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HomeMy WebLinkAboutCC 1990-09-05 Minutes_ x " NOMM Ot SUD42t VORKSHOO 1096-91 VISCAL IflAf '22#11MAIR S i 1990 tJ ITEti EUgJEC2` LIGINLAT ton PACE . '. M6. NO & i. riRsT: ,BOOST WORKSHOP FY 90-91 BUDGET- DISCUSSION 1 DISCUSSION OF SPECIFIC DEPARTMENTAL 9/5/90 k BUDGETSe POLICE DEPARTMENT. 2. BUDGET WORKSHOP (FY 90-91) DISCUSSION: DISCUSSION 2-12 rIR9 DEPARTMENT 9/5/90 3. BUDGET WORKSHOP FY 90-91 DISCUSSION: DISCUSSION 12-2 PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT 9/5/90 z 4. BUDGET WORKSHOP (FY 90-91) DISCUSSION: DISCUSSION 22-29 INTERNAL AUDITS. 9/5/90 5. BUDGET WORKSHOP (FY 90-91) DISCUSSION: DISCUSSION 29-39 SOLID WASTE DEPARTMENT. 9/5/90 _ 6. BUDGET WORKSHOP (FY 90-91) DISCUSSION: DISCUSSION 39-45' BUILDING & ZONING DEPARTMENT. 9/5/90 7. BUDGET WORKSHOP (FY 90-91) DISCUSSION: DISCUSSION 46-48 COMPUTERS 9/5/90 8. BUDGET WORKSHOP (FY 90-91) DISCUSSION: DISCUSSION 48-51 PERSONNEL. 9/5/90 Y, 9. BUDGET WORKSHOP (FY 90-91) DISCUSSION: DISCUSSION 51-56 sir PARKS AND RECREATION. 9/5/90 t� Al �x YJ.� tV la ` e - S r t� v 1 Y ??k d f t , MINAfts 01 CiTV or MiAMI 1990-91 Men YEAR � Ff CITY COWSSION BUST VOORSHOP on the Sth day of September, 1990, the City CdWiseiofi of Miami, f KiN Florida* toot in the City Hail, 3500 pan American Drive, Miami, F1tsrida, tb • review the proposed 1990-91 Fiscal Year Budget. > A The meeting was called to order at 10:10 a.m. by Mayor Xavier Suares ' with the following members of the Commission found to be presents Mayor Xavier L. Suarez ABSENTt Commissioner Victor De Yurre N Commissioner J. L. Plummer, Jr. - Commissioner Miriam Alonso Vice Mayor Miller J. Dawkins P ALSO PRESENT: - Cesar Odio, City Manager Jorge L. Fernandez, City Attorney Matty Hirai, City Clerk Walter J. Foeman, Assistant City Clerk 3 1. FIRST BUDGET WORKSHOP FY 90-91 BUDGET -DISCUSSION OF SPECIFIC ` DEPARTMENTAL BUDGETS. POLICE DEPARTMENT. -------------------- Mayor Suarez: ...really to question the Fire Department and I've had a lot of< questions resolved in the last five months, Chief, since we began, and that, it applies also to the Fire Chief, since we began the whole budget process which,- $ this year, of all years, started much earlier and with much more information and with much more analysis than ever in the history of the City of Miami.' Obviously, some of that aided by the unions in very precise employee by employee analysis and a lot of the questions that I have had have been i resolved. In the case of the Police Department, let me say that I think I reflect the feeling of all the Commissioners when I.say that the citizens- particularly want us to allocate resources to police work. That the number of personnel that you have, while not the number that we pledged to have by increasing 50 on a yearly basis for five years, at least has crept up to that figure of 1,114 and as I said once in a memo that was brought back to say Attention, in 1986, Charlie Cox from the AFSCME brought it to my attention, there's not a single instance where I have seen any of the field employees of3 the City, be they uniformed or non -uniformed, where they were just sitting around talking to each other or having coffee break or kinds of things you associate, frankly, with the City of New York or some other cities. And at). really, I have almost nothing to say whatsoever about the Police Department. I have recently heard from some of the confederations and associations, not a collective bargaining units, one of the points that they made, Chief, was that t, the level of -staff was still higher than that I thought and then actually when I° checked it out, it was not. I pulled out the numbers and it seems like 91 $, we're still headed in the right direction. Let me add that Jeff Bartel, from, f my staff, has combed - in the front raw here - has combed all of the budgets { of all the departments and has given me all kinds of feedback and, in the case F+; of the Police Department, once again, I'm not only pleased that we have . managed to, I guess, increase you by a little bit, but that the Allocation of the money within the: department is going to the right places and generally. V have to say too that the citizens of Miami are very supportive of tb_* allocation of the budget* of the Police Department, so I`real#y have at moot 43. questions, Chief. . Chief ferry Anderson: Thank you. i Septa ..�xr{{f �.i rtfr l s'x' .*', v:;i hY..xF t+rs•�d+ir ` fig F — h " � hiSiNi.YGf7n.il.H.rWGYifLi7ii.Y. '— �imiilSii�iiNi LmiLiifi..r4 ... iY raWritYr all iLiwiuilwrLY.+ii...i.w.�DLit.li1 L:.,Y'iL�iGiYGlitai.i.iltiiillYY ���� 2. WD09T �1ORXBM�1p (PY 9ii 41) D#SCWBSfONs 1�I tB DBPAft'i`M fi � ' Sl.�ii"�t?�iY.ilG'.�i3i'..,.•.-,••i�iiSiSillii{rriiii'iiiGl'iiiiiYitifif."•••��.irrYir.iiiYilracWir.r....�iLBrir�.i .,,,{" .= Mayor Buaram: Now, to the Yire 'Department Chief, r appreciate thg - discussion and the back and forth memos that have taken place between you and the union and ooze individuals within the union or within the rank and file of the City. i presume, with the level of personnel that you not have -and 1'ta Z t -` talking about personnel of the people that go out and do the rescue work and , that do the emergency work and that do the firefighting, you feel that you've ;< got sufficient resources to be able to protect the citizens against fires and other emergencies. Chief Duke: At the level that we're totally funded at right now, yes, sir. Mayor Suarers We keep hearing that at least one other equipment should be in iT _ service, whether it's a rescue unit or an aerial or a pumper or whatever. What can you tell the citizens of Miami about that argument? I keep hearing it from specific firefighters that write letters and memos and - or even the t union head possibly on that issue - before I get to the high level personnel, which is my favorite thing to concentrate on? >. Chief Duke: The concern, I guess, that you're speaking to is the - we have to - put one piece of equipment... we need to reduce one piece of equipment based on some staffing cuts this past year that actually took place in March, but are reflected in this year's budget. My intention is that sometime around October, we will be placing that unit out of service which will give us... Mayor Suarez: What kind of a unit is it, Chief? Chief Duke: We were anticipating putting an aerial out. Further discussion with staff now, we're looking at the response times, total impact of the department and it could be an engine or an aerial and I will bring that in commission to the Manager and meet with him regarding which piece that it will take before its over with. Mayor Suarez: Why would it end up being an aerial or an engine? What is the economic trade-off that makes you propose that? Where is the savings in putting one of those out of service and what other alternatives would there be in terms of either personnel.... Chief Duke: The savings strictly is from the... Mayor Suarez: Equipment leasing, whatever? Chief Duke: The reduction of that piece is strictly based on the reduction of — - staff, the reduction of bodies. We have got 24 total positions in the Fire t, Department and that reflects one apparatus that needs to go out of service to s maintain the same level of staffing that we have on each apparatus. k k _. Mayor Suarez: OK, so it's a staffing issue. r Chief Duke: That's correct. �. Mayor Suarez: And it's because you have a set number of personnel that you f ;' need to have per engine. i > ' Chief Duke: That's correct. 5' �- Mayor Suarez: Or aerial. Chief Duke: And rescue. Mayor Suarez: And that cannot be changed. , ". Chief Duke: In my opinion, no, sir. -. Mayor Suarez: Or it can now be covered by different arrangements for shift$. ':' .";= or anvth4ne 1 ilra that-9 bk Chief fie: #oj thei?e'a AlW&Ys... Mayor §uairext Other than going to longer hours which I know is the ilaftager'aie preference. And# f gussa, all of our preferencesi really. Ali, except fait, h w the unioifj f suse. I know Lou wouldn't agree with that. Mr. Odioe That's ale negotiable item, but we went from... when we treat to �► hours, you need more firefighters to cover the same period of time, but... Mayor Suareee Is s=� that on the table, Mr. Manager? -the possibility... Mr. Odio: Yen, it... Mayor Suares: ...of, what? -51 hours instead of 48? Mr. Odios dell, we're negotiating with the union right now, so what will coarse u out of negotiations, I don't know, but they certainly are one of the itemse that we would talk about. Mayor Suarez: Is it also on the table that entry level salaries would be reduced in this department as was done by AFSCMB on an agreement basis a couple of years ago? -pursuant to a survey of other fire departments that you told me you had carried out? Mr. Odio: I have not seen... I have not been involved in negotiations at this moment. I wait until they're more advanced, but everything is on the table at this point. It's just... Mayor Suarez: Has the union been informed that at least one member of this Commission would like to see entry level salaries in the Fire Department be lowered by anywhere from - I guess as high as 25 percent, I think is the figure you and I discussed. What's the entry level pay now? -twenty what? - twenty-six? -eight? Chief Duke: Twenty-seven, nine. Mayor Suarez: $27,900. This is important that the citizens of Miami know 5 this, because the next time we have vacancies, instead of - what do we have? - how many people do we have applying each time we have 20 vacancies or... Chief Duke: Anytime we advertise for a register, we probably get five, six z hundred people, or more, seven hundred. Mayor Suarez: And the typical passing grade to even be considered for employment is in the nineties, isn't it? Don't you have to score in the nineties? y Chief Duke: No. No, the... .q R.. Mayor Suarez: Because I keep getting individuals that come and say, "I got.a r} 94 on the exam or 93 or an 89 and I didn't even make the cut." And we'd call your office and, sure enough, or we'd call Personnel, and sure enough it, .-° requires a low ninety score to even be considered. , -- Chief Duke: That depends on where the individual that's, you know, that's calling your office and requesting information and actually places on the 5; register. The ethnicity of that individual and the requirements of the department based on the consent decree. So, it's very possible that could ' have one individual in the class that, you know, scored very high and another individual that didn't score that high, but that meets the needs of the -` department. Mayor Suarez: OK, let's take a white, Anglo applicant in Miami - who lives in ukr; the City of Miami, let's say. Typically, don't they have to have over 90 percent to oven be considered?� "". Chief Duke: To fall in that category, yes. f - War' -: Mayor 8u4rers And we have about 600 applicants for 20 positrons. Chief Dukes Yes, well, we don't... in most cases, we don t know hoer y 54 , positions we're going to have available, like sight now, the projoct4oa for k T K � Q J3C t. January, when We will have our retiremoats, we d6filt know what that AUMbst will be, but we need to start the process right now to fill those positions. . Mayor guarast that I'm trying to show is that we have, let's say, roughly# 30 applicants fait every positions and of those 30 applicants, I would gueat 35 would be qualified people. They are people.., what's this basic jkaidmla i requirement? -just a high school degree, right? We don't require an A.A.? t' Chief Duket high school education. hope. Mayor Suarez: Mo A.A., no bachelors? And these people are looking to earn - almost a $28,000 a year. And they're looking to have a very important job that requires a lot of qualifications and a lot of training, but that also allows them to commute different from the rest of the world, because they can live in froward, they could live in palm Beach County, they can live in Monroe, and they can have another job. They're not prevented from having another job, are they, Chief? Chief Duke: That's correct, they're not. Mayor Suarers How do we determine that their other jobs might not interfere with their duties? Chief Duke: They file a request to work off duty form, which has been used in the City for quite some time. That form is somewhat scrutinized. In most cases, it's agreed that the individual that's applying. for the job, he's put down the hours that they'll work, shows that there is no interference with his position or his or her position with the Fire Department and that the type of job that they're doing is not a conflict. When we have had conflicts, we've gone as far as the... Mayor Suarez: A conflict would be someone that is actually doing firefighting with a private enterprise of some sort on the side. Chief Duke: Possible, yes, or... - Mayor Suarers We have had some that are awfully close to that, haven't we? Chief Duke: We've had some that were inspectors doing some private work and so forth. But it's gone before the Ethics Committee of the State and they then decide or rule on whether or not there is a violation or some kind of -a k; non marriage there that needs to be removed. Mayor Suarez: OK. Mr. Manager, do we have, at this point, for the -record, - any recommendation from you on those entry level salaries so that we can begin z r; reducing the whole scale of compensation, benefits, retirement, the whole bit? Mr. Odio: On the entry level, no. On the pension plan, yes, we are working on, pension, negotiations. As a matter of fact, there is a meeting going. on right now with pension and... f Mayor Suarers Are we looking at the rule of seventy or are we looking at the whole shebang or what?_ Mr. Odio: We're looking at the whole shebang on pension and the unions have w bean very cooperative on that and the board. A Mayor Suarez: I'll tell you flat out, for the record, I oppose the rule of;� seventy. I think we have to change the rule of seventy for new employees, the City cannot afford the rule of seventy, and... Mr. Odio: But, it doesn't apply to the new employees. That was Gates... L` Mayor Suarez: When has it been die... tnR�c Mr. Odio: Mr. Mayor, it's a complex issue and I'm not going to tell you that I know it all. But 140 know that the new employees are not covered under the role of seventy. It was... OfT Right (TRAIDI$i.E C0MMTO M 11MRID IM TO MUC.' �� i�Btikli�T♦ � _ Mr, tyd io r lut i - t iftea ' 1891 66 that it not... Mayor Suaro is What is their rule? Vhat would typically entitle... , .. :. r �4 ' Mr. Odio: 86vanty-fiva, I believe. mayor Suares: ... a new ' employee that was hired after that date .,that:y stated to be eligiblej fully bested, and. full compensation retiremaat x benefits? _ k Mr. Odiot I believe it's 75 years. No, or... tgRY — °` Mayor Suarez: The same mathematical formula with a different total? -is that what you're , saying? k3 _ Ms. Angela Bellamy: years and 65.... 4 Mayor Suarez: Minimum ten years and minimum 55 years of age. Mr. Odio: But the rule of seventy is gone. Mayor Suarers By the way, I like part of that formula, the 55 years of age.- That seems reasonable for somebody who started working here when they were 18 years old or something. That would be 37 years of service. But the _ten years, of service sounds small to me. I would be very much in favor of extending— ' that for full pension benefits. And the amount? What about the amount? Is isstillthe... s ' Mr. Odio: That's what we're in the process of negotiating. Mayor Suarez: We're negotiating? Y; �i Mr. Odio: Yes, we are and it's going to be a long process, but... Mayor Suarez: By the way, again for the record, and for the citizens of Miami, the last time I -looked at the combined plan and system aggregate funds, in, the pensions we had gone up in the last four years, we had gone up almost a wt hundred percent. From a little bit less than $300,000,000 to five hundred" and forty, and we're probably at five hundred and sixty. I just got the one 4, percent funds and passed them over to the Trust in question, both with Fire,` and Police and I want -to ask one or two questions about the one percent fund"" too. y Mr. Odio: The board has done a very good Job in administering the funds.- a _ � ..r'•. Mayor Suarez: Well, we've done a pretty good job of putting money -in At too., Mr. Odio: Yes, thanks to... well, it's been a combination of what we... thet City has complied with the Gates Case and because the funds. have .boon administered very well. f " Mayor Suarez: I would like, by the way, do we have anybody from either of the z trust funds? Either the one percent or the regular pension? f Mr. Odio: They are meeting right now, as a matter of fact. And L Mayor Suarez: Mr. Manager, I would like for my own purposes and an a side j +},� matter, to get a percentage - to get the figures of how much of the,Y $600,000,000 total that I estimate we have or $500,000,000 high, approaching six hundred, how much of that is invested in banks, savings and loans... Mr. Odio: I have a report on... __�•`. Mayor Suarez: ...commercial banks and how much is in the hands. of, otos investments... Mr.. O019; We: have a report on that and I'll give it to you right like I said, because of the combination of good mans ement Qn their"port, r sur contributing on, you know, , on the money, the normal cost of �eglOil! .. t � - _.. � .'.�fAm1%tP,'`ik7�7•+-?'Fs +d.,..w'n� `,', .,,4T.'U ..3 "��'C 3nx "�4t». -rAS.r .k •.,eXr., c: Y _ F � _ gone down And thank fdt that. And that is helping out ae long as and == because of the erftvelreattons I Ove been hawing with that, that I found this ,lf� out a stud that was just completed. as ion as the investment returns btt i � � ! g � ' u at 10 p perasntj we're in good shape, pension wise. The problem to if z something changes there, then we're in danger. Chief Duke: Mr. Mayor, one other... Mayor Suarea: I think we're overfunded. I think we're overfunded. My goes my intuitive guess and I hope, Mr. Manager, that, at some point, since you and Imp, a I have talked about it at great length, I mould get a report back from eotite i; actuary, somebody either working for us directly or as an expert hopefully, 0'' - not costing us anything as a consultant... Mr. Odio: I'll be glad... Mayor Suarez: ...would give an opinion on whether we're not overfunded. .dust like you're underfunded, you can be overfunded. In fact, I think I passed to ;;- - you a clipping from the newspaper of somebody who argued that their funds were k overfunded their pension plans were overfunded, and managed to get a n reduction of the contribution. And this is not, in any way, to be, you know, xr: stingey with our employees, I think they're entitled to good pensions. I just think that we have more money in the fund than we need. We ought to start` reducing our contribution. Mr. Odio: No, but you're right. And that's what I'm trying to tell you because we have paid in and because they have done a very good job in investing... Mayor Suarez: Yes, of course. Mr. Odio: Because of that, we are contributing much less. Mayor Suarez: Right, despite... Mr. Odio: As a matter of fact, $4,000,000 lose next year: So,,you are right when you get to a point where you have too much money, your cost drops down and that's exactly what's happening now. Mayor Suarez: Despite what the Miami Herald characterizes as a critical situation, which was really not your fault either. It was in relation to what , we were looking at to try to equalize the yearly payments and contributions to the fund because they were ultimately going to go up to a fairly high figure, in the $30,000,000 range and the Herald ended up characterizing all of that } discussionandthe possibility of bonding it out as some kind of a crisis in f. our pension fund. Mr. Odio: I don't want to remember that period of time, but I will tell you this that all those discussions were healthy, that were very healthy because of those discussions, and the now relationship we have with the boards, Mr. a Mayor, we have learned quite a bit. I'll let you have a study that wax -just r completed. Because we're looking at every single avenue possible to us and it's very constructive and I think you should see it. Mayor Suarez: OK. Chief, on the high low personnel, let me tell- you the Manager and I had a couple of discussions, including - I don't want to say% an illegal bet, it was a bet without any actual monetary consequence - on exactly how many unclassified employees you have in your Department and I think finally the figure ended up being eleven. Chief Duke: As far as the staff is concerned... Mayor Suarez: Yes. Chief Duke:...ws have about 12 at the present time. r F Mayor Suarez: I'm sorry. please, let's not call them staff. This is just the most confusing term ever in the history of the City of Miami. 8voryb4y n is staff in a sense, In another sense, what you're saying by staff is you moan, people above the classified position, q ChLof Duke; People that would not.., >4 V Y . 1 t b $opte*fir s v rr4; t i Mayor Oudrat s Managerial, eatitidential, and 6*odutiVe• i y ' Chief bukii Those that would not qualify for... Mayor Suarsst Membership in the union. 3 a Chief buket . .stemberahp fn the union. Mayor Suarett It's a hell of a way to define it. All right, but that's the only way we've.got. . So, how many of those do we have? -people not 4uhliffed for membership in the..: presumably because, they're managerial, confidetdtial, or execution? ' Chief Duke.t Those ,that would be In the what I would consider in,my staff twelve.- Mayor Suarest So, it's twelve, so I was... that's right, no wonder I won the i bet. You owe me lunch at least. He thought it Was ten or less. Mr. Odiot No... Mayor Suarez: Or eleven or less. j„. Mr. Odiot No, no, I said eleven and you said thirteen. So we both came out... Mayor Suarez: But the bet was set at more or less than eleven. x; Mr. Odiot More or less than eleven. , Mayor Suarez: Twelve. Mr. Odiot Chief, I want to win the bet so... Mayor Suarez: Chief, we both want to win the bet. How does it look on possibly reducing a little bit the top management staff in the department and other management - managerial unclassified? Chief Duke: OK..., Mayor Suarez: Executive. Chief Duke: ...let,me go back to your original question that I didn't get the xR .opportunity to address. You were talking about the entry level price or coax of f iref ighters . Mayor Suarez: Yes. 3 Chief Duke: At one time, in the history of the Dade County area, the City of Miami probably not the scale, as far as a very high paid Fire Department, in h; our area, as well as the rest of the country. That's no longer the ease.. the Dade County area, I'm not sure of the numbers, but I think that Miami sow falls third or thereabouts. One of the things that happens in other areas like Broward County, you have firefighters that leave one job to go to another, j job to seek higher pay. And that's always a problem that, or a risk, that wo run when we look at, you know, entry level pays and so forth, incentives. Mayor Suarez: Doesn't it sound like we're risking that at this point who you have 600 applicants for ZO positions, but that's your opinion against mined I : guess. Chief Auket Well, I just wanted to let you know that, you know, that we are { � not, you know, we're: not setting the curve as far as salaries are concor too any morel, 7 Mayor Suaress We're not limiting to City of Miami applicants, arse wed Chief Duke: At the present time, yop. r 4, mr, MOO y0s. y� R G 7 p��! c 3 i Chief Dukef Absolutely. x Mayor Suixom City of Miami. Same with the police Department? - k � Chief Duke f So. Mr. Odioc Mo. R Mgr Mayor Suaree3 We're going in bade County in the police Department, right? Chief Duke: I think the police Department can recruit nationwide, I'm not sure. So, we are limited to those that live in the City. sr Mayor Suarets Oft, I disagree on the entry level argument, I hope that 'we reflect that in the ongoing union negotiations. And I hope we ultimately have a lower entry level salary and we still will be able to draw very competent ,x people, I believe. Chief Dukes OK... � Mayor Suareze On the high level ones though. How many of those do you think ' that slowly you can get down to? If you had the ideal number right now, given a- our constraints, obviously, I mean, the ideal number would be to have more, I °- suppose, but given our budget constraints... Chief Dukes That's correct. E> u � Mayor Suarez: ...and the fact that we're looking for every departmentto reduce b five percent its budget and in y. p g your case, I think the reduction pas only point two percent, roughly, Jeff? w, {. 