Updated December 19, 2017
Department Heads met in late October for our annual planning session to discuss issues in depth and to develop consensus and strategies.
New goals added from Council Goals Workshop—At its goals workshop in September, City Council changed the name of the Fiscal Soundness goal to Fiscal Responsibility. The Council also added two new goals: Regional Engagement and Arts and Culture. We discussed and gained clarity on the intent and objectives of these goals. We also discussed the possibility of keeping some goals as perpetual focus areas and determining which ones are limited-term focus areas.
Misconceptions about EngageRoseville—Recognizing confusion exists among staff, we discussed how to handle misconceptions about this effort to prioritize city services. A few key points:
EngageRoseville provides recommendations to Council, which will make decisions during the budget process once staff experts weigh in.
In addition to the Community Priorities Advisory Committee (CPAC), recommendations will be provided through FlashVote, Balancing Act, and a Community Dialogue in February where people can participate in person.
We will be closing long-term budget gaps incrementally over the years, not all at once. This is for expenses including capital improvement programs and rehab (CIP/rehab), CalPERS pension costs, and other post-employment benefits (OPEB) like retiree health. These long-term liabilities continue to grow and could grow at a faster rate due to decreasing investment returns experienced by CalPERS.
Operational budget gaps will be closed annually, so we live within our means.
Jobs are safe, and any changes in priorities that affect staffing will be addressed by attrition and a decrease in service levels (barring a recession).
Departments have to justify filling vacancies; they won’t be automatically re-filled.
If the Council were to put a revenue measure on the ballot and it passed, the funds would allow us to maintain service levels and start to pay our long-term obligations such as capital improvement projects, infrastructure rehab, and retiree health.
Workload involving projects, initiatives, priorities—Many citywide and multi-department projects are occurring concurrently and the staff is pulled in many directions. We discussed the need to do fewer things better and to review projects on a quarterly basis at Department Head meetings to ensure we aren’t unknowingly over committing the staff.
Core Competencies employees need to be successful—The Organizational Culture & Leadership Committee (OC&L) has been leading an effort to identify core competencies staff needs to exhibit to be successful at various levels of the organization. The initiative emerged as a priority based on an employee survey when the OC&L was setting its work plan in 2014. Department heads and OC&L committee members have been involved in identifying these core competencies. The intent is to make these core competencies easy to communicate in recruitment efforts, performance reviews, and training opportunities.
Thinking differently about succession planning—Given the wave of retirements and recruitments, the opportunity to re-think our structure and approach to providing services has never been greater. From attracting talent to retaining talent, to developing and promoting our staff, discussions focused on the following:
Examine our structure and make sure we’re meeting the needs of today.
Where appropriate use job-rotation and out-of-class opportunities to help provide exposure to other positions
Determine new ways to raise awareness of city jobs (especially utilities) at a high school level.
Document policies and processes prior to people are retiring.
Recognize that work is going to take longer as experienced people leave and take institutional knowledge with them, and as new managers assume new roles.
Help employees be open to expanded or higher-level responsibilities, even in other departments, to develop their career paths.
Directing resources toward supporting the OC&L’s identified priority of talent management and succession planning were discussed. This coming year we will develop a series of training curriculum aimed at developing employees from entry-level to executive.
Long-term funding gap for FY17 budget smaller than anticipated—it takes several months to close the books on FY2016-17, though it ended June 30. That’s why we’re now learning the good news that the City will end up with a $6 million shortfall instead of the anticipated $10 million shortfall for our long-term capital improvement projects (CIP)/rehab needs for FY2016-17. We still have an additional $4 million shortfall in funding our OPEB (other post-employment benefits such as retiree health) and pension obligations. We developed consensus about how to prioritize which long-term needs get funded first in our recommendation to Council.
New laws affect hiring in 2018— The legislature has passed three new laws effective January 1, 2018, that will impact our employment processes. First, we can no longer work employees out of class to a vacant position more than 960 hours in a fiscal year. Second, we can no longer ask candidates for salary history from their current or prior employers and finally, the City cannot require a candidate to reveal criminal convictions until after a contingent offer of employment has been made. More details to follow once the City finalizes its implementation process.
ISF: It’s not a four-letter word—This tongue-in-cheek headline describes the attitude change needed regarding Internal Services Funds, the new accounting approach that allows for costs to be associated with end users instead of with service providers. The new approach provides more transparency to the public who receive a more accurate accounting of the city’s costs to provide various services. Discussion included accountability, responsibility, and oversight of costs related both to new requests and to provide ongoing services.