On July 29, 2004, the Public Works Agency held an "All Hands" meeting to welcome park maintenance employees and recognize retiring employees. Raul Godinez II, Agency Director, presented the "State of the Agency." The text of those remarks is presented here:
Welcome Park Maintenance Employees
Before I begin the State of the Agency address, I'd like to welcome our newest colleagues from the Office of Parks and Recreation. You include the custodial crews for park facilities that are now part of our Facilities Division; the park maintenance staff that are a part of our Park and Building Maintenance Division; and the tree services staff that is now part of our Infrastructure Maintenance Division.
If I could ask all of the former OPR Parks Maintenance staff to stand for a moment.
To everyone else, please take notice of these new team members, because they are now a part of our family. Park Maintenance is now Public Works, and I know you will all extend them all the support and cooperation we do each other, because we always - take care of our own.
Please take your seats and welcome again to the family.
Let's all give them a big Public Works welcome (applause).
Retiree Recognition
To our honored guests,
Congratulations. You have reached a milestone in your lives that we all hope to reach someday - the "pot of gold" at the end of the rainbow. I commend you for your hard work and dedication to the City of Oakland.
We have 41 employees who have retired, or plan to retire between now and the end of December. Your tenure with the city ranges between 8 and 42 years. You have a combined total of 1,113 years of service.
This is a tremendous amount of experience, achievement, dedication, and institutional knowledge. The City of Oakland has benefited greatly by your combined years of service.
I believe that life is like writing a book. I hope that the future chapters of your life's story are as rewarding, if not more, than the ones that you wrote while working with the Public Works Agency. May your book be long and enjoyable!
As you end your public service careers, some of you may continue to work, or volunteer in some community service; some of you may complete (or get started) on those projects that you've had on hold; some of you may travel, or even further your education. Whatever your plans for the future, I sincerely wish you continued success and happiness.
As Director, I know I speak for the entire Public Works Agency in wishing you all congratulations, you will be missed!
State of the Agency
Good morning team.
It is my pleasure to be here. This is the first All Hands gathering we've had since 1998. It's truly an awesome sight to have in one place all the employees who help keep this city safe and clean, who keep our traffic moving and our pedestrians safe, who keep our sewers and storm drains working, who keep our garbage and recycling services working, who keep our city facilities operating, and who keep our parks open for recreation - frankly all the people who make this a great place to live, work, and play. I am truly proud and honored to be amongst you.
Let me start by talking a little bit about the State of the Agency. As you can see from our two Masters of Ceremony, Shanna and Eldridge, we are a diverse agency. Not only are we diverse in who we are: race, gender, sexual orientation, religious and political affiliation; but we are also diverse in what we do; we've got building trades and administration professionals, we've got engineers and architects, we've got construction inspectors and accountants, we've got public works maintenance professionals, and an all-star equipment shop. I'd like to say that we are probably the most diverse agency - both in who we are, and what we do - in the entire City. I truly believe this is a strength, but it could also be a challenge. I think that in order to overcome the challenges that this great diversity poses, we must do a couple of things. Practice tolerance to differing points of view and embrace our diversity. We must also remind ourselves of what we have in common: and that is our mission here at work - to provide quality service. Only in this way can we achieve the unity and cooperation, which is crucial to the success of an agency as large as ours.
Speaking of size, as of July 1st, we took the definitive standing as being the second largest agency within the city. The Public Works Agency officially has 833 full-time equivalents, which comes close to 900 actual employees. The numbers are big; and so are the expectations and challenges. Some of the challenges that come with our large size are effective communication. We live in the information age where information is key, so we must stress and value communication. We have technology to help us with some of this, but we must strengthen the lines of communication through our chain of command. I like to call this "closing the loop."
Other challenges facing large agencies are effective organization, and effective leadership. As you know, we have realigned our internal departments, and added a new one, due to a number of changes that include the loss of key individuals who are among our honorees today and the addition of 180 employees that transferred from the Office of Parks and Recreation and who we've welcomed into our family. This realignment has resulted in a reorganized organizational structure that is both internally and externally focused and poised to improve the quality of life for you, our employees, and the services we deliver to our community.
I'd like to give you a brief overview of the most significant changes and introduce you to the individuals that will lead each of the departments. The Department of Infrastructure and Operations will be led by Bruce Saunders, Interim Assistant Director. The Infrastructure and Operations department includes Electrical Services, Infrastructure Maintenance (which includes maintenance of storm drains, sewers, streets, sidewalks, and trees), and the Equipment Services function.
