Designs for City Government Innovation

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Turning Pieces of Information into Flowcharts

The city’s development review process is primarily explained verbally and there is no city document that concisely explains the general steps for getting a project approved. After trying my best to explain the development review process by referencing municipal code sections and my own understanding, I decided to create a flowchart that would enable my applicant or an inquiring community member to easily get a gist of the process and what each step entails. The corresponding document shows my iterations of the process flowchart throughout the years.

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Creating a Guide that Guides

Despite the wealth of information in the city’s current 7-page air conditioning (A/C) unit guide, residents and contractors struggle to understand the city’s regulations and review/approval process. Consequently, they reach out to staff every day for them to fill in the gaps of information and to, ultimately, complete their A/C unit zoning and noise analysis, and to draw their project’s requisite site plan. These informal AC unit sessions often require upwards to 45 minutes of staff time. In an effort to save time and empower the public with better knowledge, I have created a new guide that is more informative, shorter in length, and interactive.

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Reducing Work & Building Trust

In 2018, my Community Development director asked if we any had ideas for how we could meet the demands of a significant and sustained uptick in new projects without increasing the number of staff and with staff already being a bit stretched thin. This need and the associated constraints rolled about my mind for months. Before the end of the year, I offered up my strategy, which proposed to improve the way we communicate our development regulations, review procedures, and submittal standards to the public. I believed that doing this would reduce the amount of time that staff needed to review projects to an extent that we could save 4,200 hours of work time and improve our relationship with the public.