With well-trained staff, clear goals, Texas side poised for further growth
Recently, I had lunch with a few senior-level Texarkana, Texas, city staff members at a local pizza restaurant. We get together once a week or so, talk business, catch up on issues we’re collectively dealing with and dream a little.
Toward the end of our meal, when we’d solved all the world’s problems, we started talking about how times had changed so exponentially in regards to the technology of smartphones and the instant access we have to personal computing. Of course, the conversation quickly turned to the changes that we’ve seen in our field of municipal government, and how the smartphone, tablet and desktop computers have made city government faster, better, stronger and more customer-friendly.
Luckily enough for the residents of Texarkana, these advances only scratch the surface of the modernization at City Hall in the past five years.
One employee recalled that when he started working for the city in 2009, payroll was still printed on continuous feed copy paper that had to be physically signed and edited with correction fluid, if changes were necessary. Until 2011, the city’s budget was created and maintained in a ledger.
For those of you who aren’t aware, a ledger is a huge, leather-bound book with lines on every page historically used by accountants. The state of the city’s technology for decades has been a result of fiscally responsible public servants who have protected the cash flow of the city, and a dedicated staff who made the best use of the tools they were given to do their job. For so long, the city had been operating with very little in the way of support, and in the most recent years, we’ve made great strides to remedy this issue. Here are a couple ways we’ve made “progress”: • All code enforcement, inspection, animal control, fire and police reporting is now done electronically with tablet computers in each employee’s hands. This has cut down on response and processing time and data entry errors and has freed up our most valuable resource—staff—to complete more of their workload in a timely manner. Some of this change was made possible by a product called MyGov, which is a web-based work order system for Public Works, Parks and Recreation, Code Enforcement and Inspections. We have processed 3,474 public works projects, 3,431 code enforcement cases, 2,099 permits and 3,703 inspection cases from April 1, 2016, to April 1, 2017.
The Finance Department has started using new budgeting software, Questica, that not only expedites our annual budgeting process by a few months, but also enables the city to budget well into the future based on forecasting and projections.
Human Resources contracted with NeoGov to automate the employee development process, which has automated the performance evaluation process and improved our online job postings and hiring procedures.
The city now accepts online payments for municipal court—981 payments were received through the online program, Trafficpayments.com. Of those, 626 were web payments and 355 phone payments.
Council recently approved the purchase of a cloud-based data backup for all the video footage on our police dash cams, and eventually, body cameras.
Most municipal records are now scanned and stored on a database called Laserfiche, eliminating thousands of pieces of paper that must be stored for up to 20 years. Some of those records are permanent, so Laserfiche is very helpful to simplifying long-term record management.
City Council agendas are now created with an online process, and each item is sent through necessary staff members for approvals managed by a software system called IQM2. City Council meetings are broadcast live on the city’s website and air on our Government Access channel shortly thereafter.
The city has expanded our social media presence to include five pages (city, police, fire, parks and Farmers’ Market), on a total of five platforms (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and
YouTube) with a collective audience of over 36,900 users. The pages are updated daily and include human interest, public information, photos, partnership promotions, job announcements and more.
In the Police Department, the investigative unit now submits all supplemental investigative reports electronically, and citizens have the option to obtain police reports online. The department implemented Electronic Ticket Writers in patrol units that allow for a significant reduction in required data entry by the Municipal Court and Police Department. We also began using non-lethal weapons in appropriate cases and have issued JPX Cobra 450 pepper guns, a non-lethal defensive weapon, to all patrol officers and supervisors.
Coming soon, new monthly utility statements generated by utility billing software the City Council recently approved. Not only will the software provide a “new look” utility bill, but it also will provide management with a number of management reports and research capabilities.
These changes, and several others, have enabled staff to focus on more “big picture items in the past year or so, including a Capital Improvement Project plan that you may have heard about recently. The CIP is a long-range comprehensive strategy that identifies capital projects and investments opportunities within the city, and provides a planning schedule and financing options for identified projects. The CIP includes 53 projects spanning through the year 2044.
Currently, we are working on 11 of those projects in the 2016-17 budget year, including dredging of the Spring Lake Park pond, reconstruction of Forest Lake Estates neighborhood streets, replacing roofs for community centers, health department and city buildings, replacing playground equipment across the city, improving parking lots and installing new ballfield lights at Spring Lake and Grady T. Wallace parks. We are also working on the design for several new construction projects, such as the fire station relocation plan, enhanced Arts Park and farmers’ space and a courthouse square initiative.
We also completed a citywide compensation study last year, which resulted in salary adjustments for most of our workforce, who were historically underpaid compared to comparable cities. Now, we have made a continued commitment to review one-third of our employees every year, so that each employee will have his or her compensation reviewed every three years. We are committed to fairly paying our employees for the work they so diligently perform.
The modernization of how we do our work at the city level has also allowed our staff to make many strides in professional development this past year.
Deputy City Managers Shirley Jaster and Kyle Dooley are both completing the certified public manager course at University of Texas-Arlington. City Secretary Jennifer Evans was recognized as a Texas Registered Municipal Clerk by the University of North Texas Denton in January. Lisa Thompson, our public information officer, received her Certified Public Communicator certificate from Texas Christian University last summer, and is now completing her certificate in economic development from the International Economic Development Council.
Police Chief Dan Shiner and IT Director Kevin Davenport completed a one-year Leadership Texarkana program and graduated in April 2017. Shiner also attended a 40-hour chief’s recertification training session earlier this year. There are many members of our cabinet-level staff who were already certified in their respective fields, which makes me proud to say that across the city, from top to bottom of the organization, our staff is qualified and competent, ready to serve our residents and maintain quality of life.
As I always tell City Council, we have accomplished a lot this year, but there is still much work to do. Thank you for your trust and partnership with the City of Texarkana, Texas, to make this community a wonderful place to live.
We appreciate the opportunity to serve.