Ventura Budget Focuses on Results
April 23, 2007
Honorable Mayor and City Council Members:
Today I am pleased to submit to you my recommendation for the 2007-08 Operating Budget per the provisions of our City Charter. The budget provides a balanced plan for spending $90.7 million on vital General Fund services, $42.6 million on enterprise functions such as water, wastewater, golf and $74.1 in additional capital investment.
Although it builds on the progress we have made in recent years, it is a very different kind of budget.
For too long in the public sector, we have emphasized how we plan to spend funds, rather than the results we aim to achieve. Since we have set the goal of becoming a national model of accountability in government, this budget recommendation focuses on results.
The budget reflects four major policy initiatives:
- It directs all new available funding to enhancing Public Safety, the Council's number one priority, adding six additional police officers and three additional firefighters.
- It eliminates the costly, confusing, and counter-productive exercise of line-item micromanagement and holds departments accountable for results.
- It significantly restructures how we do business and redirects resources from lower to higher priority outcomes.
- It delivers on the Council’s commitment to gradually return our workforce to competitive compensation.
Living within our means still leaves us a long way to go to achieve Ventura's vision outlined in the 2005 General Plan. Among the immediate challenges this budget will not solve are:
- While the redeployment and addition of police and fire staff will improve emergency response times, we will not be able to afford optimum public safety staffing without several more years of a healthy economy (particularly restoring successful preventative programs like the School Resource Officer program).
- We have no additional funding for the millions of additional annual expenses that are expected to be imposed on Ventura (and all Ventura County jurisdictions) under the proposed storm-water permit being considered by the Regional Water Quality Board.
- As an older City determined to pave its streets and maintain vital infrastructure, parks, and community facilities, we are not adequately funded to keep up with capital reinvestment in the future.
- While we are closing the gap on competitive compensation, the unprecedented levels of turn-over we have recently seen (principally as a result of retirements) continues to make it difficult to replace and retain outstanding performers throughout the organization.
A recent analysis done by the City of San Luis Obispo compared nine similar cities. Ventura was second lowest in overall spending per capita overall and third lowest in per capita General Fund spending. We were also third lowest out of nine in General Fund staffing per capita.
To meet these fiscal challenges, we can take encouragement from our recent success. Over the past three years, we have eliminated a serious structural deficit in the General Fund Operating Budget. With this budget, we will have achieved significant progress on all four of the Council's identified priorities: public safety, infrastructure investment, parks, and competitive compensation. That's accountability.
With that goal continually in mind, this budget is streamlined to focus on results. We know that the global economy puts relentless downward pressure on costs in the private sector and that the best organizations in the private, non-profit, and public sector are committed to continuous improvement. So we have adapted best practices like these:
"Industries never stand still. They continually evolve. Operations improve. Markets expand or contract. A new value curve can be created by four steps: eliminating elements that aren't core to success; reducing or restructuring lower value elements; improving high value elements and adding valuable new elements." (Kim and Mauborgne, Blue Ocean Strategy)
"The purpose of budget in a good-to-great company is not to decide how much each activity gets, but to decide which arenas best fit with the strategic vision and should be fully funded and which should not be funded at all." (Collins, Good to Great)
"Smart leaders create ongoing review processes to develop new strategies and eliminate programs that are not central to their core purposes or are no longer as valuable to citizens.” (Osborne and Hutchinson, The Price of Government)
Using these insights, City staff in every department have rigorously reviewed current operations with the goal of reorienting our spending to align with the General Plan's Strategic Visions and the performance measures. It is not enough to be efficient – we must also be effective. Since all new operational funding was directed to public safety needs, every department was limited to living within their prior year budget, adjusted for inflation. Every department has recommended changes that will improve their outcomes on the results that matter most to citizens. That means that even well-intentioned and well-run programs need to be re-examined to ask: is this the best use of our limited resources?
Among the items that we have questioned is whether producing a 500 page budget book is the best use of time of staff throughout the organization. It clearly is not. By shifting focus toward tracking financial and operational outcomes, we greatly reduce low-value paperwork and greatly enhance highvalue performance management.
The changes contained in the budget recommendation are included in the overview of each department’s budget. But some stand out as ground-breaking changes in the way we do business. One of these is the deployment of a new emergency response team by the Fire Department.
For a century all across the nation, fire crews have been assigned to fire stations. The system works, even as departments like ours have evolved from fighting fires to full-service emergency response agencies who are constantly responding to medical calls, toxic spills, auto collisions, natural disasters, and trapped accident victims. But the tripling of calls for services has strained their ability to meet the goal of arriving on the scene within five minutes of dispatch. That is no arbitrary standard. National studies confirm the five-minute standard may mean the difference between saving a life or covering a body and the difference between containing a fire and battling a total loss.
So under this budget proposal, the three-member fire crew will not be assigned to a station, nor work the traditional 24-hour shift. Their engine will work the 40 hours each week when emergency response demand is heaviest, deployed where it is needed most. With a staffing increase of less than 5 percent, we aim to double that impact on meeting our response time goal.
