Joplin city manager provides weekly update

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

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

Key Meetings 

-On Tuesday, I stopped by the public meeting to get public input on the plans for 20th Street and Main Street. If you were unable to attend the open house, you can view the plans and provide your thoughts/comments by visiting the website at www.joplinjet.com. Comments will be accepted until June 17th, so if you have any conversations with residents who want to learn more, please encourage them to visit the website.

-On Wednesday, I spent the day at the high school with the other members of the One Joplin steering team, discussing the current initiative, the progress made in the first year, and the direction that initiative will take in the future.

-On Thursday, I met with YPN chairperson Brent Baker to talk about the economic development subcommittee they have created, and ways that YPN can get plugged into those efforts.

-Earlier this afternoon, I met with Councilman McCreary to talk about the assistant city manager position, the budget, and a number of other topics. If you are interested, I would like to explore the idea of setting up quarterly meetings to give you the same opportunity to ask questions, share your thoughts on topics, etc. While these weekly updates have been valuable to keep you in the loop on what’s going on within the organization, these meetings would give me an opportunity to receive feedback from you.

Miscellaneous

-To give you an update on where we stand with the priority based budgeting process, departments are continuing to work on allocating current personnel and non-personnel related costs to the programs that they offer. Once this phase is complete, I will send you a list of all programs that we have identified so far, as well as other PBB-related information, as we finalize the information needed to complete the fiscal health diagnostic tool. As I’ve stated before, full implementation of priority-based budgeting may not take place until the 2017-18 fiscal year, but we are making sufficient progress on the initiative that we can have more discussions about the process for both your benefit as well as the benefit of our citizens.

-Dirt work is scheduled to begin on Monday for the construction of the public safety training center. We are not planning a ground-breaking event, but after the construction is complete, we do anticipate having a ribbon cutting to open the center.

 -Finally, attached to this update is the progress report from public works on the projects they’re working on.

In the Pipeline

-Next week I will be meeting with several people to discuss ways that area employers can work together to recruit top talent to our region. You’ve heard the challenges that our organization faces in filling certain positions, and other employers in the area are experiencing the same issues, so we’re getting together to brainstorm ideas to solve that problem.

-Earlier this morning, the personnel board met to approve a firefighter trainee position in the fire department. They unanimously approved the job description, so you can expect a council bill next month that would place the position into our pay plan. I want to emphasize that we are not asking for additional personnel, so there will be no need to amend the budget, however this position would allow us to improve our ability to fill the ranks within the fire department.

-Also in July, I hope to have a work session with the council to demonstrate the PBB fiscal health diagnostic tool. Once the tool is ready to go, I will reach out to you to set up a meeting date.