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HomeMy WebLinkAboutCity Council Meeting - Council Workshop - Minutes - 06/06/2000 COUNCIL WORKSHOP MINUTES JUNE 69 2000 COMMITTEE MEMBERS PRESENT: Chair Leona Orr, Sandy Amodt, Tom Brotherton, Tim Clark, Connie Epperly, Rico Yingling STAFF PRESENT: Chuck Miller, Cyndi Wilbur, Ahn Hoang, Sue Viseth, Fred Satterstrom, Cliff Craig, John Hillman, Dena Laurent, Jana King, Brent McFall, Don Wickstrom, Jim Harris, Cheryl Viseth PUBLIC PRESENT: John Santana Meeting called to order at 5:05 PM. Update on Permit Process Planning Director Jim Hams - For the last year, I've headed up a group called the Permit Technical Advisory Committee. We've done a lot of work over the year. Just looking back this afternoon at the agendas that came out each week(we met every Thursday religiously for one year), we've come up with a lot of things that we feel will help the permits in the City of Kent— make it a better permit system. So I'll start with the top one, the Co-Located Permit Center. The design of the center is finished. • It will be in the first floor of the Centennial Building and will open around February in the year 2001. I just want to quickly go over here on the drawing. I don't know if you can see it really clearly, but you know you have your walkway going through east and west in the Centennial Building on the first floor. This is Gowe Street here,north is here and where the Planning Department currently is, that will be totally taken up by the Co-Located Permit Center. You will have four intake persons here. A customer will come down this walkway, go into the center and we'll have a receptionist here that will direct them to an intake person. If they want information, we will have representatives from four different permit groups, Fire, Public Works, Planning and Building, working every day here. They can come out and meet the person and talk with them. We'll have a self-help area here, for people who just want to come in and look at some maps, call something up on a computer, or to make a copy of something. They can circulate in here. They will always be just a stones throw away from help. That's the key here—this customer service. When they come in here, once they get to this threshold here and they're in this turf, they're into a very intensive Customer Service oriented operation. Their needs are taken care of, whether it's submitting a permit to be reviewed, which they'll submit here, or coming in to pick up the permit. When they pick it up, they'll pick it up here and go across the hall and pay for it over here at Finance, so it's all together. This is a round dome in the middle here. It will be lighted a certain way so it will make it feel very comfortable, very warm. The architects have done a good job in warming this whole area up with the lights and with the kind of colors that will be in here. So that's well under way. . The final design is in here, I think. You guys have bought off on that final design. Beginning in October, the Planning Department will move up to the 3`d floor. When it moves up to the 3`d Council Workshop Minutes, 6l6l00 2 • floor there will be an Interim Permit Center, so they can learn how to work in this area. There'll be a learning situation from October to February. So the people that are going to be working in here will actually be working up on the 3`d floor in a temporary Interim Center. The hiring of the staff,that we came to you and talked about last July, has been completed except for two positions. That was thirteen new positions, for those that have been hired. Some are still in a learning curve and as I say, two haven't been hired,but most have been. That fits with the fact that we needed more permit staff and Permit Center Manager. The advertisement has been put out for this new position and we're now reviewing the finals for the persons that will be interviewed. This person will be probably hired in July and the person will be in charge of both the Interim Permit Center on the 3`d floor and of course the new Permit Center. There's an office specifically set aside for the Permit Manager and that person will control and run this whole operation here. It's a very crucial position in the city and one we've not really had before. The other Permit Center staff— four Permit Technicians have been identified—who will work in the Permit Center and they'll work in the intake area and temporarily on the 3`d floor. They'll all be together. Other permit review staff have been identified. One each in Planning,Building, Fire and Public Works and this is kind of a collaborative set up, where every day there will be a representative in this Permit Center from a different division or a different department,without fail. It might not be the same person every day,because there are a lot of people who circulate around and in permits, but the Permit Manager's job, at 8:00 AM, will be to make sure that those persons are at their work station. If they don't show up for some reason, someone was sick and didn't show up, the Permit Manager's job is to go somewhere and find another body and get it in there. It would destroy the Permit Center very quickly if it couldn't be staffed to the extent that . it needed to be staffed. These are persons who will always report back to their home office, though. The Permit Manager