Agenda - Council Work Session - 08/25/2015

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• Can the duties be re -engineered or automated? Please explain. Our department has requested the purchase of a truck mounted injection patcher in the 2018 capital equipment schedule. This would reduce a considerable amount of the hand work in road patching, but would still require a trained operator to run the equipment. This position would still be involved in other parts of our maintenance operations that can 't he automatedl, such as snow plowing. street sweeping and ROW maintenance. • Can the duties be reassigned temporarily or permanently? To a certain extent Please explain. Currently we are using seasonal part time help to perform some of the functions of the position. However, seasonal employees are not allowed or qualified to run most of our larger equipment. This limits our ability to take on larger summer projects, such as trail paving, summer street sweeping, storm water system repairs and larger patching projects. • Can the position remain unfilled temporarily or permanently? No Please explain. 1feel we are approaching the limit of our ability to keep up with our basic maintenance responsibilities. We spend more time than we should in a reactionary mode instead of being proactive. • Can the position be filled internally? Possibly, but if it wasfilled internally by an employee currently working in a regular city position (not a paid - on -call firefighter or the like) the vacated positon would need to be backfilled. What is the impact (i.e., to residents, business owners, employees, and/or operations) if the position is not filled? The request for service from our residents' continues to increase. The PW department received and responded to 475 CRM tickets in 2014. The majority of requests come, from the areas of snow plowing and potholes. The ability to respond to these requests in a timely manner is directly related to this PW position. • Can the service provided be reduced, eliminated, or contracted out? Contracted out to a certain extent. At present we contract out two areas, snow removal of the Municipal Parking Ramp and the northern half of the city fr3r our spring street sweeping. Last year these contracts cost the city approximately S58,000.00. While this position would not completely eliminate these costs, it would give us the staff to bring these activities back in house and reduce the costs considerably. • What is the budgetary impact if the position is not filled (e.g., additional overtime/compensatory time off costs) There will be some increase in overtime costs' associated with snow removal operations, especially the parking ramp. All of the current staff is assigned to snow removal on city 5