City of Davison, Michigan

Met with the DPW Crew in Abernathy Regional Park for a picnic lunch yesterday. Actually the crew was eating lunch with Scott Yaklin’s daughters.

The guys had purchased a park bench to put in the park so no one would forget their boss and friend Scott. Scott’s daughters did not want a lot of fanfare with press and entire city staff and City council members. What they wanted is to see “the guys”.

The girls would be around the shop, either before or after school, and its amazing how much of the DPW family they are.

I think the bench that they had made is beautiful and hopefully will see lots of use. Legacy Monuments did a great job on the bench.

On a similar topic the Tippy Open committee has met and I think a direction has been decided on what is going to happen with the proceeds from this year’s event. For those asking how they can help, or what they can do to honor Scott’s dedication to the community, the answer is coming real soon…

“Pete, I looked on your blog yesterday and thought I would find what you thought about the Fire Department Report.”

Well it is good that people are keeping up on things via the blog, boy it sure keeps the pressure on to pick relevant and current things posted.

The results are overall fantastic. Some of the things we thought about ourselves have been confirmed by this outside review:

• Productive and Well Managed Department
• Relatively Cost effective Operation (21% to 35% lower than average departments)
• Workload consistent from year to year despite growth into he community.
• Records & Personnel Management are well maintained
• Response times are generally good.
• Fire Prevention is receiving increasing emphasis.
• Vehicles are routinely replaced and are well maintained.

The report also emphasized that we have a well trained and motivated work force that has a high moral. The report made several recommendations, or areas of concern that we should look at to improve our Fire Services.

• Recruitment of New Firefighters. We need to address our requirement methods to ensure we keep a strong work force. We should also remove our “two mile” limit from the fire station as a requirement.
• Even though Response Times are generally very acceptable, there are a percentage of runs into Davison Township and Richfield Township that are not meeting the NFPA 20 minimum standard.
• Our Compensation System for fire fighters is complex. The system is hard to understand and should be simplified.
• Our Fire Facility is becoming increasingly obsolete. The deficiencies compromise fire truck specifications.
• We should attempt to keep the Paid-on-call/volunteer system. Maybe attempt to emulate the city of Troy, MI system.
• Fire prevention activities should be increased. Maintain both the Right to Know three year inspection schedule and performing fire education programming.
• In the future look at establishing a Fire Marshall Position.
• Two new facilities need to be looked at. A two station paradigm would provide a more uniformed response rate going forward.

The report obviously goes into some more detail, but that is the “feel” of the report. Overall this is a good Report Card. We run a very efficient Fire Department and have been fiscally responsible. We have high quality Firefighters.

We have a good Fire Agreement for a one station operation. This is where I think our biggest challenge is. Is the current agreement good for a two station department?

I think the consultant also hit the nail on the head when asked about how come there is no time line to build new stations. He said that is a political question that should be decided locally. Each community has to look at the cost versus benefit and as a group come to a consensus that works for all.

In other words he wasn’t going to make the tough decision for us. The Fire Authority must make some tough decision in the near future.

I hope people check out our new City of Davison Web page. The address to add to your favorites is cityofdavison.org.

We have tried to improve our web site by making it easier to navigate. We are also changing some of our web administrative duties. Each Department Head will be responsible for their portion of the city’s web page.

I think we have always had a lot of information on our web page, but I have heard that sometimes it was hard to find things. I also heard that we don’t keep the web page “fresh enough”. That could probably mean a lot of things to different people.

I would be interested in people’s comments about our web page. The Community Development Department has taken this bull by the horns and got us this far. As our Community Development Department has explained we are in the “keep improving mode”.

This a common thread throughout the city. We do a lot of things good, but we do not want to rest on ourlaurelss. When you think you have made it is normally when you get passed up.

Anyone who has been following this Blog knows about how much the City of Davison has been working on disconnecting house hold footing drains from our sanitary sewer system as part of Our I&I Program.

Remember, this was the $24 million project to correct the situation through out the entire city.

Gulp, that’s more than I make in a year.

We went back to the drawing board and came up with a “biggest bang for the buck” program. This project came in at around $10 million. Where this would accomplish a good amount of our goals, it was still a hard burden to carry for a community our size.

The project plan that we ended up submitting to the State for SWQIF financing is about $2.3 million. This is unique because we are using tax $$$ for private property work. We have our collective fingers crossed because other communities also compete for this type of funding at very low interest rates (under 3%).

The city council also approved us to apply for S2 Grant Funding. This grant would pay for a lot of the engineering for this project, including around $37,000 that we already paid out.

A decision that Council made last night was to develop how we are going to pay off this debt for the project. We could raise sewer rates by around $8 per month, or put it to a vote of the people for a millage at the next election, or a combination of both a millage and a rate increase.

The Council decided to let the public decide if they wanted to have it as a tax millage. Estimates are that it would be about 1.3 mills, but we won’t have the exact number under our financial advisor completes the revenue model.

