Minutes - Council Work Session - 06/06/2023 - Special Strategic Planning

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Councilmember Olson asked if it could be clarified by just inserting the word ‘maintenance’ and making the strategy ‘address infrastructure and maintenance needs.’ He agreed that taking care of what the City already has before moving onto adding things is important as it gives a good base to work off of. City Administrator Hagen stated that this can be changed to ‘address infrastructure maintenance needs.’ The Council agreed to this change. Mayor Kuzma asked if they wanted to add the additional items to the list. City Administrator Hagen stated that these items can be separated out. He reviewed strategy #2 of identifying and implementing operation efficiencies, cost savings and additional funding sources. He noted that they had an action item to analyze ground maintenance on City owned properties. He stated that this could deal with things like changing the turf to reduce maintenance on a Staffing level. He noted that another action item is to review and solicit options for future Happy Days to determine the best use of funds planning for the event, in-house versus hiring a third party event consultant, and identifying opportunities to reduce the general tax levy obligations, which goes back to finding more sponsorship opportunities or a restructuring of the sponsorship amounts. He noted that this year they are bringing in a third party consultant to help organize the administrative planning of the event. He stated that by the end of this year before the budget is in place they need to know what the plan is next year for this event. Councilmember Musgrove commented on the item to review and solicit options for future Happy Days and asked if this would be an item that could be handled by the new Parks and Recreation employee as this item is currently listed under Parks and Assistant Public Works Director Riverblood. City Administrator Hagen stated that this can be changed to fall under the new employee. He added that this new role will still report to Parks and Assistant Public Works Director Riverblood. He noted that the department head is generally listed as the responsible party under each item. Parks and Assistant Public Works Director Riverblood added that this can be changed to a fourth quarter item as they are not yet in a position to evaluate how things went until the last quarter of the year. City Administrator Hagen noted that the preliminary budget is due at the end of the third quarter. Councilmember Woestehoff noted that parallel to the item of analyzing ground maintenance on City owned properties, he would be interested to hear engineering’s feedback on how third party contracting worked for pothole filling and if there is a potential efficiency there or not. He stated that this would be similar to how they reevaluated grass. He shared he feels like they are spending a lot of money on roads and potholes this year. He wanted to see if hiring a third party contractor to fill potholes was successful and cost effective. He stated he wanted to see the fiscal analysis behind the pothole patching as they will be running into this problem forever. City Council Special Work Session /June 6, 2023 Page 3 of 13