Agenda - Council - 11/26/2013 - Laserfiche WebLink

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October 2013 Smart, Citizen -Focused Government. Utility Billing Processes Get a Fresh Look. During the 2013 certification process for delinquent utility accounts, the Finance Department received many phone calls from citizens. The primary complaint on delinquent accounts was they did not know they had to contact the City to setup an account in their name. We listened and we reaffirmed old practices and devised some new ones to get the word out to citizens. Year 2013 will see the following changes to our utility billing processes: 1. Change past due notice mailing — Address to "Current Occupant" instead of the name on account. This will eliminate Post Office forwarding services for moved out accountholders and get the notices in the hands of the current resident. 2. Printed Message on Ace Sanitation Trash Statement — We have worked with Ace to include a message on every trash bill informing residents that recycling is billed through the City and they must contact the City to setup billing service. 3. Electronic Payment Service — We will be implementing an electronic check scanner at our customer service location to process incoming check payments. This will improve cash flow for the City. Instead of weekly deposits from Opus21, all payments will post to our bank account daily. 4. Continued Communication Bursts — We will continue to educate residents about City utility services through a variety of media sources including: In the News articles, Facebook posts, Newsletter articles, inserts and messages on the utility statements. Fire Department Smart, Citizen -Focused Government. Box Alarms The cities of Ramsey, Anoka/Champlin and Andover will be implementing a Box Alarm response sometime in October of 2013. This will replace the current Auto -Aid system that is in place. With Box Alarms there are resources pre -planned for the different types of incidents such as structure fires, wild land fires, large scale EMS incidents, etc. This has taken considerable time to develop as County Dispatch plays a key role in the new system and the dispatching portion has to be modified to accommodate this new system. An Effective Oranization. Shared Fire Services Efforts continue to work towards a potential consolidation. The cities moving ahead are Ramsey, Nowthen, St Francis and Bethel. Oak Grove has dropped out from formal consolidation but would like to participate in non - formal things such as group purchasing and joint training efforts. The Study Group has prioritized key issues and is working within sub -groups to conduct research. Those high priority issues are: Cost Share Models, ISO impacts, and Relief (Retirement) issues with consolidation. Police Department An Effective Oranization. Implemented Survey for Local Businesses. The Police Department will be surveying all of the businesses within the City of Ramsey. The survey will be part of the Business Registration for 2014. The goal is to have an officer make contact at each business to see how we can better serve the business community and build a relationship with them. The plan is to have the survey done by mid to late December.