City of Davison, Michigan

As we close out the year of 2006 and prepare for 2007 it is fun to review what happen in 2006 compared to 2005.

In the city we are gearing up for our annual City Council Goals and Objectives workshop. At the workshop council secludes themselves to a secret cavern (for homeland security reasons) and commits to lengthy review and discussions on long term goals for the city and shorter term objectives to get us closer to those goals.

We really don’t meet in secret, and we have held this workshop in different locations. We have met at a couple of different conference centers before and the last few have been downtown at Something Special. That space has now been converted to a church so we will be off to a new location this year.

As staff works on the documentation for the Goals and Objectives Workshop, I thought it might be good to look at the blog. I have been getting some feedback from what some of you would like to see from my previous blog question. I will attempt to look at how to implement some of them.

As for the numbers? I couldn’t be happier with how the blog has spread in readership and number of people who visit Davison through this vehicle.

2005 was the first year of this experiment and was not operating for a full year, but it is still fun to look at the differences.

• 2005 average daily page is viewed: 42
• 2006 average daily page is viewed: 172
• 2005 hits per year: 78,466
• 2006 hits per year: 633,899 (with 4 days left, but close enough for government work)
• November of both years post the highest numbers.

What the heck did I blog about? Well here is a glance of what you could have been exposed to:

January

• Dr. Beck & new night vision for Police
• Paul McCrea retired from DPW
• Brian Flewelling new hire DPW
• Council member Pat Conley passes away
• Fire Authority Master Plan started
• Paul Colinger hired into police Department

February

• RFQ for architect started
• More information on the city of Davison’s 37 year Inflow and Infiltration (I&I) Program

March

• Fire Prevention
• Emergency Management
• Camel races
• Cost of Davison Water
• More I&I
• Reverse Osmosis in Michigan
• Code Enforcement

April

• State Shared Revenue losses
• City Budget
• DCER
• Dennis Miller leaves city after 10 years of service
• New addition to Auger Family, version 4.0

May

• More I&I
• Public sessions on municipal project
• composting in Davison
• Reorganization of two city departments
• Purpose of Blogs
• Appretiation dinner
• Memorial day events

June

• Downtown loft living
• Relay for Life
• Paying for city projects
• New look Police cars
• More I&I
• City’s Well Head Protection Award
• Festival of flags
• Municipal project update

July

• DPW Director Scott Yaklin passes away
• City of Mt. Pleasant comes calling
• Farmer’s market
• Sewer wash out
• M-15 car cruise
• Power outages
• Downtown outdoor movies
• voting
• District courts
• Water mains
• Ballot issues
• Nepotism
• Abernathy Regional Park
• Director of DPW search
• Davison Night Court
• Quality volunteers

September

• GASB 45
• Reverse Code Enforcement
• School Crossing guards
• Chamber breakfast
• Davison’s finest nabs another
• Clerk Cindy Payton losses her battle with cancer
• Beyond discrimination
• MDEQ changes the game rules
• Wooley festival
• more I&I
• new look web page
• Fire department plan
• “Yaks” bench

October

• Flint’s Downtown projects
• City manager’s who blog
• keep employees motivated
• New Sr. millage
• Search for new city clerk
• Pumkinfest 2006
• Do Da pageant
• Election
• Police; Educators of the year
• New DPW Director
• Municipal center update
• Left turn arrow-not
• Leaf pick-up
• Family tradition

November

• Safety program
• MDNR inspects DART
• Traffic Crashes
• Election Results
• DTV
• Do not settle for good enough
• Veterans day
• Municipal center update
• New Council Member
• more I&I

December

• Rayola Grand Opening
• Web site updates
• Downtown Christmas
• Visit from Cars 108
• New County taxes
• Audit
• Another Davison Championship
• Walgreens is coming
• Shopping with Heros
• Employee appreciation Lunch

A lot of information was put out last year. We hope to top that in 2007.

With Christmas just around the corner I thought it would be a great question for Blog readers.