4 Chief Duke: In•my case, it was $48,000 was the mandate that the Manager had _9_1', given me and I have reached that at this particular point with one of the positions coming vacant that I'm not refilling at the present time. I really 2 ' believe that any reductions in those, what I call staff positions that you fix -have a problem with that term, limits... Mayor Suarez: Well, it's just terminological, I don't. Chief Duke: ...the upward mobility of the new recruits coming on the job, limits the opportunity for the City to participate actively in minority m$ promotions, limits your needs and the Manager's needs when we have major emergencies in the City, such as hurricanes, such as civil disturbances.... E%. Mayor Suarez: How many of those people are on 24-hour call beyond the rank that we're talking about? In other words, these are what? -division chiefs... r 'r Chief Duke: This is me, this is my two deputies... Mayor Suarez: night. Chief Duke: ...and the division chiefs and two - presently two executive assistants. One of which is our new EEO officer. Mayor Suarez: EDO. What is that? ' Chief Duke: EEO. Equal Employment Opportunity officer. Mr. Odio: That's the - remember, out of... Y Mayor Suarez; Yea. We've had enough problems in the department to warrant` 7 that. How man of these y people of the type that have the title Chief with, their name, at least, are available 24 hours a day? lit .. 5 3' Chief Duke: All of them. IM Mayor Suarez: And, we know their numbers? I mean, we know how to`reaab them? i presume your two deputies are obviously in all of our,.. 64, Chief Duke; Yell. Everyone of the, what I call staff again, are, Married. #Q their pogors, they're married to their radios, they advis'o th �ojj'off ices -�}- the70re going to be, when they go out of town on vac;tiQa. • lie rslt tiffs lntor�mation to the Manager, we have... A a i _ k � f5.s�;.'--� '• ,'fi:T fit 4 � � � ti«ET. x S �.,,; u s f _. 1 - _; .'s"� , %F.. ':'- ���� ` � - t x S f ¢- � Mayor Suaress` ina1iyti►ori many tithes would they be called during,' irk _ know emergency s"ituat onk? -on a monthly baaia7 :. Chief Duke: I don't know. We can ask Chief Jordan how many times that Visy i URIDARTMID SPRAIM t: Oh, at least a dozen times. _ Chief Duke: A dozen times. - Mayor Suarez: Is that a dozen tithes a year? ' WDANTIrIED SPEAKER: No, no, a month. ,. k. i Chief Dukes A month. No, it's pretty regular. Mayor Suarez: And that would extend back... why can't we get these people tos be called division commanders by the time or division directors or division something other than chiefs? -by the time they go beyond your Deputy Chiefs? just like the Police Department so that we don't have so many people that... t` Chief Dukes Mayor, some three years ago, you brought this up again at a_ t t budget hearing. I presented that. We went through the grievance process and it was settled out that... Mayor Suarez: Let me ask the union chief. Lou, would you mind answering that �F or do you have a problem answering that? Why - the impression is given to me _ that you insist on having these titles, which I doubt. I mean, I can't = imagine that g you would. ' Mr..Lou Kickasola: I don't care what he calls the twelve people that work for him. So, within the collective bargaining agreement, they are recognized as firefighters, fire lieutenant, fire captains, and chief fire officer. Now, - << those chief fire officers, some of those who play into his ballgame Jl Mayor Suarez: Why couldn't we call those people fire commanders or division s a, commanders or... Mr. Kickasola: Things that are in my contract are all negotiable and we're'at the table right now. If they would have suggested- Mayor Suarez: That's music to my ears. tY Mr. Kickasola: ... that's fine....° fi Mayor Suarez: I mean, it's not a big deal. It's just that it's confusing the people that you yell out, Chief, and you got eleven people responding. OK' Chief, to establish for the record in a very positive vein, your record, in the last - you gave us... the last time we had a discussion on your budget and , on the staffing levels, and I mean staffing now on generic sense, that's why l u*�r i have problems with staff as an unclassified, managerial, confidential. As to ' your last twelve months, let's say, if you have more recent figures - because I have to leave and come back for later portions of the.budget,hearings = what is the record of the department in terms of lives lost and property lost? Chief Duke: I don't have a current figure right now as far as the 6 B property loss in the last twelve months looking at that cycle. Last year, in tie fiscal year, in the last fiscal year past, we had one fire death. Presently,, with this fiscal year soon to be ended, we've only had four fire deaths; +sae' of those in a property that we actually had some kind of control over sot again, we're going to have a very good record for a city our size as t'tr a fire deaths are concerned, v, Mayor Suarozz That's one of the objective measurement of the efficacy of the s.`. � ` department. How about response time? How are we doing on respoase,tit�? Chief Duke; I anticipate that our response time will be up from ►k�at.It wes, `'` iaist y4ar. Last year, fiscal year again, we had a response tip 0f sc+rtt+h!►3a . between three minutes and IQur minutes and g$ seconds and tbo nabouts. lie b*V*Alt Sot the figures in to verity, you know, y speculation, but l dct �`i `. a ns►ilts that we U go up a little bit. I don't know how much r .5 xf 1il��t�r l►It i� � ��.��- �-��`�� 4 x y Mayor Suares: Is there a difference between Miami and Miami Beach that would and I'm not trying to Necessarily focus on that one incident over there, which t have to look at everyday during the summer when I stay at kilt-1 ' xr Beach, that one building that burned to the ground with a bunch of peopi8 dying. Its there any difference with the overall building age of Out structures in housing stock that would make us less susceptible to that kii►d of an awful tragedy In. Miami, to opposed to Miami Beach? They have a little F` bit older housing stock, by any chance, or buidings that somehow have not bib r, _- brought up to code or.... Chief Duke: That type of a loss is one of those losses that occur probably once a year in every state in the, you know, United States: They're the kind that you really can't defend against. They're the kind that may be caused by arson, so then every safety feature that you might have built into a building., y is no longer valid. Fire stations located right next door to buildings where they've got the very infirm creates that kind of a loss. To directly answer your question, we stand a -chance of that happening at any given time. In our j case... ;. Mayor Suarez: What was the response time in that? -do you remember in that particular incident over there in Miami Beach? Chief Duke: I don't know, but it was - I think it was fairly quick. TheyOve got a reasonable response time and they had a station not too far from where that was. I don't know what our response time was, but I know we provided backup in what? -in just a matter of a few minutes and we were committed to that fire for sometime. Mayor Suarez: Is our rating as good as ever? Chief Duke: Yes, sir. Mayor Suarez: What is it at this point? Chief Duke: We're still a class one fire department in a class two City. And that's the highest rating for a city our size that is available to us'. Mayor Suarez: The reference to class two city is not to the quality of the i{ Commission, for example, for anything like that. ; Chief Duke: I'm not sure, but I don't think so. It's the total city itself: The amount of underground piping for hydrants, the type of construction, the = newness of our City gives us the ability to have the class two rating. Mayor Suarez: We all know - some of us may have read in ending this, because I must get back to a meeting in my office, as to myself and I see other Commissioners staff here who may want to ask questions - but you probably have all read the letter to the Herald having,to do with my efforts to streamline the department. My reference to a five percent reduction or $2,000,000, roughly, was basically - that doesn't sound like five percent, where did we end up with two million dollars for five percent when the total department budget is what? sixty million, whatever.... Chief Duke: The projection this year is 45.8. Mayor Suarez: Forty-five. It would have been less than a million. I don't �- know where we got that. Anyhow, my reference to that was simply the effort to k cut along the lines that I have stated, entry level, and, of course, on the f side of our pension contributions the various formula that we have for ponaion contributions and pension benefits. Staff, I do have a disagreement with you. I'd like to see, as the Manager stated, for you to continue the reductions and I think you're heading in the right direction. By the way, I commend you for X. that, Chief. I think you used to have a lot more, I forget. I think at one point, they Were up to..o your predecessor made the mistake one day of taking me into his office to show me his top level staff and the more he showed nano - - I mentioned this to the union head - the more I thought that we ought to have �= a new Fire Chief, you know, so that we would reduce some of these people. Map;'_ had a story board there and he was kind of pulling these sheets over one another, shoving me 18 people, I think he had. And I think you're down to eleven. 0Ae of them I have a particular problem with, the Idea of 'a 11 officer, I guess. Is that the correct title? 10 Chief Duke: That's cortecti Mayor Suarea3 Vho is hot a fire fighter and as the letter that I havi responded toi that particular person's letter of criticism of my approach to the Fire Department, my response letter states that position is precisely W16 of the ones that I think ought to be - as soon as possible - eliminated And, of course, her letter indicated that she would be soon resigning in any "event. H6pefully, we will find a way, if that happens, to replace that person with a firefighter, a high level firefighter, who will act as spokesperson for the department. Preferably, one of your two deputies, actually. I don't see why we should have to have anybody else. And that will resolve right there some of the problems with some of the field personnel in the department - for lack of a better term - the people who actually do the work. And finally, on that point, let me say that I have somewhat of a mea culpa to get here, because I have spent time at the request of individual firefighters, with rescue personnel. I think there was a misconception in my mind that maybe is also a misconception in the minds of a lot of people, in general public and the Commission, which is that even the non rescue vehicles, when they're called out, typically are for non -fires. They're for emergency situations involving accidents, involving medical emergencies, etcetera. I'm not sure that - in fact, I don't think that is the ideal equipment to send to those calls, but that is, in fact, what happens. And you and I have talked about using other equipment and a whole different kind of a system of patroling the City for those kinds of emergencies. I don't think the union is particularly excited about that, they like the traditional division of aerials and pumpers and rescue vehicles and maybe they don't like this idea of an all purpose vehicle of some sort. But, it is unwieldy to have the large vehicles be used to respond a lot of times to medical and accident emergencies that are not related to a fire or at least not an actual fire, just a potential fire. Sometimes they involve chemical spills and so on. In any event, 8 percent of the time, I'm told, roughly, the larger vehicles are taken out and the personnel go out on emergencies that are not fires. This concords with what I know to be the level of activity of people in the department, of staff in the department. Because, otherwise, you'd wonder, you know, what they do all the time, because theres not that many fires, although there's a lot of fire alarms. We know about that. In fact, your predecessor always would try to give us the most objective indication of the work done, the number of fire alarms, and I always felt that that was not always a good indication because people can call in false alarms all the time. And, in fact, they do. But -I know that we're responding to that many more. I know that the emergency response is magnificent. The rescue personnel I have discussed with the Manager ways in which we can get the medical profession to pitch in a little bit more. I saw situations where a doctor on the scene at a hospital and I'll be specific about the hospital, Bascom -Palmer, and understanding it is an eye, you know, hospital, it specializes in eye diseases and treatment, and yet, they wouldn't treat the person that was apparently showing signs of dying. None of the doctors would. And our paramedics went in and did a heck of a job, assumed responsibility, and, in fact, revived this person. And this goes on, I don't know how many times a day. But just an incredible number of times they do a magnificent job. They're great professionals, I have a great deal of respect for them. They do a lot more of that than they do firefighting and maybe that's why the department, in a sense, has a misnomer. It would probably be better termed Emergency, Inspections and Fire as opposed to the other way that we have the three descriptions and I just want to end on that note. A very positive note and as to the PIO position, I think everybody knows how I feel about it. And if they don't ...... Chief, that you continue to... Chief Duke: May I respond to a couple of the comments that you made there? The... Mayor Suarez: Yes, I won't be able to hear you, but go ahead, Chief. I've got to be upstairs on a meeting, but go ahead. Chief Duke; I just wanted to say that, you know, the information that you get sometime from one or two individuals on the department that say that we do -Alt need the large apparatus, if you would give me a call on that, so I could tell you why that we have... Mayor Suarez: My observation.. My observation. large apparatus is being used for things that 11 there'* got to be aft ideal vehiole that Would do thati t've s6en them 6hd the x° way they turn eornaraj the way they have to back up, etcetera, They're eluay In getting to the place. I know that they have a certain amount of equipbefit that you might freed and that's part of the reason you're going to argue that �m those are the equipment that we should be using. Chief Duke: You know, it's just like a body j y part. ' If you don't train with it � r>. and use it on a regular basis, you loss the skill that's associated with it and then when you do have to have it, when you have the fire, the emergency, a ;s fire in this building here, you're not trained in its use, so it's a standby tool that we just can't do without. 1 Mayor Suarees And by the way, my discussions with you on that have been more profitable than with the union. I agree with you more than I do with the union on that. They are very resistant to changing any element of the systefn, 3 whether it's the equipment used or the number of personnel assigned to oath 3T one. You're a lot more flexible and I wished that the union were more flexible on that. I've told that to Lou, but what can you do? -you know, we sometimes disagree. Mr. Odio: Thank you, Chief. Chief Duke: Yes. IN 3. BUDGET WORKSHOP (FY 90-91) DISCUSSION: PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT, Mayor Suarez: My math wasn't.... morning, once again. Mr. Manager, I was hoping to ask you a little bit about Personnel Management. Mr. Odio: OK. Mayor Suarez: Audits and Management, I guess. I forget the names, I want to get into that in a second. And then, finally, your own staff. Personnel Management, I had occasion, Miss Bellamy, of asking you questions about four or five of your employees. I have a concern, and I may as well say 'it publicly. I've been very, very public with all my concerns, including names i_ of individuals. Let me try to avoid the names of the individuals, but I do have a concern that as many as four or five of the employees that you have are people making upwards of $60,000. And you have told me that, in one case, a_ person has a masters and many, many years of service in the City, is an expert in just about every aspect of hiring, promotions, project validation, and 5� every other function that you have in the department. As to some of the others, it just worries me that the answer is, of service, years a person has been with the City many, many, many years. I would like to think that for¢ people who are essentially clerical - for those who may be - I see both of youA' you're acting director assistant back there and you with the same facial— gesture saying no. But I haven't defined the person in question I'm thinking about. I'd just like to think that for people who are, in fact, clerical,_ essentially, whoever they may be, if we can identify any of them - that there is a top salary. In the private sector, a secretary has a top salary. One might argue that they shouldn't, I suppose, you know that in the legal profession, there are some legal secretaries that, if they weren't there, the attorney probably couldn't function at all. And maybe they should create unions and maybe they should do something about that. But, right now, the market is such that there are really top levels that an essentially secretarial person, with secretarial skills, can reach that does not have any articular degree or expertise in a� P g p professional field or occupation, such as we think of it. And, I want to ask you if there are any such employees in � our department or in the City, as a whole, Mr. Y P y, Manager. How do we cap the salary that we pay a longtime employee, as much as we appreciate them being with us, I would think in a bank or in the private sector, someone who hasyx basically secretarial skills expects - I don't know - even after 40 year*, to make somewhere in the 430,000 range. And yet, we've g got people making twice = that and, in some casesthey're , you tell me they have a masters and that experts, etcetera. But I don't want to ask specific names, but I pointed out five people in this roughly 460,000 range... u - - r . ` Me. Angela bellamyt That's correct, Mayor, We have five people vh6 are !baking $60j660 at ewer: And those people harm:.. 1 .. _ 40 -_ Mayor Suarst Matincluding the two of you. Or including the two of y6u1 _ - Me. heiiamy: That's correct. No, that does not include us. x Mayor guarea: Ott, all right, yes, let's dwell on those five." _— Ms. gellmyt OK, and those people have... Mayor suareet What kinds of skills do they bring to the job to merit us `^r paying $600000 roughly? Ms. Bellamy: First of all, they are professionals in the Department of Personnel Management. They're either division heads, who are in charge of validation.. . . t a:J Mayor Suarez: What kind of training does that imply when you say professionals? What kind of training do they have? You told me about one + case with a masters. What about the other cases? =, e Ms. Bellamy: In addition to their educational training, they have years of " experience in Personnel. And we're talking about understanding the '- classification and pay where you're talking about setting salaries, looking_at`- the labor market, determining what a job is worth in the labor market and them '- looking at the City's relative labor market and determining what that pay 'ae— would be. Also, knowing... 5— Mayor Suarez: OK, could someone, by merely coming into the department today let's not dwell on these five people except in the theoretical sense. By merely coming to the department today, as an assistant, because I presume some of these people came in as an assistant or as a secretary... ' Me. Bellamy: No. 1 Mayor Suarez: ...or as a fairly low level classification. Me. Bellamy: All of them came in at professional level. They came in with 4 their bachelors degree. They did not come in. None of them came in.,. fir= Mayor Suarez: OK, all of these have bachelors degree? Me. Bellamy: Yes. — ! Mayor Suarez: In what field? In what field? v" Me. Bellamy: And we have two of those have masters degrees. Mayor Suarez: What would the degree be in? 2� Ms. Bellamy: We have one with a bachelors in psychology. We have one that has a bachelors degree in business administration, a masters degree in public t:n administration. Mayor Suarez: OK, that person with a bachelors degree in psychology, I presume, does not, in fact, prepare any kind of a psychological testing fort ;. us? Ms. Bellamy: That person does not. k_ r, . Mayor Suarez: Because we do that by consultants, right?_ Me. Bellamy: No... Mayor Suarez: We do not? .- Ms. Bellamy: .,,we: prepare those ourselves, x '. Mayor. Suarez: In-house? Ms. Bellamy# There are occasions where we use consultants, x li Bopgombor � B f i ce! s � � 3 Mayor Ouaros3 The psychological teat that we use in the .Fito Feline ri �z bepsrtment, partieuiarly in the Police a Dopartmont, to prepare in-house' Ma, bellamyi tio, we don't, Mayor Suarett That's vhat l'm saying. I mean that... Ms. Bellamyt N+o, but the art... Mayor Suajrea: ...1 don't think we give psychological exams to the Manager: employees, do we7 -when he hires theral �Me. Bellamyt No, ae don't. r Mayor $uarezt OK, so basic we're thinking of very sensitive positionso such Y' as polite work. Do we give any psychological tests to Fire Department axe. employees? ;rzt' Me. Bellamy: No, we don't. ,hw Mayor Suarera: All right, so, basically, it's police and we do all of that. ' with consultants. Me. Bellamyt But if I may, Mayor, in the area of validation, testing and validation, that is a precise science and that does deal with industrial.. x .' psychology and when we talk about that, people who are responsible for putting }sa . together tests, which we do do in-house, for police, fire, we do. it for r. clerical employees. We also do it for Public Works employees. Then, we have to have people who understand that precise science. And we do have people on r= the staff... s j, Mayor Suarez: That precise science is not avoiding a heck of a lot of claims against the City for promotions and for demotions and for dismissals and suspensions. -�: Me. Bellamyt We have one claim... r. Mayor Suarez: We have this huge Civil Service bureaucracy in place and we airs, losing a lot of cases. So, you know, I kind of question whether we need five people making in the realm of $60,000 who have been described as having. a Y ilk{ �. professional background because they have a degree in psychology and he fi,u .' in... I still don't know exactly what it is that they do. They don't do hk Fr psychological tests for us. They don't counsel. employees. They. don't do �15 therapy- '3 i �•- Ms. Bellamy: They do a job analysis. first of .all, we find out orlxatthe , knoaledges, skills, and abilities are _in order to prepare an exam. They have to go in and •actually do an audit, if you will, of the job and find out what it taken .to be _able to perform the job, , Mayor'Suarez: I think it's fair to say... . Ms. Bellamy: They quantify that... ry.a �. Mayor Suarezz OK, that sounds like a very valuable task and.one that:we would have to pay a substantial amount of money to, I suppose. I still do0t think $60,000. But it's fair to say, in a City that is contracting its cork ftarae:•4*" ; and I said this five years ago when I was first elected, four and a half - ago, noI'm being consistent that that number of employees to everydey ' becoming a lesser number. We have very few vacancies that are being•C11144 •. up. The Manager has told us that he's going to try.to maintain vacant: almost,v, ever position that becomes vacant b attrition. b natural Y p y y proces�►es, key don't want to may all the possibilities where people end up leaving the O.ixy. } but it includes death. And, you know. I just don't see vhy: we "need five . at the $d0 00 level I would hope, Mr. Man 7Rf{ people p agar, that in thR futMCA t' we devise a way that by pure longevity, people don't get into a $600060 rauge .. with psychology degrees doing... we haven't done any validation, have we? Ms• Yes, : we have. Aellamy , 401 wr. 04LOA Noll, the... �s h'r t `'`•C 6 re` s; N Al x, ; — Mayor Sua rsat Wa havet Which eamet diVis ft a cane of a validfitiefi... Ma. Bellamy: We have for,.o Mayor Suarw i..that has Stood up in a court challenge. Mi: Bellaftyi We have for the fire series, We+ve done it for a fire captaih� 4 n� Mayor Suares: Its -house validations? -with our own eo le no Consultants? � - ��•� p p : "r `t Ms. Bellamy: With our staff and consultants, in some cases, with just our, } staff. Yes. �.,. Mayor Suarez: Give me one case in which we did it with just our staff. Ms. Bellamy: With a firefighter, with the fire lieutenant. We aid it entirely with our staff. zy�. { Mr. Rene Larrieu: Fire captain Ms. Bellamy: Fire captain, we did it with, also with some consultants. But we did, the staff put in a lot of work and we decreased the cost considerably :_• by using our staff. — J{i. f � Mayor Suarez: OK, by the way, the Police Chief has stated to me time and again that he has enough captains, enough lieutenants - even though the unions ,. Mould like to have more lieutenants and more captains - and I have not "- z specifically asked the Fire Chief about that. He has lieutenants and then the x= next rank, I guess, is, well captain too, I guess. f— Ms. Bellamy: Would be Chief Fire Officer. t �. Mayor Suarez: Chief Fire Officer. rk: Me. Bellamy: A Captain and Chief Fire Officer. Mayor Suarez: It's the equivalent of a... Ms. Bellamy: They do have Captains. Mayor Suarez: He does have Captains? Yes, they do have Captains. OK. I- 5. don't remember if he thinks he needs any more, frankly. But I remember the " t Police 'Chief saying he doesn't need any more police lieutenants or captains: F- In fact, I think he would like to decrease, as the Manager also has indicated,. kf the number of captains that we have. So, you know, there's no anticipated µ. need,for these validations, if those positions don't need to be filled in the "- future. I think a thinning down of this department is somewhat in order. tthink that we discussed some of the people that might be close to retiirement.:. The Manager and I have had many discussions about what happens when we -suggest - to them that their position maybe there may be eminently competent people who Have earned every penny of their $60,000. Let's assume all of ,that but that because of the contraction of the work force in this City, we slowly have" 3. to, you know, thin out that department at that level and, as you have told me privately a few minutes ago, and I can go ahead and say it on the record, �,. don't think theres a'single one of those people who are near retirement �3 They're going to be asking if that position is eliminated, they're going to be entitled to the highest civil service job that they have other ,than that And to be bumping other people out of the way. I'm not ours that's what we'should i be doing. But the moment that they get to the point that they have full retirement benefits, if we suggest to them that maybe the City just cane* afford to have that many people on staff at that level - and by the way, you . , do an excellent job of keeping track of the City employees that we do'have t You do an excellent job of taking the many, many referrals that we a►eat for people who are looking for jobs and at least referring theca out to other. parts of the private sector.., - Ma. Bellamy: Thank you. Y bayour. Suarooc Don't got me wronS, I think your department. is avoll run you !re Very responsive In year Bert of qu#!