Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Joplin city manager provides weekly update

(Joplin City Manager Sam Anselm provided the following update to City Council members Friday.)

Good afternoon, everyone. Please see below for this week’s update.

Key Meetings

-On Tuesday, I participated in our second Citizens Academy along with IT, our public information office, and HR, to discuss our roles at the city. Once again we have an engaged group of residents participating, and I would like to thank AtCM Brian Kelly for his ongoing efforts to make sure the program runs smoothly and is successful.

-On Wednesday, I participated in a conference call with the Missouri City/County Managers Association to discuss issues in our profession and those that affect local cities currently and in the future. These will be topics of discussion at future MCMA meetings and conferences. I have volunteered to help coordinate meetings with other managers/administrators within our corner of the state to discuss

-On Thursday we participated in the statewide tornado drill. City Hall, the health department, and the library all improved on their response times (I do not have the results for the justice center), so kudos to staff for taking the drill seriously and a special thank you to the safety team members stationed in each building for their leadership in coordinating the drill. I would also like to acknowledge the efforts of our emergency management coordinator, Keith Stammer, for his interview on KZRG this week discussing the importance of being prepared for severe weather season.

Miscellaneous 

-A summary of the Center for Priority Based Budgeting’s “results validation exercise” that you participated in over the past couple of weeks has been received, and I would like to thank you for participating in the exercise. A similar survey is being developed that will allow our residents to provide their feedback on the results as well; as soon as the survey is available I imagine we will be doing a press release/engaging the media to inform the public of this opportunity to get directly involved in deciding the priorities of our community. Once the public survey is closed, we will present the findings to you. I don’t want your responses to affect the feedback we receive from the public, so that’s why the results of the survey aren’t included in this report.

-On a similar note, payroll, benefits and other budget numbers have been submitted to the CPBB, thanks to the efforts of our finance department, to be uploaded into the system, which will allow departments to allocate those costs to each of the programs. Once I receive confirmation that the information is uploaded, we will undergo some staff training to allow departments to complete this phase of the program. I appreciate everyone’s efforts and patience as we work through this process.

-Director Pekarek passed along some information about the Homeless Coalition that I thought you may be interested in reading, so I have included a copy of their report along with this update. HUD recently announced awards to communities to help address the homeless issue, and this report includes a summary of funds received in our area.

In the Pipeline

As a reminder, the state auditor’s office will be here on Tuesday to discuss the preliminary results of their follow-up report. We do not know when the final report will be written or released.

No comments: