Consultant finds 251 ways for Cedar Rapids Public Works to improve

CEDAR RAPIDS - An extra $200 million in new streets money over 10 years - and $400 million or more expected to build a flood-protection system - makes it a good time to review the operation of the city's 173-employee Public Works Department.

That's one of the observations in the 312-page report by the Matrix Consulting Group, Mountain View, Calif., which comes with 251 recommendations on how to improve.

'We're very serious about making sure this department is the absolute best,” City Manager Jeff Pomeranz said. 'And we're not at that point based on these 251 recommendations. … When you look at this 251, there are some pretty hard-hitting ones in here.”

Pomeranz called 'extremely important” the recommendations related to the Public Works Department's job of managing and inspecting city construction projects.

In the report's executive summary, Matrix Consulting highlights the department's inspection of public improvements that are part of private developments, and calls the city's work 'ineffective.”

In addition, the Matrix report states that the city 'ineffectively” manages the way utility companies cut into the city's streets to fix or make changes to utility property.

The city should enforce a five-year moratorium on making utility cuts in newly paved streets, should establish and assess a pavement degradation fee to utilities for all utility cuts and should in properly inspect the work, the Matrix report states.

The Matrix report also recommends that the city use a team approach so that engineers who design projects work through to the project's completion along with city paraprofessional engineering inspectors. Currently, the engineers and inspectors operate in 'silos” apart from one another, the report states.

The report also recommends organizational changes, some of which will be easy to make, Pomeranz said.

For instance, Matrix states that the city forestry operation and city crews that mow along streets should move to the Parks and Recreation Department, and department employees who handle permits for development should move to the city's Development Services Department.

Finding 'large gaps” in the Public Works Department's traffic engineering operation, the consulting firm recommends that the city fill vacant positions; study the 10 locations with the most crashes; do a better job of conducting traffic-count assessments; and work to better optimize timing of traffic signals.

In a survey of Public Works Department employees, Matrix found a 'concern” among employees that the department's leadership does not deal with 'poor performers” effectively and doesn't communicate in a timely manner.

The Matrix report's recommendations come to a Public Works Department as the department and the city now are able to begin to look inward after the city's historic 2008 flood, more than six years of flood recovery and the start of planning for a new flood-protection system, Pomeranz said.

'As we now look post-flood with all the progress that has occurred, we have more time to make sure our city organization is operating effectively and efficiently,” the city manager said.

Mayor Ron Corbett said the Public Works Department also has to hustle to protect the city against three or four near-miss floods since the 2008 flood.

'The Public Works Department, frankly, has been overwhelmed,” the mayor said.

Corbett called the Matrix recommendations 'a positive” opportunity to improve city government and improve the Public Works Department, which is perhaps the department residents encounter the most in their lives, he said.

City Council member Kris Gulick, chairman of the council's Budget and Administrative Services Committee, said the Matrix review is 'exactly the kind of thing we need to be doing all the time inside the city so we can figure out how to better serve and how to better use our resources.”

The city paid Matrix $49,900 for its work.

Pomeranz said Matrix's recommendations range from big to Recommendation 188, the proper way to fill a pothole.

'I'm not saying we've been doing it wrong, but this is really a guide that takes best practices from across the country,” Pomeranz said. '… It's important to get an outside report card sometimes. I think it's a strength that the city is willing to take this kind of view.”