Keeping the wolf from the door: Trends in retrenchment
by Steve Plumb
Elmhurst Park District

At the July meeting of your leisure service agency's board of commissioners, the meeting room is packed with an angry but organized group of residents who recently received their annual tax bills, and are concerned that the bill has nearly doubled. A spokesman informs your board that his group intends to "do whatever it takes to see that you hold the line on future tax increases."

Over the next few months, the group organizes, campaigns, grows, and begins to exert considerable pressure on the local public agencies. The local paper, recognizing a good story, plays up the group's concern and fans the flames. At a fall meeting attended by several hundred residents, the board determines that next year's total tax levy will be cut by 15 percent and that all future tax increases will be tied to a "cost-of-living" index. The next day, your boss advises you that recommendations for departmental cuts are due in one week.

This scenario sounds implausible, yet taxpayers all over Illinois are asking local governments difficult questions about taxes. During the '90s, leisure service agencies will be increasingly requested to justify expenditures, budgets and tax rates, and will continually need to rethink their service priorities in light of taxpayer demands to hold the line.

In Elmhurst, it is quite likely that, beginning in 1991, future tax levy increases will indeed be tied to some yet-to-be-determined cost-of-living index. To at least one agency, the scenario outlined above is very real.

As taxpayer dissatisfaction increases, park maintenance managers will be forced to respond to the cost-cutting challenge and develop real solutions. There are a variety of cost-cutting strategies that can be implemented by most park maintenance departments, some of which may help keep the wolf from the door for a little while longer. These "trends in retrenchment" can be organized into many categories.

Improve management
Improve your department's problem-solving and decision-making procedures and capabilities. Develop a comprehensive maintenance plan. This process is time-consuming but will save money over time. As part of this plan you must develop a system for tracking labor. Identify your total workload so you will know how much additional work you can take on. Act rather than react. Work toward developing a preventative maintenance program rather than one which is reactive. Develop a resource inventory, and know what you have to maintain.

Computerize
This does not require big dollars to accomplish. For $5,000 or less your department can be off and running. Implementation of spread sheet and word processing programs can be extremely beneficial to a park maintenance department. In Elmhurst, a work order tracking system was developed and installed at no cost by students at a local technical school.

Organize
You cannot over organize. Develop checklists, manuals, schedules and other tools to help you allocate your time and resources more effectively. In Elmhurst, development of a detailed contractual project schedule has helped the supervisors spread their workloads and has insured that projects are not forgotten.

Apply proven management techniques. There are literally hundreds of applicable techniques, including Management By Objectives, Network Analysis, and productivity-based performance appraisals which can save time and resources.

Rethink your department's role. Analyze who provides what. Focus on results. Your workload is increasing faster than your resources, so look for different ways to accomplish your job. Develop service priorities. Workloads cannot expand indefinitely. Sooner or later, every manager will have to make choices regarding cuts. We must be able to justify our services and will need data in order to do so. In the preceding scenario, the park department budget was to be reduced by 15 percent. If this was your department, where would you make cuts?

Delegate to supervisors and line staff. They are most knowledgeable about field operations. Let them know what your expectations are and give them the responsibility to complete the job.

Contract with the private sector. Reduce your workload by contracting for those services which cannot be effectively provided in-house. The Elmhurst Park District now contracts out play equipment installation, custodial maintenance services, treeplanting and even some turf maintenance in selected areas.

Cooperate with other agencies and organizations. Work with your local school district, YMCA, college, hospital or village to get the job done. As an example, our agency has an arrangement with several little leagues and a local college to maintain most of our athletic fields.

Increase and improve personnel resources. If possible, tap nontraditional sources to complement your staff. More importantly, improve relations with existing personnel. Maintaining a

happy and unified team is particularly critical as unionization of public agencies becomes a real possibility.

Utilize volunteers
Recreation departments have been doing this for years. With management assistance you could establish a foundation to assist your agency in completing sellable major projects. Employ a coordinator to locate volunteers and to identify tasks that can be completed by volunteers. Create a Technical Advisory Committee consisting of people from within the community with particular talents or skills who would be available to provide periodic advice on technical subjects like furnace or boiler maintenance, making training videos, etc. Take advantage of programs such as Public Service Employment operated through the counties and townships. Use local garden clubs and horticultural groups to help plant and maintain flower beds and gardens.