In actuality, I’m going over improvements that I can make in myself, how I manage or continue to lead our organization. Part of that process to make me better is the feedback from others.

So now is your chance (my brothers don’t need to respond). How can I improve this blog next year? Ist there something you would like more information on? Is there different aspects of government you would like to Know?

Believe it or not, I enjoy hearing what people want to know. Sometimes when you are so close to something you take it for granted.

Next week is going to be hit or miss for me as I am going to attempt some quality time with my family. I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas, and don’t forget to tell me what you want…

I received an interesting email and I thought I would pass it along. One of the every week chores that most of us have is the day we drag our garbage cans to the curb to be picked up.

After a holiday we normally get some phone calls that the “garbage man” missed them, only to find out the holiday pushed service back a day.

So, I thought I would post an email from our refuge haulers.

Dear Republic Waste Customers,

With the holiday season fast approaching,
Republic wants to ensure that you are aware of our
holiday service
schedule.

With Christmas Day and New Years Day falling
on Monday, Republic will be observing the Holiday(s)
on December 25, 2006 and Monday January 1, 2007
respectfully and therefore all services for those
two weeks will be delayed by one day.

Republic Services wishes all of our
customers and their families a Happy and Safe Holiday Season!
Should you have any question, please call our elves in
our Customer Service Center.

Happy Holidays!!

Your friends at….
Republic Waste

We had our annual luncheon in the basement of City Hall Friday (I think I am still full). This is the event where we gather an recognize team members for their years of service.

It was nice to see some of the spouses come with the employees. So many times spouses might feel left out. A lot of municipal work is shift work. Sometimes even unplanned.

In Davison, we understand the wear and tear we put on the employees families and try to recognize the big picture.

This year annerversaries that were recognized:

Brian Flewelling, DPW: One year.

Yours truly: Five years.

Don Harris, Police Department: Ten Years

Tim Lear, DPW: Fifteen years.











I do not know how many years this tradition has occurred, but it is nice to see employees out of their normal work environment and mingling with other employee groups and elected officials. As the Mayor mentioned in his greeting, this has been a rough year for employees as we said good by to two employees. Scott and Cindy are in our hearts and thoughts.

For the 6th straight year Meijers store on Center Rd. has sponsored shop with a hero program.

In every community there is a family, for whatever reason, could use some help for the holidays. Meijers help fill the needs along with volunteers from our area Police and Fire Departments.

Our public servants offer their time and resources to help purchase items at Meijers so they may have gifts under the tree on Christmas morning.

In speaking with officers who have participated, they enjoy the experience as much as the kids.

The kids are truly thankful for the gifts but also have a great experience shopping with real police and firefighters.

A busy week for Walgreens in Davison this week, and not something that we have to deal with everyday.

Walgreens has been eying the Davison Community for a few years now and their representatives have been great to work with. The challenge was the the site that fit everyone’s needs. Several parcels had to be combined to make this work. To add to the mix part of two parcels were in Davison Township with the remaining lots in the City of Davison.

At Monday’s Council meeting the council voted to have a Public Hearing on January 8, 2007 at 8:00 PM on a contract with Davison Township to transfer property under Public Act 1984 425 (commonly referred to as ACT 425).

Part of this process is much discussion between the two municipalities as to the details of the contract. This is meant to be a win/win/win situation. Win for the city and its residents, Win for the Township and its residence, and win for the developer so progress can occur.

Part of the agreement is a melding of units to approve a proposed site plan. Each unit of government has a Planning Commission to handle these arrangements. The Township agreed to send their employees and some of their Planning Commission to our Planning Commission meeting to work towards a good site plan.

On Tuesday night this occurred, and after about two and a half hours Walgreens has an approved site plan.

It was a very good process and we look forward to the next steps in the process.

This year’s team consisted of Austin Beattie, Austin Smith, Jared Arnold, Jeff Sheathelm, Alex Cockman, Daniel Hooper, Sean Sauer, Patrick Holzer and David Stockwell. It is my understanding that the students come from all grades in the High School.