will make sure they are there and understand what they're doing,but they won't work for the Permit Manager, they will work for the Fire Department, Public Works Department, Building Division, or the Planning Division. Other staff that will come in to play here will be a receptionist and file clerk. Files will be very important here,because people will be asking for them. They will want to see a SEPA file or some past action that's taken place. Not all files can be here because it isn't big enough. Some will be up on the 3`d floor and some on the 2"d floor at their home base. Customer service training was very important and is the name of the game here. That's what we're trying to do in the city. Phase I and Phase II of customer service training have been completed and so all 80 or 90 people that are involved in permits have been through that training. Phase III will be conducted this fall and will concentrate on team building. They are going to get at the kinds of problems that really arise in the permitting area, and how we get at them, so they'll probably break it up into teams. The consultant seems to be doing a pretty good job on this training, so I think the staff is going to get a lot out of it. The automated permit tracking system went on line last April and it's been a tough one to learn and to put into effect. As of June ls`, there's a temporary KIVA administrator from among staff who has been appointed to do nothing but run that system. That person will work from a year to 18 months in that position. When this is finished, and the permit manager has learned the job, the KIVA administration role will delve back to that permit manager, so it ties all the permit situations together. Council Workshop Minutes,6/6(00 3 • Timelines—in July 1999 we reviewed the existing permit time lines and decided that many times the timelines could be scooted up. The goal, over the past year, has been to meet the new timelines, however to date we are not hitting these timelines in a consistent manner and that is of great concern. That is something that we need to continue to work on and in order to meet these new timelines all facets of the new permit system need to be in place. That's one part of it. That's the one that you may get a phone call from, or the Mayor will. How diligently we are on checking plans or how lenient we are or tough we are,that all has to be part of this. Getting back to customers in a timely manner and telling them why there's a hold up or what they need to do. Those are things we've been working on and I think under communications I'll say, all departments and divisions engaged in the permitting process have been involved in more intensive and direct communication amongst themselves concerning permits during the last year, but that has been the case in past years. We kind of brought ourselves together and we've really been talking to one another. That wasn't true in the past because you had somebody on a different floor. Now we're bringing people together through customer training,through just the fact that we had the Permit Advisory Task Force meeting every week. That task force was made up from persons from fire,public works,planning, and a number from those different groups. More meaningful communications with customers has also increased in this past year. We did some telephone call backs, and I personally talked to a number of people who are our customers. I found for the most part, and this is maybe because they were talking to me, I don't know, but I had one person who does subdivisions who said I won't do subdivisions anywhere in King County except in Kent. It is the only place where I'm treated right and it's the only place that I can really get a timely set of permits out. You people understand what subdividing is all about. I talked to architects, called many of them in and showed them this, and many of them said,boy, I'll be down here all the time just going rummaging through your research materials. This is probably not the end all for a lot of people, because still we've got to work to close down that time gap. We know that we can speed up permits. We've got the positions in place to do that. It's a management system now that needs to be created and I think we're right on the verge of having that. I think the big organizational change will really help there. That'll be a person in charge of bringing everybody together and that can really bring the department heads together. Councilmember Tim Clark- Outside of the building process, how many other types of permits does the city actually issue? Jim Harris—There are everything from curb cuts to hooking up to the sewer and water systems, grade and fill permits. Fire has a number of permits that they issue that deal with vents in restaurants, racks; Building issues—the concrete built structure permits, planning, zoning permits. We review anything from setbacks, height—whether it's allowed in the zoning district. A large warehouse distribution center comes in and it will be reviewed by everybody, including a grade and fill review,planning review for setbacks,height, Public Works review for hooking into the city streets, sewer and water, fire review for fire exits, and fire access to the building must be clear. We had one building that was 500,000 square feet and we'll have a number of warehouse