It’s Council Meeting Monday

Tonight is City Council meeting night in Kannapolis (I know that sounds really exciting). While you probably have no interest in actually attending the meetings, you can keep up with what happens at the meetings two ways.

First, you can read the council agendas on the city website. By visiting the Calendar section, you can scroll to find the meeting. The agenda is always linked. Here’s the one for tonight.

Secondly, you can sign-up for eKannapolis, an enewsletter that goes out after each council meeting. To subscribe, email me and I’ll add you to our database. You can also find archives from this year on our website.

Welcome Tom Kincaid!

City Council swore in Tom Kincaid last night as our latest Council member. Tom is filling the late Richard Anderson’s seat and will serve the remaining two years. He is owner of Caremoor Retirement Center on Kannapolis Parkway. We welcome him to city government and look forward to working with him.

To contact Tom and other Council members, refer to the contact info on the City’s website (to be updated soon).

City Council Retreat Observations

The 2009 Kannapolis City Council Retreat was held in early December.   I will follow up in January with a more detailed report from the retreat including a summary of next steps.  In the meantime, as we roll into the holiday break, here are a few broad, “30,000 foot view” observations about the on-going retreat topic discussions.

1. Elected bodies have a tough job.  Over the two-day retreat, City staff presented the Kannapolis City Council with nearly 25 new initiatives aimed at taking Kannapolis to new heights.  Also presented were dozens of needed capital improvement projects totaling more than $80 million.  The reality is that every program and every project is important and they would ALL be good for the community in some way.  Deciding what programs and projects come first is ultimately the job of the City Council to decide.  This occurs with the assistance and recommendations from the City Manager but, in the end, the buck stops with the elected board.  We are fortunate in Kannapolis to have strong, stable elected leadership.  This dilemma of prioritizing efforts is not new to these members of our City Council.  However, it is getting harder and harder as the needs grow and the resources stay the same or even shrink….
2. Kannapolis is a young City.  Having only been incorporated for 25 years, Kannapolis has not had the full opportunities that time alone has offered other communities.  Even so, Kannapolis is a dynamic, growing City with more opportunity than most cities our size.  Due to this fortunate reality, youth should be viewed as a minor challenge to our success, not a roadblock.   There have been hard decisions made along the way in Kannapolis (minor league baseball, securing future water resources – twice, aggressive economic development partnerships like the Kannapolis Gateway Business Park and the NCRC TIF).  We should look to those decisions for strength when we tackle new challenges.
3. Kannapolis is a growing city with an incredibly bright future…..but we cannot watch it grow and evolve from the sidelines.  The temptation may present itself to let “others” run with the ball while we watch from the bench.  Unfortunately, the past couple of years have taught us all that we cannot sit back and accept things at face value.  The world economy has changed dramatically.   The City’s leadership will perhaps need to be more involved in shaping our future than we ever have before.
4. Initial feedback on the retreat from City Council has been very positive. City Council sent a clear signal at the retreat that it wants the best for Kannapolis and wants the City government to spend the most time doing the things that have the greatest return on the investment.  City Staff has not received a green light from City Council on every new program or project proposed.  City Council is searching for the same delicate balance of needs, wants and resources that I discuss below as this relates to City employees.  Even if we all wanted to do everything, we would need to internally prioritize the work load to match the resources. Nevertheless, City Council wants to move rapidly on a number of new initiatives to make Kannapolis a better place for its citizens and newcomers.  This is very encouraging.
5. The Kannapolis City Council is made up of a good mix of backgrounds and temperaments. That ultimately makes for good decisions (and sometimes spirited, but respectful, debates).  This City Council does not agree on everything, but in the end, the final decision they reach on an issue is what goes – and everybody gets behind it.  That is a sign that individual members of an elected body are pulling in the same direction.  It is the most cohesive group of elected officials I have been involved in during my 20 years of working with numerous local governments.
6. Kannapolis City employees have lots of energy and the capacity to do things that continually amaze me. Our City employees (at all levels) are engaged in what’s going on around them.  They can move into action faster than any group I have ever worked with.  They stand ready to tackle any new initiative, project or program that comes their way.  In some ways, it is this very enthusiasm that can be problematic for us.  Even though we may want to, we can’t do it all with the resources we have.  The good part is that our City Council understands this.  The Kannapolis City Council wants to provide all the resources they reasonably can to help achieve its vision.  Our employees believe passionately in what they do and they all want Kannapolis to succeed as a City.  Finding this balance – between applying limited resources and carrying out the vision – is often a challenge.  Even so, I maintain that it would be far worse to have unlimited resources but no vision.

