http://disqus.com/by/Salmon2/enTue, 10 Nov 2009 02:10:12 -0000http://www.pnwlocalnews.com/kitsap/bir/news/69622072.html#comment-22524681<p>Oh, and the Review reporter left the Ethics Board meeting before Sally Adams got there. </p>Salmon2Tue, 10 Nov 2009 02:10:12 -0000http://www.pnwlocalnews.com/kitsap/bir/news/69622072.html#comment-22523945<p>This is all timed to divert attention from the Ethics Board's report on the Knobloch complaint.</p>Salmon2Tue, 10 Nov 2009 01:37:43 -0000http://www.pnwlocalnews.com/kitsap/bir/news/69622072.html#comment-22522759<p>OK Bainbridge Review. What gives? Not one line of coverage on the Dombrowski complaint against Knobloch filed a week ago until this Rate Payer complaint gets filed and now you are Johnny-on-the-spot when this one gets filed. I hope you are not biased in your reporting.</p>Salmon2Tue, 10 Nov 2009 01:04:20 -0000http://www.pnwlocalnews.com/kitsap/bir/news/election/64456287.html#comment-20344773<p>The City paid a lot of money and invested a lot of time for the Benchmarking Study of 2007 by CH2M Hill. I suggest you read it.</p><p>Here is the link:<br><a href="http://www.ci.bainbridge-isl.wa.us/docs_forms_apps.aspx" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank" title="http://www.ci.bainbridge-isl.wa.us/docs_forms_apps.aspx">http://www.ci.bainbridge-is...</a></p>Salmon2Sun, 18 Oct 2009 13:08:32 -0000http://www.pnwlocalnews.com/kitsap/bir/news/election/64456342.html#comment-20344762<p>The City paid a lot of money and invested a lot of time for the Benchmarking Study of 2007 by CH2M Hill. I suggest you read it.</p><p>Here is the link:<br><a href="http://www.ci.bainbridge-isl.wa.us/docs_forms_apps.aspx" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank" title="http://www.ci.bainbridge-isl.wa.us/docs_forms_apps.aspx">http://www.ci.bainbridge-is...</a></p>Salmon2Sun, 18 Oct 2009 13:08:10 -0000http://www.pnwlocalnews.com/kitsap/bir/news/election/64456607.html#comment-20344744<p>The City paid a lot of money and invested a lot of time for the Benchmarking Study of 2007 by CH2M Hill. I suggest you read it.</p><p>Here is the link:<br><a href="http://www.ci.bainbridge-isl.wa.us/docs_forms_apps.aspx" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank" title="http://www.ci.bainbridge-isl.wa.us/docs_forms_apps.aspx">http://www.ci.bainbridge-is...</a></p>Salmon2Sun, 18 Oct 2009 13:07:50 -0000http://www.pnwlocalnews.com/kitsap/bir/news/election/64456507.html#comment-20344734<p>The City paid a lot of money and invested a lot of time for the Benchmarking Study of 2007 by CH2M Hill. I suggest you read it.</p><p>Here is the link:<br><a href="http://www.ci.bainbridge-isl.wa.us/docs_forms_apps.aspx" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank" title="http://www.ci.bainbridge-isl.wa.us/docs_forms_apps.aspx">http://www.ci.bainbridge-is...</a></p>Salmon2Sun, 18 Oct 2009 13:07:26 -0000http://www.pnwlocalnews.com/kitsap/bir/news/election/64456187.html#comment-20344686<p>The City paid a lot of money and invested a lot of time for the Benchmarking Study of 2007 by CH2M Hill. I suggest you read it.</p><p>Here is the link:<br><a href="http://www.ci.bainbridge-isl.wa.us/docs_forms_apps.aspx" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank" title="http://www.ci.bainbridge-isl.wa.us/docs_forms_apps.aspx">http://www.ci.bainbridge-is...</a><br></p>Salmon2Sun, 18 Oct 2009 13:06:07 -0000http://www.pnwlocalnews.com/kitsap/bir/news/election/64456422.html#comment-20344455<p>Sorry ... the post was cut short. Here are the rest of the critical recommendations.</p><p>Council and staff. Refreshed business plans and staffing plans for each Department can <br>then reflect these service levels. <br>− Conduct a customer survey/focus groups <br>− Develop business plan and staffing plan per Department</p><p>4) Reduce the number of committees and provide a project manager to manage <br>communication and interaction <br>Engaging the public in governance and project is paramount to success. However, COBI <br>has double the average number of committees/commissions of its peers. In addition, the <br>cost of supporting these committees/commissions is not clearly documented or tracked, <br>but staff reactions point to these costs being very high. The recommendation suggests a <br>complete review of the committees/commissions and a strong push to consider <br>reduction of the number of committees/commissions. <br>5) Process improvement of the planning and public works service delivery <br>These Departments represent the