TO: CITY OF UNION RESIDENTS
FROM: Jeff Wise, City Administrator
DATE: 4/16/08
RE: CURRENT EVENTS
Dear Citizens:
In this letter you will find information relating the current events within the City, as well as an update regarding law enforcement, animal control, and ordinance issues. Also within this letter is a brief summary of the responses the City received from the questions in the last newsletter, and a brief response to some of those items. Additionally, because of the response we received from the last letter, and the fact that this seems to be an effective means of obtaining feedback from you, the Citizens of Union, regarding the City's operations and services, we are including another set of questions which we hope you will respond to and give us more feedback so we may make better informed decisions for the operations of the City.
n Law Enforcement within Union --
The City began receiving services from the Sheriff's Department under contract beginning February 15, 2008. Although the contract is for minimal services -- equal to one full time officer -- the Sheriff's Department has been busy within Union responding to calls for service. Since starting the contract, they have responded to numerous burglary and other calls, and have had notable success in following up and resolving the calls. However, it needs to be noted that the contract does not include ordinance enforcement or animal control services at this time. The City is working on a separate agreement with them to handle the animal issues, and is working on a plan for ordinance enforcement, but currently the City is still responsible for those issues. Of course, if it is an emergency or involves a threat to life or property (viscous dog, for example), you should still contact either 911 or the Sheriff's Department to report it, as they do respond to imminent danger calls. For other issues involving animals or ordinances (barking dogs, dogs at large, weeds, etc.), what we would ask you to do is submit a complaint form to City Hall, as we are keeping them for when we do either have an agreement in place for animal control service, or when we begin working on ordinance enforcement issues in general, we will have a starting point and records of items to follow up on.
Animals in Union--
Regarding animals in Union, I would note that dogs must still be licensed and controlled within your property, as we can still issue citations for not doing so. Additionally, we are working on a plan to start stricter ordinance enforcement, and as that happens, citations will likely be issued to non-complying animal owners. Owners of other types of animals (horses, chickens, etc.) must also be aware of the City's ordinances regarding such animals, as we are going to be moving forward on enforcement of these issues as well.
n Burn Permits/Ordinance
As you are likely aware from the past newsletters as well as from purchasing permits this year, the City recently adopted many changes to the burning regulations in town. If you have questions relating to burning in town, please feel free to contact City Hall or the Fire Chief with questions. Again, although we are still working on a long term plan for ordinance enforcement, anyone found out of compliance with the ordinance can still nonetheless be cited for the violations.
Zoning Issues Within the City
As you may recall from previous news letters, and as you can see in this mailer, the City has been working on Zoning Ordinances which, if passed, will revise the City's Zoning Ordinance. As also previously noted, the City had applied for, and now received, a grant to help assist in reassessing parts of the City's Comprehensive Plan. Over the course of the next several months to the next couple of years, the City is hoping to work towards a comprehensive review of the City's zoning plan, and hopefully update both the current zoning within the City as well as the Zoning Ordinance itself to better reflect and address the needs of the City. This task will take a considerable amount of time and effort to accomplish, but will hopefully result in changes that fit Union's needs, as well as provide current information that can help promote economic development. In the coming months, please look for notices of public meetings on these issues, and please attend if possible, as this process is designed to use public input for creating a plan to guide the City in the future, and in order to reflect the needs of the citizens, we need your input.
n Response to Previous City Questionnaire
We received approximately 70 questionnaires back from citizens, with many of them containing comments and feedback on the City's operations. Although I would certainly welcome the opportunity to address all of the comments and question results, and provide information I believe addresses each item, space and time limits unfortunately do not allow it within this format. Therefore, I will attempt to address the items I believe most relevant, and would note that if there is any particular item you would like to either see discussed in a newsletter, or would otherwise like a response to, please feel free to contact me at City Hall, or attend a City Council meeting and ask.
