Workforce, Communication, Quality Of Life Topics In City’s Strategic Planning

“You’ll find a few things dated in there,” Prescott said, describing materials he presented to the City Council at its Feb. 6 noon meeting, “but not in a bad way. It’s kind of neat to look at this and the progress that our community has made towards some of the things that you all brought forward in June. In some ways it’s good; in some ways it’s unfinished business because we had a whole bunch of things that were brought to us and we really didn’t narrow that funnel down.”

The beginning of the plan is made of general comments that the facilitator summarized to create major points of the plan.

Embedded in the plan are five strategic discussion points:

• Empowering Workforce Culture;

• Facilitating Communication;

• Developing and Sourcing Finances;

• Improving Quality of Life;

• Enhancing Facilities and Organization.

Prescott’s review of the plan included brief discussion of subpoints broken down under each of those five major topics. One of those summarized points is “Employee Recruitment and Retention.”

Its subpoints include:

• Increase city employee wages;

• Employee benefit/compensation;

• Increase low wages for city employees;

• Expand city staff & recruitment;

• Employee education;

• Intern utilization;

• Staffing – increase wages, insurance changes, incentives;

• Leadership Vermillion.

Leadership Vermillion, Prescott noted, appears as a subpoint in more than one of the major areas of the plan.

“Those were the things that were in this arena, so to speak, that were summarized into what is one of five of our major areas and this one is ‘Empowering Workforce Culture.’ That’s kind of the set-up for each one of these and we’ll talk a little bit more about what success might look like with each one of these areas and the potential first year goals,” he said. “That’s kind of the broad overviews that led to one of our bullet areas: Empowering Workforce Culture.”

Another point in the plan is “Communication.”

Its subpoints include:

• Communications plan;

• Communications with City, USD, County and VCDC;

• Ordinance of the month;

• Spread word about law enforcement center needs;

• Leadership Vermillion;

• Communication (public, social media, etc.) Walmart kiosk;

• Community input meetings;

• Coordinate City/County meetings;

• Require monthly update from VCDC to City Council;

• City of Vermillion App for smartphones;

• USD-VCDC-City-Hospital partnerships;

• Address fear of change (staff and city);

• Educate the public.

These points were made in June of last year, Prescott said, so some of them pertain to the bond issue to fund the construction of a new county jail and new law enforcement center that will be shared by the county sheriff and the city police departments.

Voters approved the bond issue last November, he noted, telling council members to remember that some of these subpoints were suggestions made before the vote.

Several of them he noted, suggest including communication from the VCDC on a regular basis.

“You also talked about that during the budget meetings in August and decided on a quarterly update, so the last council meeting of each quarter … the VCDC will do a report to the city council,” Prescott said.

He told city council that they likely will hear about a new smartphone app for the City in the very near future.

“The VCDC is working on a community app that they are very excited about,” Prescott said, “and I think will go a long ways toward sharing this information or providing a link to get there.

These talking points lead to the bullet area of “Facilitating Communication.”

“Financing” is a component included in the plan.

Subpoints include:

• Money — loans, grants, fees

• Rate increases and reduce losses

• Grant research committee

• Investigate curbside tax

• Business and housing development breaks

• Private sponsorship for local recreation

“The financing — the good and bad — it can be good to give money or incentives for businesses or housing to be located here or developed, whatever the case may be, but also then that presents some of the challenges that lead to this category to begin with, which is financing to have enough money to all of the different projects that we would like to do in the community,” Prescott said.

The financing talking points lead to the bullet area of “Developing and Sourcing of Finances,” he said.

Prescott then began discussion of another topic within the plan: “Quality of Life.”

Subpoints include:

• Improve services — Greening Vermillion

• Bike/walk path

• Develop westside park

• Housing

• Business and housing development breaks

• Leadership Vermillion

• USD retirement community

• Housing — accessible, amenities, and variety

• Develop Jolley and Austin land for housing/parks and recreation

• Parking taskforce with USD

• Private sponsorship for local recreation

• Non-discrimination ordinance

“You would guess that what any city would have, when developing a strategic plan, is quality of life-type issues,” he said. “How those would look from community to community, obviously, would change, but the third point down, ‘Develop westside park,’ – this is before we purchased the Munger property, so I think that would go a long ways, in what we’ve talked about to this point, in accomplishing one of those things.”

Leadership Vermillion and the development of the Jolley and Austin elementary school properties also pop up in the quality of life discussions, Prescott said.

“I’d be surprised if any city’s quality of life didn’t include housing,” he added. “It’s an issue that’s important across the upper Midwest … and, again, there’s private sponsorship for things listed – just a whole category of things that were in the quality of life bucket.”

All of this discussion lead to the bullet area of Improving “Quality of Life.”

