Goings on

The past few days I have been busy with a ton of different things. The biggest news is that one of my projects is moving forward in the process for final implementation.

I have been working with the Town Clerk on several projects the past few weeks. One of them has been regarding the current Boards and Commissions. I have been part of an internal team working on some of the details for this new project. I put together a background report, executive summary and a presentation. I had to give the presentation to all the department heads on Monday morning. I was pretty nervous since I wanted to make sure that I explained the project clearly and did not come off as a know-nothing. I think it went pretty well. No one said that I did terrible, but who would say that...

Giving the presentation was really helpful in several ways. First, it gave me more practice speaking in front of people that I am not 100% familiar with. We gave presentations during my MPA, but those were to my friends and teachers and usually did not have any consequences rather than grades, but this presentation had real life outcomes, if the Town chooses to implement this new design. It also was meant to provide the department heads the opportunity to give feedback on the process in order to work out all the details and make sure that this program can be the best it can be. I really appreciated their feedback and I they brought up many different things of which the internal team had not yet thought. I am going to give the same presentation to another group and then to the Council eventually, so I was glad to have the practice.

I am currently working on two programs that are going to be reinstated during this fiscal year. They are very similar in that one is for citizens and the other for employees. I am currently only working on citizen program since we have not yet met regarding the employee program, but I think that they will coincide fairly seamlessly. I have been preparing schedules and background for the citizens program, and I think we can pull quite a bit from this for the employee version, so I am looking forward to getting that started next week.

I have also been working on setting up the Town's United Way campaign. I think it will be a great marketing campaign and hopefully we will have a number of employees who will be interested in giving to help others. There are several agencies that work with the United Way that provide service to Marana residents. We are looking to start our campaign in the next few months, so I will be very busy with that in the next couple weeks. They are really great to work with so I am excited to be involved with the United Way.

I have also been working on finishing up organizing all the wastewater documents. I am almost finished with the electronic documents, and then it comes to make sure that all the hard copies are in there and scanning things that are not missing from the repository. This process should not take as long since I did a lot of the work ahead of time naming things and putting them in specific folders that searching should be a piece of cake. Well that is the hope anyway. I will start working on something similar for the contracts process. Currently, the team is working on how to move forward with a successful and transparent contract management process, which will be applied to most every department. But my responsibility is to create a naming convention to be used for these contracts. I created one for the wastewater files, but these are different types of documents, and my WW convention does not apply. So I have been going through different types of files to see what is currently in the system and how they are currently named as a starting place and then when the team meets again we can come up with a final decision.

I am really enjoying my time with the Town. I feel as if I am working on projects that are meaningful and will make a difference in the management of Town business and will make things more streamlined and easier for staff. As far as the new programs are concerned, that is one of the most exciting things for me. I love coming up with new and fresh ideas to brighten up something that might not have been active in recent years. I have been doing that with my volunteer experience for years, and it is nice to use those skills in my chosen profession. I really like being in on something from the beginning and working hard to build it and see it through to fruition. There is a great sense of pride that comes with seeing something you have worked so hard on finally be achieved. I really want to be able to work on something that the Town and Marana residents will  be proud of. That they can say, "oh yeah, that really awesome program..... its in my town." Its just life affirming being excited about everything (mostly) in your chosen field. I am just having a great time! Yes, I know....giant dork.

New Project Alert!

So I might be the worst at blogging....but more likely there has just been so much going on recently that I just have not had the time to sit down and think/reflect.

I have still been working on the wastewater documents. Slowly but surely I will get through that backlog! Its amazing the records that have been kept over the past 6 years!

The HR survey I have been developing finally went out for respondents this week, which is both exciting and scary. I just hope people respond and that it is easy to use and understand. I think it will be quick and we will get some great data back.

The new stuff has been really exciting also! Last week Vickie and I attended the Arizona City/County Managers Association conference in Tucson. It is the state branch of the International City/County Manager's Association, and is a place where managers and other leaders from towns, cities and counties all over the state come for professional development. It was a three and half day conference and each day was broken up into continuing education type sessions. I really enjoyed the citizen's engagement talk and got a lot of great ideas for the new commissions system we are working on, as well as the sustainability and green government discussion. Recycling and others types of conservation is something that I am really into, not in a crazy hippie way, but a normal and reasonable way. I do not drive to work on french fry oil or anything, but I am a bit of a recycling dictator...So it was really interesting to see how, in this instance, Maricopa County was institutionalizing sustainable programs.
There were so many other lectures; pensions and retirement, ask the experts, economic update, legislative update, mobile governing, and many others. It was really cool to learn from others in the profession.

Did I mention that I have some new projects....
Well I am going to start working on something that the Town has done in the past, but due to budget restrictions had to discontinue, but they are bringing it back! I had this idea from the conference about how to generate employee buy in to reduce attrition and turn over, and that fits perfectly into the project with HR and the Clerk's office. They have a employee training program where new employees are introduced to Marana and what the Town has to offer. It is a great way to inform while promoting the Town. There is an external program also, that citizens can participate in to learn more about Marana and municipal government in general. This is so exciting, since I am the biggest government nerd out there, talking and teaching other people about it will be amazing!
The other project is similar to the wastewater project in that it centers around organization, but this time it involves the contracting process. So I will be using the same programs, but in a new way. I am learning more about the other departments; how they function and what types of work they do. It makes my rotation through CIP and Records that much more important since now I have a beginning knowledge of what they do, and I do not have to start from scratch. Contracts are unique because most of the work is done electronically, editing and revising drafts, but the most important part are the signatures and how do we remedy the signatures with the electronic versions. That is what I am going to be working on with folks from Finance, CIP, Tech Services, and Records.

I have really been having a great time here. The days just seem to fly by, and it never seems like I have enough time to get things done. I think that is real life though. I am glad to be here and feel like I am doing work that is meaningful for Marana residents. While it might not seem that way when I am sitting and sorting through documents, the end product will be significant.