UniverCity Year Contact Info: UniverCityAlliance@wisc.edu

UniverCity Year Contact Info
Gavin Luter
Managing Director
gavin@cows.org
608-261-1141

Some businesses have tried to combat this issue themselves. Gundersen, a hospital in La Crosse, offers free childcare to employees. Their program provides care for children between ages six weeks and 12 years and has a capacity of 101 children total. However, this program is not large enough and many Gundersen employees still struggle with finding childcare. Kwik Trip, another large employer in the area, is planning to open a childcare facility for its employees. Since it hasn’t opened yet, we aren’t aware of how it will impact childcare in La Crosse.

The La Crosse School District and other school districts in the county provide free half-day preschool to 4 year olds. Although this 4k program is great to have in place, there is an issue with transportation since many parents work during the day and cannot pick up or drop off their kid halfway through the workday. Additionally, most of these kids need to be at a childcare center for the other half of their day and many centers prefer not to offer half-day care. Recently, a traveling preschool program, which will be run out of a RV, started in an attempt to reach 4 year olds in the La Crosse School District that cannot attend the regular preschool program provided by the district. If the county decides to expand pre-K to include 3 year olds, childcare centers will likely have to increase their costs. Caring for infants and toddlers is quite expensive, so childcare centers become profitable when they care for 3 and 4 year olds. Obviously, an increase in childcare costs is not ideal because childcare in La Crosse is already very expensive for many families. If pre-K is expanded, it’s important to consider how the county could support childcare centers in the area.

Based on recent census data, La Crosse County has around 5,900 kids under the age of 5. If the county decides to implement universal childcare, this is the number of kids they should account for. No matter how La Crosse decides to go about solving issues related to childcare, this is good to know for cost estimates for their projects.

UniverCity Year Contact Info
Gavin Luter
Managing Director
gavin@cows.org
608-261-1141

UniverCity Year Contact Info
Gavin Luter
Managing Director
gavin@cows.org
608-261-1141

UniverCity Year Contact Info
Gavin Luter
Managing Director
gavin@cows.org
608-261-1141

University Faculty Contact
Joel Clark
jclark24@wisc.edu

Facing the sunset of Proposition D in 2016, National City requires solutions to mitigate a potential revenue deficit. This report assesses the options available to National City to address this situation. Though the problem is of a very specific and definite nature, the solutions possible are disperse and many times mutually compatible with other solutions. With any budgetary solvency issues, there are multiple methods to correct imbalances. This report is divided into groups of recommendations that provide a broad range of possible actions the City can take to correct potential revenue shortages.

The solutions presented in this document can be viewed as increasing revenues, decreasing expenditures, or a combination of both. However, solutions are segregated further into four groups: Revenue, Expenditure, Administration, and Community Improvement.

The Revenue group contains recommendations related to the direct replacement of the revenues provided by Proposition D. The principle concept in this category of solutions is that the City has a structural revenue problem. These solutions involve measures aimed to directly increase General Fund revenues. The recommendations to accomplish this goal include establishing a Community Financing District, working with other local governments to revive Redevelopment Agencies and Enterprise Zones, and to increase community events.

The Expenditure group contains recommendations related to reducing the City’s budgetary costs. These recommendations consider the possibility that the City’s budgetary solvency problem can be assuaged by reducing costs. The solutions presented to accomplish this goal are to reduce current staffing levels, to encourage sustainability, to contract out services that the private sector can deliver more economically, and to consider refinancing qualified City bonds.

The Administrative group contains recommendations related to administrative adjustments in the City government. Many of these solutions could both increase revenues and decrease expenditures. The main concept of this group of recommendations is to look at this budgetary imbalance as an opportunity to reevaluate the administrative processes currently in place.

The Administrative group includes recommendations to utilize the services of independent auditors, develop a Participatory Budgeting process, increase volunteer opportunities within the City’s divisions, adjust existing fee schedules, and establish Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs).

Finally, the Community Improvement category contains recommendations that are geared toward the long-term improvement of the City. Similar to the Administrative category solutions, this category includes recommendations that seek to use this opportunity to improve the quality of life for the residents of National City. Though not immediately providing budgetary solutions, these implementation measures should lead to an increase in overall economic development, the health and wellness of residents, and home-ownership and property values. These recommendations include the establishment of Business Improvement Districts, the increased use of Strategic Community Planning, and measures aimed at increasing home-ownership.

The Sage Project Contact Info
Kristofer Patron
Program Administrator
kpatron@sdsu.edu
(619) 594-0103

University Faculty Contact
Shawn Flanigan
Public Administration

Local Government / Community Contact

Development

National City has experienced economic ups and downs for the past decade, which has impacted the level of service they are able to provide to residents. For example, in 2005 and 2006, the city faced structural budget deficits that led to a reduction in service and service hours offered to residents in addition to the challenges presented by the national recession that occurred in 2009 and the State of California’s dissolution of redevelopment agencies in February 2012 (Comprehensive Annual Financial Report; CAFR, 2014). City management commented that “National City’s Redevelopment Agency was a crit-ical partner in planning and implementing improvements to the city’s infrastructure, as well as in meeting the housing needs for low and moderate income residents, and the loss of it resulted in the loss of millions of dollars in revenue needed to address these priorities” (CAFR, 2014, pg. viii).

To help overcome this economic uncertainty, in 2007, the City Manager’s Office worked with other city departments to create a strategic plan that was adopted in conjunction with the annual budget process to produce a financially feasible long–term strategy for the city. More specifically, the strategic plan states its goals are to:
• Establish a long–range vision and direction for the City;
• Ensure all participants are working toward the same goals and objectives;
• Assess/Adjust the direction of the organization given the current (and changing) environment;
• Communicate goals and initiatives of the organization; and
• Provide a basis for developing a work plan to ensure the goals and initiatives of the Strategic Plan are carried out (CAFR, 2014, pg. viii).

After the first strategic plan was adopted in 2007, the Council has approved an updated plan every two years.

In preparation for the 2015 strategic plan update, National City management collaborated with San Diego State University’s Public Administration graduate students who were enrolled in the upper–division Administrative Theory course. This report outlines the process that took place between the students and city staff as well as the objectives created by the students for each assigned department. These objectives were presented to the City Council for further discussion.

In preparation for the assignment, an organization chart of National City was presented to the students. The organization chart showed that the city manager and city attorney’s offices are central to National City operations. These two offices oversee four categories that, in turn, provide oversight of smaller city departments. The four categories are: Development, Public Safety, Community and Operations. Examples of departments included within the four categories include: the library, human resources and police.

After students were assigned a city department or category, the next step was to review the city staff’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) document. The SWOT was developed by management-level staff within each department and outlines their office’s capabilities and limitations. Students reviewed the documents and provided recommendations for which items could be further developed into objectives that would ultimately be included in the strategic plan.

Once objectives were established, students analyzed the items further by providing an estimated dollar amount needed to implement the objective as well as alternative sources of funding to be considered. Performance and social indicators were also developed so that progress for each objective could be tracked once adopted. This report will outline these objectives and supplemental information that the students created for each department. The objectives were then presented to the City Council for further discussion.

The Sage Project Contact Info
Kristofer Patron
Program Administrator
kpatron@sdsu.edu
(619) 594-0103

University Faculty Contact
Mounah Abdel-Samad
Public Administration

Local Government / Community Contact

Assistant City Manger