distribution buildings in the Boeing area where the 200 acres are coming on line. There are a number of permits that each department deals with. Council Workshop Minutes,6/6/00 4 • Tim Clark—My concern is the record keeping, specifically for permits outside of just building permits, so if we have a violation we have easy access and recall for that. Jim Harris—We do, especially through KIVA. Every last permit that is applied for goes into KIVA and who accepted it, the timelines we have on that permit, what the holes are, why the holes are there. We have a complete history and are now just being able to print out reports that show where that permit went. Tim Clark—Are they coded so they can be cross-filed? Jim Harris—They are coded by permits by department. There are some things we can do with KIVA now that we couldn't do before. Director of Operations Brent McFall—That is a single repository for all those permit records. Jim Harris—The latest thing that we are doing is that our GIS mapping system is interfacing in with KIVA, so you will be able to call up the permit and see where it is and what other things are going on with that property, if there is an LID, street vacation, condition of use permit, zoning violation. Councilmember Tom Brotherton- Does that include things like park and recreation permits for parades or things like that? Jim Harris—Anything that goes through this group, like a carnival permit, also goes to the police department. Other permits don't necessarily go to the Police Department. Fireworks stands all go through the Fire Department and Planning Department. They are temporary use and require a temporary use permit, and that goes into KIVA and we can call it up to see who's talked to who about that,where it is in the system, who's holding it up. Tom Brotherton—It seems like meeting timelines ought to be one of the performance measures for the permit center, and it is not, as present. Is there any objection to putting it in there? Jim Harris - I think that we've put off because we don't have it pulled together the way we want it. When it's all pulled together, and we're able to report it, then we will be able to report outcomes. I think, from a management point of view, managers are going to have a tool now to find out why we aren't meeting something, why we aren't doing something. Before, we were pulling information out of four different departments. Mr. Harris explained where all the different departments and conference rooms were located. There is also a children's play area. Councilmember Rico Yingling- I agree with Tom that the permit center is a good way to handle a lot of the problems, like the timeliness issues and ability to get permits, especially by the private sector. I don't necessarily agree, though, that all the quality issues are handled just because you have a permit center. The biggest amount of comments I get from stakeholders in the city are about permits and about the difficulties and problems and it's not always from one department or another. It's always some different department. How do you get the different departments to work together towards giving quality service in a joint team process to this business out there that wants to expand or change? Jim Harris—This is the framework into which that has to fit. You can put bodies in there and it could run like it does now. It's not bad now. I think we tend to beat up on ourselves, that we have a bad permit system. We have a good one. It just needs to have more coordination and there will be fewer people going to you complaining about it. Once we get into there, we will have all the people that we need working together every day on the majority of permits. It won't be running up and down stairs. Council Workshop Minutes,6/6/00 5 Rico Yingling—How does the system help something like this? One fire inspector inspects, gives a list of things that need to be changed or improved and then a different inspector comes in and inspects later and has different opinions about what needs to be changed. Jim Harris—I hear those problems in all divisions, and through better management,people working together and communicating more closely, there is consistency. I think that those are the things that this will help get at. What you're going to have here, especially with this new system central administrator type position, is you're going to have a person who is going to hold persons that are responsible for permits accountable. That's the only way this will work and,right now, it's difficult when you have cc equal department heads all the way across. Now you will have somebody up here that can tell the fire chief, the public works director, planning manager, building manager and the other managers—these are our goals, this is where we want to go—and those things will start coming out and will be able to be attached to a management system—how people coordinate, how they do their daily work—customer service is our goal and timeliness and consistency are a part of that. Brent McFall—Those are management control issues that we've got to do a better job of, paying better attention to, and it's also training and consistency. We give one chance and we find we made an error later, unless it's a major life safety issue, we had our chance. We can't keep coming back to people two,three, four times saying I thought