Title
Funding for current and future operational needs
Body
Issue/Request:
Funding for current and future operational needs
Key Issues:
Rapid growth and changing expectations have highlighted new needs for the City of Lee's Summit to consider when making financial plans. During the FY20 Budget process, many of the operating departments communicated growing challenges in service delivery. To fully address these needs, departments prepared expansion requests to be considered for funding. In its current state, the City's revenue structure will not fully support the growing needs of the operating departments.
In addition to needs today, the City must also look to the future in an effort to prepare the community for continued success. The citizens strategic planning process has identified new critical success factors that will be important to address in the coming years. Success will likey require new financial resources and a financial commitment to make meaningful progress.
The purpose of this presentation is to explore ideas that will position the City to address challenges today and in the future.
Proposed City Council Motion:
N/A
Background:
Police Department Expansion Plans
Lee’s Summit remains one of the safest cities in the metropolitan area. Residents repeatedly mention this safety as an important reason for their enjoyment of Lee’s Summit as a place to live. The City also continues to grow at a rapid rate, particularly in retail and multi-family housing sectors. Unfortunately, such growth is often accompanied with increases in crime. Over the past three years, there have been small indicators of increases that provide red flags for concern. A planned effort to proactively curb potential increases is needed to maintain Lee’s Summit’s long-standing environment of safety and security for families, visitors, and businesses.
The Lee’s Summit Police Department has developed a five-year plan for meeting these needs called the “LSPD Blueprint.” Presentations of the Blueprint are pending for a July work session to Council. The plan addresses eight elements to meet the needs of growth in Lee’s Summit:
1. Expand the Crime Reduction Team (CRT) program to proactively reduce crime and disorder and efficiently maintain the safety of Lee’s Summit.
2. Provide a more significant presence throughout the City to foster community relationships, more efficiently distribute personnel and improve service to citizens.
3. Improve mental health and addiction services through the coordinated response of police resources and mental health professionals.
4. Improve post-incident investigative capabilities through improved technology and by meeting recognized manpower standards.
5. Improve response to critical incidents.
6. Improve police department training, administration, and fiscal efficiency systems.
7. Improve traffic safety by reducing vehicle crashes attributable to increasing roadway miles and population.
8. Meet growing demands for Animal Control services.
The plan calls for an expansion of 21 sworn and 6.5 (including one part time) civilian positions over a five-year period, along with capital and technology needs. The police department has been well-funded throughout recent budget cycles, but modern challenges are on the horizon requiring technology and manpower to assure safety. The Blueprint provides a means to proactively address these issues, assuring a safer Lee’s Summit well beyond the five-year plan.
Fire Department Expansion Plans
The Lee’s Summit Fire Department (LSFD) provides fire suppression, emergency medical services, technical rescue, hazardous materials mitigation, fire prevention, public education, and disaster preparedness to the residents, businesses, and visitors to Lee’s Summit, Missouri. LSFD is consistently working to achieve and/or maintain the highest level of professionalism and efficiency on behalf of those it serves.
LSFD Community Risk Standard of Cover is the blueprint for Fire Department
• A study of the risks and hazards within the community associated with fire department core programs.
• A description of the current capabilities and limitations of fire department resources to mitigate fire department incidents against consensus standard benchmark response time standards.
• Identified gaps are developed into strategic recommendations to enhance fire department services over a period of time.
• The SOC is a required component of all internationally accredited fire departments.
In the fire department’s pursuit of best outcomes, time is the enemy when responding to emergencies. The impact of the incident is dependent on the response time for the fire department to stabilize the hazard or control the risk.
The Fire Department will be presenting update Standards of Cover Information at this Council meeting also. Attached is a brief overview of the recommendations from 2015 and the departments updated 2019 recommendations.
Public Works Department Expansion Plans
Between FY2010 and FY2019, the basic infrastructure maintained and managed by Public Works increased as follows.
