Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutCity Council Meeting - Council Workshop - Minutes - 09/04/2001 S COUNCIL WORKSHOP MINUTES SEPTEMBER 4, 2001 COMMITTEE MEMBERS PRESENT: President Leona Orr, Tom Brotherton, Tim Clark, Connie Epperly, Judy Woods, Greg Worthing, Rico Yingling STAFF PRESENT: Mike Martin, Jacki Skaught, Don Wickstrom, Fred Satterstrom, Bob Hutchinson, Bruce Verhei, Mayor White,May Miller, Gary Gill, John Hodgson, Charlene Anderson, Brad Lake, Jackie Bicknell PUBLIC PRESENT: Julie Peterson Drought Update Public Works Director Don Wickstrom—You will recall, back in February we started to realize that we were going to have a problem. We came to you and asked you to declare an emergency supply condition. We had one of our major wells out on 2121h and at Kent Springs we were drilling a new well supplement. The streams were really down, the aquifers were down out at Clark Springs, and Kent Springs was way down. We were supplementing Rock Creek through December, before we could quit, because it would affect the fish flows, and that put a demand on our system. We ended up with a couple of well problems. We came to you saying that we had a serious problem, thinking that, based on projections, we could be short as much as five million gallons a day. You implemented an emergency declaration, which required mandatory odd/even sprinkling, which hasn't been too bad. We had some breaks with the weather, particularly in August, where within three days at Clark Springs, we had 2%: inches of rain. If we're going to get rain, that's the month to get it in and it's iabout the time of year that you want, right towards the end. To date we have implemented the new supplemental replacement well at Kent Springs. It is operating and has proven to be a very good source. We typically get two million gallons a day out of the Kent Springs aquifer. During the summertime we average about four million gallons a day, which is significant. Covington is only 2000 feet away from our well sources, and they didn't use them. They were getting supplemental water from Auburn. They didn't draw on that very early, so a couple more years, and we'll know how good we really have it. We did get our 212`h facility fully operational, with the new well, and it got us back up to full capability. We had problems at 208`h which I think is a motor problem, hopefully. We're pulling that out. We tackled this problem both with conservation on the demand side and source development. We had inter-tie during the early part of the year. We used Renton heavily for one month in order to relax our own sources, but Renton was not in a position to provide water, at least at that time, throughout the summer demand. We had our inter-ties with Highline and Tukwila, which are Seattle purveyors, and we constructed a new inter-tie with Soos Creek Sewer and Water, which is also a Seattle purveyor. We needed an agreement with Seattle if we were to utilize them,which we just completed and executed. We have developed our inter-ties for about 2-2'/z million gallons a day, and we have the right to use them, unlike before, because this is a Seattle purveyor. Seattle had to agree, and the only way Seattle could do that was transfer water through their system down from Everett. We've been able to develop the demand that we projected, or thought we needed, and it ended up, because of the weather, the rains, and because it was a little cooler,that we are in good shape at this point in time. We had indicated . that we were probably looking at $1.3 million in expenses. So far we've spent about$831,000 on those costs. Council Workshop Minutes,9/4/01 2 Councilmember Rico Yingling—For the inter-tie work? Don Wickstrom—No. The bulk of that was for the Kent Springs new well and 212`h. That was about $575,000. The inter-tie with Soos Creek Sewer and Water District was another$100,000. We purchased about $60,000 of water from Renton for that one-month period. Then, to work out a deal with Seattle, to guarantee that we would get water through our other inter-ties from Seattle for the rest of the year(if needed), it would cost us $90,000 up front. That is where all the money has gone. We were thinking we were going to spend about$350,000 on water purchases (of course, the year isn't out), so that we were going to run the operating budget in the red, because we didn't know where we would be. If it is a wet summer,we may not use any of it. So far we've only used $60. We had $125 budgeted in the first place, so there's no budgetary problem at this point in time. For the Kent and Clarks Springs and the capital projects we had about $740,000 budgeted and we spent $771,000, If you will recall from the memo, there was about $400,000 for developing a new well down at our impoundment site along 124`h. We had $1,200,000 sitting in the impoundment fund, so we probably want to reallocate a little bit of that money from the impoundment fund and put it into the capital fund to cover what we spent. Brad can go into what we're looking at next year, as far as where we are. He's got some NOAA projections, and we do have Tacoma tie pipeline under construction. It's 10 miles of 60-inch pipe, so it's a 20 million-dollar job of which we are paying half. If everything goes right (and construction jobs don't often do that),we anticipate having that on line around July of next year. There's still a tie between that line and our Kent Springs source that we're working on. Covington will be the lead to build, and will hopefully get it all on line before next July. We are buying water from Tacoma in the interim. Because the Tacoma project won't be available, the water we get is essentially ours,we are . just paying for the capital. That project won't be completed until 2006. Water Superintendent Brad Lake—The 3'a page back is a graphic representation of our demand. Last year is the