of something else. We can't do that. Jim Harris—The management will have to get at that and that will be one of the most drastic changes that staff will see. Tom Brotherton—I think that having a permit center manager who is responsible for the permit process right on hand there would be good. Rico Yingling— As long as his performance is being monitored on that issue. Jim Harris—The permit manager in the permit system center will be a division that will report directly to this system. Rico Yingling—Any plans for online permits? Jim Hams—That's coming, we are getting our website. I just saw something in the newspaper recently where some city has now gone online. Brent McFall--One of the first things we're doing with that is that we'll soon be to a point where you can download forms to fill out and then bring in. Jim Harris—According to the newspaper, not many cities are doing applications for a major building permit on line. It's very tough to do because of so many different steps. In about a year, I think the city would be very close to doing simple permits on line. Brent McFall—The biggest problem we run into with that is running into security issues. Rico Yingling—Any estimate on the cost of the permit center or is it part of a bigger project? Brent McFall—I don't have it with me today. I can get it for you. Jim Harris is retiring at the end of the month and this has been sort of his final big push project. We are indebted to him for his efforts for the last couple of years and he has done a marvelous job. Council President Leona Orr—When we decided to move forward and do this and put you in charge, I remember at the Workshop I said that you couldn't find a better person to do this. I believe this with all my heart and as I've watched it moving along and seeing it getting closer to coming together, I was right. You were exactly the right person to pull this all together and I think we're all going to be very grateful for all your efforts as it finally does come together, and sorry that you won't be here in a year to see how we've done. But, you can come back. Council Workshop Minutes,6/6/00 6 Jim Harris—I hope it does fall into line. I think Brent's putting a team together for a different way of looking at things and I think this new team is going to be very valuable to the city. You're just one of my slices of 31 years. You've been a good group of eouncilpersons to work with—excellent in fact. Maybe one of the better councils. Very mature group taking the city to the next step, which is beyond 75,000 persons. When I came here it was 16,000, so the councils of those days had a lot of different issues to deal with, but you have so many more complex issues. I thank you very much. Performance Measures Report Government Affairs Manager Dena Laurent—Provided in your packet is the first year baseline Performance Measures Report. Jana King has done a summary overview of a few of the measures from all the departments of where we've been, and where we think we're going with performance measures to provide to you tonight. The report you have is the results from the majority of the measures that we presented to you last year. Jana has done all the work and has worked with departments to get their data collection systems put together, bring their data together and help them ask the question-what does this mean? In some cases we are realizing that we're not measuring the right thing, we're not collecting the right data. This doesn't really help us understand what we're trying to accomplish. We're in an era of continuous improvement on this project. Jana King, Performance Measures Analyst—What is performance measurement? Performance measurement is a permanent data collection and reporting system that monitors and improves the results of policies and programs that government has put on. It's a complicated process,but it is very simple. Who benefits from a performance measurement program? The citizens benefit because, as we all know, citizens want accountability in government today and a performance measurement program gives them that. They want to know how their tax dollars are being spent. The greatest benefit of a performance measurement program goes to managers because they are provided with tools that help them reach their goals and objectives. Also important, it gives them the ability to communicate better with the council and everyone else that wants to know. An added bonus is for staff members because performance measurement keeps them focused on what's really important and it also connects people from the bottom up to the total process. This is all going to get tied together into our Strategic Plan so that everybody really does feel like they are part of a team. In 1998, you identified this as the top priority. So through 1999 we spent a lot of time with educating managers and developing our measures. We made sure they were outcome based and meaningful measures. Also we didn't want them to be too costly to track. Then we put on the annual citywide survey and the employee survey. We hope to report our 2000 results a lot sooner than June. Data collection is very important part of performance measurement. Data is primarily extracted from data bases and software systems that are already in place. Some measurements that we want to do are dependent on new systems or some of the software