Community Development (2)

Citygate performed a development services process assessment for the city of Cañon City, CO. With new leadership and evolving community expectations, Citygate’s assessment ensures that core service delivery systems are operating as efficiently, transparently, and effectively as possible, assisting the City to ground any potential structural decisions, including the consideration of a regional building authority, in a clear understanding of current performance, root causes, and opportunities for improvement. Citygate's comprehensive and objective assessment assessed the end-to-end development process and identified inefficiencies, bottlenecks, and areas for improved coordination across departments; provided benchmarking against comparable communities to better understand how the City’s performance aligns with peer jurisdictions; delivered practical, actionable recommendations that can be implemented to improve service delivery, predictability, and customer experience; and supported informed decision-making regarding organizational structure and service delivery models, including the potential role of regional partnerships.

Citygate conducted an Operational and Organizational Assessment of the Community Development Department for the City of West Sacramento, CA to determine whether the City’s development process is in alignment with the expectations of the community and City Council, as well as whether current processes follow best practices when compared with similarly situated organizations. Citygate’s analysis served to ensure the Department is organized in the most efficient way possible to perform its responsibilities, helping the City to better understand the factors contributing to Citygate’s recommendations related to improving and optimizing its development process. Citygate also provided a roadmap for implementation of recommendations to improve the Department’s processes and ensure the highest level of customer service.

Citygate is currently conducting an independent staffing and development review study of the Community Development Department, the Public Works / Engineering Department, and the Department of Life Safety for the City of Hemet, CA. Citygate will provide recommendations on optimal staffing levels—as well as solutions to optimize the development review process by streamlining procedures, ensuring an orderly development process workflow, and enhancing the overall experience of City customers. Citygate’s analysis will be performed in support of the City’s three-pronged Economic Strategy focusing on Places, People, and Process. Through this analysis, Citygate will determine whether current resources align with community and City Council expectations, development review processes align with best practices, and resources are properly organized to carry out their defined responsibilities. Citygate will also develop an Implementation Plan to improve the departments’ processes and staffing and ensure the highest level of customer service.

As a follow-on engagement to our Citywide Staffing Review, Citygate performed an Outsourcing Opportunities Review for the City to fulfill the City of Novato’s Strategic Plan requirement to “Authorize a study of potential outsourcing opportunities that would improve service delivery and reduce short- and long-term costs.” This review identified areas of operations most suitable for outsourcing to a third party as opposed to the City providing the services by existing staff or identify how outsourcing a portion of existing services is the most efficient or lower-cost method to augment or assist with the existing services. This review also identified alternative service delivery methods, such as public-private partnerships, contracting, and collaborative agreements for sharing resources between public agencies.

Citygate conducted a Citywide staffing analysis for the City of Novato’s Administration (including the City Manager’s Office, IT, City Clerk, Economic Development, Homeless Services, Communications, and Sustainability); Community Development; Finance; Human Resources (including Risk Management); Parks, Recreation, and Community Services; Police; and Public Works departments. Through document reviews, questionnaires, interviews, and detailed analysis, Citygate evaluated whether the existing staffing and structure aligned with the City’s priorities, providing recommendations on staffing levels and organizational structure, including specific position counts per function, as needed.

Scope of work: A departmental process and improvement assessment of the Community and Economic Development Department for the City of Santa Paula. Citygate will evaluate the current practices, procedures, and performance standards of Department functions for conformance with industry best practices and legal requirements. Citygate will also evaluate the Department’s organizational structure, including the types and number of positions needed to meet workload and performance standards, and will identify where organizational and operational performance and service levels can be enhanced with new performance metrics to help ensure the Department’s goals continue to be met.

Citygate performed an organizational review of Monterey County’s current Cannabis Program, including funding, organization, permitting, staffing, and workload. This review included recommendations for an efficient organizational structure, including formal and informal organizational alignment, management, and supervision of the Cannabis Program; job classifications, specifications, and compensation for employees in the Cannabis Program Office; efficient and effective staffing levels for the Cannabis Program; expectations related to positions being 100 percent funded by cannabis tax revenue; efficient and effective business processes and task assignments for cannabis licensing/permitting to alleviate the existing backlog, and to the extent possible, prevent new persistent backlogs; and best practice performance standards for cannabis licensing/permitting.

Citygate performed an organizational review and analysis of Monterey County’s current homeless programs, funding, and coordination services. For this review, Citygate identified, evaluated, and recommended funding sources and budgeting structure for the Homeless Services function; identified and recommended organizational best practices, including comparisons with similar cities and counties; evaluated and recommended best practices for collaboration and coordination with various County departments, the Continuum of Care, local cities, school districts, businesses, and homeless service providers; and evaluated and recommended formal and informal organizational alignment, structure, and staffing for the Homeless Services function.

Citygate conducted a review of the Resource Management Agency (RMA) of Monterey County, California. The objective of the study was to review current conditions, analyze opportunities for organizational changes and process improvements that can further enhance customer service, evaluate future service demands, and develop a Strategic Action Plan with a prioritized implementation schedule. Included in this objective was an emphasis on assessing the adequacy and currency of underlying land use and related policies, the allocation and assignment of long-range planners versus current planners, and how the current situation and practices may compound difficulties in the backlog of application and permit processing, consistency, reliability, timeliness, and overall customer and stakeholder service delivery and satisfaction. Also included was an analysis of the functions included under the structure of the RMA to determine if there are too many or too few functions. Ultimately, this review resulted in Citygate’s recommendation to reorganize the RMA into separate Community Development and Public Works departments, in which Citygate provided strategies and detailed recommendations regarding organizational alignment, staffing, classifications, and business processes. Monterey County completed the reorganization within six months of Citygate’s Final Report delivery.Subsequent to the completion of the review, at the County’s request, Citygate reviewed and evaluated the RMA’s efforts implementing the recommendations from the final report. Additionally, Citygate assisted in onboarding new leadership and management staff.

Citygate completed a fees/charges and cost recovery review for the following Community Development Department programs in Clark County, Washington: Building Safety, Permit Center, Development Engineering, Fire Marshal, Land Use Review, Wetland and Habitat Review, and Administration (includes business technology). The goal of this study was for Citygate to review the overall financial operation of Department programs and provide recommendations for revenue enhancement (fees and charges review) or cost reduction to help make the Department operation more self-supporting, achieving full cost-recovery if possible. Citygate assessed the impact and resolution of fee latency (delayed or lost) for receiving revenues (primarily applicable to Wetland and Habitat Review and Land Use Review programs).