To lead a city, you have to know the direction you're going.
On Wednesday night, City Manager Matt Zimmerman and the Emporia City Commission worked on just that. The officials held their first goal-setting session at the water treatment plant, identifying what the city's priorities should be. Today, in a 3 p.m. session at the plant, Zimmerman and the commission will work on turning those into concrete goals for this year.
"That's going to be important," Zimmerman said afterward. "We can't do it all in a year. Not without a significant increase in staff."
Commissioners spent a long time talking about the city's ability to improve itself. Training and developing staff received a high priority early on, including the need for leadership training.
One theme that returned again and again was how to give city departments something specific to aim for. Commissioner Bobbie Agler proposed outcome-based budgeting -- a system where the city sets itself some measurable objectives to achieve and then budgets accordingly. One example of an outcome, Commissioner Jeff Longbine said, might be "Lower the mill levy by 10 percent in five years" or "Have a crime rate 10 percent below another city of comparable size."
The idea, Agler said, is to avoid just taking last year's budget and adding five percent to it. But there are some challenges to it. Some departments are harder to establish goals for or have less control over their achievement, Zimmerman said, such as police or fire.
Commissioner Julie Johnson added that sticking to an outcome-based budget requires a certain amount of political will, something she said the city hasn't always had the best track record on.
"Last year, we asked the city manager and staff to deduce expenses in the police department and their recommendation was to do away with the manager of the animal shelter," she said. "That recommendation came to the commission and there was a huge crowd in the meeting room and we put the position back in. That's the political will I'm talking about. If the staff says 'This is something we've got to do, we need to either say 'OK, but it won't be popular,' or 'Well, we've got to find the resources to keep it.'"
One priority Zimmerman raised was the need for a greater cash reserve against bad times.
"My feeling is we should have at least three months of reserves," he said. "At the start of January, we had about a two-week reserve. That has caused cash-flow problems, especially with grants."
Under Kansas law, a city can have a five-percent carryover in its tax-based funds. Beyond that, it can establish multi-year funds for a specific purpose, such as capital improvements or vehicle replacement.
The commission also talked about focusing on Emporia's diversity, marketing the community better and improving housing conditions -- three aims that could tie together, Zimmerman and some commissioners noted.
That could mean strengthening the city's rental housing codes, which like the city's other property maintenance codes currently work on a complaint basis. That means someone has to report a violation to the city as opposed to, say, a city inspection system.
"The complaint approach doesn't work anymore," Agler said. "You've got to take proactive steps."
The commission also talked about the need to reach out to the public more, such as by involving the public in the budget process at an earlier stage and making it clearer, or by having the city itself be better educated on its cultures and community leaders. Even the location of a public meeting can make a difference, Johnson said.
"Maybe we need to take some of these budget meetings to the neighborhoods," Johnson said. "Instead of going to the civic auditorium all the time, maybe we should go to St. Catherine's or Logan Avenue (Elementary)."
The discussion will continue at 3 p.m. today.