Way to go Cardinals, keep up the great work.

Peggy Jury, an auditor from Plante Moran Auditing Firm, presented city council the annual audit at last nights council meeting. The 55 page report might be hard to summerize in a blog, but I’ll give it my best shot.

First of all it was a clean audit. City council always looks for this. Of course the auditors can not look at every transaction that occurs in the City of Flags, but they do have us pull a lot of records both with specific intent and random selections.

One of the things I like about our annual audit is improving our operations. This is where we ask our auditors to tell us how to place better safe guards on our day to day operations. As loyal readers of the blog will know we upgraded our software operations this year. This put some of our internal controls behind schedule. This was noted in their review, it was also noted that the software is being integrated. This will give us additional checks a balances and less possibility of human error.

Another issue that was brought up is that at the time of the audit the City Council had not passed an ACH Policy. We rectified that at the very next council meeting to ensure that we are in compliance with Public Act 738 for electronic transfers and payments.

How do we spend tax dollars in the City of Davison?

Here is a breakdown of the fiscal year of 2006.

• Legislative: this covers the elected officials, meetings, legal publications etc… $19,968.
• General Government: this is city operations and staffing $603,662.
• Public Safety: Police and Fire $1,310,254.
• Public Works: Local and Major streets etc…$564,739.
• Recreation and Culture: Parks and recreation programming $274,497.
• Water and Sewer Department: $1,745,138.

Like most Michigan Municipalities the squeeze is still on financially. We received about 12% less in revenues from 2005 to 2006. We also cut expense by $384,554 during the year.

Over all the city looks in good financial shape. We, like other municipalities, are still dealing with a sluggish Genesee County economy. But we are in a position to lead Genesee County in our recovery. As the State of Michigan keeps backing out on its obligations to local governments through our State Shared Revenue, we have to figure out how improve our assets and services in creative ways. We have a staff capable of doing just that. We have a great location; just north of Oakland County, at the cross roads of I-69 and M-15, a good solid school district, and an infrastructure in place that can handle growth.

A challenge for us is to do the things that make us attractive for the new growth of jobs.

I can tell people started receiving their winter tax bills.

We normally get phone calls asking what their tax money is going to. This year people are correct the taxes went up. County voters voted in two new taxes. The is point seven mills for Senior Citizens (no, the county still does not know how they are going to spend this), and one full mill for a county wide health system (I’m not sure how this will be spent either).

In fact you do not have city taxes on this winter bill. In fact the winter tax bill for a homestead property with a taxable value of $87,393 (cash value about $174,786) would break down like this:

• School Debt $168.66
• School BS $122.56
• ISD Operating $14.28
• ISD Vocational Education $84.18
• ISD Special Education $210.42
• Mott Community College $86.93
• Mott CC Debt $30.15
• County Allocated $160.43
• County Parks $42.35
• County Paramedics $42.35
• County Sr. Citizens $61.17
• County Health Services $87.39
• Library $65.37
• Airport $42.35
• MTA $69.89

You may notice that there is nothing on there for the city of Davison. The new taxes just voted in are highlighted for an additional $148.56.

Often I here people blame the local elected people for raising taxes, but your taxes went up by a vote of your neighbors, not the city council.

The city does reap a 1% administration fee to process the tax bill, take the funds in and then distribute the taxes to the listed stake holders. On the above tax bill we get $12.88.

Tonight we repeat what maybe a Christmas Tradition of going through Crossroads Village (just outside Flint, Michigan). This Genesee County Park is a throw back to yesteryear, with restored homes, a main street and the Huckleberry Railroad.

There are lots of Christmas lights hot cider and donuts.

I am sure many people have traditions that they perform year after year. I was contacted by someone on the west side of Michigan (via this blog) on a new Grand Rapids tradition. I like the video effect of this blog and may attempt something similar in the future.