Fort Smith city boss: Organizational review ready for release
by July 1, 2009 8:18 am 90 views
The organizational review of city government first mentioned by Fort Smith City Administrator Dennis Kelly during a Dec. 23 city board of directors study session could be released during the week of July 6.
Kelly, who assumed administrator duties in October, said at a January board retreat he hoped his ongoing review of city government — including downtown Fort Smith tourism and economic development efforts — would be ready by March or April. In late April, Kelly declined requests from The City Wire to update the status of report delivery. (Comments from Fort Smith City Directors about Kelly’s proposed review were posted May 5 in this story by The City Wire.)
But in a short interview following the June 30 study session of the Fort Smith Board of Directors, Kelly said he is “confident” the about 1-inch thick report will be released “next week.” He said the board, key city staff and the media will receive copies of the report.
One item to be in the review is an attempt to pull at least a 10% savings from the city’s almost $2 million annual vehicle maintenance budget, according to Kelly. He said existing vehicle maintenance is scattered in various physical locations with no centralized control to monitor costs, needs and other factors.
“I want to consolidate that. … I think we could see some real savings there,” Kelly said.
His goal is to spend no more than $100,000 to have an engineer study what is needed to create a more efficient system to manage vehicle maintenance. Kelly said he wants to adopt maintenance systems implemented by other cities and companies with fleet operations.
“There are good systems out there with software programs and models that I think we can adjust for what we want to do,” Kelly said.
Kelly said he plans to schedule a 2-3 hour special meeting with the board of directors in the near future to review his ideas “page by page.” Following that, Kelly said he sees the development of a “punch list” with items the board agrees should be addressed.
“This will be a work in progress as time goes on,” Kelly said.