►sl-actin; 'dirl#otor, hera'slso i�lR , ; ,n� lT y k VZ 7���.'�a..�#`.,��n,r.y.wrrtsL �����+.r�..x_ �9v..Y.., ..,.k•.r_.... _., .r ..... - .. .. ..r.._r�:mat..,z...'rf<�.fir:-�'a�3a.: rt ''— 41 S (, N Arid we're very platted with that, gut, somehow, a department of this slu with 20 eeaplatises, e*empting yourself and your assistant, does not, f don't think, need to have five people making $60,000 roughly and, particularly when we need people to do the field work out there and particularly when a lot of the work that is involved in Personnel promotions and exams and antr�r, ; steatera, is done by consultants, 1 just don't see it. And, somehow, we halts to figure out a way in the future to thin that out and I don't know if th6r0s sny... 1 think you have done about as good a job as you could have under the circumstances. I think you're constrained by Prior decisions. You've gone f5s. from over 40 employees to 290 Y understand, right? Me. Bellamy: We've cut... Mr. Odio: We had 51 employees in that department. We had 51 employees In Personnel Management in 1086, 'W-186, and we're down to twenty-eight. Mayor Suarez: OK. One last question then. Suppose a person comes into your department or any department of the City, Mr. Manager, I guess, I really want it to be a broader question, as a secretary. Essentially fielding phoney calls, doing the kinds of secretarial work that is so important to the functioning of a City, and that is something that people typically have either a high school degree and a secretarial program or an A.A., typing, computer expertise, in the sense of p , personal computers, not programming or any of that or hardware. That person gets hired, let's may, at somewhere less than $20,000, I guess. At least in one department less than $20,000. Mr. Odio: Well, under the new, there are two tiers and since we negotiated. tt- the second tier, the new employees coming in are making 25 percent less for the life of the... Mayor Suarez: If they're AFSCME employees. Me. Bellamy: We've applied that to all of... — Mr. Odio: To everyone. Everyone... Ms. Bellamy: Well, AFSCME and... Mayor Suarez: OK, so that could apply in the Police Department, let's say. Mr. Odio: No, it does not. It applies to civilian... =s;x Ms. Bellamy: It would for general employees, civilians. - Mayor Suarez: Civilians in the Police Department, a secretary in the Police — Department. sx Me. Bellamy: Right. �r Mr. Odio: Civilians in the Fire Department. Any.., Mayor Suarez: OK, what is the typical starting... yp g... give me just a typical starting salary for that kind of a person. Mr. Odio: A clerk I. Ms. Bellamy: For clerk I, it would be about $12,000. Mayor Suarez: Y OK let's say that person spends the next 40 , Y P p years in the City aF and... Mr. Odio: It's limited to... if she stays in the same... Mayor Suarez: The chair recognizes the Vice Mayor who's ready to take over in a couple of minutes as I go out to lunch. s Mr. Odio: They only have so many steps. Once they hit... if she stays or he stays in that same category,° Mayor Suarez: Yee. It'll get to a point where trey won't gat any more increases. lb �i ! , N,"w"i Gam^ ", »yT•*�'a����� ��s� - 4�3.�. N �= t� jyy �eilatay►.t �caotly, il Mayor 'Suit -at. 1 Wall, how high doas that gets Mr. Olio t it's hew MAW Ma. helix riy' tell, it's a 4S portent range, so they would go frees tha " bagitiflit� step to - it'# an 8 step salary schedule. LL � } guarest total range gs that means... Mayor 1torty--fiva peraent Ms. Bellamy] Yen, from the beginning, from the and. Mayor Suarezt .., that it would be another 50 percent, so you're talking the - most that person will ever make is $18,000? . Ms. Bellamyt You. �we .r Mr. Odiot if he stays in that category, yes. �v Ma. Bellamy: Yes, and that was exactly what I was trying to explain... ' Mayor Suarezt What category do you have to begin with a psychology degree to <r eventually make $60,0007 Ms. Bellamy: Well, what happens is, if people get promotions and that's what x: has happened in the gases of these individuals. Once they receive promotions, they go to higher ranges. And, if they receive... Mayor Suarez: OK, give me a typical then -- we'll have to do all in your,- f' department - not to pick on you, but that's what these examples are coming._- Believe me, it will get worse when we look at some of the other employees that ; - work directly under the Manager. What would be that job description of that person coming right into the entry level position with a psychology degree to be used in Personnel... Ms. Bellamyt Personnel Officer. Mayor Suarez: ...for validation purposes and all of these other kinds of ;•- things you were describing of these people who are making now $60,000. Me. Bellamy: It would be Personnel Officer. Mayor Suarez: At what salary level? Mr. Rene Larrieut It would probably be less than a police officer or a'{� ' �— firefighter, Mr. Mayor. Mayor Suarez: So $25,000? t �. Mr. Larrieu: It would be around $25,000. ;- Mayor Suarez: OK, supposing that person stayed with us for the next_40 year,$,; never having a different classification, but simply going up the varioµ,$. steps. How many years do those stops take to happen? Eight years? Mr. Larrieu: It's an 8-step pay plan, Mr. Mayor, so basically, in about :*igbk. _ - years the person... �- k� Mayor Suarers The steps are coincident with the years. i. Mr. Larrieu: Within the anniversary increase. ; Ms. Bollamys Lot sae explain, Rene. OK, there are six steps, and thers orp five percent increments between the steps. The last two stops are longavi.ty stops. Sp,. when they get to the last step, the sixth step, they stay thsse; jk 4 until they are at their 10th and 15th years, No or $uaress Oil, that's right. The first, six steeps, then ars for $ alto` after that, It bog* 4s at the loth year and the 15 yeers .it JUW411 so k S mma i s;.• yid" _ No, Beilamyt That would be the first sic steps. Sit, not eight years. Mayor suarea: Well, does that change the job classification? -either the aotnplotion of the ` B - steps orb .. Ms Bellamyt OXI what happenb..► i Mayor guaret: ..,the sit steps rather, or the 10th year or 15th year it F f jUnps? Ms. Beilamyr At the idth year it jumps. They go from one through the sixth x — year, and then they're on hold until the tenth year. Then they're on hold until the 15th year. } Mayor Suarers OK, what do they become at the end of all of that process? tz,= 4 Ms. Bellamye OX, now, that's for AFSCM$ employees. What you're looking at is - ' managerial, confidential employees who don't have the longevity steps, to... _ Mayor Suarez: Wait, wait, wait, wait.... how did it get from being civil service to being managerial, confidential here? r' Ms. Bellamys OK. We're not talking about between civil service and managerial, confidential. We're talking about the difference in employees who are covered under the AFSCME agreement... Mayor Suarez: Right. Ms. Bellamy: ...and employees who are not covered under that. OK. And they have the same twenty-five.... A { Mayor Suarez:: Well, how did this person who was initially covered by theAj- AFSCME agreement become not covered by the AFSCME agreement? Me. Bellamy: None of those people were ever covered by AFSCME agreement. — Mayor Suarez: All psychologists, a person - what do you call them? -Personnel - Officers? - Me. Bellamy: Personnel officers. F•Z- Mayor Suarez: Are, by definition, not covered by the AFSCME agreement? Ms. Bellamy: That's correct. Mr. Larrieu: They're exempt. <' Mayor Suarez: Porque? Why? Ms. Bellamy: It's because they work in a confidential manner and PERC (Public Employees relations Committee) came in and they looked at definitions and �. based on those definitions, they fall out of the labor agreement because of the confidential manner in which they work. Mayor Suarez: Confidentiality of the matter that they're transacting. That's a _ interesting. I guess that we could argue both ways on that, the union e certainly, I know how they argue on that. OK, now that person then, as hf managerial, confidential from the beginning following the eight year, six step ` process and then in the 10th year and the 15th year ends up having what kind of a salary and a job classification? What is this person called now? - Ms. Bellamy: Are you asking me, where would they be... r ,i h Mayor Suarez: Right. t�k Ms. Bellamy: ...at step... at the 8th step. j. Mayor Suarez: Are they still personnel officers? -or what are they called at - this point? Ms. Bellamy: Well, some are, or they may have received a promotion, we h#ve '{ - a job family which goes from personnel officer to senior personnel s�ffe+sx. f' r ar 4 j M1_ N ji vs Mayor Suarez: It' e a job what? r Me. bellayt l'Iaily, *6 call those job families. Mayor Suarets Ahhhhh, This reminds tee of the Fire Department when they Ud*d to tray they function Ms a family except when they were fighting with each fi t other all the time, y at the �M1 All right, so you got a fob family an now we're ibth year, let's say. Let's day that there has been no change of ,fob . classification, What would this person be called? Still personnel officer?, r Mo. Beliamyj Well, they would be still a personnel officer. =- a D' Mayor Suarezt Step what? Me. Bellamyt At the and of the 15th year, they would be at step eight. S; Mayor Suarezt Step eight. Me. Bellamyt Right.` Mayer Suarez: And what would per salary be? Me. Bellamy: That would be in the thirties. I would say, high thirties. T Mayor Suarez: So, how did these five people end up making sixty... 7� ti Ms. Bellamyt Because... Mayor Suarez: Is this something that won't happen in the future? INAUDIBLE COMMENTS NOT ENTERED INTO THE PUBLIC RECORD. . Ms. Bellamyt Excuse me? INAUDIBLE COMMENTS NOT ENTERED INTO THE PUBLIC RECORD. j. Me. Bellamy: They also would have received costs of living increases. And, in preceding years, these people received cost of living increases in addition to their anniversary increases. Mr. Odio: Excuse me. Well, the difference is, that in the past, you had yearswhere we would get a four and a four plus a five in the City.^ ( Mayor Suarez: That explains everything. A four and a four, plus a five. Mr. Odio: I have seen that in contracts that we had here in... P Me. Bellamy: He's talking about total increase. So, he's saying... . Mr. Odio: You would have an 8 percent cost of living... k 1 Mayor Suarezt Oh, four percent cost of living, plus four percent, plus five percent in step increase. Ms. Bellamy: Right. t - Mr. Odio: In one year. ;;. Ms, Bellamy: And automatically, the range increases by the percentage increase of the cost of living increase. Mayor Suarez: OK, so this person now making $60,000, of which there are fi roughly five, and I know that I'm being generic in the approach, under the now system, under the new entry level pay, it shouldn't happen. Me. Bellamy; That's correct, Mayor Suarez: Unless they really, really deserves a whole now job h claosification and they end up g bein an assistant director or achief �r personnel officer, or whatever the title would be.N £f. ni l,�K:• �t 19 sop tqabA i -- " ice. • Nz'• Mr, Odioi It they get prortated, it will happen and some people hav6 been,.. Mayor Suares: Itight. Unless they get a promotion, in which, of,eburets Lb sY determined by all of our systems and subject to all of our rules and to on. Q �- the same rules of'promotioh apply to managerial, confidential or not?CA e -•hf � r } - No, Sellers t They apply to everyone. r Mayor Suares: OTC, Have you been consulted professionally - and I presume that you have, I hose you have, but if you haven't, please tell me about thin because I'm very interested in this - In an effort to streamline the number of job classifications in the City of Miami? t., T� Ms. Bellamy: Yes. Yes, we have. k Mayor Suares: How are we doing on that? I previously have stated and most of ' the information really has been provided by Charlie Cox. I don't want to give the impression that I spent all my time doing this. I just don't have that - kind of time and he's had it. Whether you get angry about him because of that or not, I think it's a great service to the City of Miami. Anyhow, he sat down and analyzed and added up roughly 500 different job classifications. is that any way to run a company? Me. Bellamy: Well, we've done our own search of about 25 municipalities all over the country and with comparable sizes and so forth and we are not the highest. In fact, we are one of the lowest ones. Mayor Suarez: OK, let me see if I can track down for you, and I'll make it available, if I can, if not, hopefully, you can find it, it came out in .a national publication. A major auto maker - I forget if it was Chrysler or Ford or one of the ones that was having a great deal of problems being - competitive - they had 300 plus job classifications to produce an automobile, which is a fairly complicated product. We produce City services which are fairly complicated too and I guess, in a sense, we have more different kinds of services than producing an automobile. And so I would understand a three or four factor applying. But, they were totally out of competition. They - were about to go bankrupt and they had a whole new management approach, came in an reduced three hundred and some job classifications in that particular = company with a heck of a lot more volume of business than we do. They were clearly in the tens of billions of dollars. If not tens of billions of _= dollars, at least in the billions of dollars in total volume of business, to, I believe eight, from three hundred and some. We could probably never get to — eight. The more I think about it, the more I realize that in any one' { department, let's say in the Police Department, we have managed to reduce ranks to, I guess, Mr. Manager, in 1985 when we came aboard, there were ten Jz_ ranks I made reference to during my campaigns. I think we're down to about — seven now, with the elimination of colonel and one or two others, I believe. I think at least seven or eight maybe and in some other departments, we would t_ have at least two or three and then, of course, you've got the management r f' ` people, you've got the assistant directors and so on. But this City really should function with something approximating 50 job classifications maximum... And if we don't head in that direction, all of the discussions that we' have with the unions and management will be essentially gobbledy-gook. We won't, be able to understand each other. Because every time the unions say, managerial, conf idential employees have one u b 20 some percent, when we have 8 P Y P , goes, up'�_— by lees, the Manager will counter saying, no, actually, we froze their coat of living increases. Then they'll say, but you changed your classificationa end,` therefore, you have people making, you know, 40 and 50 percent more than 'What` � they did three or four years ago. And we just won't be able to understand each other. We also subject ourselves to innumerable claims and'iawauits r�= because there's so much - and your department has to be larger and has to do a t.t� lot more work because there are so many classifications to deal. with - and sot � — f` to mention the computers having to handle all of this, and somebody trying to understand it all. I mean, I don't know any one person that could give me' even a third of all the job classifications we have in this City. Now, some' of them are quite interesting too and I'm glad that we've eliminated a few of them since four or five months out a ago when I pointed 8 P public information y `. officer in the Computer Department, or public relations offir In the , � Computer Department. I would hope that there would never be again a pubs relations officer in the Computer Department. Mr. Manager, do you thiak w0 4 z should'havo a public relations officer in the Computer Department? lk 4 " r �.irI 24 � {i x :t S�S�y1,F . N f 4 } - T• 7r �j� N' } S r �5 r� (Y'�+ • k": i 2-t..,. �HLE ��SN53�d2rne'X2^._ .i£.fd. ..:5 SHl a'iea —1+: fh'. Y..«S,.M 1iiTP.t%l._ - — v t 41 l Mr. Odiot Mr. Mayor, I don't want to go back in history, but there are ways 5 of doing City business and one of the w►ay& was sometimes you didn't have X== funds, somebody wanted a public information officer in PIO (Public 2nfdiwaatidiir � -`_ Office). They didn't have enough funds, ad they had enough funds in eabltl to they used cable m6nies to charge that and I mean that is a way of funding -- Certain positions and that's why they show up like that: You want to CAil it a subterfuge, yes, but it's a way -of funding certain positions that are ftb6ftd at some time. Mayor Suaress Are we than headed, as far as the question on job classifications.::. k e �� Mr. Odio: It's clean. I... no, no.,.. Mayor Suares: ...are we headed in the right direction and are you working together with the Manager on this? Is that something that we can... r Mr. Odio: Let me answer that. We are doing that. The fact is, as you know, we eliminated 187 vacant positions. They are gone from this book. This is the cleanest budget ever. I think there is no - also there are no positions being charged to one department when they are using the persons in another one. this is clean and, yes, they are doing a total study on all of the classifications and eliminating them as we have eliminated the vacant , position. Ms. Bellamy: We will do everything that we can do professionally to make sure F— r that we have no redundancy in the classifications. We have to, however, make sure that if it is a difference in classification, that it is, you know, shown that way. But there was some instances that you pointed out previously that _ were dormant classes. They were not being used, but they were shown in the <}= books. Mayor Suarez: And we had not eliminated them from the computer system. Me. Bellamy: They had not been eliminated. However, they weren't being used and there were no incumbents. Mayor Suarez: Yes, you know, I'm not doing the programming for the City. You may want to have a whole separate - I don't want to make it sound like we have k two different kinds of books - but you may want to have a whole separate set 5! of information as to classifications that were once around and just for future �- comparisons and for all the other reasons that you would want to have that, but not the active ones. And you call them dormant, that's about as good a term as I've heard.- . Mr. Odio: They are gone now. ' Mayor Suarez: Yes. b � ` Mr. Odio: They are not dormant.... Mayor Suarers And when we asked for what we have now, so that we would not receive those, so the commissioners and I wouldn't get all confused about that. And, again, once again, thank you, for your responsiveness .of -pour zr` department generally and particularly - I forget how many employees we refer on a yearly basis - but you handle them well and you refer them to the private sector.. We tell them pretty much - every single employee that I interview or ?� every single applicant for employment that I interview, the first question I ask them is, "How about if we help you get a job in the private sector?" 4"d, that, right away, gate rid of about 50 percent of them. I don't know why they: t all seem to be somehow put off when we suggest to them that they go work in K. the private sector. It seems like they want to work in government. They must have the impression that working in government is kind of sitting around and, you know, things that may be are throw backs to the old days, you know. Non► �Y days, we try to explain to them that they're going to have to work awfully hard, they're going to have to meet a lot of competitive testing requirements and even entry level pay has been made a little bit more in line with the, market. And it's funny that a lot of them just sort of Bever come back aga�a.`" Hut the ones that do, you handle quite well and we appreciate that. I kao�► you have an employee bank. On a yearly basis, you process four or fiv* thousand job applications? a fi, t3 a 21 t fix♦ �' ge004ba �_ Y ]i.JU r_ ._ � y S� Me. Beilamys Yes, About 101060: 5 {` Mayor $caress Ton thousand. That's a service, That's a aervica, it** one #, that doesn't alVaye lend to fruition in the sense of the people being employed iti the City, but t know that they're referred out to PING (Private tnduktry Council) and to pt=ivite sector and we do have private sector job banks that; V6, refer people to, Mr. Odios We have Dr. Daniels here from Internal Audits. Is that what... p- Mayor Suarez: Yes, my first ques... thank you, Angela, Rene. ;- Ix 4. BUDGET WORKSHOP (i+Y 90-91) DISCUSSION: INTRRNAL AUDITS. '?t ..