I hope each of you have a safe and restful holiday season.  Let’s roll up our sleeves together in January and get to the job of making Kannapolis the best City it can possibly be.

Retreat Summary: Finances, Economy, and Priorities

So, this is my first posting on the City’s new blog and I’m eager to share some post-retreat thoughts and highlights. A few of you may have had the opportunity to preview the financial and budget Powerpoint I presented to City Council two weeks ago.  The jest of the presentation centered on the fact that for the past 25 years we’ve made budgetary and tax decisions that generated revenues sufficient enough to stay roughly one percent above inflation; thereby allowing us to sustain and maintain day-to-day operations.

Most people may not understand that City’s only control three decision making processes for insuring revenues are sufficient to maintain basic levels of services and make investments in capital projects: tax rate, fees, or decisions that help raise property values. All other sources of revenue are controlled by other entities and are usually based on the city’s population (which is why the 2010 Census is so important).

Similar to other parts of North Carolina, property values in Kannapolis have steadily increased over the last 25 years. It’s tempting during periods of increasing property values to make decisions that adjust the tax rate to near revenue neutral levels, as opposed to keeping the rate the same, because based on circumstances at that moment in time the short-term gain may be in the best interest of a majority of people. However, while such decisions may provide short-term gains, doing so can also have unintended consequences often associated with delayed infrastructure repairs, upgrades, and quality of life improvements such as: higher construction costs, costly emergency repairs, low community moral and enthusiasm.

My research shows that past budgetary decisions to maintain, as close as possible, a revenue neutral tax rate, resulted in the City’s ability to stay one percent ahead of inflation…which doesn’t leave a lot of additional revenue to do much else.  Of course, there were occassions, usually every 3-4 years, where monumental decisions were made to invest in capital projects such as Village Park, Baseball Stadium, Public Works Operations Center, Fire Station #1 and #5, etc., that have benefitted the community.

There’s no argument that the economy is struggling. There are many factors to use when determining if the economy is good or bad (unemployment rates, consumer price index, inflation rates, new home construction, etc.). These factors, along with plenty of talking head interpretations, are critical to determining when the economy is healthy enought to make capital investments.

Point is, the economy is dynamic in the sense that it’s always going to fluctuate. In a great economy everyone’s revenue is plentiful but the cost of products may be on the rise; in a sour economy our revenue’s may be decreasing but the costs of construction could drop as much as 20%, as is the case in 2009.

Bottom line, the intent of my presentation was to close the loop on the projects and ideas that city council heard during the two-day retreat and get them focused on how to make these intiatives a reality. At the end of the day, we all have to decide if we’ll let our priorities dictate our financial decisions or whether we’ll let our financial decisions dictate our priorities. A dilemma indeed for any city, regardless of its age.

Bachman Brown’s Bust

Over the last week or so we’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on the history of the incorporation of Kannapolis. Both the Salisbury Post and Independent Tribune produced in-depth features on Sunday, including a very cool video done by Ben McNeely at the IT that also ran on WFAE.

While, as City Manager Mike Legg likes to say, we’ve beaten this topic up pretty good, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the reception we had last night that honored many of those who worked tirelessly during the early 1980s to incorporate Kannapolis. The highlight was undoubtedly a special presentation related to the first mayor — Bachman Brown.  A group of citizens commissioned a bust of Bachman that will reside in our train station with the one of Dwight Quinn.

Thanks in advance to Emily Ford of the Salisbury Post for letting me use this photo off their website from her story in the paper this morning. There’s also a lot of great photos here.

North Carolina JOBS Commission

Lt. Governor Walter Dalton was in Kannapolis on Friday at the N.C. Research Campus. He is the chair of the JOBS Commission (“Joining Our Businesses and Schools”), which is a group formed by the N.C. General Assembly to make recommendations on how to better link public education and the needs of the businesses in the state. The meeting included panels of business leaders and education leaders. Some of the comments that were made echoed the presentations made at the recent Kannapolis City Council retreat.