black, average is yellow for the last five years, and red is this year. You can see how we have had a sharp change in the demand for summer, and that's primarily due to the conservation measures that we implemented. Rico Yingling—How much of that is due to... Don Wickstrom—Revenue-wise—we looked at that and luckily we were very conservative when we projected the budget revenues for 2001. Right now we're projecting the ending balance revenues to be only$100,000 less than what we projected. There's really not a revenue problem there. We worried that we'd have a big, significant problem on top of that. We spent$831,000,plus we lost a bunch of revenue, and that's the net effect of our drought head-on to us, but so far the overall revenues are within those we are projecting. Rico Yingling—You're saying this difference is conservation. We had two conservation policy items, one was odd/even watering and the other was large meters, so what proportion was one or the other? Do you have any idea? Which one was affected in cutting usage? Don Wickstrom—We only had one real request for a large meter to be implemented before October 1st. Rico Yingling - That was the Laundromat. Don Wickstrom—That too,but they never really pressed. We had a suit company, down in the Horseshoe Acre area, that wanted to have the 2-inch one go to 3-inches, and because of that, it's held off until that ordinance lapses, which is October I". We're not recommending the change to lift that ordinance early. Rico Yingling—In the meantime, have we lost any big meters? Don Wickstrom—We do have the Laundromat still coming in. Rico Council Workshop Minutes, 9/4/01 3 Yingling—Anybody with meters that have basically dropped their usage. Anyone gone out of business? Don Wickstrom—No. I don't think that's been an issue. A two-inch meter is pretty good • service to begin with. You have to be a heavy user to go up to a three, plus you've got good size system development charges tacked on to that, to boot. Rico Yingling—So most of this is people not watering their yards. Don Wickstrom—Yeah. Or just complying with the odd/even. We only had about seven instances where exceptions were requested because there were new lawns. I don't think it was a major impact. We just had a lot of people not watering their yard anyway, and maybe that was their excuse not to water. Brad Lake—There was a lot of publicity statewide and a lot of awareness and that helped in addition to our conservation. Looking ahead at the weather forecast from NOAA, what we've seen is that they are forecasting the next month or so to be a little bit wetter and cooler than normal. They are also saying that the dry trend will continue into November, possibly into next winter, early spring and even summer, but they are not expecting it to be a drought situation like we have now. It's normal or slightly drier, so we're thinking we're coming out of the trend that we've been in through last winter, which is good news for us. Tom Brotherton— Sounds like with the second source pipeline, by next July maybe, and the conservation steps we have here, we don't have any long-term problems. What's the plan for impoundment facility at this point? Don Wickstrom—If you look at our projections for growth based on historical trends, and growth projected to occur in this area by 2006(when we finally get the Tacoma on line, and our water is allocated versus having to buy water), we only have about three more years before we have eaten up • that surplus. You're looking at an impoundment project that has probably a three or four year lead time to implement. That means that it is in our 6-Year Capital Improvement Plan. It means we need to at least be in a position to construct. That would mean an EIS completed,permits processed and worked though, and the plans inspected. You need to do that work. In any major construction project that's where the time is spent. You get the construction- it's over, done. It's getting to that period that is the big task. It means that if growth does occur like we're projecting, as it has in the past, when we finally get the Tacoma facilities on line, we only have a couple more years of growth available so we need to get the next source on. One thing in the Tacoma agreement mentions that, and Seattle is part of that,because of their north spur which is the line that goes from the Tacoma line all the way up to Lake Young. That agreement is only in it's infancy with regard to the EIS, and the permit process. There are some questions as to whether it will be stopped or it can be built, so Seattle does have an out if it hasn't been built by 2006. If Seattle were to pull out of that agreement then the remaining partners would pick up their share,because we would get twice as much water for half the price. To construct that piece of main is 30 million dollars. Seattle's share of the project was 78 million. That means for 48 million, you would get 21 million gallons. Split that four ways between Tacoma and the remaining three purveyors and it's a good deal. Seattle knows it. I doubt if they are going to bail out. We've made that clear. It would be to our advantage if Seattle did drop out. That would be our next source, but I won't know that until 2006, so I have to have the impoundment project ready to go or something that can be implemented. • Tom Brotherton—So the lead-time on these projects is getting the permits and being able to do it. The money won't really start flowing until you start doing heavy construction on it. Don Wickstrom —We have a cash flow. Everything looks doable. Even our rates look good until 2004 and they only have to step up if we end up having to build the impoundment. We have money to design it and that Council Workshop Minutes, 9/4/01 4 kind of stuff, but when we get into the construction phase, the rates have to step up to handle the construction or to buy Seattle's