---------- Mayor Suarez: My first question has to do with - I should have had occasion to clarify this, but I may as well do it now because I'm all confused. We have Internal Audits, we have a Management and Audit... o A. Mr. Odio: We had. We don't have... Mayor Suarez: We had. ;- Mr. Odio: It's no longer in existence. Mayor Suarez: Was that the one headed by Sujan at the time? - Mr. Odio: Yes, it was. Mayor Suarez: Management & Audits. And you've got him doing... Mr. Odio: He's in insurance. He's working on the Insurance Department. Mayor Suarez: In Risk Management. Mr. Odio: Yes. And his offices have been totally disbanded. Mayor Suarez: -OK, and he's working under the City Attorney. Mr. Odio: No, he's working under... Mayor Suarez: Under you, but with the City Attorney. Mr. Odio: Under Angela Bellamy. Under Personnel. We moved Insurance, the Risk Management under the Personnel Management because we already had group in... Mayor Suarez: How many people in the staff directly under Sujan doing that ti work? f_ Mr. Odio: Three people, eh? I mean, the ones that - oh, I'm sorry. I was.... Mayor Suarez: It just grew from three to 26. - Mr. Odio: No, no, I'm sorry. I was thinking of Management Audits that he only kept two people there. The other ones are gone, but he had a total of 26 people in Risk Management now. Mayor Suarez: Twenty, how many? Me. Bellamy: Twenty-six, r Mr. Odio: And they handle quite a.... Mayor Suarez: In the old slays, Mr. City Attorney, when all of that functiou was effectively handled by yourself, I guess, as an assistant city 4ttoraoyo how many employees wore you using? t 22 _� :rr be a i�erna$de * #s lie Nava never handled that by ourselves. Mayor duarear Oh, beoa+ewe you always did it in conjunction with Hati616116fit � 7 Audit � '' r Mrs 'ernan+aess . "Yee, ens tly. In January of '87, the City Manager and the city Attorney then agreed that for reasons, for proper reasons) that the City } Attorney would aeeruee the responsibility of supervising the claims- and the r insurance functions of the self insurance trust fund. And that hike *06rated that WOuntil recently When the .Manager and the City Attorney again decided - that allof these functions will go back to personnel Management. u Mayor Suarezi Nov, is Dr. Denials in a supervisory capacity... Mr. Odios No. Mayor Suarez: ...over any of the function now being handled by Sujan7 ` Mr. Odio: No. =j Mayor Suarez: OK. Mr. Odio: And Risk Management had 32 people in 187, and he's 26 now. ' 7" a Mayor Suarers What amounts do we have set aside for future risk for claims? ;^ Mr. Odios That is a good question. Mayor Suarez: That's something that we shouldn't even ask publically or... Mr. Odio: You can, but... Mayor Suarez: We don't want the world to know how much we have in the golden - at the end of the rainbow there in the big pot. a Mr. Odio: Well, no, Mr. Mayor.... No, because it's not enough. We are being told that within two years, I believe, that we will have to have, like you had with the pension, full funding, and every City in the country will have to show that and I'll guarantee you that every City in the country will not "be 4*�= able to have the monies to back up the risk and I think that we might be -able to nationwide to change that because most cities will show that they are broke, if that was ever done., Mayor Suarez: Could I suggest, Mr. Manager, that maybe Sujan could most with {40- 8d Rosasco at Mercy Hospital and see how they're handling their self Insurance fund? Mr. Odio: Sure. ` Mayor Suarez: Iverytime I've run into the director of that hospital, I; ask him how he's doing. He was one of the f irst, if not the f first hospital in 4 this area to go self insurance. Mr. Odio: Right. }" F � Mayor Suarez: ...and his fund is growing. He's over $18,000, 000, I think. And they, of course, don't have sovereign immunity, we do. On the other hand, }� we get hit by civil rights suits which go outside of sovereign immunity. We also get hit with contractual suits, but perhaps we ought to see what, anything, they're doing that's different from what we're doing and if we can i s4 Uvp profit from... Mr. Odio: We have $23,000,000 in the fund. Now, we increased it by another , two for next year, but the problem is, according to the now -regulations, ie r� that you will have to... if you have pending, so called pending -losses ar whatever, in the amount of $100,000,000, you would have to have $100,000,090` in that fund. And why we're doing that... V Mayor Suarez: By what regulations? ti Mr. Tor4on4oss GAS regulation. " n r WK AP x _ Mayor Warm Promulttitetd by What ehtity7 -what agency? ` x Mr. rernandea: Ay the agenoy that governs the accounting VtOiCtioes of, >C 4. *A. goverment. r } ` Mayor Suareet It'* a private agency: �¢ = qMr. Farnandeat davernmahtal what does it stand fort-GAA257 Mayor Suaress to be able to say that we follow generally accepted account rag n� - Principles. Mr. Odiot Tou have to... sea$ if you don't follow... , Mayor Suare:r: Oh, I don't give two hoots about generally accepted accounting principles in risk management.° Mr. Odiot Oh, yes, it does have a factor. Do you know what is is, Mr. Mayor? Mayor Suarez: I thought you were saying that it was a regulation of the state or the federal government. Mr. Odiot No, no, no, it's a generally accepted prac... a� Mayor Suareza Yes, it affects our credit rating. I don't mean to say that... Mr. Odiot Oh, yes. Mayor Suarez: ...I just, you know... We have our own Risk Management, we've done well with it, we did well with it under you. I'm sure we'll do well with it under Sujan and you and the Manager and Angela and everybody also that's involved apparently. But, you know, let's not get carried away with what other cities are doing or what the generally accepted accounting principles, particularly in the area of public accounting where they really haven't done a particularly good job. I mean, generally accepted accounting principles in the area of public accunting right now, are a discredit, to me.... Mr. Odio: No city is going to be able to... Mayor Suareza because they really just don't have a very good public accounting. Mr. Odiot I don't believe any city is going to be able to comply with that. 4 Mayor Suarez: Yes, and I think that's.... that reminds me of what we used to b. do in _engineering when you can't design something and you can't analyze it properly, just add a lot more reinforcement and everything, because you don't have the analysis to back up what you're doing, so just put s lot of reinforcement and hope for the best. I mean, that's just being very T conservative. So, we have $23,000,000 in the fund. OK,Internal Audits' -now 5 encompasses what? -we still do the audits of all grantee programs? Dr.- Hattie Daniels: We have seven... We do grants, expenditures., revenue,.' lessee compliance, franchises. So, we have seven different kinds of auditi that we do in a department. Mayor Suaress And how many employees do we have in Internal Audits? j Ms. Danislst For Internal Audits for the entire department, it's 17, 1*or the. 4-. division, ten. Mayor Suarez: And how many are CPAs now? Me. Daniels At the present time, there is one CPA. The 'preaerat its auditor was formally a CPA and is from a Big 8 firm, Price Waterhouse. p Y Mayor Suarez; What did he do? -lose his CPA? - - He. AaAieM Apparently, ha did not keel+ Mayor &uarozs fib, he's iAactive? I F � g { ti 3 !!a. banieis guts rothetwise, all of the auditors do met government auditib� =." standards which require that they have bd hours of continuing education aaoh Cl Mayor duares: Are ao rehensive in covering the grantee programs -16 the leases and so on? -or do we just do a spot check on a year to year basis and u� thea we sort of.... Ma. Daniels: No, Mr. Manager - I'm sorry, Mr. Mayor, since you brought.,+ 4� t� Mayor duarers That's all right, he wants toy job and I want his job. Mr. ©dio: I don't want his job. Mayor Suarers That's right. He doesn't want mine, t want his. t Me. Daniels: Since you brought that... r' Mayor Suarez: I want his pay and he doesn't want mine. Ms. Danielss Since you brought that up, we've been able to take a look at all of those grants and we know which ones are required to have a certified audit every two years and all of those that do not, then, our department are basically covering them. So we are being comprehensive as far as the grants. Mayor Suarez: We are being comprehensive. Ms. Daniels: Yes. Mayor Suarez: How about leases? Ms. Daniels: Leases... Mayor Suarez: A little tougher. Ms. Daniels: I could basically give you the percentage of that. We're doing at least SO percent each year, so we're doing some new ones every year. _1 >4 ` Mayor Suarez: So, we're on a two-year cycle, we kind of cover all of them? a' Is that the idea? l 8 Ms. Daniels: Covering all of them, yes. f* _ �x '., Mayor Suarez: And we're doing all of that internally. Al, �j `mow Me. Daniels: Internally, yes. There are no...�" +'.. Mayor Suarez: What's the budget for the department? A Ms. Daniels: For the department, the budget is nine hundred and f ifty-nine' a thousand. . Mayor Suarers And this does not include any of your affirmative action duties?` Me.- Daniels: Yes. For the division of Internal Audits, the budget is sine }. hundred and fourteen thousand and then the remainder would be for theif , #: director's office and for Internal Audit and for Affirmative Action. Mayor Suarez: We've dropped, for the moment, Mr. Manager, the idea of putttng ak out for contracts any of the Internal Audits then? r Mr. Odio: Everything is in-house. We're going to try it that way, we have no dollar's allocated for outside audits. We have a measurement that you aright kT f. S want to mention how touch revenues you have raised with your audit so this,,,A 4.= t+ not all out-of-pocket cost to the City because through her, audits, she box i#. raised revenues. How much did you raise this fiscal year? kx� No. Daniels: Well, we've looked at each year we're bringing in somovtw p :> between five hundred and six hundred thousand additional revaDue:arid oWe04 _ past throe years..,vXl K` 1 z f L ( * I1t, Odid* Thr6ugh Barr fie+dings, Ms. Yfiit�#elttt# s6*6r` $2 000,00A� s r r Mayor Suarez 'What is tht hri&kd6vn of that figure? f ffiean &8*6060ef#tsam r What of that sort, or... 4, " a Mt. bdiil! It's fi.ftdingsl Leta suppose she goes and audits the.,. 7 r _ ` Mayor Suaress Or just money that was in some account that nobody knew aeoutd k Mr. Cdio# No, no, no. She goes and audits, with her department, ,RhC goes dad F audits, let'e say, the Orange bowl Hurricane contract. She reviews all of the ,tr, invoices, then she finds out that they underpaid us sixty-two thousand, fit hundred and twenty.`... t { x Mayor Suarez: Oh, so it's collections against the grantees or the lessees. t 11r. Odio: Sure. -aN Ms. Daniels: You, sometimes... Mr. Odio: Or she might go into... Ms. Daniels: ...they have not complied with the lease agreements. Mr.'Odios She goes to Florida Power & Light franchise fee and says, well, the only - you.pay us two million, whatever, and you should have paid us three million. It is through her finding... Mayor Suarez: Well, that's not... is that a good example? Does that go under, your department? Mr. Odios Yes. Ms. Daniels: Yes, let me give you an example.... S Mayor Suarez: The Florida Power & Light franchise fee is something that you, ' in Internal Audits, are looking at? Me. Danielss Oh, yes. Y. Mr. Odio: Oh, yes. Ms. Daniela: That, and Southern Bell, AT&T. Mayor Suarez: Well, I would presume, in the case of that, of the franchises,' 'utility franchises, that you and every assistant city manager and the Disaster A �._ and the Commission and everybody is looking at those very closely. We don't want to have chat the County just went through in having r particular i Commissioner have to take the lead in that. I mean, that's something that al1 of us, I... Mr. Odio: No, no, we're... Mayor Suarez: We're talking large money there. �t Mr. Odio: We looked at the contractual negotiationswhen they're duQsh . f.# she looks at is actually what they report based on the contract that we have... Mayor Suaress OK, the operating sort of recurring... the monitoring of. �. Y Mr. 041as ... and that's where the findings come in. What�rthl1 � ,.w Ma. Datablat . The Law b6VArtment'8... Mr Od io j That's in the Law D604 ;mifit w e ift, Me. banials: the Law Department is handling that. Mr P`er�►andess We have filed a lawsuit and ire have sent all of You oopiea of the Coflnpiaint with an advahee memo explaining to you the theories that weis, _ pursuing: jut, we have already sued Mr. Trainer. _ Mayer 5uAress If, "in fact, we reduce grantee recipients in the upcoming budget, As I believe is part of the budget recommendation of the Manager, does t that not decrease the number of programs that you must audit? � Mg banieiss r�o, Mayor, because one of the things that we Ara attempting to do is to expand our focus internally in term of looking at departments,F._ specifically. ���� Mayor Suarez: Ah. * Ms. Daniels: And that will open up those opportunities. `— Mayor Suarez: The old expand the work to fit the requirements. Mr. Odio: No, in some cases we have not done enough internal audits... N Mayor Suarez: So, what you're saying really is, that you feel and the Manager obviously agrees, and you guys are a good one, two punch here, that, in fact, you're not covering as many things as you'd like to, so if we get rid of.a feej-- grantee programs, you'll be able to do a more comprehensive job as to the, other.— Mr. Odio: Yes, as a matter - yes. I can tell you three or four areas that we're Mayor Suarez: I figured I was going to lose this argument I just didn't think it would be so quick. Mr. Odio: No, because, see, it means revenues. Right now we had to create a small task force to go out, actually, physical, and check every building'that r `� c we're billing for solid waste. In one case, we were billing for one apartment and it happens that the guy had five and he should have been billed more: pnd =; we're Finding that out by physically doing this audit and those are things that she should be doing. As a matter of fact, in three weeks, we have found Er -"fig' additional revenues of 4500,000, just by doing that physical audit. So audits can mean monies to the City. They really can. Mayor Suarez: One quick question, Mr. Manager, and it's really not related'to Internal Audits, although you may have some involvement in it. 'If someone is delinquent in their real estate tax payments and the County, proceeds against that person for the full amount, plus interest and penalties... P `Y Mr. Odio: Right. ; Mayor Suarez: Who gets the interest and the penalties? -the County or.wo, or do we share? :— Mr. Odic: We do 1P it's is the City proper. In many cases...IM - ' r - Mayor Suarez: Our properties, yes. a Mr. Odio: And, in Pact, we are discussing with the County certain settlem4i that they might want to reach while properties that are within our 440e840 LL rolls and we can argue with them that this cannot happen. They still vs, �iw► ., bone mile. in case of the Gould thing, it's one issue' that i coin th *; of that we do not agree with the kind of settlement they want to and... �# z 1 Mayor Suarez: I know you're also looking at the coutesteld proporty Appraisals, tight? -and our involvement iu those when 'they gat a Voduc their assosawnt? -so that we don't totally let the County do tit.ltha!u� intorvantion by us? Didn't you tell Mo that aomebody wao ioo�� �t � t {.a „r dN . .E.. rr .,:"a. ,�.,'� s,. .v rk i+, :.: ,.as,:;....•ke.,w.�,.ct.u.u...,,.«t..a.-,xx ..t..r„w"c•�4.'a�vSaae�'. ZI 41k Mr. Odiot tee we have Chabbra# as part of Management Audit, it's one, at his roles and It's, acov herb, is to review what the County does vith_buf 688GOOMOtLtO and, guartat Nimbi Mayor Because we had two or throb major properties in downtown last year that asked for reababdom6fits downward and they van and as a r6sulti the tax base of downtown vaht down last year and kind of created a bit of in, aberration that everybody Is concerned about. ry Mr. Odios There it a big... Mayor Suarest Actually, we may have wanted to have intervened in that and argue that if, by mismanagement, then they have low tenancy or it the furniture is made of gold or, you knows etcetera, that is not our problem. I mean, the fact of the matter is that certain value was added to that property when they built those buildings and they should be paying taxes accordingly. Mr. 0diol But thanks to the role of Management Audits now, we have established a beachhead into the County's tax assessors so that we can be involved. Mayor Suarez: And the one thing, Mr. City Attorney, that we never got back from you, as a request that was made a couple of years ago, but I,know that you were already City Attorney, I'm pretty sure - I don't think I could blame it on your predecessor - was a request to have a sort of by neighborhood analysis so the possibility of contesting, now on the other side of the argument, contesting evaluation increases when they fall on certain neighborhoods in the City, which we feel, perhaps, are not correctly valued, and upwards, let's say, and then want to contest and want the City to give them a hand in that and then we, collectively, could do that. Of course, the final result of all of that would be that we will be obtaining less money in taxes so, in a sense, we're, you know, going against our own interests but the neighbors, I think, are right in thinking that maybe the City occasionally ought to look at those and see if the overall valuations are correct. I think generally we've had increases, I think we had this discussion because Miami Herald story that was incorrect, I think only 20 percent of the residential homes in the City - residential properties in the City - went up in valuation And the Herald always says the average homeowner will pay more in taxes, which is wrong. It's an average of all the homeowners, not the average homeowner. The average homeowner will not experience a single penny increase in taxes. if Yh we keep the tax rate at the same level - from City taxes. Of course, you've got the County and school board and so on. But, they always say the average and it's the numerical average, it's not really referring to the typical homeowner. And they always misstate that and so the homeowners are out there thinking this applies to them and they don't realize that it's really Dad* County and the School Board and some of the other taxing entities that are getting to them. At this point, your final, professional opinion is', that'You do not need to look at the outside consultants idea for the Internal audits. rr Mo. Daniels: No, we have been able to increase our staff by two individual that we acquired from Management Audits, and I think that we can address all, of those needs. Mayor Suarezi Are these people being encouraged to become CPAs?. Mo. Daniels: Well, I think that we will require someone that is working -on the CPA or has it already, so we'll have at least two in the department, But... Mayor Suarez: Is the low ratio, you think, a function, either one of you, or the Manager, who might give me an idea on this - a function of the fact that we don't want to be out in the market competing for CPAs or a function of the fact that since they work under a deportment, they don't need to do certified audits and so we can got them a little cheaper. Why do we have so few CpAX for *very accountant? Ms. Daniels: Wello I that would may they you know, we moist gove Auditing standards and that does not require, you know, that overygAw4v to# department have a CPA. Put, we do have all of... we 4Q ;wet &IL ot 000 standards and everyone there has accounting doSrsox, some Witb ow ro OUd CPAs,' so WO have A mixture, Which is what to rocomneadod by gov4=44�lt suditins standar4a. p i ._AILr�i N Y: Mayor Suarea: Thank you. I wish that I could continue on the other item that> ' I have, but Ilm going to have to ask for it tomorrow morning, if may, beeause live got to do a little bit of personal auditing this afternoon in M �Y own law firm so that I tan take some money hoiee and put beans on the table iof thy kids. so I won't be able to continue. a Mr. Odiot Mr. Mayor, sines I think Commissioner i'lumster is sick and the other ones Commissioner Hawkins has to work in the college. Does it make any sense to have all these people hero tomorrow or... Mayor Suarent The only department that I'm interested in is your awn ' employeesi characterized, I guess, as the Manager's department and a couple of generic questions I tray have. That's about it for myself. Mr. Odio: Well, I think I can answer my department anytime that you wish, so what I'm trying... Mayor Suareze Tomorrow morning would be fine with me. I won't be around this afternoon. Let me just state that right off the bat. I don't see that there's any need to continue having hearings if there's not going to be anybody here asking questions this afternoon. Mr. Odio: Well, Commissioner Alonso indicated she wanted to be here this afternoon so I will provide her. She wants to hear Solid Waste and the Building & zoning Departments and... 5. BUDGET WORKSHOP (FY 90-91) DISCUSSIONt SOLID WASTE DEPARTMENT Mayor Suarezt I had a big discussion, by the way, as long as you mention Solid Waste, with Carlos Smith and yourself and then Carlos alone and prior to that I had met with department head on the whole issue of recycling. I am - pleased that after discussions of the models that everybody had in their minds on the impact of mandatory recycling or variable rates or some of the other bag and tag programs, etcetera, that I finally got Carlos and the Manager to agree that, perhaps - perhaps there would be a total reduction in the volume — that's kind of a minomer to call it the volume the weight of refuse that is thrown totally away by the citizens of Miami if we went to a variety of mandatory recycling and other kinds of incentives and disincentives. And an ordinance would be forthcoming for the Commission to consider that would, at the very least, give an indication that we will only pick up a.maximilm number - of containers on our regular pickups. And then beyond that, have some kind of -4 a variable rate. At least that incentive. I'd like to see a whole host of them, I really would. I don't think it's right for us not to have in place an •; ordinance that somehow punishes anyone that puts bottles in with the regular ' refuse, that puts leaves in with the regular refuse, and does not have that... } and I was a little concerned - I won't say it - but I hope that our ordinance still provides that large, discard items, Joe, or Mr. Manager, are not to be 3 put with the garden trash and are picked up separately. by appointment, Am I #` the only one in the City that makes those appointments? — S k Mr. Joseph Ingraham: No, you're not, but we will be strictly ;enforcing Chapter 22. It's already there and those... Mayor Suarez: It is in the ordinance. — Mr. Ingraham: It's in the ordinance. a r A Mayor Suarez: I want all the assistant city managers to be clear on that point that it is in the ordinance, Mr. Ingraham: It's in the ordinance. What is needed, however, is full a j Commission support in reference to enforcing the ordinance and I think that the element of it that you are giving to us right now that we dearly•nsed. _ But those things you address, we're in the midst of doing, is not, in fl�ctt•. I'm taking a look further at the variable rate structures than 9916t bet places to implement these hers and it will call for now 14S4e1stio'D #n .that„ regard and we're in the process of preparing and doing research brial b.{ to you and to answer those questions. ' - BSc t �h.T •. � �ssk-t �"v`;%,.., �} p Mayor Suaree: And, 1 don't think we're preempted, are we, Mr. City Attorney? -or if we are, I'd like you to let me know about it in a writtbfs R opinion from passing every kind of negative disincentive ordinance oA itG that should be recycled, elitainating or forbidding bottled liquids where the bottle cannot be returned for deposit, which is what 1 gather the State I&* -it going to provide, that everybody's pushing for and that the Mijal Herald in interviewing every State legislative candidate. I think that could be done by municipal ordinance. 1 think we can be a little bit more restrictive than the state, can ae not? Mr. Fernandez: I think that the state sets the guidelines and municipalities within that can... ter- Mayor Suarez: Can be a little bit more strict. :a- w� Mr. Fernandez: Yes. a; Mayor Suarez% And, there's a whole host of others, I mean, I've threatened my wife with proposing an ordinance that would ban compactors, trash compactors, because of their inherent anti -environmental effect and how difficult it makes segregating as to why it's impossible to segregate it once it's compacted. You've got mixed paper in there with plastic, with - heck, they used to put bottles in those things. So, I guess, people still must do that. It must not be illegal for someone to compact all of their garbage, including bottles, and sticking it all into the garbage container to be picked up with the regular refuse. That's not illegal right now. Mr. Ingraham: No, it's not. - Mayor Suarez: And it's very dangerous for our employees. I mean, they have to pick up that stuff. They will not pick it up unless in some kind of - container, plastic container, right? Mr. Ingraham: Exactly. Garbage has to be containerized, whether it's in a can, plastic bag, but garbage must be containerized. The segregation that you're talking about is important for total reduction and also to help certain i- other areas. We need the local legislation... Mayor Suarez: And, Joe, the discussion I had, unfortunately, was leading is? IL in the direction that we had a lot of skepticism from our top management in the City, including the Manager and his assistant city manager, that people '`- would actually conserve and throw away a less total volume of everything if we have all these mandatory recycling and negative disincentives in the law. - And, unfortunately, I think that we have to become believers in this because it has been the case in every other city. In one city, the mandatory _ recycling and variable rates and everything else that goes with it reduced a typical homeowners refuse from three and a half containers to one. That's`a factor of, you know, three and a half to one. You can imagine what the does t just in the tipping cost to us or in the disposal, not call it tipping.'- That A_ } would save $7,000,000 right off the bat and internally, it would free up a lot of your employees, far from doing what the media keeps saying, which is that +`- we need more employees now to pick up the recycled stuff. That's nonsense. We need a lot less employees if people segregate the stuff and put it appropriately because they conserve a lot. And we would f ree up your employees to make sure that illegal dumping didn't take place, which the r' Manager is concerned about. To make sure that people were abiding by... and, then, ultimately, if we had nothing else to do, because I wouldn't want to reduce the level of your employees, I think it's a very important department, Y" it has expanding functions. They could go out there and clean the streets: t '_ They could go out there and clean the streets and that would really, 'really make the City of Miami clean. I am not as skeptical as the administration on people being able to be educated and trained to do this. And the fact that,, we're a City that has a large population of people who are poor and elderly ° does not detract from that. They actually have more of an incentive because if you tell them, I will keep your rate at a $160 or I might even reduce it in time, if you begin to learn to conserve, if you bag it and tag it, Its one program. If you segregate it, if you don't give us bottles with the refuse, ,- if we can take all of the yard trash and without great, great effort, make it into compostible material. And, you know, the County, I guess, is getting rid { of it for $25 a ton for composting it. vlti%natelg, someday, hopofuily, somebody would actually take it for free. So, anyhow, I'm satisfied tbxt .