04-13-2005 Council Agenda - Laserfiche WebLink

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Identify Areas not served by City Water and Develop Plan to serve those areas — Staff will complete a thorough investigation of areas not served, but my initial belief is we have done a good job in this area. Essentially, those areas not yet served are awaiting road improvements (Lakeside Court and Australian Avenue east of Lakeshore are a couple of examples) or will be accommodated when development occurs (balance of land along County Road D — Heinel Property). Staff has also set up a meeting with the City of Maplewood to evaluate the possibility of serving Beam Avenue, Kohlman Lane in Maplewood and perhaps the Scully property with water. We are not sure which city is in a better position to serve this area as of yet. 800 Mhz — Maintain or Improve Current Dispatch Levels — With the introduction of the new 800 Mhz radio system, a number of concerns regarding dispatch service levels have arisen that are associated with the merger of the County and St. Paul systems. Studies indicate St. Paul is understaffed in dispatchers. While the exact status of the merger is still unclear, it seems inevitable that our costs will go up with the new system, barring a complete County takeover of the system and costs (and even then the costs paid by our taxpayers will be higher even if they are not coming from direct charges to us). The County Manager has been updating our Sheriff's Department Contract Group and assures us service levels will be adequately addressed. We will continue to monitor this issue. Conduct Community Survey and include questions related to Community Center — The City has done two citywide surveys conducted by Decision Resources, Inc. They were done in 1988 and 1995. They have proved helpful in gauging community support for various services such as parks, trails, and our newsletter. They have also provided a good indicator of general satisfaction with the City in a broad range of service areas. While I don't recall exactly what one would cost to do at this time, I would guess it would around the $15,000 range. Many cities do these on a more frequent basis. I believe it would be worthwhile to consider one again given the time has lapsed. Upgrade Utility Map System — This has been a long - standing area of concern that continues to frustrate us. We have commissioned previous engineering firms to update our maps and put them in a format that is useable for our Public Works staff. We have not been successful, but progress has been made. We will discuss this with Lee Elfering and come up with a plan and cost estimate to accomplish this important task. It will be incorporated within our 2006 Budget. Merchandise Little Canada and Develop Public Relations Guide and Street Map — We have done some merchandising of the City over the past number of years with clothing, refrigerator magnets, recycling bins, and our 50'h Anniversary items. As far as a public relations guide, we do have our Welcome Packet (please ask for a copy if you have not seen it). The concern with Guides is the dating of material relative to the cost to publish minimum run quantities. With our Welcome Packet, we attempted to solve this by having updatable sheets that doesn't force us to toss a lot of preprinted material. We have a limited street map and have relied more heavily on the Ramsey County Map due to its inclusion of a broader area. This topic may be worthy of more discussion by the Council at an Update Workshop. If you agree, let me know and we will schedule it. 2