Kenny McDonald, VP of Economic Development Services with the Charlotte Regional Partnership, pointed out three key talent challenges that we face as a region:

• Creating places that allow us to attract talent from U.S. and abroad. At the City Council retreat, we discussed the importance of human capital recruitment, and that establishing a strong quality of life and sense of place are critical to making Kannapolis attractive to talented workers.
• Preparing educated individuals and an entrepreneurial culture. Another topic at the City Council retreat was economic development, and the need for Kannapolis to foster an entrepreneurial culture and to develop and attract a well-educated workforce – these are the foundations of growing a strong economic base.
• Preparing specialists capable of solving multi-disciplinary problems. The future workforce needs a wide range of skills and a deep knowledge base. Increasingly, jobs and the problems we face are multi-disciplinary – meaning that you may need different types of degrees or at least an understanding of different fields to be able to tackle work and business challenges. Locally, the N.C. Research Campus is designed to achieve the multi-disciplinary work and collaboration needed for the future. For example, the MURDOCK study being conducted by Duke University, brings together experts with experience in fields such as radiology, cardiology, proteomics, and clinical research.

Scott Lampe, CFO of Hendrick Motorsports, echoed McDonald’s comments and noted that at his company, while they have a variety of jobs from retail operations to licensing to performance racing, what makes their company successful is the process of creating leaders and entrepreneurs. As a community, that should also be Kannapolis’ goal – for us to work together collectively to make this a place that can grow and attract leaders and entrepreneurs. Those are the types of people who create jobs, increase local wealth, and give back to our community.

John Cox, CEO of the Cabarrus Regional Chamber and Cabarrus Economic Development, used the acronym TINKER when it comes to workforce development needs – Think, Innovation, Nurture, Knowledge, Entrepreneurship, and Research. As our future workforce, our kids need to develop or experience all of that through their school years.

As a city government, we have limited direct influence on our educational systems. (Did you know there are 3 school districts in Kannapolis?) However, it is important for us as community leaders to support and encourage the advancement of education and workforce development in the Kannapolis area – it is the essential ingredient to our future prosperity.

Council Retreat Summary

Last week we wrapped up an intensive 2-day retreat with City Council that covered several different topics about the future of our community and what kind of strategic investments are needed. Each one of those topics could be a separate discussion on this blog. The topics included:

• Quality of Life – newcomers survey, visual enhancement/beautification, parks & recreation, recycling, historic preservation/heritage districts, and a music festival
• Infrastructure – water/sewer, streets/transportation/stormwater
• Public safety – fire department needs, police headquarters
• Planning & development – development standards, signage, tree preservation, open space
• Economic development – facade grant programs, downtown & corridor redevelopment, human capital recruitment, business incubator, tourism development
• Finance & budget – revenue outlook, fund balance goals, debt service level

Each of the presentations are posted on the City’s website for your viewing pleasure.

The minutes from the retreat should be available in the near future by going to the Kannapolis WebLink site (click on Administration, City Council, Minutes, 2009).

Day Two is Underway

Day two of our retreat is underway. Right now Fire Chief Ernie Hiers is updating Council on needs related to the fire department. Their longterm needs include software updates for their communications software, a hazmat team, and the remodeling and relocation of several different stations. You can see the full presentation here.

Morning Highlights

We’ve made it through our many quality of life topics. Highlights include the decision to proceed in planning a large, multi-day music festival in partnership with a private concert group. More details to come, but staff was directed to keep going and keep Council updated. If the festival happens it is targeted for June 2011.

A new concept for historic preservation was also presented to Council. (Check out the PowerPoint here). The plan is to incorporate several different activities into a Kannapolis Heritage District. Within this district the city would work to build a cultural and historical marker trail,  develop some mill village preservation guidelines, use the train station as an interim history museum, improve Veteran’s Park, and look into a Cannon Tribute.

Personally, I’m most excited about the potential for a historical marker program. How cool would it be to have them all over the place on sidewalks? So, as you’re walking into the NC State building on the NCRC you walk over a very nice brass plaque with an image of the smokestacks?

Council Retreat Today and Tomorrow

City Council, department heads and other key staff will be spending the next two days at a City Council retreat. Discussion topics this year range from quality of life (parks, events, visual enhancement, historic preservation, recycling, etc) to a new police headquarters building. Economic development is also on the agenda.

Stay tuned for updates.