share of the pipeline. Otherwise, our rates are okay. • Chief Administrative Officer Mike Martin—The council declared an emergency, which was unusual. Were there any other jurisdictions declaring emergencies? Don Wickstrom—I don't think there were any that officially declared an emergency. Covington may have come close. Mike Martin—The fact that we declared an emergency wasn't necessarily a good thing, in terms of everybody asking why we had an emergency and nobody else did. But it did send the signal that allowed the conservation savings to occur, which was a good thing. We also authorized an additional position for the City, to consolidate all these newly added conservation efforts. That person was temporarily assigned to coordinate all of those things. We did something as small but as important as to declare an emergency. That allowed Don to go ahead and order some parts for the pump that we needed for the well that we needed to sink, and it accelerated the whole effort by quite a number of weeks. As a result we got that coming on line. There were a whole bunch of little things like that. On Fred's side, they waived the requirements for certain landscaping to occur during the summer. It was a series of small things, that everybody did, that added up to a very controlled environment that allowed us to really emerge on the other side. We're in good shape. We don't know for sure that this is what happened, but it's conceivable that this sort of behavior attracted an additional S10 million loan, quite unexpectedly. We became considered through Public Works. We haven't got the loan yet, but it looks like we have a good chance of getting an additional $10 million loan for our water project. Don and I have talked and speculated, because we were somewhat alone in saying we have a problem here, then we went and did all those little things to try to address it. I was really pleased with the way the organization responded to that issue. Another thing, as small as ordering pipe in • advance for the pipeline project, saved us a number of months. It was just like, every little thing that we could do to move this along, we did. And it worked out for us in the end. I am pleased with the way this has all added up for us. Don Wickstrom—Our share of Tacoma is $28 million and we have about $11 million in cash. Some of that is obligated for you to loan out to other purchases. Last year we got a Public Works Trust Fund loan for$10 million. We were on the secondary list, which didn't mean it was guaranteed, because they would have had to take some bonding through the legislature to approve it,but they did and we got that one. We submitted recently, and we're on the first list this time, for another$10 million at 0.5% interest rate. From that first one, we got$8.5 million and I think we have only spent about a million on the Tacoma project already, so we are generating more money. Council President Leona Orr—Are we allowed to do that? Like sometimes when we do projects and we accrue a certain amount of interest... Don Wickstrom—That's for bonds. We're not selling bonds. It's just a loan. They front us, as soon as we award the contract, which was done. Did the design, completed and awarded it and we had already fronted those costs. They paid us $8.5 million and we got that invested to make interest off of it. Now,if we can get a second one, I'm quite pleased. That means we've essentially got our funding for the Tacoma pipeline project at 0.5%. Our rates look good for 2004. It's because of the next project that we'd have to increase it, and it could be longer than 2004 before we'd have to implement something. Leona Orr—I would echo what Mike said. I know that the Council is only as good as the staff that backs us up. When you come to us and explain what needs to be done and we're able to do it, then you go out and do what you do, it's phenomenal what happens sometimes. I hadn't heard about this extra$10 million. That's incredible! Council Workshop Minutes,9/4/O1 5 Don Wickstrom—Brad put out a great effort on getting all this. I got the information together and Brad implemented it, and he is the one that followed through. We do have one little development for . next year. It's called our Seven Oaks Well. We were budgeting $350,000 to develop it, and this is probably the last of the existing water rights that we can either redevelop or supplement. We have an existing water right there for 900 gallons a minute. We have a well facility that can produce that, except the well production has dropped down to more like 500. Our geologists say to drill another well and we can recoup that loss of water. That's what we want to do next year. Any water that we can develop and put on line means the less we have to buy, because we're going to be buying water from Tacoma until 2006. If we have water,we need to put it on line. Leona Orr—Do you anticipate continuing the conservation efforts next year? Don Wickstrom—It won't be the odd/even thing. The Tacoma project has thrown up the whole question of the water rights issue. Tacoma reached the resolution, after much legal hassle with DOE when they issued the water rights, of issuing a permit that would give you 20 years to fully vest(which means put your water to use), then every five years they renewed your construction permit. Well, because of all the delays, Tacoma has gone through three of those permits,where they just issued them. The last one they said no. It's a new game. Now we have to have, as part of an agreement you authorize us to sign, that we will come up with a 1% reduction per year for the next 10 years in conservation. If we can achieve that, which is going to be difficult for us because we have been practicing conservation for so long, it pushes out our project and extends the life of the supply we have. It could be a good thing in that respect. Rico Yingling—When