�. �3= x ,_ VQr • i we're hooded in the right direction the 1 am going to get an ordlh*a 6e prior Y to rriday. boh't hawe it yet, it not, perhaps by the 21th. Mr. Offiith, at some point, it will be a Mandatory recycling ordinance and please, to the extent that we can help to educate the cit tens of Miami to the importahce of to happen, It dukes no eebee tiff these things, it is Ultimatelywhat's goingp be putting out to be f i l l ing when I found out what a landfill Wass, 1 496 -asyated. The idea that we take refuse and just put it out there to sort t�f create a mountain& That's crasty, that doesn't make any sense at all for" this community and this state with a fragile ecosystem that we've got.. Aiid particularly, when some of that stuff actually has value. And I think the s department is flexible enough. Hopefully, the cititens of Miami are educable on this issue so that they can begin to act accordingly and conserve a hack of a lot. So, as far as I'm concerned, Mr. Manager, I'm basically going to be r looking to go over some of the managerial employees who come under your direct jurisdiction sometime tomorrow morning, whatever is a good time for you, .. actually, is a good time for me. Thank you. THEREUPON THE CITY COMMISSION WENT INTO RECESS AT 12:40 P.M. AND RECONVENED AT 2:06 P.M., WITH ALL MEMBERS OF THE CITY COMMISSION FOUND TO BE PRESENT EXCEPT COMMISSIONERS PLUMMER, DAWKINS, DE YURRE AND MAYOR SUAREZ. Commissioner Alonso: I certainly would like to hear in the details as much as you can tell me that will help me to make a better decision. OK, great. Mr. Joseph Ingraham: You have it whenever you're ready. Commissioner Alonso: So, I'm ready if you are. Mr. Ingraham: Good afternoon. The Department of Solid Waste presents to you, Commissioner Alonso, a budget as indicated in your budget document, page 133, that is approximately 6.7 percent less than what it was on last year, in reference to FY 190. This budget request is specifically $2,092,642 less than we had previously been funded. The positions that this particular budget advocate is 432. That is what we're seeking in reference to this year. As far as the accomplishments and those significant highlights that I like to present to you in the next few minutes, they are as follows. We have, in the course of this particular year, collected from 57,000 residential units, garbage and rubbish, and the tonnage, as far as the breakdown is concerned for garbage, it's been thus far in reference to this year, 111,000 tons in reference to garbage, 121,000 tons in reference to our trash collection. We also collected, in reference to this year, commercial waste from 2,350 units. In addition to that, we have added 126 additional commercial units at an additional revenue of $81,750 for the past year. In regards to code enforcement, which is something that we're trying to work to improve there, we have a long way to go. There is a lot still to be done in regards to code enforcement and we will, in this year coming, is I indicated to the Mayor and others when you were not here, be seeking from you, your support to make s Chapter 22 even tighter. There are some things in Chapter 22 that we are not doing relative to need for legislative support to help us in reference to ` really enforcing the code. But, in reference to those efforts that we have undertaken, this year, specifically as it relates to a couple of items, and I'd like to just bring them to your attention. In reference to number of lots that have been posted, we posted 1,354 lots, of which 619 of those lots were cleared by the City. We actually expended City personnel time and monies to clear them and another 735 of that one hundred and three hundred and fifty- four were cleared by the citizens themselves. In addition to that, as far as the major highlight is concerned, and this is one of the things that I believe yourself and Commissioner Plummer had asked about, in reference to containerized garbage, this is the overflow on the ground. For a total from last budget hearing and now, we have done a combination of 2,028 citations and warnings in reference to those individuals that we have found to have overspill on the ground. We also went a step further in reference to your request and sent letters directly to all private haulers that operate with,*. license within the City of Miami, indicating to them the code and the restrictions, as far as that's concerned. The difficult problem its that tsR. those individuals who will not adhere to the code and our inobtlity to tonally do something when we catch someone in the midst of doing 111e941 _duusp$A$ on ' the ground... (AUDIO EQUIPMENT l ALTUNCTION) }; 31 0 along with in conjunction with that to give Code gnforeement afore support vhoa we actually - Cola Intakeemente officers actually catch somebody in the midst °z of doing that, whare there will be more tooth in our Municipal Code to- eff"t >s the kind of action that we will like to have at the time of infraction+ Vs also had a conference, meeting conference, with the City Attorney and his staff at length and we're working right now to look at how we can stake the � code more stringent in that particular regard. In reference to the overall budget, as far as the department is concerned, we have, right 'how, In departmental savings, Approximately $1,500,000 that has been accumulated through the means of this past year in reference to salary savings for `ny vacancies that have not been filled and predominantly, in reference to avoid a coat of tonnage, where we've been taking and saving money by sending our { trucks directly to the resource recovery canter, rather than going through transfer station and saving the difference in that cost. In the cotabined of those two, we've had a significant savings of approximately 1.5 million dollars in the course of this year. Commissioner Alonso: Could you be a little bit more specific about the vacancies? Mr. Ingraham: Sure. We have, right now, in the department, minus those — routes that have been cut out, approximately 41 positions that are vacant in the department and by that, I'm saying that we've cut out five of our garbage routes and those positions have already been taken care of through attrition. Right now, we have 41 - approximately 41, 42 - vacancies in the department right now that are not being filled at the present time. That's it, as far as — the personnel reduction is concerned. Overall expenditures in reference to a- CIP, which is very important because these funds have helped us in reference to other - offsetting other costs throughout the City. In reference to our fleet replacement, we have utilized, in the past year, $1,327,000. We project next year a need for an additional $1,079,000 as far as replacement is concerned. And I don't think we have a problem in that particular regard. I'm going to be talking to the City Manager about doing some things, as far as pursuing new avenues of bonding, looking at some things that SPA is doing in — reference to some funds. Hopefully, if all goes well within the senate, that's going to free up more money on a state level. Governor Martinez has been working a great deal with the federal government in that particular regard, especially as relates to things that the state took the initiate to do relative to recycling. The federal government is trying to follow suit to really give us some benefits on a federal level as it relates to recycling that should generate some other dollars that we can utilize for trucks and other kinds of equipment and so forth. `o Commissioner Alonso: The City Manager has. been very concerned about the cost of recycling for the City of Miami. What is your feeling about this in the future? Mr. Ingraham: I think that in the future if we adjust ourselves, as far as reallocating our manpower, there is no doubt about it, there is a cost s4 attached to recycling. I would be very remiss in telling you any different.% But, what it's going to call for is mindset on a changing of citizens attitudes towards the environment, that they would work with us. The Mayor has a concept he's addressed here this morning about us really studying a mandatory recycling effort. That may or may not work, but there is some considerations about that. 5 Mr. Odio: You have in this budget that is in front of you, Commissioner, as additional 23 people for recycling for next year that we would not normally have had. Mr. Ingraham: In that particular regard... Commissioner Alonso: Excuse me. If that is the case, if we go to mandatory recycling, what it will mean to the City of Miami? Mr. Ingraham: It we go to mandatory recycling, you're reducing your wasto stream, number one. You're getting rid a groat deal of garbage, particularly, and your focus then is going to be on the recycling effort is reference to your household recycling that you see today, but on a City wide basis aa4 � really strict code enforcement, as far an that's coacerned, In r*feronco to . an overall tonnage reduction, and I assume that's what yAu rei lookiagi¢r, we V to L { coilett, right no*# In tonnage, for whatever rathan the City hue gbh& d6ft �1 ; approximately i0,000 togs. About 215,000 teens, conservatively, this yeah and if we have bad weather, maybe up to two hundred and fifty and two hundred and sixty thousand tons. But, with the advent of mandatory recycling, We hops to have a significant reduction overall in our trash tonnage. You're looking at approximately, 1 would say conservatively, forty-five to sixty thoustmd tonic. And that's very significant. And we're looking at, hopefully, in the first x year. if we can get started in it sometime early November or late Novembee, at the end of this particular year, 1 Mould say, conservatively, anywhare tfft _ forty-five to sixty thousand tons that we would avoid paying Dade County at a significant rate. Mr. Odios Which is,.. What she's asking is this, you might save the same maximum of 50,O0O tons a year at $36.00, you're talking about a million sixo a million seven, savings.. Then, in 23 people alone, you have an additional cost of about $8006000. So, when you go full circle, and that I mean every street, every house pickup - we don't know yet what the manpower will be - but you will have a cost to the.., additional cost to the City. There will not be a savings. Commissi Al B over onso. ut, if we are going to consider a possibility of going and the Mayor has suggested the possibility, and when he has suggested that possibility is because he likes the idea. I think it's very important to the City to look at the cosh personnel, everything, so they can give him an answer and give us an option... Mr. Ingraham: Sure. Commissioner Alonso: ...to look at the entire picture. How could we make any kind of decision if we don't even know how much it's going to cost? We cannot only look at the amount of garbage and the tons and the saving in that sense, but we have to look at the total package. — Mr. Odio: We have a... Mr. Ingraham¢ You're exactly correct. Mr. Odio: We have a study prepared that... Commissioner Alonso, Do we have those numbers available? Mr. Odio: Yes, the additional cost is $17.00 per household a year. Mr. Ingraham: Right. Commissioner Alonso: Seventeen? Mr. Odio: Dollars, per household a year, you have 57,000 households. That's what the cost would be, Commissioner. INAUDIBLE COMMENTS NOT ENTERED INTO THE PUBLIC RECORD. Mr. Odio: That is the first year's. Mr. Ingraham: The other part of that... Mr. Odio: The big savings will be in composting. Mr. Ingraham: Right. Mr. Odio: That's where your big savings can be, but.... Mr. Ingraham: The other side of that, Commissioner, and you're right, is that all... you have to look at it all, in reference to the rate structure, in reference to the cost for every new activity that you take on, But then, you also have to look at the saving factors, as the Manager just said, from the standpoint of composting offsetting that cost. And what we really need to do, and I believe I'm getting the signals from the Commission, and the Manager for this to be done, is a real in depth analysis by my staff to present to yAu. They can give you those kinds of figures as we line tbe,a up agalnet 1 thin budget that has been significantly reduced. And, ultimately, what it's going to mean if there is Mess garbage in the waste stream, there are addttipaai 33 xi : �i ,services by taking that manpower and reallocating it to do other things. If it's going to be more people doing the composting, it's going to mean afore people doing street cleaning and whatever. You need to have a total picturs of ghat the ananpowtr reallocation means. It's not just a matter of savingsr per se, or cost of per se# all the other glamourous words that may be thrown at you. The bottom line is that if we're saving in one end) what are we spending on the other end? And that's what you need to have before you. In addition to that, as far as Solid Waste is concerned, one must be very attuned to the problems that we have with our revenue base. What the ? Manager's doing right now is taking and putting together a task force and we've done pretty good so far in going back and actually looking at the number of units. The federal government would have you say, if you talked to our CD director, that we're losing people in Miami. I think anyone, and especially a member of the Commission, knows that's impossible to be true. Regardless of what even the Solid Waste tonnage man tell you, there is an influx of individuals coming into Miami. We have two different groups of citizens in Miami. Those who habitate here during the day and those who come back and cohabitate during the night. And they are two vastly different groups and somebody's escaping. We have folk that come in and leave that provide untold amounts of tonnage on the streets of Miami in the course of every work day. At S OO o'clock, they go home. They leave behind refuse that there is no revenue coming in from anyone in reference to our department cleaning up. So, there are a number of things that you have to look at when you're talking about the cost of Solid Waste, that may not be presented, per as, in a budget, but that will be presented to you in the course of probably the next 90-days. We're going to be looking at some things in Seattle and some other places to give you a smorgasbord of what is actually going on throughout the country so we can make some decisions or help you to make the correct decisions as far as the department is concerned. Very briefly, I have about maybe another two minutes and then I'll answer any of the questions that you may have in regards to where we are. In regards to the revenue for the Department of Solid Waste, for our projections for this year, we're looking at approximately $14,000,000 in total revenue. Approximately fourteen, fourteen point five million dollars in total revenue and we are fortunate to look at about 98 to a 100 percent of total collection of those revenues. That, we've been very good in doing. And then, the other part is a matter of what we're talking about right now, as far as how we reduce the General Fund contribution to make up the difference of what we need to operate the department in. The total personnel for the department in the oncoming year to provide the services as I've indicated, will be, as was indicated in your budget book, 432 individuals. In reference to those other significant things we've done in the course of the year, we have attempted to try and alleviate some of the operational problems we had in the past, as far as the number of pot holes that that the types of hydrocanes we utilized, have dug in the past, we've gotten that down very significantly. We fill, maybe now, as opposed to when we first started, 20 or 30 pot holes a day, only on an average of ten per day, at the cost of $20.00 roughly per hole. In reference to our fleet, we're looking a situation of once we are reducing routes, not only to just get rid of equipment that we do not need any, more, because of the services is not going down, but the use of the equipment may be. But to look at replacing new equipment with equipment that has a longer life value to it. In the long term, it means a less in reference to cost to the City. And less wear and tear in a reduction in overall service costs. Code Enforcement, this year, as indicated to you, has increased its services by approximately five percent. And I would like to say to you, in reference to the overall contribution from the General Fund - which is to focus for this year - rest assured, we're taking every viable means and even element of our line item of the budget to reduce that particular cost,. in additions to the other kind of avoided cost measures, as far as composting and recycling is concerned. I'll stop there and answer any of the questions that you may have, as far as the department is concerned. Commissioner Alonsot And the Manager has requested an increase in the garbage fee and he's thinking about forty some dollars - forty-eight. What can you tell me? Your department really needs $48.00? Mr. Ingraham: If you look at... Commissioner Alonsot Is it more twenty? -and is he asking twice the amount? Mr. Ingraham: Well, in all due respect to you, I may, you are, I would be asking for more. if you're asking me aAd 34 M1 , - CommissionerAlonsot Just think of the reality of the world around you, a , Rri Ingrahame I understand the reality of the world &round its de7[r F}' .. ' Commissioner# and the reality is) is that it cost* for services, Those dod�d � y j° are not going down. When you look at what's happening in the world ttadayj Ai far to a number of thing* ate abneerned) they're going up. Mr. Odiot Rio, one example... a Commissioner Alonsot The quality of the services the people are not that h= ¢'f pleased. So, we hear a lot of complaints.` Mr. Ingraham: Sure. R ` Commissioner Alonsot Sven the garbage pickup, I think it's good) it has, ` always been good. s Mr. Ingrahamt Yes, right. 5- a Commissioner Alonso: But, when it comes to looking at the entire picture of _ the City, ask the citizens, they are not that pleased. So, if we were to ask_ them, are you ready to pay that amount of money, because of the quality of the service, they are going to turn you down. Mr. Ingraham: Well, I think that in reference to your question, and I will answer your question, as I attempted to in reference to what it costs to do business. If you look at this budget, as f ar as the revenue base is concerned, and what it costs to operate the department, it speaks for itself. In reference to what we can do to do better, there's a lot that we can do to do better. I would the last person on this earth to say to you that we are doing the best job that we can do. I will not stand here... I would tell you that we can improve 100, 200 percent and we've been improving since I've been department head for the past four years. There is a lot of things that I will like to do. Some of them are not politically feasible, some of them are not... _ Commissioner Alonsot Why not? Mr. Ingraham: Well, it takes some direction, I think, that will come to the 4 Manager from the Commission in reference to the policy that you would like for ,- him to implement through the department. :>k Commissioner Alonso: Tell me. Mr. Ingraham: In reference to how we go about providing the services that we're providing. We're looking - I'll give you one for instance what's in - the code today. We attempted in revising the code four years ago to take bundled trash, bundled trash, and have that collected with the garbage. That'a something that was in the code and that we had, through this City. t_ Manager, proposed to do some times ago prior to your being elected. But... t Commissioner Alonsot Not necessarily in curb pickup, but... Mr. Ingraham: No, we're not talking about curbside.` r, �Y — Commissioner Alonso: ...regular... Mr. -Ingraham: But, whatever reasons, it did not occur. We are putting those - things back before you and the Manager now, as another means of increasing our` ' iY efficiency. So, therefore, the garbage collector would also pick up your grass cuttings from the weekend. If you cut your grass, you'd be able to put it in a bundled bag and put it out at the same time that y B P you put out our garbage and we would take that also. We're looking at doing some other things` f as far as the trash collection is concerned. In reference to not having white goods picked up from any street corner in Miami. In other words, it would be outlawed and we would give you a fine in that regard. We'd have a truck that would actually come when you call, when you call in for, ghat we call,-:* bulky km x waste pickup. These are things that are in the code today. So, when I may to you, little things that we can do to enhance our services, this is just 44r indication of some of those things that we can do and we're stririag to d everyday. Trying to enhance and working this out through labor aogottati.Oasi have; our trucks stay out and give to us more *tours on the street in ruts sc* ` 35 f1 777 any t x__ U to the tnaapower a1loCation and utilisation ever' day, You have an inCtlistite program that'sin yourlabor Contract that says one thing and reality flays antsther and through the Managers w6 fve been mediating and the union has both very good in this particcular regard so those are just a few things that Y dab say to you. That we ire looking at doing and will be doing to enhance out r ' level of services. And in doing those things, it will help us to provide 66SO ' ether things, and we talk about manpower shift. To have more street aweePfftij ' which we're not doing during the day. To have that done in our Coro[aercisi +' areas, more so than just at night, and so forth and so on - litter Control and ' tome ether things that we're not doing now. So, there are a number of things that we can do if allowed to do and have the support to do and that we will be doing, attempting to doing, in the coming course of this particular year. Sol that's one element of it, but what it costs to do business is a whole another. story. I think what the Manager is asking for is very conaervative as far as �t that's concerned. Commissioner Alonsos So, you're telling me that you really need the $48.00. ;-_ '4 Mr. Ingrahr ms I'm saying, you may need more, but the Manager is asking for $48.00, that's what we need. Mr. Odio: Since I asked... I think he should be running for office, I may not... not department head. But, Commissioner, you can't - you have to crawl before you run and I figured that even $48.00 I won't get, but I have to - we have to start somewhere to start saying that the cost of doing business has _ .� gone up, just with the County alone, 500 percent, since we had the $160 of established. f Commissioner Alonso: How much is the true cost to the taxpayer? — ij Mr. Odio: The true cost to the taxpayer - because they're paying for this !i anyway - all we're saying is, don't pay... Commissioner Alonso: No, what I mean is, before this service was provided — through taxes. - Mr. Odio: Yes. — Commissioner Alonso: Then, time came where an additional fee was... Mr. Odic: Right. So what is the true cost to the taxpayer? What portion Commissioner Alonso: . t of the tax, plus this? Mr. Odio: Well, you have to take your $14,000,000 that we're contributing to` his department is a mill and a half. t Commissioner Alonso: No, the portion of the taxes. How do you divide? Mr. Odic: Well, it's a mill and a half. One mill, point... one mill and a half of what they're paying of their taxes goes to pay for sanitation. Commissioner Alonso: So, in fact, they are paying quite high. Mr. Odio: Yes. And what we're saying is, since you cannot go up in millage any more because you are at the top. That when you run out of that source of revenue, who will pay for the services? And all I'm trying to say now, .is look to the future, because somehow, some way, somebody has to pay for this service. And if it has to be from property taxes, so be it. But where do you get it from property taxes when you don't have any more millage to go to? And the County smartly saw, a long time ago, are totally self suff... and what the County taxpayers pay for their solid waste is one hundred percent of what -it costs the County to do business. Commissioner Alonso: What is the alternative that you people have, look into, facing reality of the Commission saying no to an increase? Hour are you going to do it and what are the alternatives you have looked into? Mr. Odic: For this department? Commissioner Alonso: For this department. k . $d soptowwr I , 4 . 