The Department of Facilities and Environment will be led by Brooke Levin, Assistant Director. The Facilities and Environment department covers maintenance of all city facility services (at parks, libraries, City Hall, the Municipal Service Center, and others). The department is also responsible for street cleaning, illegal dumping, graffiti abatement, park maintenance, median maintenance, administration of our solid waste and recycling contracts, restoration of our creeks and our environmental remediation & compliance services.
The Design and Construction Services Department will be led by Mike Neary, Interim Assistant Director. Design and Construction Services will continue to provide capital project delivery, engineering design, right-of-way management, and transportation services.
Lastly, is the Administrative Services function. This department will be led by Stephanie Hom, our new Agency Administrative Manager. The department includes the human resources, training, public information, fiscal services, and information technology functions needed to support our work.
I am confident that my new executive management team will make us stronger and more effective. With this reorganization, I am optimistic about our future and feel confident that we have positioned ourselves to address both the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead for our organization.
I want to take this opportunity to thank all of you who participated in the reorganization efforts, by either suggesting changes, serving in an acting or interim assignment, or serving on one or more focus groups. I truly appreciate the help during this time of transition.
We're off to a fresh start and I'd like to steer us in the right direction. I'd like to share with you some of the challenges I foresee, and some of the ideas I have to face them. The most obvious challenge we face is one of inadequate resources; however, this is not something that is going to change anytime soon; in fact, our entire state is in a similar situation, so we've got to be creative and resourceful.
Therefore increasing volunteerism is one of my goals. Our task of caring for our infrastructure is huge - especially when it is aging and resources are dwindling, so we can use all the help we can get. I want to increase volunteerism and develop partnerships with community groups, which will help us work collaboratively in addressing some of our needs. Our adopt-a-spot programs and community clean-up programs are great examples of how volunteers can help us improve our City. Our annual Earth Day and Creek to Bay Day events have established a culture of caring within our community, and we must further develop that culture from an annual event to one that occurs more often, perhaps monthly. Our parks and medians also provide us with an opportunity for volunteerism and stewardship, and we must develop these opportunities into functioning partnerships. Once we develop these partnerships, we must be prepared to fully support those efforts - in a true partnership fashion.
If you can think of ideas where we can partner with the community and solicit volunteers, please let me know.
Another one of my goals is to improve our image. One way to start improving our image is to start promoting and communicating the great work that we do here - because I do believe we do great work. The other is improving customer service and satisfaction. Studies have shown that customer satisfaction is the number one factor in improving an organization's image.
Each of us must understand the role that we play in customer service. I want our service to be friendly, efficient and effective. We must all recognize our role in customer service. As an office worker, you have the opportunity to improve customer service when greeting and directing visitors in person or over the phone; and during meetings with both internal and external customers. As a field employee, you can provide improved customer service by being responsive to calls and community concerns out in the field. You can help us improve our image by doing your work in a professional manner, and being conscientious about the fact that because you are the most visible to the public, you represent us. I once read that "the manner in which a person looks, speaks and acts conveys an attitude just as the tone of voice and choice of words affect a message." So let's make sure we're all conveying the right message and the right image.
The next goal I want us to focus on is on building and strengthening relationships. We are not a silo. Everything we do affects someone else, and what we do is affected by others - therefore, we must communicate and we must develop and strengthen relationships. We need to strengthen relationships among ourselves, our labor unions and our customers, to make us more effective. We must develop and strengthen the relationships with our community - we've already talked about developing volunteerism opportunities; we must develop and strengthen our relationship with our leaders - both elected and appointed because the resources they allocate can mean the difference between our success or lack-there-of.
We've covered a few goals now: improving our image, improving our customer satisfaction and developing and improving our relationships with all of our partners. These are all inter-related. Improving our relationships will help us improve our customer service and achieve better customer satisfaction; improved customer satisfaction will improve our image. An improved image will help us attract more resources (our original challenge - remember?) by restoring the trust and confidence from our elected leaders and the community at-large to give us additional resources. The voters have generally been generous in approving additional resources for libraries, schools, and major capital programs like Measure DD, and I believe that they will invest in our infrastructure and parks if they believe their money will be well spent with us.
So there you have it, I've laid out what I believe our strengths to be - our diversity and our size, I've laid out what I see some of the challenges to be - our size and ability to communicate effectively as a result of it, and our need for more resources to do the job we have. I've also laid out some goals that I believe will help us overcome these challenges and help ensure our success.
We've only just begun, but I believe we are off to a great start! I along with my executive management team will work hard to restore confidence in our leadership; together we must all work hard to restore confidence in our Agency. I encourage each and every one of you to start each workday by thinking about the role that you play in achieving these goals - improving our image and customer service, promoting volunteerism, and focusing on building relationships.
Finally, please know that I appreciate the work that you do for the Public Works Agency and the City of Oakland. Thank you for your continued support and dedication.
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