the Seattle City Council is talking about an ordinance not to allow Seattle to sell their excess city water supply, what are our concerns there? What are we doing? Don Wickstrom—It's an initiative. That's why our agreement is only a one year agreement until December. If that initiative goes into affect, we're not going to let our Tacoma supply go down. We need to get that operational for next year. Next year we're also working with Auburn. One of our sources was potentially with Auburn, but we tore that tie out with the road project. Auburn then felt that they weren't sure they had any supply, so we're working on an agreement between Lakehaven Water District to back up Auburn, so Auburn can flow water to us. As a backup to this tie with Covington, a new line to our Kent Springs, we've got a little inter-tie on Kent Kangley that will give us at least two million tunneled through Covington. They will have the connection to Tacoma if we don't get that tie to Kent Springs on line. We're still playing with all the options. Permit Center Activity Status Acting Community Development Director Fred Satterstrom—If the theme of Don's report to you on the drought is a theme of a lot of little things, a lot of little planning things adding up to success, then hopefully what we have to follow up on will be Phase II to that. We've been doing a lot of little things in the permit processing area which, I think we will agree at the end of our presentation, have been leading up to a larger success. I have the pleasure of working with the different divisions and departments that oversee the permit process. Those are the Fire, Building,Planning, and Engineering Departments. I don't oversee Fire,but with the addition of Bruce Verhei as the Acting Permit Center Manager, I feel like I'm working with Fire a lot more closely these days. The purpose of us coming forward to the Council this evening is to give you a full update of the permit process improvements that have been going on since the Zucker Report in 1999 but, I think, more vigorously starting this year. It was actually an effort which Mike Martin got going in January of this year, and an effort which we've been diligently trying to keep pace with since he has been over in the Mayor's area working on duties and responsibilities of the CAO. If you recall,back in 1999, if you were involved with the permit process you couldn't lift your head too high because Paul Council Workshop Minutes,9/4/01 6 Zucker came in and did an audit of the permit process and recommended that 132 things be changed. Those were organizational from a process standpoint and most of them had to do with the training . and personnel kinds of issues on how to process things. At last count,we were working on or have accomplished 108 of them. Some of those are kind of an anachronism now, we're not going to work on them, and there are some that represent future kinds of initiatives but, about 80% of those have been accomplished or we are working on. There was a time when I would be somewhat shy about coming forward to the Council and talking about the permit process, because there was a negative connotation associated with that. But I'm actually fairly excited about being here tonight. I've looked forward to it for quite a while, in terms of making a presentation to you, and if our Power Point presentation works, then we're going to be able to do that. I'm going to have Bruce Verhei, who is the Acting Permit Center Manager on loan from the Fire Department, run you through the Power Point on the improvements that we've been making and some of the ways in which we've been measuring our performance. He works in the Permit Center every day. It has been a pleasure working with him. Bob Hutchinson, who is the Building Official, will assist. Bruce Verhei - I've had the good fortune to be over at the Permit Center, and it's a real fun and exiting time. We've been able to move from our temporary site into our permanent site over there and I think most of you have been there. Our web page has finally gone live and is expanding. I'll talk a little bit about our permit time lines and how they have continued to improve, even into the busy season. I'll talk about customer service ratings and how they continue to be pretty favorable, Permit Center opening,permit process effectiveness (which is a real key), focus on customer service, and some initiatives we have for the future. • This is a picture of our old center. It was kind of good, in that you got to know everybody pretty well, as close as you are here, except on a long-term basis, it was fairly loud. Really wasn't room to set out a set of plans and blueprints. On the other hand, it was a good thing in that it got us up and operational much earlier than waiting for this Permit Center. As far as having an interim Permit Center, there was an upside to it. Here's some of the new Permit Center in process. I think that's looking toward the parking garage, but I think we're seeing some of the Customer Service area there too. It was a pretty busy place for awhile. Here's looking toward our City of Kent Permit Center. This is a staff picture from the middle of the day, so there are a couple of people having lunch. It's pretty short, but 1 guess I want to make a couple of comments here about the varieties of people that we have mentioned that are present there. We've gone to only one permit tech and a couple of customers at the counter, receptionist Shannon, and three of the four specialties that we provide down there full time. There's a firefighter, but we also have a building, and an engineering(or at least a couple of tech-level engineering)plan so that we can bring people out and talk about the substance of an issue. Here's the new intake counter and it's big and spacious and you can see there is room to lay out a set of blueprints and have people to talk to the