1 _"wt indln.YSr ; Mr. Odiat pia t it have to contribute the full amount that it would . bo tt+acehsai� to covet the deficit that they would have - of not def icit j but whatever the cast is in addition to what we get from the feat we would have to take it out ofthe,budgstt,Gity-budgat. Commissioner Alonsot Yost but what are the alternatives that the departt"nt N can take of cutting from some areas? f Mr: Odiot We have reduced it by - from this year's level... Commissioner Alonsot Doing something differently. Have you looked.into the possibility of saving some other way? Do you have any other alternatives? �— ' And, if not do you have any ideas that you would like to share with me now? j Mr. Odio: We start October let... Commissioner Alonsot Are you ready to do that now? rah Mr. Ingrahamt Well, the composting... s 't Mr. Odio: Yes, we starting October 1st with composting. #- Mr. Ingraham: Right, that would save a significant amount. Mr. Odio: A million dollars... Mr. Ingraham: Right. Mr. Odio: ...a year. However, you know, every time we take a step forward, t, we take two back, it seems. That we had... ' Commissioner Alonso: What do you mean by that? Mr. Odio: Well, the fuel costs... Commissioner Alonso: That's right. Mr. Odio: ...since the Arabs decided to go to - start playing games over there the fuel cost has one u 32 cents a gallon. This ear alone just,for =- , 6 P 8 y. , what happened over there, we're going to pay an additional $150,000 in fuel. ¢ Just the current year. We're projecting, for next year, if the cost stays''the = same, if it doesn't - if we don't have a war and something happens to the fuel supply, you're looking at $500,000 just for fuel alone., { Commissioner Alonso: That's right.531. ■ Mr. Ingraham: We have also looked, and we've done some already without being asked, and that's route reduction in reference to our garbage collection is concerned. But .there is a limit that you can do as far as that's concerned, as far as the method in which we employ. We're looking at everything we canf We're looking at a variable rate structure that provides the citizens"';M ry option. We have a base and the individual is paying what he pays right now and we're going to be looking at how, from there, if he wants more service, �— that the individual be - the citizen be allowed to acquire more service.based } on what that would be. And we don't have those figures for you, but we will In the study in reference to variable rate structure." rCommissioner Alonso: Give me an example of how the program will be. Give me .:: some ideas of how... Mr. Ingraham: Well, in other words, if you're paying one -sixty a year now fflr one 30-gallon can and you want, for instance, two 30-gallon cans; or throe, Beyond the one, there will be OX" number of costs. We don't knotty what thst cost is right now, for each additional can. And, therefore, and what,.fi indicated to you early, if you want a service in reference to what we do not► as an automatic, when we come and pick up the trash from the right -,of -Way, you have to call for bulky waste pickup. And, as we do now, as aa..nutoxatico,.thmt we pick up everything from the curb will bo segrogated. Wo. will not 4a tint x any more. go that when a truck moves, you're talking about tiara and motion tied to a particular economic return, that it would be in your private concert that if the truck goes out and provide a service► you're, 1000�n$ a r 37 s' S •` _ — J yy f r z AR s } r at to" typo of to envte that is genaratifig for providing that satvice. VA a tr6mvhat different kind of concept that wa have right now, with ad valorem tide uass in the ilepartM6ftt of Solid haste in the City of Miami. You're talking about a situation where a department is actually generating a tevenue for oath . t"o of service that we provide. How, if we go to a house and theta ate tth canal, we pick up tin cans. If we to to a house and there is half acreage or } whatever, we pick it all up. Commissioner Alonso: Something is wrong if they have tin cats. Mr. Ingraham: Wall, you'd be surprised, Commissioner. There are a lot of people living in small houses in Miami and that's the truth. And we find a lot of overcrowded conditions in certain parts of our City and without getting into a lot of detail, people are coming in and it's a matter of tradition. This is how they assimilate into our society. Our department happens to be t~ one of the few departments in the City that touches every house, every day of - cv, the week. So, we have a pretty good pulse for what's out there. And the P people are not going away, there are more people coming. And- if there are more people coming, there are more services, environmentally, that have to be provided. And it's a total picture. But those few areas are our ideas as far as how we can go about generating, not just revenue, but in the process of, being efficient also. ; Mr. Odio: Joe, how many people did we have two years ago? Mr. Ingraham: As far as the department's concerned? Two years ago, you were _— up to almost five hundred, I think it was, and about twelve people. About 512 people. Mr. Odio: The number for next year... the union and I have worked something out, I hope, that is three ninety-five, and forty temporaries, or forty ninety -nines. Commissioner Alonso: Say the numbers again. Mr. Odio: Three hundred and ninety five and plus forty ninety -nines. Or now, there will be , so that is a considerable reduction from where — we were a budget and a half ago and... plus, like I said, where we're lookingts,t for more savings, trying to keep the cost down, is the composting, we figure t about a million dollars. We figure a million dollars a year in something that the union and I worked it out this current year which was to take out directly to the County's weigh station and bypassing the transfer station, we save 49.O0 a ton. And, so that... and in the three ninety-five, we are including r — '' 23 recycling people, which we were not counting them before, so which re didn't have last year, so the reduction of cost is there and... Commissioner Alonso: And the number of people right here, you say the union is happy with it. e r . Mr. Odio: Yes, we worked that out. I don't say they're happy with it. I'll bet you they would like to have 600 people, if we could afford it, but the realities of what we can do is there and some other people can do it cheaper. So, we have to be competitive. Commissioner Alonso: And the numbers for the variable, as you explained to me, additional services and so on, you don't have numbers for that right now, Mr. Ingraham: No, not yet. We're going to be doing a study... Commissioner Alonso: But, you're working on that?_ Mr. Ingraham: Yes, we're going to be looking at what... Seattle, Washington, V has, from what we've heard, one of the best variable rate situations in the country where they did a lot of in depth work. Fortunately, one of the consultant firms that we've been using for our recycling composting, did a lot of the rate analysis there. We're going to be in touch with them and looking at a couple of other rate structures, But that has to be back into what our cost to for the type of service that we're delivering. And then, woo ll, b J r . present to you what it will look like beyond our revenue base, for what additional cost would be on a per unit basis. P { AAIt 4 •� ._..� v .may.. � �-� Mr, bdiat you have to tosimbiri WaefA paying the ebunty an AdditionAl aeiilift and a half, A ffiti-ItOft and a half dollarb for neat year betrexueei of their f'a�. increase: �dtemisa�ioner Aie�neo}#udl? F tlNib i 'tR 1 SpBAnIti Wa almost got two million dollars. Mr ingrahame Thetis what they're going to charge us in more fees. y Commissioner Alonso: OK. Thank you very much. Mr. Ingraham: My pleasure. t S F .Y,.y,;y Y._.r.ri_r:rrrtr..-._••:--"'JrrL.izrYfia+r.w_rr:.rrr__.r— 6. BUDGET VORK3HOP (FY 90-01) DISCUSSION: BUILDING & ZONING DEPARTMENT. F Mr. Odio: Building & Zoning.' Mr. Sergio Rodriguez: Commissioner, let me give you a copy of the organization chart, because I'm going to try to follow that so that you can . y ' understand the two functions as a whole. Good afternoon. Commissioner Alonso: Good afternoon. u_ Mr. Rodriguez: The f irst sheet that you have before you shows in one chart = the Department of Planning, Building & Zoning, including all the functions which are part of the planning band building part of it, including all of the Enterprise Fund. And, in the same chart, the same headings, the boxes of all the names of the different divisions and then, in the Planning Department, you will see the other functions which are under each one of the - having'a staff member from the Planning Department, and I will try to explain to you the composition of the department and how we have integration of some functions as we are reorganizing the department. If you look at the chart that shops Enterprise Fund, that shows - this page over here, the long one I believe` that has in the top Fund Enterprise. Fund and the other one - that Fund Enterprise, right. There's a director of the department and then you have _ deputies on each side and I'm going to cover first the Building &; Zoning a, L portion of it. In the boxes that are shown under the building official ,as►d �i acting deputy director of Building & Code Enforcement, we have the following }_ j functions. Permit administration, electrical inspection.services, mechanical s inspection services, plumbing inspection services and structural inspection' service, and plan examiners. The inspections services are the typical 5 ` building functions that we have in the Building Department dealing with all si the trades. And those are the functions in which we serve the public -when i they come and they review the plan for the different parts of the building 1 process; either electrical, mechanical, plumbing, or structural. And also, +� the plans examiners are members of that group that also participate .,in <f' reviewing the plans as they come through the whole process. In the permit = j administration, we have members of the staff that basically deal :with ( certificate of use and certificate of occupancy - and getting the .:permits „ approved. One of the things that we have been able to accomplish:in'this last X year is that we have cut in all the trade inspectors, which are..41 .were i certified with the County and we have eliminated the backlog of COs that we M n, have - certificate of occupancy, that we have. And we have , expeditsd, the. certificate of use and that in the past took a long time. Also recpmtly, .,in" rd the last two or three months, I have implemented the one step permit for minor Al _ y" projects and people can come in the first floor of the building without .k47.1A9 to go through different floors in the building and different groups, to Sot,;* ¢v �A permit. And, also, we have simplified the process. Recently, also _ instituted a new simplified procedure for homeowners so that we can make; at ` - easier for them to get a permit and if the permit is lean than $5004, Okay i don't have to get a permit within the City. We believe that... bosioa9,1i►, those are minor permits and they don't have to come through the process.. -"mod t +5 we have simplified, in such a way, that they can do the improve pt, th mse;ivbc - and in this sense, avoid the complaint that we had in they pant that the)►,.. ., to go through a contractor and that was more expensive, or. otboxvii►s, troy„ �y we have to pay a double too. And if they pass the Carat 1Mtt.ti� _:�a+�a . d�► the job, they can eliminate a double fee.►e have beendiaat.ia y r� 39 i a { � 3vr SAY MY �4, err �NL*. S -x Y difference oi'vio btganieationse especisiiy the coalition of Here and s ffie�nTEsert of the Coa itim ref Homeowners, apeeifieskiiy in the 968ils ' - seeti6u, it I made a presentation and they were very happy with that g rticular approach that we Ato fbllrting to make it easier and no* tO "bid the e*cuse that, because homeowner* have to pay more for a pertain th+sYl i btb r: doing it illegally: go, 1 think there has been a positive improvement in the' �xr procer�s. y". Commissioner Alonso: What would be important is that the citizens really knew dr• abbot this. 1 don't think they have been really informed and I think,., Mr. Rodriguez: I sent a letter to all the members of the Coalition of the z�4 homeowners.•• `s Commissioner Alonso: That represent a very small amount of the whole.,. Mr. Rodriguez: Of the whole, yes. Commissioner Alonso: I'm not talking about that particular area, the entire City of Miami. Mr. Rodriguez: I think you are correct and I think it's very important that we do that. I have offered to the different groups that we will go there at ,. night and we will make presentations and make them aware of all the improvements that we have made in the process and the availability that we have to meet with them and try to explain to them the process. In addition to the fact that we have opened up inspections on weekends, basically inspectors, y not inspections, but inspectors to check on weekends to make sure there are no illegal construction because we had a lot of complaints, as you probably know, in your office - in many of the offices - of illegal construction happening during the weekend and we offer them the use of our beeper number where they can notify the complaint and we follow up with the person that we have on duty that day. In addition to that, if you continue following our chart... oh, by ; the way, something also. We also recertified more than 500 buildings that were over 40 years old and I think that also was a major accomplishment last year. Commissioner Alonso: Excuse me, Sergio, how many people are we using in weekends and things like that? �F f Mr. Rodriguez: Usually we have two people on weekends. It's a very low t number of people because of we have to work it out in such a way that when they work on weekend, they are given a day off on the following week °or - whatever, you know. I have made sure that I have assigned them in groups of two and they're available on Saturdays. At this point, what I was trying 'to Lk do in trying to fulfill with that requirement. I don't know how it's going to = work in the future. I don't know how effective it might be, but that's one of the things that I received complaints about and, I'm trying to address that issue. If it works or if there is a need for more, I'm sure I will address it too. If you look at the next section, the building code enforcement and, the Environmental Code Enforcement section, those two sections were created' -, basically with members of the Building & Zoning staff taking from the trade service areas and from the zoning administration area that was there before: In the building code enforcement section, we have seven members and basically, - those are the people that go and take cases before the Unsafe Structure Board: To give you an idea how the number of cases have improved in that particular. <° area, we used to have five cases per month before the Unsafe Structures Board in the County. We're now taking approximately about 20. We have had, -in the last year, approximately 192 cases before the Unsafe Structures Board and that doesn't include, of course, all the many cases that we have in which wefres able to settle before we take it to the board and we have been able to correct < the problems, or the violations. Many cases we find that the property ownerr$ � are willing to go and fix the particular problem that we find and corract'the situation before we have to take a more drastic action. One of the thin&$ that we're trying to do now is working with the Housing Department to 'try to' see, in cases where the owner doesn't want to do any improvements, that -he might be willing to donate or facilitate the use of the property for a 'rehab by the City. And that's one of the things that we working apecifically,14 the _- pop area, the pusher's area, which is the area located between 54 and 71st s N.V. Avenue -Streets, encase me and between nth and 17th Avenue in ties N,W, �- and we are working very closely with members of different groups, like the ,- Urban league and other groups of housing groups in the area to see how wo cal, N f Sfi 40 Sap r 4 lvoi,F S oe get the buildings that can be rehabbed, rehabbed, if we don't have to � demolish, In 6;4Me oases, we want to move with demolition right away because the buildings are in such a bad shape and we have crack and so on in the area► In other caseso where we can see that the building is salvageable, we're ! trying to do that. We have lost some good buildings before in the proebonj x; but I think that we're being much more selective now. Commissioner Alonso: So, tell me a little bit more about that program. When ` I came to the City, that's exactly what I addressed and I contacted the regal Department at that time and I said, legally, can we take over the buildings? And I received daily requests from citizens asking about properties like that, that perhaps they can improve and live for a period of time and perhaps going *= to a sort of a contract buying in the future, whatever, some sort of agreement. Have we worked out the details, legally, that we can actually take over? -Do we agree with the owner? How are we handling this legally? _ A Mr. Rodriguezi Only when we get the owner to agree, the owner voluntarily agree, that he or she doesn't want to take care of their property and sometimes, if we can get them to agree to pass the property to the City or to I an organization that might be in the business of trying to fix up' the buildings. We let the organizations know about the building being demolished and see if they can work out something with the owner. One... Commissioner Alonso: Are we doing... Sergio, excuse me... Mr. Rodriguez: Sure. Commissioner Alonso: Are we doing this prior to placing so many liens on the property that it's well above and beyond the value of the entire property? because we have seen in front of us, several cases, some properties that we didn't even want to take because of the number of liens. How are we handling that? Are we waiting until that point? Are we moving on faster? How are we handling this? Mr. Rodriguez: Well, we had two different situations. First, we had the situation of the backlog of cases in which we have liens which account for, three hundred and so many cases in which have liens which are substantial. Well, in some cases, they are very low and we have been able to work out an agreement or a settlement. The Law Department works with them and tries to find a solution to their problem and the lien, if it is resolved, we don't start foreclosure. If we haven't been able to resolve the issue of the lien, '! then we start with foreclosure. The backlog, in the cases where we have large ;a figures, you know, we know that realistically, we're going to have to come up to a settlement and we're going to have to try to solve those as soon as 4v possible and then work with them. Either we get them to pay, through a settlement, or else we will have to foreclose. In the cases where we're foreclosed, then we will have something available for either the option of 4— selling the lien or then to offer the property for anybody that might want to improve the property and pay us an amount and that's something that I think, in a way, we're in virgin ground now, the City, and we're going very slowly to make sure we're not doing anything that is wrong legally. But we have been - working closely with the Law Department as to what are the next steps that we want to follow. And I think that it's going to offer an opportunity In some areas of the City for a homesteading program, in cases where the building is salvageable and in cases where there are no other liens involved in the property. I understand that we are number five in line for lien collectionAlt after the mortgages companies and so on. So, in that case, sometimes our effectiveness is limited, but we are following that very aggressively now. We have been having meeting with the Finance Department and Law Department to b start seriously getting after the property owners that have been ignoring us in paying the liens, the fines, all these years. And I think that's going to resolve in having a number of properties that we can work with as compared to a one and one over there. Once we get the backlog of three hundred and so many cases that we have of liens and foreclosures and ;so on, we're trying to avoid in if what we work out now a system with the Law Department by which after one month of not paying the fines, we immediately go and we inpone a lien on the property and we tell them they have to have so many days after which we start foreclosure procedures to avoid the accumulation of liens. Commissioner Alonso; Yes. I'd like to have more information,.. Mr. Rodriguez: Sure. _ 41 p near lif 4-910 4� Commissioner Aloitsot ::.t don't wart to take, you know, more tine now, bvv►t think f ire very intereated in the program. Remember, it was one of the f ifA n things... ter: 1todriguess I r6mem►ber. a yk, Commissioner Alonso, .:.I requested. And I think it's great if it can *brk. I think itts great. Mr. Rodriguez: Well, I kept it in the back of my mind, yes. Commiasioner Alonso: OK. Mr. Rodrigueze In addition to that, in the environmental code enforcement section, we have divided the City in approximately 8 areas. We have ton t inspectors and we have eight or nine areas... ten inspectors, one of which is a floater, go through different areas. What we have been doing here::. I don't know, in the past, if you remember, we used to have, in the City, r approximately about 200 cases per year, up to 300 cases per year., before the Code Enforcement Board. We're now taking between 150 and 180 per meeting. So fi the amount is 350 or so per month, so the amount of cases before the Code Enforcement. Board has increased dramatically. It's not because we have more violations, I think it's because we're being more aggressively pursuing them and that has been basically also a response to the many complaints we have from the different areas of the City. In many cases, in most of the cases, we come to a settlement before. We come to an agreement, they agree to fix the =6 property and we don't have to proceed. So, in that case, we all come out winners.. We don't have to charge anything to the property owner and that is in violation and we get the violation corrected. In cases where this cannot happen or we don't get it resolved, then we start with the issue of the fines and, eventually, the liens and then the foreclosure. But I think, again, the increase have been dramatic in this area and we hear good things from the different civic groups that have been after us for not being as aggressive as we should, maybe. And now, when you move on to the next area, in the area of urban information system, go to, if you don't mind, to the next page which deals with planning functions. I'm going to jump to the area code hearings boards. That's one of the first areas in which there was an effect of the consolidation that I'm trying to do in the department, the reorganization. _ The hearings boards now takes care of all the presentations that, we have'to. make before the different boards and all of the coordination that. we have on — all the boards. We have .22 meetings before the Planning Advisory Board per year and 22 for the Zoning Board and so on. We have a total.of -about- 1l0 board meetings per year that we have to service in the way of advertising and r also keeping records and attending and staffing and so on. And that is now =` consolidated and as compared to before in which we had the Planning Department x doing certain things and the Building & Zoning Department doing other things.. So, right there, I believe that we have a big saving factor as to be more effective in the use of our resources. We, with the construction industry, advisory board, I believe we have concluded with the functions that we have _ with them. We met with them for two, three years, and they met with us^ regularly. I believe most of the concerns that they have addressed have been '- taken care of. At one point, there was a request for an increase of staff lag." We couldn't do it because we had budget limitations and at this point,-wetre .