Citistat - That Urinal Hasn't Worked in Months

[Suzanne Metelko]

Back to CitiStat. The point of CitiStat is to reveal problems with process; to determine how a department is doing something, and how it allocates resources (human and financial). Ed's point, I believe, is that the fact that the toilet is running and the pumps aren't tracking, could have been revealed through the Citistat review. Citistat is about accountability and transparency. It doesn't like sweeping stuff under the carpet and it provides the means to uncover problems with staffing, management and process. The resulting efficiencies can have a dramatic positive effect on both the budget and customer service.

Ed's answer about the fire department is confusing. If it's too complicated then it has to be Lakewood's problem. Citistat was originally developed and implemented to address the growing problems with the safety forces in New York City. Overtime abuse, sick leave abuse and staffing are right up Citistat's ally. Jack Maple and Rudy Giuliani made their reputations on this data tracking system. Retooling the program for other departments came later.

49 percent of Lakewood's budget is Safety forces. So why begin this process with a piece of Human Services that is, in total, only 3 percent of the budget?

[Stan Austin]

Jim--- I forgot it already. Since it had something to do with urinals (and it had nothing to do with citistat) it probably wasn't too witty.
Stan

[Gary Rice]

I would be even more funny,

if this was not about money :-)

[Bill Call]

Just a few more notes on the Citistat meeting of January 19th.

The discussions also covered the City fleet "motor pool" and the water and sewer departments.

Mr. Favre noted that after extensive analysis by Citisat it was found that the tire changing machine could not accommodate the larger tires found on some of the city vehicles. The decision was made to buy a new tire changing machine.

I suppose if I was paying a supervisor $100,000 a year to manage a department I would expect that he would discover the need for new equipment and take the necessary action as part of a normal business day. I expect too much.

During the power point demonstration one slide on the water department displayed a graph. A GRAPH!!! WITH DATA!!!

What could it be? An analysis of overtime, sick time, water usage, staffing levels, performance standards, benchmarks with historical averages, benchmarks with other cities, cost ratios etc...? No such luck.

It was a graph of rainfall in the City of Lakewood over time. You see, the load level of the sewer department is partially determined by the amount of rain that falls on City streets. It was discovered that while it might be raining at City Hall it might not be raining at the sewer plant. How was the sewer department to know if it was raining? The answer was elegant in its simplicity. Citistat would install rain gages at the fire stations!

Who would read the gage? Is that a function of a unionized employee? Which union? How often should the gage be read? How would the results be communicated? How should the results be interpreted? How did the department operate so long without a rain gage?

So many questions. Perhaps someone should form a committee.

[Stan Austin]

Bill---

You started your rant on Citistat months ago when you thought it wasn't being implemented.
It was.
You then maintained that Citistat should be immediately applied to all the city's' departments.
It can't. It has to be phased in. Otherwise it would draw dawn resources needlessly for implementation thus risking unnecessary expenditures.
You then finally decided to actually attend a Citistat presentation, maybe, perhaps to expose yourself to first hand knowledge rather that bleacher play calling?
And, surprise, since you don't understand modern management techniques or even modern technology you continue to throw your little pebbles at it.
To wit: if not rain guages (a technology that has been embraced by most state highway departments) what would you propose? A divining rod?
The tire changer in question was for 17inch rims which is now taking over for most city cars from 16inch rims. This was a decision based on the common sense evaluation, which is what in many cases Citistat is, that economies were to be had by buying the larger equipment instead of sending out tire changing.
I think I reflect the opinion of many Deck readers in my perplexity of your bizarre criticisms of any and all things.
Stan

[Bill Call]

You started your rant on Citistat months ago when you thought it wasn't being implemented.
It was.

Citistat is not being implemented. The Administration is just going through the motions. It has already been announced that the City's Citistat program will save no money and bring no operating efficiencies. So what's the point?

When the meeting was over I was left with the questions: If Citisat is needed to tell supervisors that toilets are broke, that equipment is outdated, that fuel gages are not working and that it is raining at City Hall what are all those supervisors doing? Do they communicate with employees? Do they leave their vehicles? Do they walk through the parks?