programs are going to need to be tweaked a little bit to get the data we need. Baseline data for these will be reported next year. The annual citizen survey is a professionally conducted telephone survey by Hebert Research and is targeted every year at summer time. It's a statistically sound survey. Last year 409 Council Workshop Minutes, 6/6/00 7 citizens completed it. This is important. For our purpose of performance reporting we factored out all of the"no opinion"responses. The employee survey was conducted in late fall and that was an email based survey and last year the participation rate was 57%, which is not bad. We do have an audit process set up for periodic auditing of the data. We have some Quality of Life items here. We asked citizens about: ♦ Value of city services received for their tax dollar- 79.4% good or excellent ♦ Kent as a place to live - 79.1% good or excellent ♦ Quality of schools in Kent— 82.5% good or excellent ♦ Relationships between different cultures and races—72.6% good or excellent ♦ Is Kent headed in the right direction?—70.6% said yes Citizen Concerns and Issues. It shouldn't come as a surprise,but when we asked what the three most important issues were, four major areas stood out—traffic, growth, crime and safety, schools and education. Citizen Contact with Kent Employees. ♦ Courteousness of Kent Employees—90.6% good or excellent. ♦ Employee willingness to help— 81.1% good or excellent ♦ Knowledge of issues at hand— 78.4% good or excellent We went a step further there and asked about police courtesy and it came out 97.4% felt police were somewhat or very courteous. . Police Department. You want to be safe and be sure they get there fast and you want them to solve crimes. These sort of came up as highlights here. 96.3% of Kent citizens overall feel safe. 4.7 minutes is the average response time and we've got a 20% crime solving rate, which when I first saw that I thought that was a little low. Actually that's not a bad number. Our target is 25%, and 22-25% is pretty normal for crimes nationwide. Fire Department. With the Fire Department, it is also response time. 42.7% of the time the first unit is on scene within 4-6 minutes. The Fire Department is planning on doing a lot more measures than this. They are going to be measuring from the first call to dispatch, from dispatch to getting the trucks out of the station, and thenpetting the trucks out of the station to the scene, and then they are going to be working on the 2" unit to the scene,which according to the chief is usually the most important time. We asked about quality of service for emergency services and 96.3%came out favorably. Another thing that they are looking at is false alarms. It has cost the department a lot of time and money, and the false alarms due to system malfunction are 9.4%. The national average in the 1980's was close to 11%. This does not include maliciousness, which is a little less than 2%. Rico Yingling—There was a performance measure that, of those receiving non-emergency fire department services, the percent rating them good or excellent was 100%. Was that citizens or community? Jana King—It was the citizen survey. There weren't a whole lot of people that had received those services. Of those that did, it was 100%. Council Workshop Minutes,6/6/00 8 . Parks Department. In the citizen survey we asked if the City of Kent meets their recreational needs or if they can think of anything missing and 72.2% said their needs are met. Another measure that Parks Department is following, and has followed, is the percent capacity of programs ♦ Youth camps—84% ♦ Senior classes and workshops— 90% ♦ Cultural performances —77% You might think that youth camps with 84%, why is it not 100%? They do save a certain amount of space for low income and people that could easily be in and out of the area so the space is held and they can't sell it to someone else. They also have their Outreach for the cultural programs and they are tracking how much is redeemed at performances. We have a 46% rate. They are hoping to get to 66%. The number of general recreation program participants is 32,724. These are people that basically sign up for anything from classes to volleyball and the sports teams. Actually the number in and out of the Kent Commons is close to 500,000 a year. Planning Department. We have the Permit Center, which we just talked about. Responsiveness and timeliness in customer service were asked on the citizen survey,but we didn't have the response rate that we wanted so we will be targeting the Center when we get set up so we get better feedback. 