= trying to do the best we can with what we have, and I think there has beea;a_ tremendously positive reaction from the staff in trying to react to this, Also, they were interested in having the functions relocated to the f first floor of the Administration Building. What we're doing is trying to convert the 16.conference room that we have there and put the one step permit in that area and try to do, again, the beat we can with little money. And I thinki we're being successful in accomplishing that. In the next area, zoning code administration, basically we had functions before in which we have the-mwberp of the Planning Department making recommendations in zoning cases and thou. getting also input from members of the Building & Zoning Department. Thee was a little bit of an overlap in that area. And what I have tried to do is consolidate all that you seen that were zoning functions in that particular area. As you know, one of meetings before the Commission is always the planning and zoning meeting and where we have about 20-40 cases ,per month. Those recommendations now basically the result of what the combi.aed,statt. Wit _ meet together before we make a recommendation to the Zoning ." ard, to the Planning Board, and then we go before each one of those WOW$' .aBd `,tbon � eventually, come before you. In addition to that, that particulor 4e0494 i* 4 MA i rpt� so it" ♦yi_ ' r y� P dealing or dealt with the zoning ordinance, that gamoth document that we worked on for A long, long time. We don't think it's perfect. Us think itlz better than before and I think that took a tremendous amount of work, lie also initiate all the Zoning ordinance amendments, all the text amendments, and Mork closely with the Law Department in trying to get them in the proper language. In addition to that, we take care of all the class, now they're called close one and two permits, where they used to be class A, 8, C, and D permits also in this particular area, This is, again, an area of a tremendous amount of visibility with the public and with the boards and the Cotmnission. The next area that we have in the chart is the one shown as general planning and it includes, basically, the functions of comprehensive neighborhood planning and urban design, preservation, and area projects. To give you examples of things that we have done over here, in addition to complying with all the requirements of the Comprehensive Plan and the growth management legislation, we also have been working in each one of the neighborhoods of the City. In some cases, with more impact than others in trying to guide some of their needs and interests in a particular plan of action that eventually result in either capital improvement projects or in projects by the private sector. We have planners assigned to each one of the major areas of the City. We have seven planning areas and they have been working with them for a while with different levels of success. In the urban design function, we work with most of the projects that have an element of design in them as to - for example, there are areas of the City in which we require them to submit the facade of the building or we work with them as to the plazas that they create and the amount of landscaping that should be provided or the walkways in front of the river or the bay and so on, and, basically, that function is done by that staff member. In preservation, you have seen the historic preservation cases before you. Now if the ordinance is finally passed on second reading, you will only will come before you in cases of appeals. But it will go to the Heritage Conservation Board and also they're in charge of the tree preservation ordinance. Remember, that some of the cases we had before the board that were very controversial in the Grove of people that were concerned about certain trees being cut and so on. Those are the kind of cases that we deal with. We have a lot of cases like that every year. Only the ones which are controversial are appealed to you. Area projects were working areas like Miami River, for example. In this area also, we're working with the Liberty City tax increment financing district that we're trying to prepare to bring before you. The Wynwood Safe Neighborhood Improvement District. Those are the kind of projects that we do in those areas. In the areas of support services, basically, we have together all the support of the rest of th e department, people that work in the budget and dealing with the revenues since we have an Enterprise Fund in Building & Zoning, want to make sure that we generate enough revenues and that we have... we are on track in what we're doing. Mr. Odio: Let me see, I think next year's budget history of the City that Building & Zoning, part of on any monies from the General Fund. Mr. Rodriguez: It is the first time. is the first time in the it, will not be dependent Mr. Odio: In fact, this is curious, I was looking at the other day, preparing my message that in five years, Commissioner, we have removed from General Fund monies, besides the position, we have eliminated 633 positions are no lon8er funded from General Fund monies, which is property tax. That's almost $30,000,000. And now, I think where Building & Zoning is self sufficient, CommunityDevelopment is p getting there and, you know... Mr. Rodriguez: And, finally, planning data and analysis, we have been working R with the census and also the GIS, geographic information system, we provide all the data that you see mostly official data that we see coming out of the City, we also get a lot of requests from prospective developers when they try to invest in the area or people that want to get information as to the statistics of a particular area. In the geographic information system, we have been working with the different departments, and, specifically Police, Housing, Solid Waste, Fire, to try to make sure that we have an address now with data associated with that address, land use data. In the future, the idea will be that when they list a particular address, they will know eacaotly, by the type of information they will get, what kind of equipment they can send In case of afire, for exempla, whether it's any storage of materials that might be dangerous and so on. So, we're doing that. That was basically doup for the whole City, the gleaning of the data and now we're in the process of 43 A implementing it and we have the equipment and working it. BastatIly1 that's an overview of what we have. ire also do, as you know, all those plats amendments and we go before the City Commission - Comprehensive plait aents - working with the state. taendm Because of the state laws, we have to a follow Florida statutes requirements and state requirements in our daily work and a lot of our time, I'm afraid, in consumed in doing some of that work. Mr. Odio: Commissioner, excuse me... Mr. Rodriguest Sure. Mr. Odlos The one thing you notice on those charts is that this is acting, there in not a permanent consolidation. We're welcome... you know, I know A. d I that rea that in the coming year you know, to work with you re stems e n us in finding out what is zoning area, specifically, until this a � the best way to deliver services in the building and so that consolidation is at a trial. it was only Commissioner Alonso: I think that one of the complaints we hear more often, and it's not only from homeowners, but people who are in the business as well, it's the length of time to obtain the permits and, also, one other complaint that we hear often, and that comes more often, perhaps, from homeowners, but it also comes from contractors, is that when the inspector comes for the first time, sometimes they request a limited amount of things. And then, at the end, at the very end, when they are ready and they think they have done all that they were requested to do, at the very end, they come with a list of requests that it's costly and also it affects the entire process. I have heard "you're trying to address some of the things, expedite getting the permits, and I think that's something that is important for the City of Miami because it gives the impression that if we are not efficient in that line, people would rather go somewhere else... Mr. Rodriguez: Sure. Commissioner Alonso: ...to open a business or do construction.- And we, of course, need the revenues coming to the City of Miami, especially at times like that, like we are living right now. So, I think whatever we do in your department, it's of great importance for the entire City because the amount of revenues and new businesses and new construction that comes to the City of Miami and we have heard many times before people saying, this is the last time, because of the nightmare and sometime it's their fault, but whenever it is ours, or we can improve the quality of service or trying to work with them and let them know exactly what is requested, what are the items that are completely necessary, having better communication is the bottom line. Mr. Rodriguez: I think that's a very good point and I agree with the concerns „- that you have expressed, both views, because they're true. I have heard the complaints too. One of the things that I felt at the beginning when I started in the position was that maybe there were not enough supervisors going into F the field with inspectors. So I asked the inspector, supervisors, to go into "a4 the field too and I don't know how popular that has been, but it is being done. They have to go to the field and they have to check with them and .I < also have asked supervisors to also hear from the inspectors as to what places they are visiting ahead of time to have better control of the information that we have, the quality of services being provided. I imagine that if we have several visits to the same site, that's going to indicate something, either that the person was - the applicant didn't do the job well done from the beginning or if there is a repetition, there may be something that is not being caught by the inspectors and I'm implementing some of those things already. The results is too soon to know. I don't know how that's going to work. I am very favorably impressed by the "can do" attitude of the staff and f to say that the staff is very... without ignoring the interests of the {_ neighborhoods, and trying to protect the neighborhood's interests, which I W" think is very important, they do have a "can do" attitude toward then applicant. And I compare going to the Building & Zoning Department like going to the dentist, you know, you have to go, it's painful, but you have to do it And it's something that is for the benefit of the person applying and for the -_ whole community. But it is very difficult to be excited about going to dentist, you know. But, I'm trying to make the dentist as easy as possible and I'm maybe giving a little bit of laughing gas or something, when they go Y ?_ i 44 spc 5 1900in j L T'a} Coai�aissione Alonam Do now we know that you are afraid to go to the dofittit'd Mr. Rodriguez: Yeas Se that ,they will be able to enjoyo at least, getting the proceae done as effectively and efficiently as possible. And I know j6tng to have complaints, but I have been very favorably impresead by. the ;k staff trying to help the people in going through the process. And if you hear of any complainta or any problems, let the know. Commissioner Alonso: tea) I think that the key of all of thib is pbrhape :. r, working with the staff in developing a system that, from the beginning, we J, tell them what to do. And, by experience, I know that in many cases, and it has been from many different areas of the construction world, you find that whenyou think you have it done and you have complied with all the ; requirements, at the end, it becomes a nightmare. And it's not healthy for the City... Mr. Rodriguet: True. :3 Commissioner Alonzo: ...or the people involved or homeowners or for anyone concerned. So, we should really work on that to improve. I also like to make a comment since you just referred to that and I'm sure I don't have to tell ". you, but I just want to remind you that when it comes to sending the supervisors with the inspectors or with any staff, we have to be very professional about that in the sense of not giving the impression that our inspectors, or staff of any kind, needs the close supervision because they are not doing the job. It might be a negative perception sent to the public as well as to the particular employee and I don't think it will be very healthy for the morale of the people. So, it's a very touchy and it's done in many areas, even HRS sends its... Mr. Rodriguez: Inspector. Commissioner Alonso: ...supervisors and they do the evaluation on the field visiting people and so on. And it's done and they try to do it in a very high level, in a very professional way. I'm sure you're going to look at ways of doing that, but I think we should really emphasize that that might be a very' sensitive issue for everyone and I think the morale of the employees might bed affected, and we don't want to give the impression to the public or demoralize` that person by, well, here, I have to bring my inspector to see if I'm doing b the right thing. Especially when it comes to inspectors that sometimes they are blamed for doing things that they don't necessarily and... Mr. Rodriguez: Responsible for... r` Commissioner Alonso: Yes, responsible for. Mr. Rodriguez: I think the supervisor has to be aware of what is happening,' himself. I think they should be able - I, myself, go in different parts of the City on my own, and I check things on my own and not to check on people. It's just also to see how well the system works or how knowledgeable I`am or am not, you know, of how things work. And I think it has been healthy for me` so I expect them to be as interested as I am. So... if, any other questions?' Commissioner Alonso: No, not on that. ,r Y .,4 k gt } pyy - d - { - i • Su "We" My 06-01) Dl3CUS6109: COMIM19 . Mr. Odiat tie have) CoMiNsiftOr, Community Developutent, that should... 3 Commissioner Alonsot Not that I don't pant to hear from Cormnufitis Development*.. Mr. Odiot I don't either, we're... � Commissioner Alonsot ...I think they came and visited roe. We Went over some x of the items I have read and if I have other questions, I think I Will be able to call on them and... Mr. Odio: So they... goodbye, Frank. Then, we have Computers. That could ba }s brief, if you Mant to and... Commissioner Alonso: Personnel.... Mr. Odio: ...this - I'm talking about ones that we had for the first day. Commissioner Alonsot No, I don't think I have... Computers, if they're # here. Mr. Odio: They're here. ! Commissioner Alonzo: ...and they want to do a brief presentations. Mr. Odio: Parcher. Carlos. And that way) we'd have done everything that we said we would be today. Mr. Carlos Smith: This should be very brief. Our budget for next year is $4,494,433, which is four percent less than the current year, and on that we have taken - that includes funding three positions that we did not have last year. We were funded two positions - two programmer positions - were funded by the Fire Department - and the Cable Administrator position was funded by the cable license fee that we received. So those are being funded now out of our department, otherwise the budget would have been further reduced. This, current year we implemented the new payroll and personnel system and 'the,y accounts receivable system. The July solid waste bills, by the way, were 2� produced usingthe new accounts receivable system. The major objectives for this year are to complete installation of the building and zoning system. There is a Building and Zoning system that the Commission approved buying from ' Fort Lauderdale. We have been involved in negotiations, and our attorneys from the City of Miami and the City of Fort Lauderdale have been going , batck and forth on some terms, but we e -; xpect to have that implemented sometime early , next year. Also convert the lien system on the certificate of use and occupational licenses systems to the new receivables system, which will give us a centralized location where we will know what every property owes us as f opposed to having systems that do not talk to each other, so we will know this " property owes us so much for each of these things. The other thing that we are trying to work on that we expect to get done this year is to, do on inventory, a physical inventory of properties in the City to refine the r, accuracy of our property data base, and we are starting to do that. Wye;expect k; that to take about six months or no, but We've started to do that now._ Those rak are the major highlights. If you have any questions specific -'" p questions you } would like to address, I'd be more than happy to answer them. Commissioner Alonso: Yes, I do have some questions, but i guess I Will call you about some specifics about - for example, some orders in some departments j and I am referring specifically about Parks and Recreation and the system that x is followed through the computers. Mr. Smiths A work order system? r � x Commissioner Alonsos It does not reflect some informstioa that it seems to, me H I it's very easy to obtain through the system, In the computer system, but,Z. s' will get a copy and I'll show it to you... w t p} t� •' op k yy,, 5 :• w mr. amitht 01, fina. a a, '} Ctsiraisaie�ner Alonso: And perhaps it's something that t aon't think iti� . �L vary corapliested and you might be able to improve. Mr, tmith: by the Way, another thing that We are trying to do is to pu�chala this year an ad hoe reporting system Which will allow the departments in ttsls r; City -to be able to, you know, sitting on a terminal, just make up reports 6 Y ... things that they need. And we expect to have that, and hopefully bring it'to ; the Commission sometime before the and of December and have it implemented at }. the beginning of next year. Mr. ddioc What was the computer budget about three years ago? Commissioner Alonso: What page is computers? Mr. Surana: On page 45. Mr. Odioc Eighty-six, l'archer you remember what it was? Mr. Surana: I got it. Eighty-eight was $5.5 million. ; Mr. Odio: Eighty-six. Mr. Smith: I have a combined cable, and it went from - in 186-187, it was $6.4 million down to $4.5. Mr. Odio: I wanted to point that out because it's now down to, what? Mr. Smith: Four point five. Mr. Odio: Four point five, yet they're producing more than they were under the higher budget and they have gone down, yet they have absorbed cost of living increases, so they are very, very efficient. They're very efficient. Mr. Smith: We're a lot more efficient than we were three years ago. Commissioner Alonso: That's good. Do you have the information that you can provide that to me of the cost to the City of Miami when it comes to sending :— the bills to the citizens when it comes to Solid Waste and - mainly Solid Waste because it comes so many of these notifications go out. How much is the cost to the City? t Mr. Smith: I'm not too sure I can give you that cost. That comes from Finance, but we generate approximately 60,000 bills twice a year, and there;; are some bills that are sent monthly for late notices and so forth, but I'm a4 not too sure at this point in time exactly how many of those go out. . i Mr. Surana: Finance spent about $300,000 for Solid Waste collection of bills. k $306,600. a Commissioner Alonso: And could you provide to me how much is the cost par unit? t Mr. Surana: Sure, Commissioner Alonso: OK. When it comes to personnel in the Computers e' Department, the number of people that we're going to have? There are rumors flying around. Mr. Smith: We're going to have fifty. Fifty, next year. A Mr. Odio: So that's fifty people less next year. Parcher, thirty loss?w 186-187 Mr. Rodriguez: If you count cable also. In we had 77. Commissioner Alonso: How many? s j - Mr. Smith: Seventy-seven. .t- Mr. Qdjot Twenty-seven people less, -_ e �s V. 1 # im a Y t 3 CbMisilLft6t Aioneo: 86f 6tiffie11 wham ete hear these numbers I don't know if it's good of it'ra Nadi his because we are redueing ourselves to tha pol it that fohat's heppeaing to almost fritht4fting, I'm almost to the point Of not = U s going any farther in questioning itl Mr. Smith: I can assure you... 4 } Mr. Odio: Oki i agree with you. I think that we havo cut far enough. VA, have cut enough and, from this point on, we build. ate don't cut any More.'. But s think, and my philosophy was and ia, from five years ago, is that you really have to cut till you're really down to what you think you need fid then ` you erfe�ot. You cannot keepthe fat that we had... We would 'not be ,talking f 5 here with a balanced budget if we still have 30 people there, 50 therb # 1 y g and twenty -- we couldn't do it. We could not have done it. And the proof is r that they were not needed. And we didn't lay them off, either. It was just a question of not hiring. t` Mr. Smith: There's no question that they work very hard. I mean, some of the staff there stay late, come on weekends to get projects finished, and eo forth. Mr. Odio: That's right. Mr. Smiths They do work hard, and they are dedicated, but I think we have the staff that we need. Mr. Odiot We have what we need and from there you build on it. And I really believe, Commissioner, that no more layoffs should be happening, should happen. That we are down to where we need to be. Commissioner Alonso: Greatl OK, thank you. He said that he was going,to be = very brief. _ 8. BUDGET WORKSHOP (FY 90-91) DISCUSSION: PERSONNEL Mr. Odio: Do you want to hear from Angela in Personnel? Commissioner Alonso: Yes, thank you. Ms. Angela Bellamy: Commissioner... Commissioner Alonso: I won't keep you very long. r Ms. Bellamy: The Department of Personnel Management - I'm going to take it in sections, because we have acquired some additional functions that if you look at those together then it will appear as if we've grown, but what I'd like to do is begin by telling you what the functions that have been traditionally part of the Department of Personnel Management, we have realized a ten percent decrease. Four positions - from 30 to 26 positions. Of those, three positions are vacancies, so we've ended up with one layoff. We've also 4 acquired, in 1rY1911s budget the Office of Labor Relations, where there will be, a reduction of one position, and in Self -Insurance Fund, that entire Fund would be completely as part of the Department of Personnel Management.So in, addition to group benefits and safety, we're looking at claims, property and' 4 casualty and insurance. Those functions have previously been a part of tha Law Department. The functions that - the total description of the functions include the administrative... `i Commissioner Alonso: May I ask a question? Why this was done, and is it, better for the system in your opinion? Ms. Bellamy: Well, it makes sense that all of those functions are personnel functions, and now I look at it as an opportunity for us to look at the total picture of not only safety, which was a part of us, but looping at how we manage some of the liability and claims, and so forth. Looking mt that etAd � analyzing how we can reduce those claims by including it a_ part of `:a maintenance program for the City. So, It we look at what bee bee*u bappsAiag �- and then we start building a program that will be dexigned to brig` ab t R' 4�r•_ rr !' 