largest investment of both staff and cost for the City <br>and also have the most interaction with the citizens and community. Both of these <br>Departments have opportunities for performance improvement. Fundamentally, <br>performance improvement for both of these Departments is linked heavily to the <br>processes that they use. This recommendation suggests closer scrutiny of how they <br>Departments function and what business processes drive the delivery of services. <br>The importance of these five recommendations cannot be stressed enough. The first three are of <br>paramount importance. Without the first three being discussed and moved forward, the City <br>will not be able to take advantage of any other improvements. If these critical <br>recommendations are accomplished, the city can maintain their current staff levels. If the <br>critical recommendations are not accomplished, the city’s staff levels will continue to grow at <br>historic levels of 2.3 to 4 percent.</p><p>Back to my own comments. Staffing levels are down considerably from when the study was done and a some of these things were beginning to be addressed. With the huge management exodus, much of the beginnings of the work may be lost. Mark Dombrowski was bringing order out of chaos. I hope the changes he was causing will remain in place.</p>Salmon2Sun, 18 Oct 2009 12:58:20 -0000http://www.pnwlocalnews.com/kitsap/bir/news/election/64456422.html#comment-20343993<p>You cite the benchmarking study and the first thing you mention is overstaffed. In order to be well-informed you should study the entire document. It points at problems the City Council does not ever want to address. Here are the "Critical Recommendations" CH2M HILL defined before ever working on the staffing details.</p><p>It is interesting how people want to pick only specific things out of the document and not take it as as whole.</p><p>Here is the link to the entire document.</p><p><a href="http://www.ci.bainbridge-isl.wa.us/documents//benchmarking_Final_07.pdf" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank" title="http://www.ci.bainbridge-isl.wa.us/documents//benchmarking_Final_07.pdf">http://www.ci.bainbridge-is...</a></p><p>Critical Recommendations <br>A review of all of the benchmarking data, interviews of City staff, interaction with the City <br>Council, and benchmarking assessment has brought five critical recommendations to the <br>forefront. The five recommendations are placed in order, starting with the most fundamental <br>and important at the top. <br>1) Agree on governance roles/responsibilities <br>The City is struggling with the lack of definitive and understood roles of the City <br>Council as a whole, Council members, the Mayor, and City Administrator. This lack of <br>understanding is creating significant barriers to achieving effective governance of the <br>City. Coming to a common and agreed upon definition of roles and responsibilities is <br>the first fundamental step to improving service delivery. <br>2) Focus leadership around the Strategic Themes and consistently communicate them <br>All of the individual City Council member and the Mayor have individual impressions <br>of the direction for the City. However, there is more similarity than difference among <br>those individual impressions. The challenge is, even with the work previously <br>performed on the priorities of government, the City does not have a common vision. <br>This lack of common vision creates moving priorities, in-effective conversations among <br>the Council and Mayor, and lack of direction for the City staff. The common vision must <br>be re-visited, agreed upon, communicated, and finally, used to focus all efforts of the <br>City. <br>3) Understanding and setting levels of service in concert with strategic direction <br>Both from the City staff and the City council there was little understanding of the levels <br>of service that are currently being provided to the citizens. This is caused both by the <br>fact that citizen and/or customer level of service expectations have not been surveyed in <br>many years, and the conversation about service levels has not occurred between the <br></p>Salmon2Sun, 18 Oct 2009 12:49:41 -0000http://www.pnwlocalnews.com/kitsap/bir/news/64534622.html#comment-20250817<p>I am wondering what your motivation is by bringing this up for discussion outside of the scientific forum provided by the USGS and COBI scientists working on the project?</p>Salmon2Sat, 17 Oct 2009 01:26:58 -0000