Agenda - Council Work Session - 07/09/2019

Home

CC Work Session 2. 2. Meeting Date: 07/09/2019 Information Title: Continue Discussion on Outsourcing Ramsey Resident Newsletter Purpose/Background: The purpose of this case is to discuss options for reducing the overall cost of the Ramsey Resident newsletter and allowing the Administrative Department to allocate more time to other tasks such as records retention. Our goal is to make this process more efficient and cost-effective as outlined in our Strategic Plan. The City Charter requires the City to publish a minimum of six Newsletters per calendar year. (Sec. 12.13) Currently, the City publishes a bi-monthly Ramsey Resident Newsletter which fulfills this requirement. In addition, the Community Development Department publishes one to two Ramsey Recycler newsletters per year which fulfills the Select Committee On Recycling Environment (SCORE) funding requirements. These newsletters are bulk mailed to every address in Ramsey, including all businesses, for a total of approximately 10,600 addresses. The newsletter is currently printed by Countryside Printing with ads being sold by Scott Robinson of Universal Apparel. The revenue from ad sales is split 50/50 between the City of Ramsey and Universal Apparel. The invoicing for ads is handled by the City's Finance Department. Since we last met on this topic (May 14), staff has conducted research in terms of how other cities of similar population handle their newsletters and what other vendors exist that can handle the design, printing and solicitation of ad sales. Other than PRIME, staff found no other vendor that coordinates the design, printing and advertisement sales. Most companies, on the chart provided, only have the capabilities to handle the design and printing. The following six options exist: 1. Completely outsource the Ramsey Resident Newsletter to PRIME (four, 24-page full color glossy Ramsey Resident Newsletters, one Community Guide and at least one 4-page Ramsey Recycler) 2. Continue (as is/no change) using Countryside Printing, Scott Robinson (ads) and staff time for design (Six, bi-monthly Ramsey Resident newsletters, no community guide and at least one 4-page recycler) 3. Select a new designer and printer, Scott Robinson (ads) (Six, bi-monthly Ramsey Resident newsletters) 4. Discontinue print newsletter and move to electronic only (Would require an amendment to the existing Charter; the City would then be able to determine how many it wishes to produce) 5. Use a combination of these methods (i.e. Move to quarterly newsletter designed in house with ads being sold by Scott Robinson, outsource with PRIME for Community Guide and publish at least one Ramsey Recycler to meet our six required publications) 6. Other combination approach Please note that the cost of postage will remain relatively consistent no matter which vendor is selected as postage is determined by weight and number mailed. Administrative Services Staffing The Administrative Clerk is currently responsible for collecting articles and designing the newsletter. In 2018 the Administrative Clerk spent 184 hours on the newsletter. Staff proposes that the Administrative Clerk would spend more time on other duties within her job description, but especially records retention, which includes the ongoing task of scanning, retaining and destroying city records. Looking ahead, in December 2019 the part-time 20 hour per week City Clerk will retire. To help off -set some of the loss of staffing hours, the long-term succession plan currently in place allocates an additional 11 hours per week to an Administrative Assistant already working part-time in Administrative Services, but this is still a drop of 9 hours