Good morning Team, it's great to be here with you this morning at our All Hands Meeting. It's always an impressive sight to have in one place all the employees that help keep this city clean, safe, and a great place to live, work and play. I'm truly proud to be a member of our Public Works Agency and serve as your Director.

Before I get to my State of the Agency comments, I'd like to spend just a little time discussing why we're here this morning. And I'd like to begin by telling you a little story that was relayed to me by one of my college professors many years ago. Apparently his professor - as a young student engineer, had been assigned to work on the construction of a major cathedral. His superintendent asked him to try and figure out why one employee was consistently producing more, with a higher quality, and to compare and contrast this with the employee with the poorest performance record--to try and see what the differences were.

He started by reviewing their backgrounds and they were both journey-level masons with approximately the same years of experience. He studied their technique, and again both competent. What he did notice was a difference in their enthusiasm - one was grumbling a bit and the other was whistling tunes and generally upbeat, so he decided to interview them. To the poor performer he asked, "How do you like your job?" to which he replied, "How do you think I like my job?" "I lay brick after brick, line after line, day after day, and this project will go on for another 4 or 5 years. That is my job."

To the high performer he asked the same question, to which he replied, "I love my job. I'm helping build what will be the best cathedral in the whole world! And when we're done, I'm going to bring my kids, and tell them I helped build this magnificent cathedral!"

So that was the difference - what I call the power of perspective.

Now, I remember when government was perceived as a good thing, and to work for the government, a noble and respectable calling. To get a job in public service was something to be proud of. Times have changed. Government is generally not held in the same esteem, and jobs in the private sector - especially with stock options and an IPO are the new ideal jobs today. Our work has also gotten more difficult - our budgets have been cut over the years and we're expected to do more with less. So it's not hard for many of us to have lost our power of perspective in our jobs over the many years of fixing pothole after pothole, picking up trash in our parks day in and day out, responding to sanitary sewer overflows everyday, etc. But, that's exactly what we're here to do today - to focus on the larger picture and our role within it.

Well now that we know why we're here, I'd like to start talking about the State of the Agency. Almost 3 years ago, we got together to christen a new organization that had just taken in park maintenance, tree services and the other half of the city's custodians, and then reorganized into what we are today. At 856 FTE, with part time staff, that translates into approximately 900 of us. We are the 2nd largest Agency and the most diverse in both who we are, and what we do. The numbers are big; and so are the expectations of us. I mentioned that one of our biggest challenges - and strengths - was our size. Another of our challenges was our lack of resources to properly maintain the infrastructure that has been entrusted into our care. I then proposed the following strategic initiatives that I thought would serve us well, and they are:

• Focus on relationships with ourselves and our customers
• Improve our customer service and satisfaction
• Improve our image and restore the trust that has been placed on us.

I said that if we did these, we would better compete for the limited resources at budget time. In the interim, I added a fourth:

• Increase volunteerism - to help us with this very big job we have.

I believe that pursuing these initiatives have made us a better organization and begun to pay dividends. One employee stated that she not only felt that we were going in the right direction, but felt that we were getting better each year.

The City Council has also reversed a long trend of budget cuts with our 2005-07 Budget when they added 19 positions to our budget - during a difficult year where other agencies were being cut and our city jail closed. Then in the mid-cycle budget adjustment, we were given money to help with our sidewalk, street resurfacing and tree pruning backlogs. There is still a great need out there, but these additional resources demonstrate that we've done a better job of communicating our infrastructure's needs to our City Council and begun to earn back some of their trust that we will use these additional resources effectively.

Hopefully, contributing to the increased trust being placed upon us, are some of our accomplishments; such as:

• One Stop Call Center. In order to improve customer service, we created the Call Center . Instead of the previous paradigm where we placed the burden on the customer to figure out what number to call for service, we now have one number for them, and we log and track all the calls, giving the customer a tracking number for their call. We then dispatch the service request internally. (Kudos to Sabrina and her team.)
• Emergency Response: In order to improve our visibility and image, we started to compare ourselves with Fire and Police as first responders, and started to quietly focus on re-vamping our emergency operations manual. We also began sending all executive, management and supervisory staff to the one-week earthquake preparedness training - a big commitment of time and resources, but after Katrina, we all know emergency response is all about emergency preparedness and planning.