63.6%were satisfied with customer service and 71.4%with the time limit. Human Services. The Home Repair Program is one of our biggest efforts here. I think a great measure that Planning has picked out is the increased self-sufficiency, how they feel after we go in there and do stuff for them. They do ask every single client and it's at 90%. Public Works. Street Maintenance. Roads, we have condition and cleanliness of the streets. The citizens were asked and they came up with 93.8% and 92.8% approval of the way the roads worked. The problem is there is too much traffic. The paver system,which is a pavement condition rating, is more of a technical program in 1999, came in at 79.6%out of 100. Our target is 85%. Utilities. With city water, their priority is to meet the health and safety standards of Washington State,which they do. They meet or exceed those but they do ask their customers every year how they feel about taste, pressure, and clarity. That figure for 1999 came out at 77%, 89%, and 92% of our citizens felt that way. With the sewer and storm drainage, one of the measures that they are looking at is the percent of time that they spent on preventative maintenance rather than emergency. Sewer came in at 98%and storm at 99%, which is a great result but when you think about it how often do you really have to worry about that? It's nice to know it's working. City Clerk. We asked the employees how they felt about accuracy of the City Clerk's Office and 97.3 felt their accuracy is good or excellent. Municipal Court. Their fine collection from the previous year went up by 23.4%or $1.2 million. The number of tickets issued went down from 1998 to 1999,but the fines went up. The reason is that they farmed it out to two different collection agencies that ended up competing against each other. City Attorney. They are measuring the quality of legal advice and we asked the people that . interact with them. 95.5%believed they were excellent and police employees that work with the city prosecution rated their work at 100% good or excellent. Council Workshop Minutes,6/6/00 9 . Finance Department. One of the best ways to tell if they are doing well or not is by the city bond rate. Recently we were upgraded to AA status for both Moodys and Standard &Poors. The target is at AA even though AAA is possible but not for a city our size. We have an excellent credit rating and we save thousands of dollars. We have received the Distinguished Budget Award for four years in a row and the Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting seven out of the last ten years. The three years we didn't get it, we didn't apply for it. Rico Yingling—I'm a little disappointed because I know the Finance Department does a great job with numbers,but I didn't see what I thought would be good outcome performance measures there. I know you've got state auditor findings that are, in a sense, outcome performance measures. We have an investment portfolio and there's no information on the return on investment of that portfolio—debt loading measures on the city, no ratios. So, I just wanted to throw that out at you. Jana King—We do have debt and investment information,but as far as an outcome, we'll take a look at that. F.mployee Services. One of their measures is the overall quality of candidates that are referred by Employee Services to hiring managers and they came through at 83.4%rating them good or excellent. That would have been higher but the job market last year was really tough. We averaged in the technical/professional/clerical all together, and the technical and professional candidates just haven't been out there, so we can't blame them for not having super results. The quality of customer service that they give internally was rated at 81.4% as good or excellent. We also look at lost time date and the percent changed from 98 to 99, it went down by 1.3%. • LT For them, it's system availability and the whole city thanks them that the city is up 99.3 to 99.9% of the time. They are of course measuring other things. Fleet Services. They have an inventory of about 350. They are tracking costs of preventative versus unscheduled maintenance and the ratio right there is 61%. The Performance Measurement Program is currently tracking over 380 meaningful performance indicators. As the city moves ahead and analyzes trend data over time we will be taking the program to the next level. We will focus on areas that need improvement, communicate our progress better to the public and integrate performance measures with our overall strategic plan. We will provide Kent citizens with annual performance reports that evaluate not only how well we are meeting our goals, how well we are doing compared to previous years and eventually how we compare to similar municipalities. Dena Laurent—Our next step is to maintain these 380 measures that we've got started. As early as the next ten days we're beginning to go out to the public to do our 2000 external system survey. One of the things that we're trying to do this year is also use that survey to evaluate public perception of capital needs, so as we update our CIP,we have some statistically valid feedback from the public about where they want to see us spend resources. The next piece of that is,Rico, what you were pointing out - what aren't we measuring that we really ought to be measuring?For example, the Permit Center. Questions are great but we're asking them to a non- specific audience. We need to narrow the customer group that we ask those questions to. It's • those kinds of changes that we need to make to what we're doing right now. Council Workshop Minutes,6/6/00 10 The next step, in all those areas, where we understand the measure enough, is to set targets, either based on professional judgement or national standards. Then,how do we begin to compare ourselves in areas that are ready? With service groups that are ready to begin doing some benchmarking. Looking at how we compare ourselves to other organizations. There are some groups within the city that clearly understand their service,measures, there's