Pavement + 67 miles + 6.8%
Storm drain pipe + 21 miles + 8.6%
Storm drain structures + 1,386 each + 9.3%
Traffic signals + 11 each + 24.4%
City-owned streetlights + 1,141 each + 95.2%
Not accounted for in these figures are the additional curb & gutter (equal to the miles of pavement), sidewalk and/or paths, pavement markings, various types of street signs and leased streetlights that are associated with all of these expansions.
During the same period, FY2010 to FY2019, the Public Works Department budget for general fund divisions (Engineering and Operations) has remained flat (approx. $10.2-10.3 Million) and staffing levels have remained essentially the same. Maintenance priorities have shifted from year to year to balance budgets with the storm drainage system often receiving almost no funding for preventive maintenance. For several years, storm drainage maintenance has been reactive, mostly addressing emergencies. Very little preventive maintenance is done on the system. Construction of new projects adds to the maintenance demand.
Programs for expansion or addition
• Expanded transit services have recently been discussed and there appears to be more demand from citizens to provide fixed route service between Lee’s Summit and transit centers in South KC and in Independence
• Eventually a central traffic operations/video management center will be appropriate to monitor and manage traffic and emergency issues remotely (similar to KC Scout), which should be a collaborative project with PD and FD
• Beautification is a high priority to a number of citizens and groups so landscaping and tree replacement programs may become necessary
• Growth in the number of capital projects across multiple departments (PW, WU, FD, PD) is planned over the next few years. Engineering staff is in the process of evaluating taking responsibility for managing the project management process for all capital projects in order to ensure consistency on all City projects. This change will definitely increase the need for engineers as project managers as well CIP construction inspectors and managers.
Information Technology Department Expansion Plans
Between FY2013 and FY2019, the basic IT infrastructure maintained and managed by Information Technology Services has increased as follows:
FY 2013 FY2019 Change
Network IDs + 542 + 969 +427 (78%)
Email Accounts + 542 + 678 + 136 (25%)
IP Phones Managed + 547 + 670 + 123 (22%)
Applications Managed +130 + 234 + 104 (80%)
Devices Managed +1281 + 1636 + 355 (28%)
Servers Managed + 116 + 151 + 35 (35%)
During this period, four new City facilities came online. Each of these new facilities expands the responsibilities of ITS staff. Not included in the list above is the impact of the expanded network, network equipment, and increased number of remote locations to service.
During the same period, FY2013 to FY2019, Information Technology Service Department was able to add 2 new positions (1.9 net FTE) these new positions were added because there were gaps in maintaining core ITS responsibilities, functions that were necessary to address, but were not at the time. These additions did not increase the capacity to meet the increasing demands on our services.
The growth in demand for IT projects has increased every year over the last eight years. Each year there are an increasing number of requests for applications, and additional ways to update and modernize their services. As more of these requests are approved, there are increased demands on ITS for the support of these new tools and processes. To address these increases in demand for services, ITS has requested two positions in the last three budgets.
Programs for expansion or addition
• Staff: ITS has identified staff expansion as the key issue to address future demands. There have been two positions on the expansion list for the last three budget cycles. Those are still needed. In addition, we are estimating that a minimum of 3.25-4.25 additional FTE will be needed to meet current demands and demands in the next five to eight years. These positions would support each of the core functions of the organization: GIS, Applications, Operations, and Support Services.
• Software and software maintenance: The City regularly expands its software implementations. Both in number and complexity. What has not been done is funding for the known upgrades and replacements that will be upcoming. The Software License Enterprise Replacement Program (SLERP) was created as a reserve account for this purpose, but adequate funds have not been allocated to fully fund the program.
• Workspace and fixtures need to be updated: Many staff do not have cubical desks. There is very little space to grow, ITS does not have a conference room, and managers do not have the ability to have closed door meetings in their cubicles.
• New infrastructure growth: The City will need to fund increasing bandwidth and network capacity to support current and future technologies. New software is also needed to allow for expansion of enterprise collaboration and project management.
Presenter
Stephen Arbo, City Manager