Strategic Planning Part ONE...

I just got done with several hours of strategic planning with the City Council, the City Department Heads, and the City Administration.  There is a ton of information floating around in my head, so I apologize if this post is a little less coordinated than other posts (if at all!), but I wanted to get all of the information down before it started slipping my mind (and I have another meeting this evening!)...

We started the meeting with the usual introductions (we pretty much knew everyone already, so this was pretty short) and then segued into a "State of the City" report where each of the department heads explained how their department was doing and all of the important information necessary to understand each department.

First we heard from the Water/Sewer Department.  The report was that our facilities are in good to very good condition and that they meet or exceed the expectations for water quality except for one new factor:  mercury in our wastewater.  The amount that they are testing for is measured in parts per trillion which is a minute minute measurement, but the state standards are there for a reason.  In response, the water treatment plant has created a mercury mitigation plan to help lower these amounts.  YOU can help too by trying to keep mercury containing chemicals out of circulation and certainly don't flush them down your sink or toilet!  Our distribution system for water and our collection system for sewage are more complicated than other cities our size due to our geography and how hard it is to get water to flow uphill... or downhill slower than it wants to.  Tom Nelson told us that if there weren't things in place to reduce water pressure coming from the water tower, downtown businesses would have 180 psi coming out of their taps... Now THAT'S water pressure!

In lieu of all of that infrastructure, there is a good deal of maintenance that needs to be done to keep our water/sewage system in good shape.  Roughly 10% of our water mains are slated for replacement and a slightly higher percentage of our sewer mains are on the docket as well.  These are complicated replacements though and usually are done when the streets are reconstructed... which adds to their complexity and expense.

I was surprised to hear that Grand Marais has a lot of water that is unaccounted for in its fresh water system.  It is not unusual for municipalities to have some lost water, after all, we are talking about miles and miles of pipes buried in the somewhat unforgiving ground.  When the water mains are re-done under the streets this amount of water goes down.  Go figure!  This is a good reason for us to work on making a plan for getting these things done!

Next was electricity.  Did you know that 10 years ago our electrical system in town was really bad?  I guess that there were many short circuits and small outages due to poorly run lines and capacity problems, but over the past 10 years almost all of the city's electrical infrastructure has been redone and the result is that last year there were only 27 outages in the city of Grand Marais ALL YEAR.  9 of those were from trees falling on lines, 8 were due to animals causing problems (squirrels mostly it sounds like...), 3 were weather related, 2 were due to humans causing problems (probably similar to squirrels), 3 were equipment failures, and 2 were unknown.  It is really impressive to hear about all of the work that has gone into this system and the fact that there are only a few sections of the current system that need to be upgraded.  Future expansion of the system is possible, but there isn't really anything planned since there isn't a lot of development planned.  We also got an update on the city's backup generator station, which is located up on Lupin Lane.  That system was built in cooperation with the company whom we buy our electricity from, Southern Minnesota Municipal Power Agency (SMMPA).  SMMPA pays the city a considerable amount of money to have that station, which pays for us having it... It is a very good deal for us, and for them!  That plant can produce all of the electricity that our community uses, but is designed for peak assistance and outage coverage, not continuous use.

It was brought up several times that it is a liability for the city to have all of the utility equipment stored down in the Rec. Park on the shore and that it is a high priority for them to relocate that facility to better be able to serve the community and to clear all of that equipment out of a very sensitive and highly traveled area.

Streets/Maintenance came next.  Right off of the bat the facility was brought up again.  The Streets Department houses all of its equipment in the shared facility in the Rec. Park which poses many challenges for the department.  They are responsible for the upkeep of our city streets, maintenance on all city buildings, plowing and snow removal on some of our city streets (the county plows most of our city streets), and performing garbage pickup/maintenance across town.  The number of small ancillary responsibilities that were given to this department was long, and I was surprised to hear of all of the little things they do to make our experience around town better.

The department head lamented his inability to plan for road reconstruction because the accomplishment of any of those projects needs significant cooperation between many different entities, some of whom are hard to get on the same schedule.  In the meantime, they will work on repairs to the roads to extend their serviceability (seal coating and crack sealing and patching...).

The poor condition of City Hall was also brought up.  It appears that the deferred maintenance on City Hall is starting to reach a critical point where the roof leaks, the doors don't shut properly, there is considerable heating inefficiency, and space is not being used well... to name a few things.  The City Council voted in our first meeting to get an inventory of City Hall done so that we can tell what the potential of that building is, either as an asset or a liability.  Those results should be coming in April or May.

The liquor store came next.  Probably the most commercial aspect of the city, the liquor store is a huge source of income for the city and could be so much more.  The store manager lamented (as well) that although the liquor store's location is good, the space designated to it is not.  The store's coolers are in good shape, but there aren't enough of them, the flow of the store is poor, it is not a comfortable place in either summer or winter, the roof leaks, the back door has issues, the employees have to use the bathroom in the City Council Chambers, the list went on.  The space doesn't allow the store to respond to trends in the industry and thus we miss out on a lot of potential business.