n Code Enforcement
This was a topic that most responses indicated a feeling that the City was failing or poorly handling. I would agree with this. However, this is the unfortunate result of a combination of things, including disarray of the ordinances to the point of not being able to locate either the ordinances themselves or the correct and accurate version of it to enforce, personnel available to do the enforcement, and Citizens generally upset with enforcement efforts. During the past months, the City has worked hard to locate all Ordinances, and has contracted with an outside professional company to do the appropriate compilations and legal review work, so that we will have a concise Code Book to work from. We anticipate this to be completed by this summer. Once this task is completed, I expect to aggressively move forward with code enforcement, as I believe it is an important and effective means in which to clean up and address many of the problems in Union. My expectation is that by moving forward with Code Enforcement, it can also help resolve many of the safety, animal, and trash/cleanliness concerns reflected in the responses. Similarly, I anticipate that this issue will also help address some of the quality of life/overall image of City issues.
n City Management/Staff/Decision Making
Many of the comments and results reflect an overall negative image of the City's management, staffing and decision making, as well as beliefs that the City employees are excessively compensated or over staffed. Included within this news letter is a condensed chart of similar cities staffing, and some of the salaries offered for similar positions. Although this is a condensed chart, if you would like more details, I would encourage you to either contact the Cities directly, or stop by City Hall and I will show you the source of the information and more complete details.
There are two important issues I think need to be addressed in response to the comments about these topics. First, many of the comments appear to reflect discontent based upon events that occurred some time in Union's past, and do not take into account that Union now has a new administrator (myself, as of December, 2006), and has a significantly different composition of staff, Council and Mayor. Even assuming bad things and mismanagement did happen at some time, my suggestion would be to judge current management and staff on what they do, and not something from the past. I openly accept criticism of my own performance and that of the employees I supervise, but will defend myself and the employees from things that we were not directly involved in.
The second, and in my opinion, more important and relevant issue is that of funding for the services which the City provides and for which the City is compared to others on. Many of the other comments relate to services which the City of Union provides, such as law/ordinance enforcement, streets, library, park and water/sewer, and beliefs that the City is not providing adequate services. To this I would note the age old proverb, "You get what you pay for." As you will note from the chart, most other communities have more staff available to provide and maintain these services. This is a reflection of revenues and resources available to the City. The simple answer is, if you have the resources to provide the service, you can provide it. Otherwise, you put what resources you have where you can, and reduce or eliminate the services you can't support. This was the ultimate downfall of the local police department, and also what results in service levels below what would be ideal and desired. This is true for all services -- the streets, park, library, transfer station, law/code enforcement, municipal court, water and sewer, etc. Just like lights don't work if you don't pay for electricity, and furnaces don't warm you if you don't pay for gas, the City can not provide services if we don't pay the vendors and employees to provide them, and people to manage and make decisions about the services. In my opinion, if you compare the resources the City of Union has and the services provided with those resources, against the resources and services of other similar sized communities, I think you will see that citizens in Union get a good return on their resources. This does not mean that your City Management believes what is provided is adequate, as I would certainly like to see more and improved services available. However, to do so would require additional resources which are not currently available. The only feasible and available solution is to increase the resources by increased fees.
Another issue which relates to the first two, and which I believe also plays a roll in the opinions reflected in the responses, is simply a lack of understanding and knowledge about the services provided to the public by the City, or what the employees of the City actually do to earn their salaries. Due to the limited number of employees, each person must take on several different rolls and perform several different tasks, and often must do so with limited knowledge, training, education or experience in the task. Additionally, not everyone uses the same services, or places the same value on the services as other citizens. Thus, as the City attempts to maximize the services it provides with the resources available, it is an inevitable reality that we will not be able to satisfy everyone's needs or desires for volume, content and quality of services. Although volunteers in Union have historically stepped up and greatly helped in addressing many of these issues, there are unfortunately many other tasks for which we simply can not use or rely on volunteers. Nonetheless, management, coordination and oversight of these volunteers still remains the responsibility of the City, which again requires staff time and resources.
As a final note, in order for us to effectively make decisions about the services provided to the public, as well as projects and planning for the future, we need input and assistance from the public. One way to do this is through these surveys. Therefore, I would again thank everyone who previously responded, and would request that everyone again fill out and return responses to the current set of questions. I would like to again encourage everyone to keep informed about the current events within the City, and that anyone wanting more information to please feel free to contact me at City Hall (562-5197), or attend the City meetings (Council, Planning Commission, Budget and any others that may occur). Thank you, and best regards to all.
Jeff Wise
City of Union
City Administrator/Recorder