Implement policies and procedures designed to expand the number of productive man-hours available. For example, our department analyzed the use of sick leave over a four-year period and recommended several policy changes designed to reduce sick leave abuse annually. The net effect has been an increase in available man-hours.

Cross train employees
Train more than one employee to perform critical tasks. Make certain that critical information is on paper and not in a single employee's head.

Replace full-time employees with seasonal employees. As full-time positions are vacated, consider filling that slot with several seasonal employees instead. In some situations, many more man-hours can be produced for less money.

Increase communications with your employees. You could develop and implement a communication audit to determine the effectiveness of inter- and infra-departmental communications. Survey employees for their opinions on working conditions, benefits, supervisory effectiveness, etc. Establish employee committees to increase employee participation in the decision-making process. Establish a program to tie a certain percentage of an employee's merit salary increase to an incentive program; or work with agency managers to develop a cafeteria plan for benefits so employees can choose among a variety of benefits.

Become more efficient
There are a wide variety of ways to increase your department's efficiency. These include reducing maintenance. Look for more efficient and effective ways to accomplish a task. Consider maintenance costs as well as the initial installation cost. Some of the ideas implemented by the Elmhurst Park District include discontinuation of wooden timbers. We now use SPIKMA curbing for play area borders, recycled plastic timbers for parking barriers and interlocking stone for walls. We have installed mulch around tree and shrub groupings to reduce triming and mower damage to trees. We've installed a portable irrigation system to help maintain soccer fields. We have changed our approach to recurring tasks such as mowing and litter removal. Picnic tables are painted and repaired in the field instead of hauling tables back to the shop. Bulk instead of bagged fertilizer is used. The cost is about the same but the labor needed to handle and apply it has been reduced by 90 percent. We plant perennial rather than annual flowers in several beds. Perennials require less maintenance in the long run. We have altered building-use policies and procedures to reduce or eliminate problems related to the control of building users.

Improve loss prevention programs and procedures. Improvements that could improve productivity include initiation of a safety committee to review and develop policies and procedures, inspect facilities and correct safety deficiencies. Develop safety policy manuals. Implement a safety incentive program.

Increase staff training
Training is particularly difficult for most maintenance departments during a major part of the year, but remains one of the most effective ways to improve employee efficiency and productivity. Look for new ideas. Read magazines. Brainstorm with your staff. Attend meetings with your colleagues and discuss problems and solutions. Put an idea box in your shop for departmental employees.

Improve the management of resources and supplies. Change the way you operate to reduce or eliminate waste. Some examples of programs which have helped the Elmhurst Park District include completion of an energy audit of many of the district's buildings and facilities; development of a gasoline monitoring system with the city; sharing equipment with neighboring agencies; purchasing replacement automobiles off the lot without sealed bidding; cooperative purchase of natural gas from a pipeline company; and development of an annual vehicle cost summary which totals repairs, gas and labor costs for each vehicle.

Increase intergovernmental cooperation. Obviously, departmental flexibility can be increased through intergovernmental cooperation. The Elmhurst Park District shares a maintenance complex with the city. This permits the sharing of supplies, equipment and even personnel. We are also in the process of completing major flood control and park improvement projects in cooperation with the city. A shared safety coordinator has been employed through an intergovernmental agreement with two neighboring agencies. The Illinois Park and Recreation Association has established a very successful cooperative purchasing program.

Identify new sources of funding. Although taxes are the primary source of funding for most park maintenance departments, other funding sources are available. Some programs which have been successful in Elmhurst include implementation of service fees. Some service fees are possible. The Elmhurst Park District charges a fee for Sunday picnic reservations and for rental of a portable stage. We are investigating use fees for athletic field use.

Donation programs
A tree memorial program implemented in our agency has resulted in the donation of 252 trees in 14 years. We also transplant acceptable trees from residential yards.

Facility leases
We lease space in one of our recreation buildings to a local museum. Green Meadows Farm, a farm program, also leases a portion of a park for one month each year. Approximately $12,000 is generated yearly through lease programs.

This outline of cost-cutting ideas is not meant to be a comprehensive listing, but rather is intended to stimulate thinking and planning by those who will be affected by the need to "retrench." As we move into the '90s, there is no doubt that we are going to be asked to justify our service priorities. We need to be ready with a wide range of solutions if we are to keep the wolf from the door.

About the Author
Steve Plumb is Superintendent of Parks and Planning at Elmhurst Park District.