permit techs. It's all public information, but not everybody likes to talk next to everybody and people don't like to be eavesdropped upon. So it's real spacious. Off to the right we have a self help area that has a wide variety of documents,from short plats to maps to fire codes, building codes, Public Works systems brochures and surprising . information on maps that I don't really understand at all, but the planners and the engineering staff seem to. Another nice thing about this is that we've got a couple of chairs here and little tables that can be usedfor mini-conferences. Council Workshop Minutes,9/4/01 7 This is one of the planners and a couple of gentlemen talking about some project, and that actually works out really well. Works better than I thought it would—permit process effectiveness;permit • timelines. These are percent maps, and percent overs, which is a nice way of saying late. Back in January, which in theory is a slow time of year, we were hitting about 50—52%. As time went by, we improved the trend upward as far as being on time. Mike Martin—The Council gave the Permit Center guidelines, in terms of what duration for each permit. So in January, about half the time now, it's about 83%. Bruce Verhei— This is permit activity history just by gross numbers. The blue column is year 2000 and the jump there is a distorted jump. It reflects that we went to the famous "KIVA"permitting system and all the planning permits show much bigger and a lot of the public works and engineering permits show up at the end of that year. So, to some extent, comparing years previous is not real effective. In addition to the big, high visibility projects like some of the Gateway Pacific projects that embodied lots and lots and lots of hours, I guess one of the things I've learned is there's a lot of much smaller side sewer permits and water meter permits. Frankly, I was aware of them in a vague way, but there's a lot more of those than you might guess. That reflects that large jump there. The other one is the year to date July 31. Here's our year to date, and just to give you a reference back to last year,permits are down about 12-13% in gross numbers from year 2000 to year 2001 through July 31. Building Official Bob Hutchinson—I want to talk briefly about building inspections, because many of us have heard about them and we have our own ideas of what they encompass. The purpose is to verify that the construction is actually going on out in the field, meets the approvals that have been granted on the plans and the permits have been issued and the details which normally aren't checked at plan review actually meet the code requirements. These building inspections comprise the most frequent field contact between permit customers and the City. It's an ongoing, everyday thing and some of these projects involve literally hundreds and hundreds of inspections. I think our all time record was the Regional Justice Center, with over 3000 inspections on that one project. Our service standard has been and continues to be next day inspections. If someone calls in, up until closing time on a given day, we try to make our inspection the next day no matter what the weather, illness, planned training or whatever. Inspectors' roles involve other things than simply comparing the construction to the plans and the codes. Part of that role is important- teaching code requirements to customers or to homeowners who may be doing the one and only project they'll ever do where they'll have an interface with the code regulation community. Part of it is also helping our customers to resolve problems that arise, and anyone who's ever been through a remodel on their home or built a new home or something like that knows that you're going to have problems that arise unforeseen. Another important role is building damage inspections as part of the City's Emergency Management Plan. We were able to exercise that pretty well on the 28`h of February. Building inspections are conducted in the City through a staff team of seven inspectors and one assistant building official who is a supervisor. About half of his time is involved in doing some of the difficult and very complex or problem inspections. To give you an idea of the scope, last year we conducted over 21,000 inspections and nearly worked our folks into the ground doing it. We did over$91,000 worth of overtime in that small group. I'd like to thank the Council for authorizing in this year's budget one additional FTE inspector, that allows us to,pretty much, eliminate overtime. So far we have conducted about 11,000 inspections through the end of July. Council Workshop Minutes,9/4/01 8 Another item that building is more intimately involved with than some of the other components of the City staff are certificates of occupancy. This is like the final punctuation of a project. It is the City's . final approval that allows use of a building when it's been constructed and it's legally required before any building can be put to its intended use. This year we worked at a couple of different attempts and finally came up with a new and improved, simplified, streamlined, automated process in April to issue those certificates of occupancy. This utilized one City signature instead of four, which we had been doing for decades, and allowed us to have the Engineering, Planning, and Fire units sign their approvals at the site on the permit job record card. This allows the customer to have more control over the process, because they can deal directly with those inspection people in those divisions who have to give their approvals. It has allowed us to automate the record keeping of that activity, reducing a lot of our staff time that was involved in processing these things, and these are only issued to new buildings other than single family. We have issued, through just a week or so ago to now, 54 of these