Richmond’s Department of Public Works employees say they’ve had equipment repossessed from job sites because of late bill payments.
The city’s Emergency Communications Department said three outages last year translated to missed calls and delayed response times.
The Department of Parks, Recreation and Community Facilities said the city’s fleet department takes months to perform basic maintenance such as oil changes.
Mayor Levar Stoney and consultants with Virginia Commonwealth University’s Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs released a promised comprehensive review of city government on Thursday. The results offer a glimpse into the dysfunction, inefficiency and general malaise that has permeated city government and provides hundreds of recommendations for how Stoney and his administration can set about turning things around.
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“Today is the day of long-needed and honest reckoning,” Stoney said at a Thursday morning news conference.
Despite the overall bleak picture painted by the report’s department-by-department breakdown — recurring themes included excessive bureaucracy, low morale and micromanagement — the consulting team’s members said not much surprised them about what they found.
And they stressed they found a workforce that, while frustrated, is eager to put improvements in place.
“These are issues we’d find in any large organization,” said James M. Burke, director of the Wilder School’s Performance Management Group.
The report zeroed in on inefficiencies in departments that touch every aspect of city government: Information Technology, Finance and Human Resources. And Stoney said those are areas he hopes to address first.
“Those are kind of the pillars of an organization that can stand on its own two feet. And right now, we need a little help,” Stoney said.
The report attributes Public Works having its equipment repossessed to an overly complicated procurement processes combined with poor accounting procedures, which tied back to recommendations for the Finance Department to hire additional technical accountants.
The report said broader issues with the procurement office, which surfaced in nearly every department, could be addressed by empowering departments to handle their own smaller purchases.
The outages at the 911 center, including one that the report said lasted 13 hours, could be addressed by creating redundant networks, the report suggests.
The review of the Department of Information Technology found “city systems are not in a position to be dependably recovered in the case of a disaster,” and suggested the city develop a detailed recovery plan. On a larger level, the report recommended the city consider hiring a citywide chief information officer.
In regards to long delays experienced by the parks department getting vehicles maintained, the consultants suggested an online scheduling system with “clear accountability for servicing standards and turnaround time.”
The Department of Public Utilities was among a number of departments where frustration with the city’s Human Resources Department surfaced. Employees “reported a severe staff shortage in staff coupled with a hiring process that is reportedly slow and problematic. Employees feel that Human Resources has been ineffective and unresponsive to staff needs.”
The report suggested offering managers “more control over the hiring process, including screening the applicant pool and salary decisions.”
Issues in other departments focused on concerns with management and laborious bureaucratic procedures. In the city’s Department of Economic and Community Development, the report said employees voiced frustration with “lack of empowerment at the director level.”
“Rather than handle and resolve certain things, individuals allegedly pass the problem on to their superiors or a related department to approve it, even when such approval is not required. Employees gave several examples of key people avoiding making decisions so they can distance themselves from the outcomes that may be later criticized by the CAO, the mayor and/or City Council.”
Other complaints were more basic.
“City Hall lacks the appearance of being well maintained and clean,” the report at one point states, suggesting as a fix an evaluation of “visitor experience, security, routine maintenance and cleanliness of City Hall.”
City officials sought to qualify or clarify some of the report’s findings. Stoney’s press secretary, Jim Nolan, said the interim public works director, Bobby Vincent, was unaware of any city-owned equipment being repossessed, but acknowledged that slow payments have created problems and said employees might have mistaken rental equipment being abruptly collected as a repossession.
And in response to a statement Thursday by the consultants that there is no backup to the 911 system, Nolan sent out an email to say the city has a long-standing partnership with Henrico County to serve as a backup provider for emergency dispatch services and that the system was reinforced this year.
On the campaign trail last year, Stoney made his promise to conduct the review a centerpiece of his pledge to reform city government. The total cost of the review was $200,000, which was defrayed in part by $50,000 contributions from both Altria Group and Dominion Resources. VCU covered another $50,000 of the cost as an in-kind contribution.
Overall, Burke and the Wilder School’s Linda L. Pierce said they were pleasantly surprised by the enthusiastic response from employees through interviews with department heads, focus groups and 1,200 survey responses.
“The energy of the employees is impressive,” Pierce said. “That might be a pleasant surprise. How much they’re invested in their jobs and how much they really want to find improvements and have their work be more efficient and effective.”
The report does not recommend any specific staff changes. Burke and Pierce noted Stoney had already replaced four department heads, including in Human Resources.
Stoney, however, said, “There may be many more changes coming.”
The consultants spoke positively about Chief Administrative Officer Selena Cuffee-Glenn, who was hired by then-Mayor Dwight C. Jones in April 2015.
In response to questions about to what extent Cuffee-Glenn should be held accountable for not addressing problems identified in the report earlier, Burke said he saw in her “an absolute investment in change.”
“I don’t think there’s a thing in this report that’s surprising to (city administrators),” Burke said. “And in terms of organizational change, it takes a while, but I don’t think this is an administration that’s going to be patient. Even though Mrs. Cuffee-Glenn has been there, I think you’re going to see rapid change.”
Stoney said he would immediately begin implementing the report’s recommendation to create a team within City Hall to prioritize and implement the report’s recommendations.
“We have some substantial challenges ahead of us to make City Hall deliver the government the citizens of Richmond deserve, and this is an important first step in that journey,” he said.
“Moving forward, our goal with this report is not to relitigate the past and point fingers. It’s about the fix. With the support of our employees, our City Council and our community, I am confident we will get there.”