Grading the Cities introduction THE GOVERNMENT PERFORMANCE PROJECT Report Card: Kansas City Revenue Rank: 35 Form of Government: Council-Manager Mayor: Kay Barnes (took office 1999) City Manager: Robert L. Collins (appointed 1997) City Council: 12 members (6 elected by district, 6 at large) FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT: B+ Missouri’s largest city handles almost all of its financial affairs well, including debt and investment management, financial reporting, preparing for economic downturns and watching expenditures without restraining managerial flexibility. There are some problems with contracting. Several audits have reported that the city isn’t careful enough when it outsources work. Two years ago, the city auditor called for specific guidelines in the review, pricing, documentation and monitoring of vendor performance. Another report, dealing with garage privatization, recommended that cost-benefit analyses be required prior to privatization attempts. The city could improve its long-term cost analysis of new programs. Most discussions about proposed ordinances center around their impact in the current year. Generally, however, the city has done a pretty good job at identifying the impact of capital expansions. One upcoming test will be whether the city can continue funding previously deferred maintenance. Money for this purpose has been coming out of surpluses, but in the future, the council will likely have to cut expenses or increase revenues to keep up the practice. HUMAN RESOURCES: B- Kansas City has made great strides at improving its hiring process. It has just begun doing work force planning. In 1995, the city gave up most of its centralized written testing, and individual departments can now test or evaluate candidates on-site themselves. New lists of candidates are aimed at specific job openings. “If we put out an ad Sunday, feasibly we could have a list 48 hours after the closeout of the ad,” says John Thigpen, the human resources director. Kansas City can accept job applications online from city workers and will extend this to outsiders before year’s end. It posts jobs on the city Web site and uses job fairs, minority newspapers, churches and “every method we can think of,” says Thigpen. “We target women, for example, by going to their gyms.” The city has a three-year-old centralized employee training office, but after years in which training was a low priority here, many employees resist taking time away from their jobs to be trained. What’s more, training is still shortchanged in the city’s budget. Kansas City has been revising its employee evaluation system at all levels, requiring that supervisors develop clear expectations and document individual performance. Department heads can reward employees for exceptional performance with pay raises of up to 5 percent in any 12-month period. Unfortunately, the city hasn’t provided adequate budgeting for these raises in all departments. INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY: C After much effort, Kansas City has a reasonable number of standards in place for its IT procurements. But there’s still much work to be done. For example, the city has two fleet management information systems. Its fire, police and ambulance dispatch systems don’t work together right now, so police have no idea if a fire truck is on its way to the scene. The city recently brought in a new budgeting information system, which is integrated into the broader financial management system. But human resources information is still weak. The city’s Web site stands out in clarity of presentation. It features a “neighborhood network,” which gives users access to much property information, including code violations, ownership data and neighborhood demographics. CAPITAL MANAGEMENT: B+ Kansas City’s capital planning process is almost uniformly excellent. The entire approach is one of the most open in the country. Citizens can make capital budget proposals themselves on the Web site. The capital improvement plan is inviting in itself. It contains a clear explanation of the planning process, with a glossary and users’ guide, pictures of the projects and location maps. A project manager/engineer is responsible for contract oversight and monitoring each project. Cost estimates are updated prior to actual funding and reviewed on an annual basis. Recent estimates have been somewhat wide of the mark, however. “As we bid out each piece of a funded project,” one official says, “we always miss by about 30 percent.” Meanwhile, the city is behind in maintaining its previously ignored assets. It’s spending large sums on streets and bridges — but that has merely halted their erosion. The cost of fully maintaining public buildings would be about $14 million annually, and last year the budget was $4.5 million. But at least Kansas City knows how much it ought to be spending. That’s more information than many cities have. MANAGING FOR RESULTS: B- For 50 years, Kansas City operated without any real comprehensive planning document. When it finally put one together, it was determined to create a doozy. FOCUS, which stands for Forging Our Comprehensive Urban Strategy, is a voluminous 25-year outline of the city’s future, based in part on best practices from other cities. Twenty-five years may be an overly long time horizon; the new city manager is working on a shorter-range plan. Performance measures are used in the city budget, but they are almost entirely workload-oriented. “Most people don’t really have a good grasp of outcome-based measurement here,” says Mark Thoma-Perry, senior analyst in the city manager’s office. The council is learning to use the measures to make decisions. After a stormy beginning, city auditor Mark Funkhouser, has turned his office into a major force in pushing for better performance. His reports have much impact, and he is included in major policy decisions. AVERAGE GRADE: B- Copyright © 2000, Congressional Quarterly, Inc. Reproduction in any form without the written permission of the publisher is prohibited. Governing, City & State and Governing.com are trademarks of Congressional Quarterly, Inc.