By Adam Swift
City Manager Fidel Maltez provided an update on inter-department collaboration efforts in Chelsea’s government to the city council on Monday night.
Last month, Council President Norieliz requested a subcommittee meeting for an update on completed, ongoing, and planned departmental collaboration efforts.
In a letter to the council, Maltez highlighted five initiatives: bi-weekly operations meetings, the quarterly board and commissions staff training, the Housing Task Force, the Munis Improvement Team, and the Opengov implementation teams.
“The city is working with a new vendor, Opengov, to help our departments work better internally and improve resident engagement,” said Maltez. “Opengov allows departments to submit annual budget requests through the software, previously done with individual spreadsheets.”
Opengov will become a public transparency portal for the budget and uses conditioned logic and automated processes for more seamless communication between all departments, Maltez added.
The bi-monthly operations meetings include the city manager’s office, the permitting and land use planning office, inspectional services, and housing and community development.
“These internal meetings allow departments to share updates and troubleshoot problems that come up for residents and on an operational level,” Maltez said. “This group covers a wide range of topics and the bi-weekly convening has made them more nimble in addressing issues and looking for opportunities for partnership between the departments.”
The quarterly board and commission staff training began last summer as a way to standardize board and commission meeting processes and postings. According to Maltez, the meetings include all city staff who support a board or commission, and allows staff to engage with each other around best practices for hosting and posting public meetings and have allowed the city to streamline the notices procedures.
The housing task force includes the city manager’s office, the police department, the fire department, housing and community development, inspectional services, and the health and human services department.
“These monthly meetings allow departments to review any problem properties, as well as discuss larger strategies around housing issues in the city,” Maltez stated. “This group created the city’s emergency housing policy, worked to support the Law Department’s creation of the property management license, and is currently working on the implementation of the City’s partnership with UpToCode.”
The Munis improvement includes IT, budget, auditing, treasury, procurement, and human resources.
“Munis is the City’s financial software which manages our core functions of human resource management and financial procedures,” said Maltez. “Some of the successes of this group include: paperless paystubs, accounts payable decentralization, activation of Employee Self Service, the process of moving personnel actions, and some procurement processes online and away from paper.”