City to consider outside audit of police department

The city council plans to consider and probably award a contract during its meeting Tuesday night to a San Francisco Bay-area firm to conduct an audit of the Kyle Police Department that’s designed "to ensure that staff and facility resources are adequate for today’s service environment as a foundation for the future."

The $45,000, 14-week contract most likely will be awarded to the Matrix Consulting Group of Mountain View, Calif., which, according to its website "provides detailed analysis of management, staffing and operational issues for city, county and state governments." Just last month Matrix completed a study of the Code Enforcement Department in the city of San Clemente, Calif., determining "the city has sufficient code-enforcement officers but the system isn’t efficient." Matrix made a series of recommendations for improving the city’s code enforcement policies which that city’s council approved unanimously.

The Kyle PD audit will include seven specific tasks, the last of which will be a report to the City Council that Matrix says will include:

• "An executive summary of all key findings and recommendations, including opportunities to improve services and operations within existing budget resources, as well as the costs of alternative and additional services.
• "An analysis of existing operations, organization, and staffing needs based on service level targets.
• "A review of facilities, systems and equipment needs.
• "Supporting materials, such as the descriptive profile, results of the employee survey, and the best management practices assessment."

It is not clear when the clock starts ticking on the audit, but if it begins when the council approves the contract, which I fully expect to happen Tuesday, it’s possible Matrix’s findings could be presented as early as the council’s May 16 meeting, although a June or even a July date is more likely.

The audit was included as part of the most recent meet-and-confer agreement between the city and the police association. Hopefully, it will not be the last audit of a city department. Not that I’m questioning the performance of any department, but I am convinced independent audits often find ways to improve performance levels while simultaneously saving taxpayers’ moneys.

In fact, I’m convinced a complete independent audit of the city’s 2013 road bond package, from inception and voter-presentation through planning and execution could provide municipal leaders a valuable guide on how to handle future major capital improvement projects of this magnitude.

Matrix says the first task of its audit will be to "Conduct initial interviews to develop a detailed understanding of the Kyle Police Department … To fully evaluate the issues facing the (the department), as well as to identify the law enforcement needs of the community, the project team will develop our understanding of the department, including attitudes toward existing service levels, as well as the unique characteristics of policing programs and services it provides."

Task No. 2, Matrix says, will be to document "employee attitudes toward department strengths and improvement opportunities, and public safety issues."

The other four tasks Matrix has specified are:

• Profile the organization, staffing, and operations of the department.
• Evaluate key staffing, organization, and operational issues through a best management practices assessment.
• Evaluate the department’s staffing and service delivery needs.
• Evaluate the department’s organizational structure and management systems.

Other items on Tuesday’s agenda include:

• Amending the city’s littering ordinance to prohibit the releasing of balloons and lit lanterns in the city parks because such actions, according to the city, are detrimental to the environment and wildlife. "The obvious reason to prohibit lit lanterns is fire danger, but there are no rules prohibiting it on public grounds," according to a city memo on the subject. "Balloons are latex rubber that do not dissolve or disintegrate and when a balloon goes up, it will come down, somewhere. And is trash wherever it lands. Even the expensive bio-degradable balloons take up to six months to degrade, but the ribbons tied to them will never degrade. These items tend to end up in watersheds that eventually make their way to open rivers, lakes and to the coast."
• Amendments to the city’s PID policy that include, among other items, a recommendation from council member Travis Mitchell that would require (1) MLS listings to include any and all PID assessments that a home buyer will be required to pay and (2) escrow accounts established by these purchasers that are used to handle mortgage, tax and insurance payments must now include PID payments as well. While not eliminating the fact that Kyle’s PID policy still amounts to "taxation without representation," Mitchell’s amendments make the policies far more tolerable.
• An interesting note that the applicant wishing to rezone four acres at 1381 Goforth Road is requesting that the second reading of this change be postponed to the council’s Feb. 21 meeting. Here’s a brief history on this item. The owner of the property found a purchaser for it who wanted to locate a non-veterinarian petcare facility there, but would only agree to the purchase if the land was rezoned from agriculture to warehouse. The item went before the Planning & Zoning Commission which rejected the warehouse zoning, saying it could eventually lead to a multitude of 18-wheelers on that stretch of Goforth, and, instead recommended, by a 3-2 vote, the more restrictive retail services zoning. I wondered whether the applicant would appeal directly to the council for warehouse zoning and when I posed that question to the applicant’s legal counsel I was told such information would violate client/attorney privilege. But when the item came before the council on first reading, Planning Director Howard Koontz told the council the applicant could live with retail services zoning and the item passed with only Mitchell dissenting (saying warehouse zoning was perfectly appropriate for that area, which, truth be told, is an accurate statement). So why the request for postponement now? Who knows and my inquiries will obviously be met with the same privilege argument. But one can’t help but wonder whether (1) the applicant, after thinking about it for a while, really doesn’t want retail services zoning and wants the warehouse instead or (2) the potential buyer is fed up with the entire process and has withdrawn his/her offer to purchase the property. "Oops, there goes another rubber tree plant.".
• Another version of the city’s animal protection ordinance that finally allows private citizens to buy and use their own live traps to capture unwanted critters on their property. Previous incarnations of this proposal had required citizens to use only traps loaned to them by the city.
• Oh, yes, there is also what will forever be known as the "truck stop" ordinance, the one that was supposed to come before council a year ago to pave the way for a developer to construct a Godzilla-sized truck stop at I-35 and Yarrington Road, a proposal, to put it mildly, that was met with some resistance from those both near and some distance from the property. After the request for warehouse zoning was rejected early last year by the Planning Commission, the applicant, PGI, has since (after many months of intense negotiations with Kyle, San Marcos and Hays County officials, among others) amended its application, now seeking retail services zoning for the property, even though the agenda item still states (a legal requirement) warehouse zoning is sought. A public hearing is attached to this item, although I do not anticipate it will attract the attention it would have had this same time last year.