FISCHER SAYS CITY'S PLANNING SESSION POSITIVE; AIMED AT BETTER COMMUNICATIONS

Cape Girardeau city department heads met Thursday and Friday for a city planning session, part of an ongoing effort to improve communication and cooperation among city officials.

City Manager J. Ronald Fischer said Saturday that the two-day session was informative and helpful.

"It was a very good meeting," he said. "We've been doing this once a year for the last four years, and I think the department heads are at a point now where they look to working together as a way to get a job done.

"When you sit down with a team effort like we've tried to do here it helps eliminate a lot of mistakes and duplications."

Fischer said that since he was hired as city manager five years ago he's tried to foster a "team management" style of city government.

On Thursday morning the city department heads participated in a "team building session" with a human resources and training officer from a private corporation.

"One of the things that came out of the session is that it kind of gave the guys some ideas of how it was important for them to make the various advisory boards more of a team with department heads," Fischer said. "We've got some 200 people who serve on the various boards, and that's an important resource for the city."

Also on Thursday the group studied the city budget process and discussed ways department heads could have more flexibility in making budget decisions.

"We want to have less red tape, basically," Fischer said. "n ot only in the budget, but in purchasing."

Another topic of the session was a new performance evaluation process the city hopes to implement this year.

"Hopefully by July, we'll be able to put this in place. What we're going to do this year is not tie pay to performance, but basically through the performance evaluations make better and more productive employees who are more responsive to the public," Fischer said.

"Hopefully in the future this will be tied to pay."

The city manager said the standards for the performance evaluations will be established by various department heads.

On Friday Kevin McMeel, the assistant public works director, reviewed the city's equipment. All the department heads were able to see the needs in other departments and better understand the capital budget process.

"I think that was a very positive thing," said Fischer. "I think the guys started understanding more what the needs in other departments are."

Also discussed at the meeting was a new computer mapping system at City Hall; the imminent completion of the Cape LaCroix Creek-Walker Branch flood-control projects; and annexation.

Fischer said completion of the flood-control project will mean the city must take over maintenance of the project and a recreation trail that's being built along with the project. It also will mean establishing laws for the trail and police enforcement of them.

"Annexation is another big issue. We're trying to put together another comprehensive plan on stages of annexation," he said. "We need to look at orderly growth for the city."

Fischer said the department heads also held a "brainstorming session" on how the city can better work with the public schools, the university and the county.

"It's important for us to be willing to work with those entities, and in return they have some resources that we can benefit from," he added.

In three to four months, Fischer said, "second-level management" will conduct a similar one-day seminar. Second-level management are those city officials who aren't department heads but do have some management responsibilities.

"This seems to be a very good tool to get the department heads and second level of management thinking along the same lines," he said. "It's a good source for getting information out and getting a better line of communications between the departments."