certificates of occupancy using the new process. One of the main items of importance to attach to this is the fact that nobody talks about it anymore. It has become such an easy,quick, routine part of doing business with the City that it's simply not a subject of conversation. I think that we're pretty proud of having made it that way. Mike Martin—I want to stop Bob right here because this is really more interesting. It's not just like a bureaucratic thing. They create a piece of paper that they give to someone when they get a permit, and they can see the inspections that they have to have signed off, so they know what's not done right thereon the job site. We no longer keep a copy of this. We just don't do that and there is one final signature required here. This was identified by some of the builders like Polygon as their single greatest priority, because it's so much faster and so much easier and it allows them to go off construction and into occupancy. So this was money to them and this was a good deal to our local builders. Bob asked why are you keeping this piece of paper at all? We don't need it. We just automated it and it resulted in this. It's pretty progressive. It was a good thing. Bruce Verhei—We're talking a little bit more about the Customer Service. It's been several months ago that we had a huge retreat that involved 60 some people who are involved in different phases of the permit process. Some are full time, some of them are not. It was a lot of people. People who do bonding, to fire,to building inspectors, to receptionists and we had a lot of discussion about why we have the permit process. What is our goal? How do we view ourselves as we try to carry out Council and the Mayor's bigger goals on a day to day basis? We came up with a couple of documents. One was a core purpose, and this one was to shape and protect and enhance the quality of life and sense of community for the citizens of Kent. Remember we are talking about fire, public works, and building, and planning and is focused not on permits,but what the end product is. The end product is just to put out a permit. Why do we go through a permitting process? This was kind of our core value. How we going to try, as a group of 60-some people, to agree to try to cooperate and work together. Rico Yingling—What was the purpose... Bruce Verhei —I guess it was mostly agreeing on how to work together to carry out the purposes. These are customer comments that we have been collecting-for some time. We give them a card, and when they fill the card out, we give them a pen. We are rated on a 0—9 basis. This is March to July 31 feedback. Some of it's regarding the facility, and again Mr. Zucker was really concerned about • some of the facility and how it looked. Are people friendly?Do they ignore you when you come to the counter, or not? Do they know about what they're talking about?And, I personally would put this highest.' did you have a successful outcome? Council Workshop Minutes,9/4/01 9 Mike Martin—Do you have a sense of how many cards this represents? Bruce Verhei—Hundreds. There is an ongoing question that I have, though. Eventually we have a lot of repeat customers. I don't know if they're going to continue to fill out cards. I wonder if we'll have to change the system. Ongoing permit text: This is something we're working on, bringing a specialist from either planning or building to talk about why do we do SEPA and what the process is. Why do you do building inspections and what is the order of doing them? These are recent classes. We're online with our web site. We'll give you a business card before you leave here. You can see all the applications and most of the forms. We are one of two cities that you can go check the status and plan review or inspection status on line in the state. Mike Martin—This is really cutting edge. Rico Yingling—Can you pay on line yet? Mike Martin— It will be available very soon. We're trying it out in Parks right now and as soon as we get that settled, it will be available. Bruce Verhei—Right now you have to know the exact number of the permit. It doesn't have a search but if you have an application, you can go in there and see that Building signed it off, Public Works signed it off and those guys in Fire haven't signed it off yet. You can see that directly from your home. Fred Satterstrom—This is the check permit status program that's on line. Last Thursday they were working with the South County Journal on getting the permit issued so they could begin construction after Labor Day. It required City departments to review pretty quickly. They went on line and they were checking it from time to time, because if you enter your permit number here it takes you to a clearance check sheet that shows you right up to the minute whether or not the departments have signed off. They watched on Thursday afternoon, as each one of the divisions signed off on it, so they knew the permit was ready before they were ever notified. I called the gentleman up to tell him that their permit was ready, and he said, I already know. They told me that it was already ready and thanked us profusely. He said, Gee that was really neat watching the divisions sign off on line. He said you guys are really working on it. Of course we were,but they could see that happen. It was exciting. Bruce Verhei—If we're doing things the same way now as we did five years ago, we're failing. We're trying to look into new ways of doing business. There are more things that are being looked at in the code area, like online applications for permits. I presume this will be a transferable initiative for over-the-counter type permits and interactive voice response. Interactive voice response is a system similar to one the Parks Department has done,that they are using for signing up for classes, or soccer, or something like that. If you're requesting a