Beginning a few years ago there has been a movement to get an assessment done of our liquor store to see how it could improve it's business.  This hasn't happened yet, but we know many of the things that would improve the experience.  It is the assessment of how we can run a better liquor store that we are looking for, and that has proven difficult to nail down (no one we can find specifically does liquor stores...).

Then the library.  Our shared library with the County.  Our shared 5 star library!
The library director started by explaining the joint powers agreement with the county for the operation of the library.  The City manages the operations of the library and the county helps to support it as a resource to county patrons.  He also explained that the library board is more of a managing board than other boards in the city as legally the library is an independently operated entity under the city.  If you would like the ordinance, let me know, I can find it for you.

Staffing was brought up in regards to the library.  It was identified as the biggest point of concern.  There are many very good employees at the library, but they are just enough to take care of the transactional needs of the library's many users.  In order to continue the high quality of service at the library and to continue to meet the public's need for technology, reference, resources, etc, the library will need more staff.  The director gave a list of goals that were identified by the library board for 2015 through their strategic planning.  Accessibility, attraction of new users, programming, and involvement were all themes.  These themes are in line with the library's goal of being a community center for learning and education.

The Park and Recreation Department closed down this first part of the meeting with a summary of the P&R Dept's assets and what it does.  It does more than just operate the Rec. Park!  It takes care of all of the public spaces in town, mows many fields and boulevards, takes care of seasonal decorations, the marina, and the golf course.  The P&R Dept. spoke briefly about its Master Plan, which was done several years ago after a long session of public comment and contribution.  There are many capital improvement pieces to this plan, from bath-houses and upgrading camping sites to the rebuilding of the boat launch in cooperation with the DNR (which again brought up the relocation of the city facilities down on the shore).  There was also a brief discussion about the difficulty to find seasonal workers to meet the needs of the park department from cleaning bath-houses to picking up all of the little tasks that the full-time employees can't complete.

In a positive note, it was mentioned that now that the old pool is gone, the Rec. Park contributes a staggering amount of money to the city, something that we should be aware of because it is a big piece of why our tax levy is as low as it is (it would be much higher without!) and because that part of our city finances is highly volatile as it is based on tourism.

*There were a few things brought up by several departments.  One was succession planning.  We have several city employees that are nearing retirement.  Getting qualified employees to take over these positions could take years and should be considered before the time comes for the City to hire someone new.

*Staff retention was also talked about.  The City doesn't employ many people, roughly 20, but those people are largely very well trained and qualified for their jobs.  Finding replacements for these people could take up to 4 years as it did to train one of our current electrical linemen.  This is a concern for the City definitely.

****That was half of the day more or less.

We returned to begin talking through the process we would like to use to create our priorities/ discover our values for moving forward.  We started by identifying our stakeholders.  These are the people who care or have some investment in our decisions.  The list started simply with voters and tax-payers, and businesses, and the Council itself, and employees, etc.  Then we started getting more abstract in talking about organizations such as non-profits, environmental organizations, governmental agencies, service organizations, etc.  We ended with the City's many partners, both for services to the community and for support in other ways.  It was really an impressive list...

Starting with this list we looked at the next exercise through the eyes of these people/groups.  It was called a SWOT Analysis, or Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats Analysis.  I am not going to do this part of the process justice in listing the things that were mentioned, but I can summarize to say that many of the things that were in the Strengths list also showed up in the Weaknesses list and vice versa!  For example, we have a great sense of tradition and cultural history.  Definitely a strength.  Also, at times, a weakness.  Our proximity to the lake?  Definitely an opportunity, but also a threat as we are subject to very strict standards and what happens to the lake happens to us.  I will be getting the complete list, so if you would like to see it, I could try to show you the whole thing.

Building on these SWOT, we tried to distill down what were the values or issues that were present in our community.  In order to direct this more we did a simple exercise that I would encourage you to do at home in order to continue thinking about this process:
1. Picture what a healthy Grand Marais looks like in the future.  A simple sentence that summarizes your desires for Grand Marais
2. What is stopping us from getting there?
3. What can we do about it?

We did this in three groups and got three very different images of a "healthy" Grand Marais.  But throughout these three there were similar veins of meaning.  It seemed that we all saw Grand Marais as a place with similar values and we were all very interested in how the general public sees it as well.

Seque...

Thus the City is going to be working on some kind of a structure for public input on these values because the Council really wants to know what YOU ALL value.  This way we will be able to drive policy and help the City get closer to this ideal that we put out there in question #1.

So that is largely where we ended.  We DID produce a list of values, but I would like to hear from you about what YOUR values are.

We also identified that there are things that the City just needs to accomplish, like being a good steward of our facilities and our property.  That means that we are going to have to seriously start looking at solutions for both the city facilities down in the Rec. Park and the City Hall as well as the utility infrastructure in the ground.  It sounds like a lot, but we can make a plan that will pay back the city for its hard work.  Nothing is going to happen overnight though, and we are committed to making sure that whatever decision is made is financially prudent and will meet the needs of our community.

There was much, much more to this.  If you would like more information, please let me know and I would love to sit down and talk more thoroughly on it.  I will also be doing an interview on WTIP where there will be more information shared as well...