City of Riverdale issued the following announcement on Apr. 13.
Earlier this year, the City Council met for a goal-setting session and identified the need to improve the responsiveness of the City to the needs of its residents as a top priority. One significant change that would need to be made would be to increase the number of hours a week City Hall was open to the public and, at the same time, increase the number of hours City Staff were available to work on a variety of issues and projects.
About a month later, Interim City Administrator, Lisa Kotter, announced she was taking a full-time position with the City of Eldridge – bringing these staffing changes to the forefront and influencing the City Council to step up the process of searching and selecting a new, full-time administrator (either a City Administrator, City Clerk or combination of the two) as well as a second person to serve as a full-time deputy.
At Tuesday’s City Council Meeting (04/14), the Council will decide whether or not to increase the budget for hiring consultant Pat Callahan to assist in the search and selection process. The goal is to have both new positions filled by the start of the next fiscal year in July.
What’s Happening at City Hall Now?
Even though Ms. Kotter continues to provide some assistance with Riverdale city issues – with the knowledge and agreement of Eldridge City Officials – Mayor Mike Bawden has stepped in temporarily to keep a number of different projects moving forward at City Hall in the interim. His latest Administrative Report identifies thirty-one different projects currently in-work at the City and it’s likely that number will continue to grow.
In addition to these various projects, the mayor, deputy clerk and maintenance person are all working at better defining the work currently being done by each, documenting processes and brainstorming ways to work “smarter” and not just “harder.”
“We’ve already started identifying ways to make it easier to create, file and find documents related to all of the various projects we take on every year as a city,” explained the mayor. “Document management has been an issue here for years and between the recent IT upgrade and the additional capabilities our external vendors bring to the table, we should see a significant improvement in the City’s response time for records on everything from Council Meeting Minutes to sewer lateral connections.”
But improvements go way beyond how paper is being handled by the City. A new work order process for maintenance projects, a system of double-checking any purchase made over $250 and improved reports to the City Council for both maintenance and fire department activity are all just the tip of the ice berg.
“We’re working on reviewing and re-inventing almost every process that’s existed at City Hall for the last 60 years,” explained the mayor. “As a result, we’re finding small savings here and there that, over the course of the year, are likely to add up to some significant savings.”
“I look forward to sharing more of that information with residents at our next Town Hall meeting on April 26th.”
Original source can be found here.
Source: City of Riverdale
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