Public Works Manager Dean Werner.
Some of the routine responsibilities include fixing potholes, sewer maintenance and sidewalk repairs. The garage deals with all departments. Service requests through the city website this past fiscal year added up to 248 issues. Approximately 150,000 visitors come to Lacy Park every year, requiring regular maintenance.
Street and sidewalk repairs, sewer and storm drain replacements, the center median irrigation replacement project and the citywide street re-striping project are a few major accomplishments by this department in the 2015-16 fiscal year. Pending projects are the streetlight conversion, Patrick’sTree, Rose Arbor repairs, St.Albans parking and more.
Challenges, Next Steps
Challenges for the Parks and Public Works department, according to Garcia, include filling the Public Works director position, coming up with a long-term strategic plan, financing capital improvement projects and investing in aging infrastructure, reinforcing training and creating a better records system.
Additionally, limited personnel and contract resources pose a problem for accomplishing goals. Investing in customer service products as well as technical enhancements could help too, but these are extra improvements that are not yet necessary.
Ad hoc committee members will now divide the departments, develop a list of questions and meet with the department heads. Citizen advisors will then create a draft report of their findings about what is being managed well and what can be improved upon.
The draft report will be presented to Mayor Yung and Councilmember Talt at a public meeting before a final draft is prepared and presented to city council, who will determine what to do with these recommendations.
