09-20-1999 WS - Laserfiche WebLink

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I should also let the Council know that since the meeting where the direction was given to develop an information request form, I have received a standard form that complies with Minnesota data practices statutes. It is used in some surrounding communities as well. While the form itself is complete, part of the foim delineates the type of data determined being requested. According to data practices, some types of data are either not considered public such as personal social security numbers, while other data cannot be made public unless compiled so as not to infringe on privacy rights. For instance, the City may become aware of someone's income due to a social service program that assists in paying water bills. We can say we have X% of bill payers receiving assistance,just not name the people individually. Anyway, I need to have a policy in place that employees can use to determine the type of information to be made available. This shouldn't be too hard since I have copies of other cities policies as well, it's just a little cumbersome in doing it timely. I expect we will have it done fairly soon. In other matters, we have had some discussion about the City Hall parking lot striping. It wasn't done quite right. The stalls are a few inches too narrow. Mike conferred with me about the options to correct it. To do something sounds like a bigger mess than leaving it as is, and that is how staff is leaving it with the contractor. The lot will eventually get seal coated and we can restripe it properly. Related, questions have been coming to us as to whether the double yellow line on Edgewood means left turns cannot be made into the parking area. The final word here is that the yellow lines do not prevent that turn from being made; cars simply can't pass there. It was designed correctly. In our staff meeting of Tuesday, we reviewed the meeting of Monday night. I reported on Givonna Reed coming as the new Assistant and my expectations of her. We discussed the need to increase and improve the information we have on the City proper and City operations, that that should help provide staff, council and residents a better reference point from which to decide what's good for the community. Specifically this boils down to two general areas, one, from the community development perspective the GIS data that is becoming available must be analyzed and presented for public consumption. It is expected that with improvements to our web page and internal computer filing that it can be more complete and easier to access for everybody. This would include property values, land uses, zoning identification and so forth. The second need we discussed is to do a better job at measuring City operations and productivity. It has been difficult sticking to this objective with the volume of stuff taking place,but the increased use of software should be getting us into a position to scrutinize our own productivity better. We also discussed the need to acknowledge that data does not substitute for values, meaning needs will still be determine as policy. We spent the rest of the meeting on the agenda for Monday's work session. We have some absences to work around this month as well. That's it for now. Have a good weekend and see you on Monday.