Information only.

This report is intended to provide Council with a summary of the feedback received as a result of our Development Services Listening Tour along with some recommendations to improve those services.    

In July 2014, the City undertook an organizational initiative, “Refresh”  which realigned the reporting structure of several divisions and, perhaps most significantly, swapped the responsibilities of the Management Services and Community Development Directors.   In order for a healthy organization like the City of Flagstaff to continue to be vibrant and responsive, it must continuously re-evaluate and scrutinize itself and be willing to make changes if necessary.  A quote from the City Manager at the time of “Refresh” provides some insight as to why the change was made in director responsibilities:
 
“The purpose of an exchange is to provide a fresh set of eyes on vital services that we provide to the Flagstaff community as well as grow our personnel in order to increase their breadth and depth of knowledge.  This makes for better managers and leaders as well as a better organization.”
 
“Refresh” presented a great opportunity to conduct a “listening tour” in order to better understand the perceptions, thoughts, and visions of our customers of the City’s Development Services.  Listening tours are nothing new to our organization and are conducted periodically by all divisions to provide an opportunity for our community stakeholders to share with us how they think we are doing. 
 
In order to assure a broad representation of the diverse customer base of the City’s Development Services we reached out to developers such as Capstone, Evergreen, Red, and Miramonte Homes.  We also listened and heard from many contractors, specialty firms, and community organizations, including: 
 

Woodson Engineering Mogollon Engineering WLB Group Hilton Harris Real Estate Shepherd Wesnitzer

Hurley Construction Loven Construction Kinney Construction FCI Construction Hope Construction SDB Construction

Chamber of Commerce Housing Solutions of Northern Arizona NAIPTA ECoNA NABA

 
 
Additionally, we sought input from internal City customers such as the Fire Department, Utilities Division, City Attorney’s Office, Economic Vitality Division, and Public Works Division.  Finally, we wanted to provide an opportunity for employees serving in Development Services to share their unique observations. 

THIS IS WHAT WE HEARD:
Balance, Coordination and Consistency are Important
Generally speaking, we heard that our customers are pleased with the quality of service they receive from Development Services.  About 80 percent of those we spoke with had  generally positive feedback for us.  There were names of certain staff members who were repeatedly offered as examples of those who provide exemplary customer service.  It was suggested on more than one occasion that the City has made progress in balancing its role of protecting the values and desires of the community while also respecting the contributions of the development community and understanding that they too are citizens and customers.  However, we also understand from meeting with stakeholders that more work still needs to be done in these areas.  We heard some frustration on the part of customers that some staff can be subjective in their interpretation of certain codes and that coordination/communication between Divisions needs to be improved so that there is consistency in the requirements and certainty in the timeline for approvals.  These items have a great impact of the ability of developers to build quality projects in our community that are also financially viable. We heard that many applicants want the City’s “development rules” to be much more black and white; we also heard that “greater flexibility” was highly desired.
 
Communication is Important
Most expressed confidence in CD’s Current Planning Staff acting as the Single Point of Contact (SPOC) for their projects and agreed that it improves communications and responsiveness.  There were some who felt that the SPOC wasn’t sufficiently empowered with “final decision making authority” to successfully guide projects through what can be a very complicated review process involving staff in several divisions.  Our customers noted that the communication gap increased when they had to contact staff from different City divisions.  Several indicated that they were optimistic that now having the Community Development Division, Utilities Division, and Fire Department within the same Deputy City Manager Team will serve to improve communications and break down silos. 
 
 
There are Many Regulations to Follow
We heard, loud and clear, from many in the development community that some of the development regulations as specified in such policies as Low Impact Development (LID), design standards, resource protection, and landscaping standards were onerous and presented significant challenges to their projects.  We also heard complaints about the superfluous and voluminous comments contained in the building plan review process and how important items can become lost in the extraneous “noise”.  
 
Low impact development and resource protection/landscaping requirements were considered challenging due to the expense and the amount of property it takes to address.  Design standards were generally considered to be subjective rather than objective and several customers asked for this to be better codified to allow for an objective standard.    Staff understands that most of these requirements are codified in various codes and regulations and, as such, are policy matters that will require Council action to change.  At this time staff is not presenting or recommending any changes to current policy as these opportunities already occur at regular intervals. (e.g. amendments to the Regional Plan, Zoning Code, Engineering Standards, Sign Code, and the suite of Building Codes)
 
THIS IS WHAT WE WILL DO:
 
During this listening tour we heard a key area where the City needs to improve across the board: responsiveness and clarity in communications. 
 
Recommendation #1: Improved Reliability of Telephone Communications
Many respondents indicated frustration with the City’s phone tree system and cited occasions where phone calls are not returned in a timely fashion or even responded to at all.  In order to help improve the reliability of our telephone communications, the City Manager’s proposed budget contains funding for a call center solution which will provide a high level view of customer calls as opposed to the current “blind” system.  The new system will allow us to review items such as average call time, average hold time, average speed of answer, etc.  Community Development (CD) Administrative staff has been working with Information Technology (IT) staff to update/modernize CD’s phone tree to provide better information for our clients.  Development Services will emphasize to its staff the need to have adequate “back up” when they are out of the office so that questions or concerns of customers can be addressed in a timely fashion rather than wait until the staff members returns.  This means that another member of the team will be designated as the “go-to” person in out of the office notifications made via email or voicemail.  One contractor expressed it best when he said that we need to have a “strong secondary” to back up project managers when they are unavailable due to illness or vacation. 
 
Recommendation #2: Implement Project Management Tools for Improved Internal Coordination
During our meetings with internal staff it was emphasized that there currently exists a deficiency in our ability to provide our customers with timely and accurate data about their project status.  The idea of an electronic interface that would allow customers to view up to date information about their projects in a “dashboard” format would be a benefit to customers and a more efficient use of everyone’s time.  We believe that our new Innoprise software for Community Development, which is currently being implemented,  will, over time, address this need by providing customers with immediate access to information that would otherwise require a staff person to look up and then respond back.  This respects the busy schedules of our customers and offers them choices with regard to how they would prefer to receive information. 
 
Recommendation #3: Streamline Building Plan Review Comments
The Building Official is currently working with our clients and our 3 Building Plans Examiners to ensure that our comments are consistent, from reviewer to reviewer, and that we are recommitted to continuing to provide clear, code-cited comments back to our applicants.
 
Recommendation #4:  Cross departmental communication
The City will continue to vet projects through the IDS (Inter-Division Staff) process that allows for the open discussion of reconciling, planning, engineering, building and/or site issues, at the staff level.  In addition, the Deputy City Manager will continue to support resolution of competing regulations, between City Divisions, at the lowest staff level possible to expedite staff responsiveness.