The next point of discussion in the strategic plan dealt with “Facilities and Organization”

Subpoints include:

• Facilities — land acquisition

• Identify priorities for law enforcement center

• Centralized IT and facility management

• Focus on accomplishable number of projects

“If you were going to grade a community, this is where you would have the most points scored,” Prescott said, “in terms of what we’ve looked at here.”

The community has come a long way, he said, in setting priorities for the law enforcement center and the land acquisition subpoint was written before the City acquired the Munger property. Progress has also been made in ther centralized IT area.

The facilitator assisting the City with its plan development noted last summer that it is important to focus on “an accomplishable number of projects – figure out and begin those which we can afford to do, what do we have the capacity and staff, in other words, to create,” he said.

This discussion lead to the bullet area: “Enhancing Facilities And Organization.”

“Those are the five overall categories that she developed,” he said, referring to the facilitator that assisted the City last summer. “Then what she did through each one of those conversations that we had that day … she asked us, as a group, to develop ‘what would success look like in each of those five areas?’”

In the area of empowering workforce culture, these factors are identified as part of the city’s success:

• Rich applicant pool

• Higher retention

• Competitive wages/benefits

• More education for staff

• Consistency and standardization

• Internal mentoring and promotion

• Reduction in gender inequity

• Good morale

Last June, the City had between 10 and 15 open staff positions. Today, that number is three, “so we’ve come a long way with that (retention area),” Prescott said. “In particular, in law enforcement we were down and to some degree we’ve paused that a little bit … because we can only have so many brand new officers at once because of the training.”

There are still two officers positions left to be filled, but the hiring has been paused, he said, “because we had so many people that were early on in their training,” he said. “We’ll ramp that back up here now and hopefully get those two positions filled.”

Another job opening existed in early February in the street department.

“That was not the case last June,” Prescott said. “Our economy, our environment, whatever, has changed that way to make that issue less of a priority than it was last June. And the list is how we might define success with regard to empowering workforce culture.”

In that area of empowering workforce culture, the facilitator also asked the city to identify the finer things it hoped to accomplish in that broad area during the first year of the plan.

Those items are:

• Establish what is competitive

• Establish where we want to be percentage wise

• Look for ways to standardize and simplify

• Research wage study/options

• List of outlets to advertise positions

• Review/analyze employee incentives

• Research education incentives

In the area of facilitating communication, these are identified as items that will bring success:

• City of Vermillion App with high usage

• Marketing/communication intern

• Public relations position

• Community leadership meetings

• Active participation in Leadership Vermillion

• Better relationships between groups — reporting back

The plan lists these first year accomplishments in the facilitating communications area:

• Research the app

• Establish Leadership Vermillion

• Facilitate at least one community leadership meeting

• Establish additional methods of notices/publications

• Forming city/county subcommittee

Success in the area of developing and sourcing finances includes:

• 1-year of reserves for general fund

• Maintain good debt ratio

• Better grant opportunities

• Additional funding sources (public/private)

• Reduce losses

First year accomplishments identified in this area are:

• Expand second penny uses

• Explore grant research committee

• Evaluate high loss areas

• Research TIF District

Success may be defined in the category of “improving quality of life” by working toward:

• More green space

• More housing options

• Winterime recreation activities

• Named on “BEST” list

• Increased MEI score

• More affordable housing

• Bike path complete to Crawford Road

First year accomplishments identified in this area are:

• Explore TIF District

• Work with VCDC for land acquisition

• Identify employers to work on housing

• Prioritize top goals from housing study

• Approach USD about parking

• Non-discrimination ordinance

“There are a whole bunch of goals in that housing study,” Prescott said, rhetorically asking, “How do we prioritize that down into the housing goals that we want to develop?”

These items help define success in the enhancing facilities and organization category:

• Quality law enforcement center

• Coordinated IT employee

• Updated and improved facilities

• Increased park space

• CIP on track

• Finding opportunities for shared services or maintenance agreements

• Land acquisition

Prescott noted that the City has successfully accomplished all of the first year goals identified in this area:

• Hire/source IT position/coordinator

• Plan for new law enforcement center

• Land acquisition exploration (targets)

• Establish IT equipment replacement fund

“I believe we would be four-for-four on this one if the accomplishments I’m thinking of here match up to what you all are thinking of in that category,” he told city council members.

Prescott once again referred to the five major areas identified earlier in his presentation.

“There are a number of first year successes that we may need to rewrite or redefine,” he said. “I think the focus of this was to help revisit this, bring it back and say, ‘what is it that we need to do or change.’ The comment was made that it is a fluid plan and we know things today that we didn’t know six months ago that we’ve made progress on. How do we tweak and adjust that to fit where we’re at?”