Isn't anything being done as part of the normal day to day management of a department? How did the City run so well 20 years ago with fewer employees and no Citistat department?

Modern city management is certainly complex. More and more people accomplish less and less and the only solution is to hire more and more people.

[DougHuntingdon]

Stan

Do you oppose any ideas/actions of the city government?

Doug

[Lynn Farris]

You know, after doing maintenance on a building for many years, we are pretty sensitive to building maintenance issue and we know that we had to pay for a leak anywhere and it adds up. Actually the city is quite good about helping you find leaks if you ask them.

We were at a Democratic Club meeting at the Woman's Pavilion - last summer and the urinal in the men's room was running. (Just like you said) Don looked around and found the Mayor figuring the buck stops there. He told him about the problem. Of course at first, the Mayor thought Don was joking and laughed about it. Finally at the next meeting a month later, Don saw it was still running and brought it up again to the Mayor. Don offered to fix it. The Mayor did go in and look at it this time with the security gaurd. Don was told it is designed to always run. Seemed like a waste of money to us too. I dont know if or how the CIty pays for its water usage. Something told us the city doesn't pay and somehow it is all added into our bill. Anyway we gave up trying to get it fixed.

So while in the scheme of things it is small potatoes, I will concur that we were aware of the problems months ago.

[Gary Rice]

If no one plans to fix that urinal, and with summer coming soon, perhaps we could come up with a new tourist attraction; that being "The Falls of Lakewood".

Or perhaps in this case, the "Fall" of Lakewood.

"This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper." T.S. Elliot

(Or in our case, with an everlasting stream?)

I have a new respect for my water bill now. The bigger question is how much does Lakewood have, for theirs?

[Shawn Juris]

What a fantastic distortion of an otherwise worthwhile program and informative presentation. Nice work taking several points out of context, misrepresenting achievements as failures and still having time to oversimplify duties while randomly assigning blame. I think that you've missed the mark on this one Bill. Is it the best thing since sliced bread? Probably not. Bread that comes in sandwich ready servings is pretty freakin' cool, but it's certainly not a disaster as you seem to contend.

[Jim O'Bryan]

What a fantastic distortion....

Shawn

I am willing to wait and see what the report brings.

However it should be noted that the urinal was not even part of the CitiStat program. It is merely a sidenote to the meeting.

Though I agree that the running water has probably cost the city a fortune, and reasons for doing it seem wierd at best.


.

[Bill Call]

Nice work taking several points out of context, misrepresenting achievements as failures ...

What achievements? Just curious.

[Jennifer Pae]

City of Lakewood CitiStat Accomplishments
March 2006 – January 2007


General Municipal Benefits
The multi-department forum has allowed the participants to understand city issues from other perspectives. The CitiStat Panel membersâ€â€

[Shawn Juris]

Nice work taking several points out of context, misrepresenting achievements as failures ...

What achievements? Just curious.

While Jennifer is obviously much better versed on the ins and outs of this program, the only ones that I were referring to were each of the examples that were brought up earlier in the post. I believe they were; the gas pumps, larger tire exchanging equipment, phones/radios, toilets and tracking waste water levels. Each of these were somehow slanted to imply that Citistat was at fault for identifying and addressing the issue. Are we using the equivalent of "if you smelt it you dealt it" or can we agree that this is simply a tool and could be very useful if in the right hands.

Thanks for the information Jennifer. Nice to see something more than reactions and interpretations.

[Donald Farris]

Hi,
While some may feel a urinal running 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, year after year is a "point out of context", I feel it is an excellent example of a wasteful management that can act as a cancer to destroy our City.

As a kid I was always told, "Waste not, Want not"?

Perhaps someone from City Hall (or anyone else that knows) could tell us who really pays for that running urinal. Does that running urinal directly get charged to a specific budget? Which budget? How much has it cost us since it was determined it should run always? Is that the only City structure that "needs" to run always or are there others?