40 goptix< o i►,, 1 � � ��r � LL of s ioyee�a�wareness, really getting in and trying to ist AtOl weeha� ar striae of the ptoblems, trying to reduce accident#, and , eal opportunity to reduce some of the costs to the City.: Commissioner Alonso: OK, think you. Me. be,liainy: The other functions include the administrative support that will be provided by myself, )tone Larrieu, and we have Renee Jones who, in addition �F= to being responsible for the financial aspects of the department, will be working with Group Benefits and Medical. I'm going to go briefly over the - functions, in applicant processing, that's where the public normally co&68 into the Employment Office and they go and apply for a position, and so forth We have employees there, and we've reduced that by one position because we know that we're looking at less employees, so it makes sense to reduce the ;fin number of people there. Mr. Odio: Again, we had 51 people. Ms. Bellamy: That was about five years ago, we had 51 people and now we're;; talking 26.;:_ Mr. Odio: Twenty-six plus Ms, Bellamy: In the Division of Classification and Pay, that's an area that's extremely busy, right now, because they're responsible for not only conducting — audits and going in and making sure that we're in compliance with the Pair Labor Standards Act, but also they're responsible for calculating layoffs, and that process is extremely difficult... Commissioner Alonso: That's very important in our City. Ms. Bellamy: You wouldn't believe the man hours that it takes to go through that, but we actually, in accordance with the Civil Service rules, we have a_ - procedure that provides points and so we have to go in when we are told that a position is to be abolished, that may not be, you know, we never know who = exactly will be hit, because it deals with a complicated process, and so forth. So, it takes a lot of time for the staff to work on that. We're responsible for medicals and we provide the pre -employment physicals. We - provide the annual physicals in Police and Fire Departments. Now, Police has y= the annual physicals and is based on the age of the employee -- and the Fire Department - as to how often they have the physical. We also have the drug - screens. That's part of the pre -employment physical and any other areas where we have employees, for example, who have been injured on the job, and so " forth, or who have problems being able to continue working in the department. - to analyze whether they can continue working in their job. In that area, we will be concentrating - this is another opportunity with claims - finally trying to get together a light duty program, because we have several employees. who are injured on the job and then we find, from our experience, that.if they t- are allowed to go home and stay home, they get very comfortable with that. ,- And so, because they still receive 100 percent of their salary, they're i= comfortable doing that at home, So what we're going to try to do, and we're ,. working on that, and that's one of our major goals, is put together a lighta- duty program so they're not at home. We don't gat them comfortable staying ht home and getting a paycheck. We give them some other duties that they can do i in the City. So that's one of the main goals that we'll be working on. Records maintenance - we have, the number of records that we have are incredible in the City, and because of State law, we have a requirement- to keep employees files for employees who have terminated for fifty years, . and that was reduced. It used to be 75 years, so we and up with a whole lot - of files. We also have State record retention requirements for even applicant files, to keep those for three years. What we're trying to do for next year, and we probably will be soliciting the City Clerk's help, In to look, at microfilming in some way because we're using a lot of space. I know a lot of ; other departments have that problem, so we need to have some way of keeping- the files other than keeping the large employee files. But that area is responsible for not only keeping the files but also processing all of the *- paperwork. So that would be not only people who come in from the outside, new - employees, but it would be any type of personnel action - anniversary }k increase, any actions that occur. In recruitment and selection, that's an professional staff is responsible for analymng the area that the; noncompetitive applicants. Those are the people who are not tested, We've reduced that by one again, because it makes mono* that if we'ro taking in f 49 BOp►t11�Or 5 iiliQ 3�ry r �r m . ry 4�Fj a � less employees that we Wouldn't concentrate as couch in that area. Ho�vei�, .- s valve been able to concentrate on some other areas# too, which iota proud ofs - such as for Firefighter selection, we have gone over to the Fire Department, #F k we've devised our own selection process for them, and we've actually had a staff member who Would otherwise be processing applications Who's been able to teach them how *6 should give interviews, so that we have a uniform system 6f interviewing the firefighter applicants. in validation, although we reduced ., it by one, that's the most technical area that we have. That is the area thit °. is responsible for devising the written examinations that we give and that means these people have to be very aware of the state of the art, you know, the psychological association requirements, the uniform guidelines of the employee selection procedures, and so forth. And they make sure that they go in and study the jobs, and make sure that the knowledge, skills and abilities that are required in order to perform the jobs are accurately tested. at)they're responsible for primarily testing Police, Fire, the clerical series, and Public Works employees. And then, in Recruitment and Selection, they would look at the applications and resumes of people who had not tested. f Training has really been a function that is extremely important, and I'm = hoping, in future years, that we'll be able as we get - well, we're now at the point where we have the workforce that we need - that they need the proper training, so we'd really like to concentrate a lot of efforts in that way so that we have the best employees possible. So, sometime in the future, we'd � ` like to give not only training to executives and mid -managers, but also we B y B would like to have a customer relations type approach for the clerical employees, and so forth, so that when the public calls we have sort of a City image, you know, a good image for the City. Labor Relations is a new function i part of the Department of Personnel Management. They will continue the responsibility of negotiating with the four labor unions that we have and also continuing with the pension negotiations, handling of grievances, and so forth. And one of the areas that we would like to add to Labor Relations is - to have a team approach and make sure that we have, in addition to the Labor i Relations Officer, a person from the Law Department who has been working with us, and also Management and Budget, and any other specialty areas where we _! would need their expertise as part of the bargaining team. Now, in Group Benefits part of Self -Insurance, we have five employees, and one of the main objectives this year, in addition to working with Labor Relations because we've been negotiating, we're still in negotiations with two unions - and " that's IAFF (International Association of Fire Fighters) and the General Employees - so the staff is providing technical support in terms of all of the 1{ insurance items and so forth. They've been working with that and we're trying to put together a new - we've devised, as you know, an RFP that was sent out, _j j and on November loth it will be received and we will start analyzing that. i Labor Management Committee work together, composed of the General Employees and IAFF, and management, and we're waiting for a response, hoping to have a multiple option plan that will reflect state of the art types of medical benefits for the employees. And, lastly, as part of safety, I'm proud to say that the City received the Dade County Citizens Safety Council Award for Best Government Safety Programs this year. -; Commissioner Alonso: That's good. Ms. Bellamy: In terms of - I've kind of hit on some of the goals and objectives for next year - we are very proud in Validation that we will now ihave, as of December, we expect to have the new police officer examination. This has been a project that we've been working on. We have been using a police officer examination since the early 70's and, as you know, the ji demographics of the City of Miami, the types of crime, has changed - the whole ? direction of police work has changed, especially in a large City, a large area such as Miami, and therefore our focus had to change and we're very pleased thus far, and we think that we will have an excellent examination that we'll be able to begin giving in June of next year. So we've been working, we've had a contract with a firm, but the staff has also worked many hours with the Police Department and with the firm, and we expect to have a state of the art police officer examination. x. z� Commissioner Alonso: That's wonderful! Dr. Daniels should with this. Ms. Bellamy: Yes. Commissioner Alonsos Me, too. be very pleased C; September 1990 1 } � Y } i 8 G - Me. Bellamyf That concludes my presentation, It you have any questions, like to entertitn thecae at this time. Yh CbM dgionor Alonso: Not at this time, thank you very much, Angela. 4 Ma. Bellamy: thank you. `Zt YyitiwW=YrrwirWYfi.rriiiiYirilkii..WiM1Yi.r.sill.riwtYii�:iiGiar�:�'.i+Y�L.iriilriliYilriirirWrrrYYi.Y.r�WisilticLL�t :. `=` yyA��''� `4F3h 9. ttMG1T WOUSHOP (FY 90-91) DISCUSSION1 PARKS AND RECREATION. - rwrrwr—i.ar3ilW.4—JY.— rrirrrr.w.i.rr---------------- Mr. Odio: Commnissioner, do you want to do the Parks and Recreation? Commissioner Alonsos Yes, if they're ready, I'm ready. Mr. Odio: Rudert B the if y way, you notice in the new budget .book, f..� Commissioner - — Commissioner Alonso: Yes. Mr. Odios For the first time ever, the last section - Mr. Surana: Mr. Odio: The "r;" section - I didn't have time to do what I wanted to do, _ which is to have a picture - that for the first time in the book, we have a - description of each active park - the number of acres - — - Commissioner Alonso: Yes, I know. That was very good. - Mr. Odio: And the staff. I wanted to put a picture also, but we didn't have time to take a picture of each park, but it gives you the staff per park and _ - the activities per park. Commissioner Alonso: Excellent. _ Mr. Odio: And we know the cost per ark - we can p p provide that, I think. _ Mr. Albert Ruder: Since you're the only Commissioner here and I sat down with a-- you about two weeks ago... Commissioner Alonso: Yes. Mr. Ruders ...and we went over the budget in detail, I really didn't have like a formal presentation, but if you want me to go through a formal one, I ..' can, or else I could just answer an additional f q .questions. ' Commissioner Alonso: No, I don't think we need to. Some of the things., — concerning the budget and the work of Parks and Recreation, one of tte concerns that been having and complaints that I have, and I don't knows especially at the budget this year where we have so many limitations, what's going to be the situation with the people who are working an part-tirue workers? People who have been working for years for the City of Miami, some people in day care services, people who have been with us for over 15 years Mr. Ruder: Right. - Commissioner Alonso: I have heard - and you tell me whether this is true or: not - some employees that have worked for the City in the neighborhood of Qppr^" tan years, to give a right time, those people say that whenever the City needs` a to cutf the are laid off for a Y period of time. They are part-timers, e:vep though they wanted to be full -tithe. What is the case, and do we have any gray that we can improve this situation through P g people who have left the City of Miami? Have we taken this into account, and why for such a long time nothing was done to improve the situation? Mr. Odio: Commissioner, we're not going to lay off any part-timers, Commissioner Alonso: Good, I'm glad to hear that, but ghat about the people who scanted to be full-time for such a long time? Why Vasa t it poo�r�bi+� through the years? t } a. Mr. Odio: hecaUst the creation of he wasn't there, I was. Commissioner Alonsot Yeah, you were, yes. r Mr. Odio3 The creation of the part-timo rs came about when the first finanaiai crisis hit the City about 1081, 182, and that's when we lost the WA employees. In 180 we had a thousand additional employees in the City. .Th+ek s � are all employees we no longer have. They were CFTA. They were paid t* the Federal Government. All of a sudden the Federal Government ends the program and we're caught with no monies to pay for our people. So, then we began to look at ways of how do we have people in the Parks to man the parks when we i:1Y= don't have the money, and that's how the part-time people came about it concordance with the union. The union agreed at that time that it was the w best way out because we needed only people for three or four hours in the m afternoons, and not to have persons there all day long. For instance, a recreation specialist would go to a park and sit there... Commissioner Alonso: The day care employees are included in the same groups that you referred to? Mr. Odiot Day-care are included, yes. And what happened is that they were - sitting there when we had City employees who were recreation specialists sitting there from eight o'clock in the morning until four and nothing happening in that park because the kids were in school. So we developed the part-time system to have people in the parks when they counted, that is, when you have kids in the park. And that's how the part-time people began to - assist because of the lack of funds at that time because of the CETA problem. Commissioner Alonso: But we have kept them as part-time through the years. Mr. Odio: And they were kept as part time - No, but... Commissioner Alonso: It's because it's better for the system, or because... - Mr. Odio: No, it's better financially. Commissioner Alonso: ...their desire to become full-timers was not heard? Mr. Odio: Well, a lot of them don't want to be full-time. They have - indicated to us, time and time again, we like the part-time because we have something else we want to do. Commissioner Alonso: But somehow I hear different stories. I'm quite aware- that many of them would like to be full-time. ; Mr. Odio: There are some that want to be full-time - = Commissioner Alonsot Some are very much.afraid to say so. Somehow you receive letters, sometimes people don't sign the letters, sometimes the word comes through a friend, and they come and say this is a very good friend of mine but please don't mention the name. And sometimes you wonder how can we help the system, and if so, when someone leaves the City, do we have an= opportunity to move ahead and help these individuals? And why it was not done Tf before, because... Mr. Odiot That's the way it should be done - that if we have a vacancy, that you move that person up from the part-time ranks that want to move up to a — full -time. That should be done, and we have done it. Mr. Ruder: If I can add - Over the two-year period that this administration r— has been involved with the department, in all cases, every time there's boots a full-time position open, we have looked from inside and promoted people. And, in the last two years, there's been 16 positions that two years ago they wore part-time and 18 full-time positions opened and we took part-timers and moved them into full-time positions. Commissioner Alonso: And when you're talking about the 18, are you talking .about men working in parks, or are you talking also about women working on stay cars? #ram v ` x 52 Septr-►► � f Mr, Audert Teel I'm talking about combined, riay=Dare is a different situation, which I know I've spoken to you before and I know you've indidated that you would like a tour of the day-care centers, i think that is en dro& k. that we need to spend a lot of time on, and I think it Would take a varY lohg d t- d it hav_e a lot of reatr16tt6u tithe to explain, but sa that you un ers an in how we generate money for the day cares because there's an e*tating - lr ordinance that caps the amount of money that we're able to charge and we're ih 4�c .- C,."- the .process of working and revising that ordinance and that's one of the 1 ►x things we wanted to brief you on Nq Mr. Odiot It was the Rosario Kennedy ordinance._ Mr. Rudert Yes, it happened in September... ; Commissioner Alonso: I beg your pardon? tt ;. Mr. Suranat We lost 90,000 revenue. Mr. Odiot Rosario Kennedy passed an ordinance limit, and we lost $90,000. -, Mr. Rudert This happened back, I think it was September of 187, so that is part of the whole area of day care. I think we need to spend - and since also �- you're the Commissioner assigned to Parks, I thought that we were going to spend a lot of time to go over that and for you to visit the day care centers - and understand that why it is that way. But the bottom line is, in day care, right now, we don't have any money right now to make any of those part-timers full-time. We just don't have it, based on the contribution that the general i` fund gives day-care and the fees are generated as a result of that cap. F Commissioner Alonso: Do we have enough space as to increase the number of children that we take? x Mr. Ruder: Yes. The number of children that we take right now, we're almost -_ at capacity. You know, we work with the State and their regulations on the _ number of slots that are available, and they're almost at capacity. But our - - ability to generate more money is very limited by that ordinance and the = different yearly household incomes that are in that ordinance which, again, was something that I wanted to spend a long time with you to explain. Commissioner Alonso: OK, we'll - - Mr. Ruder: But, to answer your question, the 18 that I'm talking about, that was department -wide. It could have involved Parks, it could have involved the stadiums, when we had the stadiums - right now we don't have the stadiums -- = but we felt that by doing that we would at least show the employees we have about 177 employees part-time, year round, so we're obviously not ever going.;- to be able to please all of them - but part-time employment is a phenomerea that every Parks Department in the nation - and in this county, if you call_ every. Parks Department, they all survive on part-time people,. especially_ because our recreation periods, you,know, it's not like a normal work day that. you start at eight and finish at five, you know, you have different programs. "= Sometimes they're two-hour programs, sometimes - like the Manager said, a lot _ of these people don't want to be full - they might be a teacher teaching for ' }— two hours, so our policy has always been to try to, whenever there's opening, if someone retires, or someone, heaven forbid, passes away, to.alw4ya `t try to help -the one who is already inside and who is a part-timer. And that's what we've been able to do with 18 of them, so far, in two years._ ;4 Commissioner Alonsot OK. Are we seriously considering selling any of the r' parks? � Mr. Ruder: We're doing a study,now, of all the mini -parks, -just for information purposes and to share with the Commissioners what we find in each of those mini -parks. It's going to take a while because we're trying to give you an idea of what the usage of the park is and we're trying to observe it at different times of the day. Any plans to do any of that would cos►e to the Commission and would be subject to public hearings, and everything else►, {*�s Commissioner Alonso: What's the name of the park that is close to the itus¢tstn of science? x - Mr, Rudert There's Wainwright... -# 531fT�} 1 r d Cotniaaiofidr Al6neot We a beautiful park. Mrr Audert Alice Vainwright, is that the one, or Triangle? C6ftlssioner A16asot ...very narrow shtranee, and theft it'a gorgeous viaat► t r_ d fir. Rudert The museum in downtown or the museum right here? ' Commissioner Alonsot No, no, no, right here, in... `,. Mr. Odiot That's Alice Vaihvright, by the ocean. It's a beautiful park. ,. Commissioner Alonso: How large is that park? �V Mr. Odiot It's about, I believe it might be - I think it's about l0 acres. I'm going by memory. z Mr. Rudert I think it's roughly 10 acres. Mr. Odiot But that's prime property. Mr. Ruders I don't have that right - it's not one of the major staffed parka. 'a — That's achy it's not here. It's not staffed. Commissioner Alonso: So, actually, this list that we have here is... Mr. Odio: Are the 46 active parks. Commissioner Alonso: OK. Mr. Ruder: The ones that are staffed by actively by active, recreation t. programs. CommissionerAlonso: I see, OK, fine. I think that we went over most of the ''r= things. - Mr. Ruders I do want to bring one point up Commissioner Alonso: I'll call you if I have any further questions. Mr. Ruder: There was one important point that I know the Manager told me to,€ ' make sure that you understand, and that was in regards to. Virginia Beach.. r'. Commissioner Alonso: Oh, yes, he mentioned to me, briefly, but if you go a'` little bit more in... Mr. Ruder: All right, well, the bottom line is that although originally there +` E was some talk about closing the beach during the winter season, we now have et plan in which we're going to keep it open all year round. t xM _ Commiasioner Alonso: That's much better. Mr. Ruders Yes. That plan, you know, we're still working out the detailsl. of far as whether we're going to have, you know, as far as the lifeguard.° situation. The main coat in that park 1s the, lifeguards. They're .very expensive and a lot of beaches throughout the area are more and more gains to' have no lifeguards with vary clear signs saying: "Swimming at your own risk," and we're evaluating the whole situation right now with risk management$ but i u think you can be assured that our plans are to keep it opens Mr. Odio: That's the way it used to be before we started charging admission. We are charging admission so we provide lifeguards. Before the admizaton feee', the beach was open to the public before at their own risk T that's bafore ;. started this admission charge, so all we're doing is going back to the way it was, for always. Mr. Ruder: Yes, and since then that beach has been impraved trameod*usly. ti Commissioner Alonso: For many years it was open that way, } Mr. Adios For many yoars it was opsn. 54 kli i lS RY 1ST `x`bTF; it = .�1 ',: _, _, ,-. -- --•— . .:z "-'w`_YC .�"`sfi '^' _ q� � �z•s.� t yi' F+ 1.24'/ : 1Y.P �c` ?.�fi��i,, £ ''' z3v_�' _ z :,. Oonimes►ionar A1oi►a6: And when it cornea to liability, do We have ar►j► prtble YV rp in the past Mt. Odio: None, r t'erftandett We had a boating accident. r — Mr, Odio: But that Wasn't... Mr. Ruder: We have checked with risk management - that is no longer a party telling us, *hat We �s=- +uesb, of the Law Department, but they have given us a memo like Jorge said, there has, need to do because, according to the records, eight or nine years there thiniC, been one accident with a boat, but in about has not been a drowning, or anything. Commissioner Alonso: Thank God. Mr.. Ruder: We are planning to have, like, a ranger who would be capable —he if anything is — would .be driving around and at least provide some type of help enough signs everywhere with the proper k_ needed, but the main intent is to put the size of the beach, somehow, to wording on it, and also to try to narrow keep the beach open all year round. In a _ better control, so that we can also been talking to the wind surfers. It's supposed to positive may, we've be, like, the fifth - one of the top beaches for wind surfing in the country - — maybe number five - and in a positive way we've been talking to them. They been trying to came to us when they heard that it was going to close and we've host a couple of come up with solutions together, and they're going to try to for that wind surfing tournaments there that we hope will generate more money - beach, which should be very helpful for the future. Commissioner Alonso: From what months to what month we will keep the beach open like this, and when we will have... Mr. Odio: All year round. - Commissioner Alonso: But we will not have any guards, not through the year? Mr. Ruder: Well, right now, that's what we plan. We're going to use the = winter period as a test which is, you know, but we think that with the proper a signage we won't need guards there. commissioner Alonso: Yes, but remember what happens during winter. It might. not be - even though we don't have winter, but we believe we do. uder: Right, so we'll be evaluating the situation very closely and if vs. Mr. R g Y feel that the need is there in the summer we'll have to make some changes, but - - Commissioner Alonso: During the summer we have done that in the past? Mr. Ruder: What? Commissioner Alonso: We had no...° J no one there, no one. It started back Mr. Odic: For many years we had in +i _ 1986 - i Commissioner Alonso: Because it's a beautiful beach. Mr. Odio: We received grant money and we improved the beach., and we dacided, to charge admission, but it's costing us a lot of money.re Commissioner Alonso: OK, thank you. �r - Mr. Odic: We did all of what ws were going to do today, so what we have planned for tomorrow is - can you come tomorrow? r£ i Commissioner Alonso; Sure. $�£ fi Mr. OdQ; We're planning to do, at nine, Public Works, and thenz�prgi r-, Sorvicsa Actm3nistratioa, and Conference*, Conventions and Pubs. ir And then the other dop+artM*At" are ,just the smaller oAos, and wq Con d© Cottimissioner Alonsot Oki i+ubiic V6eks� l'd definitely like to hear frois tti�te►. & � Mr, (idiot OK, �we'ii do that at nine. { r u• Comissioner Alonsot Yeah, line. ., MrOdiot OX Commissioner Alonsot I don't really have many questions for some of thO fl� departments after going over the budget, and perhaps rather than'- I meats, p 6 6 g P t, the rest of the Commission comes, it's fine with me - but, Mr. Cdiot I don't think they're coming. I think the Mayor... , 'Commissioner Alonso: if not, perhaps we can be moving ahead with other g y things. They don't have to be here. Mr. Odio: OK, so then we'll have Public Works and then General Services. You did Conferences and Conventions already? ' ,f} Commissioner Alonsot Yes, I did. Mr. Odio: So we'll do just Public Works and GSA. _ Commissioner Alonso: I might have some other questions, but I can call them, directly. Mr. Odio: OK. Commissioner Alonsot OK. I'd like to hear from - I'll tell you inthe morning if I have some questions about some of the other items. Mr. Odio: Yes, we can bring them - Commissioner Alonso: Right. OK, rather than having everyone here. Mr. Odio: Right, so have here Public Works, GSA, and that's it. y <, Commissioner Alonsot OK. Mr. Odiot Thank you, Commissioner. Commissioner Alonsot OK, thank you to you. s MW MMM71M AWOUFUM AT 5:50 P.M. �r 7. 't �4 rat �3 r ;r p; fir' i s' � 1 56 Bptsr .. F i