building inspection, or inspections, the tree will be a lot bushier. It's a little more complicated. City project, Fred Satterstrom worked on this through July and August. The big focus was to demonstrate that the City is a big developer. We do a lot of parks, water mains. Assistance was to try to contact the people who were going to develop, and highlight people from all four of the review units, to talk to them really early in the project and try to save them time and money. Temporary Use Permits. We improved this so we can do a lot of over-the-counter permits. This affects a lot ofpeople who know a lot ofpeople. Fred Satterstrom—Those were from Cornucopia. They used to give us problems every year because they are a unique kind of a permit, and they only happen once a year so you're not used to issuing them. Fireworks stands, Christmas trees, Fourth of July Splash, these are things that only happen Council Workshop Minutes, 9/4/01 10 once a year. If you only deal with it once a year, you're not used to working with it and they all involve community groups, the Lions, the Rotary, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts and some service groups. . We made some improvements this year, and the benefit will be that next year it will be truly over-the- counter. We gave some demonstrations this year and everything went very smoothly. We expect it to be even better next year. These are permits that should be issued very quickly, because they only happen once a year. We used to fall all over ourselves every time. Bruce Verhei —Permit Process Streamlining. We've got a couple of teams. One is at the management level and one that is more at the production level. At production level, senior planners are doing things like improving the review on the temporary use permits like Fred was talking about, asking question like- why does Fire need to look at that?Maybe Building needs to look at only 5%, and maybe the Building/Fire planner can say we need to add them by exception rather than route the other 95% to them. Some of the things are more systemic and somethings are just incremental. The core group is taking a real look at trying to augment folks with making the processes less painful, and streamlining them. Trying to troubleshoot individual permit problems to see if this is an interim permit problem, or was it truly an individual, or was this one that we could learn something from. Now that we have the KIVA system in place where we can look through the database behind that, we can pullout reports and try to learn from them. The database also becomes a performance measure, to look at the "councilmanic"timelines and the major goal of trying to continue team building among that big group—the "decubicalization", as I call it, among that big group of people. Fred Satterstrom—I think Bruce has done a good job of showing you some of the improvements— not only what they are, but also being able to measure them. I think there was a time when performance measures and reports like that were scary,because you didn't know how well you'd . done and you were afraid of the results. Every month that we revisit now,Bruce brings to the meeting how well we did the last month. We review that report and we pride ourselves with these reports. They want to know how well they did. But also you look at where you didn't do so well, and it becomes kind of a troubleshooting meeting where you look for patterns. You begin to troubleshoot the process that way, and over the period of the next month you take a look at that group of permits that you didn't do that well on. You analyze why and you come back after studying it and find out if it was work load or work flow, or how we process it, what was the problem. You noticed in one of the slides a graph that we had reached 83% of permits reviewed on time in July. Bob ran the results early this morning for August. We didn't have time to get it in here. It was 84% for August. In many ways, I think, 83-84%represents a heck of a lot of success from January, but I think its going to be more difficult now. It's almost to a point now where it's going to be very difficult to make progress, because we're down to the 20%that represents the tougher projects. With the progress from here on out, the incline isn't going to be quite as steep as it has been, but nevertheless it represents a challenge. We are also in a year right now where we are a little down, in terms of activity and, unfortunately, revenue as well. It's not that great that we're all sitting around twiddling our thumbs, but it has certainly afforded us an opportunity when it's a little bit slower to get our feet on the ground and to hammer out some changes in the permit process. When things do pick up, and they will, (they go back and forth like the weather), we will find that it is fortunate that it's been a little bit slower this year, and that maybe some of our progress wouldn't be as steep, if it were like last year. When a year like last year happens again, I think we will be better equipped to deal with it. We would be very pleased to come back now to give quarterly reports or half year . reports or whatever frequency the Council would like. We look forward to it more. I think our performance measures depend on us succeeding at this and I guess we'd like to come and brag to you from time to time. Council Workshop Minutes,9/4/01 11 Leona Orr—We'd be happy to have you and we'll coordinate with Mike to reschedule for another time. This is great news. I did have a chance to get over to a take a tour. Everybody wasn't moved . in the day I was there,but Mike took me over and showed me. That building is just unbelievable. You've done a good job. I know that the number of complaints that we used to hear I'm not hearing anymore. That tells me that you are really doing a good job. Not only does it look good, and the new building is