good data, there are national standards, we could go out and do those groups in a relatively short period of time. But you don't want to just go do those for fun,because you could waste a lot of time and money that way. They need to be areas where we would really be seeking improvement. How do we integrate performance measures into our overall strategic planning process? The goals that you identified at your retreat should connect to the measures, the budget cycle. Full systems approach to using these tools for management and how we take direction from you and,with the Mayor's direction, get that implemented. That is our focus for the next six, twelve to eighteen months. Councilmember Sandy Amodt—Is there any way to target different groups of people, different levels of income, the area they live in Kent and then ethnicity to the ratio of the ethnic population? For instance, there's 10% Chinese in Kent so a percentage of 50 or 100 of those people would be called versus 30,000 Caucasians. Dena Laurent—That 400 number achieves this 5%error ratio and the more surveys you buy, the error ratio doesn't trail off all that much. So, it's really not worth the extra money. We set two quotas in our survey right now. One is that we say no more than 60% of either sex and no more than 60%homeowner or renter. Those are the only quota criteria we have given to the survey company. We do ask people to give us their range of income. Last year we did not ask them for ethnicity and neither of those were quoted. If there is some specific issues that we want to understand how they relate to income or to ethnicity, my recommendation would be is that we approach that with a focus group. If there's something we're really concerned about, how a particular group of folks in our community are receiving some service or what their concerns might be, rather than trying to get at it with this big picture broad brush survey,invite a bunch of them in and develop a question and ways to talk to them. You'd get much more meaningful results. So if you have some questions or interest with that let me know. Rico Yingling— I worry about the way that we use averages and then compare them against targets. I think I like the way the Fire Department did it better, they said our response time between four and six minutes was"X"percent. Who's looking at those kind of statistical measures to say whether they are meaningful or not. Jana King—With the Police Department, it was the California cities that came up with that statistic. They said any high service level department is around 5 minutes for a response time and if you're high level,you are going to get there in 5 minutes at least. This is baseline here. Next year we'll be looking at last year's results, so in a way a lot of what you read in the report is that I'm trying to give you an idea of where we're at without comparing trend data, which is kind of tough the first year. Brent McFall—One of the other things that we will want to look at,just to use the police response time as an example, is at different kinds of calls. We do prioritize and so it might not give the same priority to a call for service to report on a traffic accident that happened yesterday as opposed to a crime in progress type of situation. Rico Yingling—It wasn't the number that 1 Council Workshop Minutes,6/6/00 I1 was bothered with, it was the use of an average because an average means at least a weighted amount is half below and half above. Jana King—You'd be more interested in percent of priority one calls responding within five minutes. So you like the way the Fire Department did theirs. Rico Yingling—It's just more meaningful. It kind of tells you what they actually did. I just wondered who's looking at those kinds of statistical concepts. Tom Brotherton—Not so much on the process,but I was really struck by the Fire Department number. I really think that's bad and we need to work on that. More than half of the calls took longer than six minutes response time and a lot of people die in that sort of time. National standard is much lower than that. Jana King—Its about 40%. Tom Brotherton—42% of them are four to six minutes. That means that 57%of them are more than six minutes. Jana King—In the report we split it out. Tom Brotherton—Didn't that include the lower ones too? Jana King— No. Just that middle portion,but we put all three in the report. Tom Brotherton—Anyway, it's still too big. And 7% of our calls are life/safety and take more than five minutes to get there. You have a heart problem and you're dead after five minutes. Our response time is long and getting longer and we've got to worry about an extra fire station or something. Brent McFall—You're right. We do need to address that, because of population growth and congestion, and response times are increasing, and the number of responses and alarms, which means our units are not available to respond. Another thing to keep in mind,particularly when it comes to emergency medical, many of our emergency medical calls are not emergencies as well, and it gets down to how finely do we split that hair. The workshop adjourned at 6:11 PM. • r Council Office 2°d Floor, City Hall 220 4'h Ave. South,Kent,98032 PLEASE SIGN IN DATE: Name Address Phone Number 36\1) S k n )Zpp (o(-LcC 6 aeek vx L- 2� K'�i PO AAAAA .gat -wi- 12s - Ct Irx- (M"'g 5- e 7r