"Thinking outside the box" has produced other innovative approaches to be implemented under this budget. Here are some of the other highlights:
- Police: Targeting our highest priorities (emergency response and gang prevention and suppression), in January the Department revised its alarm response policy, changed how we handle non-injury traffic accident investigations, and redeployed our patrol beats. This has already improved 911 response and reduced gang incidents. The addition of six additional officers in this budget will continue that progress. In the year ahead, we will also become more efficient in domestic violence reporting, refine how we target patrol, increase the use of our dedicated VIP's, and step up probation and parole searches.
- Fire: Our continuing emphasis will be on arriving at emergencies within the five-minute standard by directing all new resources to this goal, using the innovative deployment strategy of the new three-person Fire crew. In addition, our code enforcement efforts will focus on the highest priority (life-safety) violations and utilize a citizen volunteer corps for visual blight abatement.
- Community Development: Community Development will focus on activities that produce additional City revenue and high wage/high value jobs, particularly the Westside Community Plan/Redevelopment Project Area formation, revitalization of the north end of the Pacific View Mall, and planning commercial development of the 70 acre McGrath site, as well as implementing the Jobs Investment Fund. To focus on these goals, along with completing the Saticoy and Wells Community Plan and the Midtown and Victoria Corridor plans, we will postpone new community plans and new specific plans that are primarily residential.
- Public Works: Public Works is shifting resources to implement a downtown parking management program, launch a Citywide "mobility plan" to achieve the ambitious General Plan goal of improving transit, bike, and pedestrian options and pursue our "Green Initiative" to improve water conservation and energy efficiency. We also strengthen our safety program to help reduce and prevent injuries, invest additional resources to clean graffiti and catch up on deferred maintenance in our parks as well as increasing janitorial cleanings in public restrooms and elevators from once to twice daily by reducing cleanings in non-public areas.
- Community Services: We will refocus our programs to emphasize improved service to teens, seniors, families and the growing diversity of Ventura’s residents. Strengthening our community partnerships, we will initiate a Citywide High School Leadership program, pilot an outdoor summer family film festival in regional areas and focus on cooperative marketing efforts to bring tourists to Ventura.
- Finance and Technology: We will begin the implementation of a new Citywide financial system to provide more timely and useful information to improve decision-making. The first phase will be a new general ledger/chart of accounts as well as a new Human Resources component. Instead of providing centralized office support, we will be transitioning to training staff in each department to develop a self-sufficient, tech-savvy culture. The Treasury function will streamline its business processes through implementing new check handling processes and equipment and eliminating non-core functions such as passport submissions.
- Human Resources: In the year ahead, we will begin implementation of an up-to-date and user-friendly backbone computer system, redesign our management performance evaluations to emphasize accountability for results, and increase staff training and mentoring opportunities to develop and retain high-performing staff.
- City Manager/City Clerk/Civic Engagement: We will emphasize economic development, improve service on public records requests, and partner with the Ventura school district to teach fourth graders about local government. We will do this by using our more efficient web-based system for addressing citizen concerns (My Ventura Access), cutting red tape on contract processing, and referring cable complaints to the appropriate regulatory agencies.
These changes will not bring an overnight transformation. Some of them may trigger immediate outcry or complaint.
When the Police Department earlier this year focused on how to improve emergency response times, it became obvious that the least effective use of patrol time was responding to unverified alarms that turn out to be false 98.5 percent of the time. Requiring verification during daylight hours elicited concerned calls, emails, and letters to the editor from a couple dozen alarm owners. Nothing of course, was heard from those calling 911 who received quicker response as a result.
That pattern will not change. But our responsibility is not just to the few who may complain, but to the many who will benefit – even if we never hear from them.
For those who disdain government, who distrust City Hall and believe that nothing ever changes, there is nothing we can say that will change their minds. But acting to make our streets safer, paving and greening our streets will speak for itself.
Last year, a majority (62 percent) of our citizens supported an additional one quarter cent sales tax to fully fund public safety, just short of the two thirds needed for passage. We will continue to face tough choices between what we want for Ventura’s future and what we can afford. Ultimately, it is the citizens who will make the fundamental choices about what kind of community Ventura will be.
Although it falls short of funding our identified needs, this budget recommendation aims to bring another year of steady progress toward achieving our community’s long-term vision.
Respectfully submitted,
Rick Cole, City Manager
See also: Complete 2007-2008 Fiscal Year Proposed Budget
City Manager Blog
City Manager Rick Cole gives immediate insight into breaking news. His latest post analyzes the decision by Macerich to locate a Target at the Pacific View Mall:
"Another Target – at the Mall? Have they lost their minds? I've been a little surprised at the visceral reaction as news spreads that Macerich, the company that owns the mall, has leased the old Robinson's-May store to Target, which already has a store less than a mile away."
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