wonderful,but it means that the new processes that you've got in place are working. Fred Satterstrom—Hopefully the complaints you hear are kind of unique. We're trying to address those that have patterns to them. They recur over and over again, and those are the ones we want to address, those are the ones that are the priority. I think as long as you have a permit process, there is going to be someone who is not satisfied with it. I don't think we'll ever eliminate all the complaints and that isn't one of our goals, really. Our goal is to continually improve on this, and if you're hearing reduced complaints that, hopefully, is a result. I'd like to thank the Council, too,because after the Zucker Report we came to you with quite a list of proposed positions and requested a substantial amount of money that Council paid for this to be done. I think the proposal was 13 positions, representing a lot of money, $750,000, I believe. I think the mood of the Council was, Okay, you've got your staff, now we want to see the results. I'm working with staff who remembers that. I can't speak highly enough of the people that we have in the permit process. You look at a set of values and they're very meaningful to the people. That one-day retreat, they were anguishing over those values and that purpose statement. They believe that they're working on something that's important to you, the policy makers, and that's what gets them to work every day. That's what makes their work important. That's something that's difficult to instill in a group of people and I think it really started on that day. There's real competition between different divisions. They don't want to be the division that slowed the process down that month. iMike Martin—Fred is really right in mentioning the point that Council made a substantial investment, and folks over there are very aware of it. We have talked about it a lot, and I can tell you that those folks really take it seriously. The fact that you were willing to make such an investment really meant something, and I think you are seeing the results of it now. We've got good folks over there. Bob stepped in when we needed him, and Bruce stepped in in the interim. There is a whole bunch of people, kind of like the Mariners—over there there's no real big hitter. Everybody's a team player. It really is like that, and I'm very appreciative for the staff. You guys should really take credit for this. It was a great move and you are getting what you paid for now, I think, and there's still a lot of work to be done. Rico Yingling—One of the biggest things we did was that we raised the fees for people who have to get permits. I know the developers and the builders were willing to have their fees raised, but they wanted to see a change. It's really good to see that. It's good to go back to them and say, things are much better now and one of the reasons is because you helped to pay for all these changes. I want to congratulate Fred. One of the biggest detractors of the old system was the Chamber of Commerce. Fred went to the last meeting and gave his little report and talked about the changes and the great things that were happening lately. That was received extremely well. They loved hearing the systemic changes that are going on, and the behavioral changes that are going on,with some of the major complaints. Fred said,we're not going to be perfect. You can always strive for continual improvement. • You're getting to a point where there's going to be unique situations,where things aren't going to work as well as you want. I just want to say that what's really important to a customer is the response they get when something doesn't go right. In the past, one of the biggest complaints I would get from business people was the response they got when there was a problem. It was not a Council Workshop Minutes,9/4/01 12 warm and friendly, let's work together response. What I'm hearing now is that the response when things go wrong is much more customer focused and more business friendly. That's going to go a long way, in the long term, to get cooperation from developers in the business side of these issues. I know that we went through a lot of processes in the last couple of years, on the Council side, to get us there,but it is so good to see all the positive change. Now you're such an excellent example for other City departments, because this is such a great example of how to do process improvement and all the little parts and pieces that are part of it. Thanks a lot. Fred Satterstrom—Thank you. I think you're absolutely right. People are a lot more patient if they know you care and that you've got their interests in mind, even if there isn't any way around or any other options to that code requirement. It does depend a large extent on their reaction to it. Now we measure it, and we remain friendly even though sometimes the outcome is not successful. People are getting tired,by the way, of filling out that form. They're saying I gave you all 9s last week I'm not going to give you any different this week. A newspaper asked one time to talk to some detractors, people who don't like you. I said that the comment cards are public records, and they said why don't you give me names of a couple of people who don't like you. I tell you it wasn't easy going through the comment cards, but there were a couple that I gave to the newspaper. It took me a long time to get through and even their ratings weren't that low. I'm going to get a complaint pretty soon that I don't want to fill out your comment card any more. The workshop adjourned at 6:16 PM. Council Office 2°d Floor,City Hall 220 4"'Ave. South,Kent,98032 PLEASE SIGN IN 1 DATE: Name Address Phone Number CcE �2 Sate- ilSfl2 a5� �°L 6206 -2.2-4 4- 1 3 FR-X L E V€R H!ice �GrV ?E2-A4 GT C,&N�j &fZ- ^ S 3 0 7 �y�� .S�-I-Fc%s�}va w► 410M►Mw�,'�y 1?r.��I o w�c u-}- S 4-30