The City Council liked the fact that people who itemize could write off the local millage for their Federal tax filing.

Where are we with the hiring for the DPW Position?

I have heard this question, in one form or another, at least a half dozen times since the deadline of Friday September 22.

So I will attempt bring inquiring minds up to speed.

We received 27 resumes and request to be considered. Not all of them are from our geographical location (actually only a few local). Not all of them are from Michigan, and at least one from overseas.

So what is next?

This week I will be starting the process of entering information from the prospects into a spreadsheet. This matrix will break items down by the 17 different things we are looking for in a candidate.

I hope to narrow the field down to a manageable number. I will then do some back ground inquires to see if I can gain more insight. Then I will conduct interviews.

Seem simple? Could be, but it never is. It is very time consuming, but we want a good match, someone that fits and can continue the trend of improving city services.

It is that time of year again. One of the largest yearly DDA projects each year is our annual Do-Da Parade and pageant followed up by Pumkinfest.

The Parade is Friday night October 13th (oohh, pretty scarrry). The parade goes from the fire hall to the entertainment tent downtown. Everyone in the parade is in a costume and it is a real hoot to witness people having good clean fun.

The annual Do-da pageant is really a spoof on beauty pageants. The contestants are sponsored by local business. The contestants are also in costume and we have had some real characters over the years. They have to answer questions and judged on about six or seven different factors.

Last year we
had great weather
and great a great
turn out.

New this year is the semi-final to “Davison Idol” will be held right after the pageant. It is my understanding the final 10 will sing before our live audience with the final during Saturday’s Pumpkinfest festivities.

This year looks like another great year to come downtown on October 14th. All types of family friendly events, contest and food. Yes, even the mechanical bull is returning, I just don’t think my daughter will be able to talk me into riding that contraption again.

How do we know it is just around the corner?
We’ve just selected this year’s logo award. This year’s winner is a fifth grader from Hahn Intermediate School.

Sweatshirts with the logo will go on sale soon, so contact the Community Development Department to make sure you get yours before they sell out.

The Davison Area Historical Society hosted the annual Woolley Festival in the parking lot behind the areas museum. The festival is named after the veterinarian who’s building still sits in Davison and to my knowledge is the oldest vet clinic still standing.

There were all kinds of contest for costumed creatures to pet owner look a like contest.

This type event is fun for all us kids no matter how old we are.

I have blogged about NPDES Phase II before. I happened to be at one of my monthly meetings sitting on Genesee County Water & Wastes Service Advisory Committee and we received some frustrating news.

I won’t get into the Federal and State Unfunded mandates that NPDES is. Nor will I expand on the total permitting process and implementation of our plan.

The frustration is that we have combined forces with the Genesee County Drain Commissioner’s Office and other communities in our watershed areas. Since 2004, working with everyone as a team, and not duplicating what others are doing we estimate we have saved $100,800 to date.

We have developed our Water Shed Plan and an implementing plan. We have all the documents and required information together.

But Wait….

The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) has just changed personnel. So now new MDEQ people are interpreting the same language differently. Even the personnel agree we have all the right information, but they want us to put it in a different format now.

Plus rumor is the State now wants local communities to enforce things we have no say in (e.g. agriculture run off).

So yes, even us who work in government get frustrated with government. It is things like this that really waste $$$.

Received an interesting phone call this morning.

The lady on the phone gave me the impression she worked for a State of Michigan Agency. She then went over some employer information and updated my name on their file from my predecessor.

She then started asking some questions about how we hire people in the City of Davison. A simple question like, Are you and equal opportunity employer?, can lead people many different ways.

The conversation then lead to other questions. Are we a diversified work force? Do we actively seek diversity? Do we discriminate against race, ethnicity, religion or sexual preference?

Wait a minute, we are not even allowed to ask about any of the above. Come to find out it was a solicitor call for the city to purchase advertising for Minorities and Success Magazine, although no where in the conversation did the caller identify this.

Let me set the record straight. We in the City of Davison hire people to work. I do not know how many:

• Different Religions are represented by our employees
• How many divergent ethnicities are represented in our employees
• How many employees are happily married
• How many employees are vegetarian
• How many employees vote the Democratic Ticket
• How many employees vote the Republican Ticket
• How many people vote the Libertarian Ticket
• How many employees don’t vote

I’m so glad we are further ahead than some people. We don’t ask, if it does not effect the job we ask them to do.

We look for good workers who make good decisions that make Davison a great place to live, work, and raise a family. Can’t wait until the rest of the State to catch up…

Some more sad news this morning from the “City of Flags”.

Early this morning Cindy Payton, our City Clerk lost her battle with cancer.

The City has learned a lot through Cindy’s courageous fight. Cindy had worked for the City of Davison for ten years and was Clerk for the last five. She will always be remembered for her bubbly personality and for the pride she took in her three children. If you wanted to change the subject of what Cindy was taking about, all you had to do was mention one of her kids names and she would start an endless conversation.

Cindy was only 51.

Rest In Peace Cindy.