In addition, we made a concerted effort to comply with the new federal mandates, and as such were the first City Agency to be fully NIMS-certified, by August 2006! (Kudos to Guadalupe Thomas, David Ferguson, Dave Lonestar, and Frank Foster).

• Winter Storm Response: All of this emergency preparedness work began to pay dividends during the past two winters with record rainfall. The first of the two winters brought 28" of rain (up from 18" the previous year), and the last winter brought over 30" of rain (138% of normal) and over 45 landslides/slope failures - resulting in 21 slide repair projects. Thankfully and due in large part to our initiative, Alameda County was included in a federally-declared disaster area - making this repair work eligible for federal funding. (Kudos to Brooke Levin, Bruce Saunders, and Mike Neary and all of their staffs for their hard work and sacrifice. S. Hom for processing all the paperwork to make sure we get reimbursed.)
• Capital Projects: In the last 3 years, we've completed several sewer, streetscape and park improvement projects; in some cases we've partnered with community and non-profit organizations to deliver these projects such as the Laurel Streetscape, Union Point Park , the Bertha Port Park and others. But the work our staff is doing around Lake Merritt under the Measure DD Program is truly world-class. They will be the kind of improvements we'll want to bring our children and point to and say "our Public Works Agency did that" - with a lot of pride.
• Volunteerism: Special thanks to Cookie Robles-Wong, Kristen Hathaway, Noel Gallo and Jocelyn Combs who have facilitated the donation of an extraordinary 60,000 hours of work in 05-06. In order to show our appreciation, we are hosting an event February 7th, and have also produced this wonderful calendar - isn't this great? Stephanie Hom and her team have done the impossible - they've made what we do look hip.

In the next categories we are fighting the valiant fight.

• Illegal Dumping: Last year we removed 6,000 tons of illegally dumped debris on our streets. We respond quickly, and are combating this thru enforcement as well as community outreach and education. But, we need to change the pervasive culture of littering, in order to make significant in roads. (Special Kudos to Dave Ferguson and the KOCB staff.)
• Potholes: With the condition of our streets quickly deteriorating, and these two very wet winters we've just had; we have been inundated with potholes to fix. To try and gain some ground, this past summer, we augmented our 9 member staff (3-3 person crews) to 36 for one week each of the 3 summer months and focused all that staff in 1/3 of the city each time. It was long enough to be significant, yet not disrupt our other operations. (Kudos to Tim Harrison and his team).

Due to the long rainy season last year, we had a short paving season. In order to gain back some ground in this area we are doing something we normally do not do, and that is paving during the winter months. So when it is not raining and the ambient temperature is above 50°F, we are out there paving the 10 worst streets in Oakland - with the additional monies the City Council gave us. (Kudos to Yader Bermudez and his staff.)

• Park Maintenance: We've staffed up, filled most of our vacancies and are deployed under the 31 hub system, a geographical - based deployment where we utilize the leadership of our gardener crew leaders more. A recent report by the Oakland Parks Coalition gave us credit for a marked improvement. (Kudos to Jim Ryugo, Brian Carthan, and team.)

We know we need additional staff. In contrast to previous years where there had not been support, we received support to pursue an increase to the LLAD in 2006. Unfortunately, we narrowly lost a bid to increase our LLAD, but there are discussions under way on next steps.

• Graffiti Abatement: In the last few years graffiti has spiked, and our crew continues to do a valiant job of eradicating it.
• Finally there was our Accreditation by the American Public Works Association (APWA). It was an effort that took three years to achieve, and was not easy, but we are a better organization as a result. We are only the 3rd public works agency in California - among almost 500 cities and 58 counties, so say approximately 550 agencies in our state. And we were only the 35th agency from across Canada and the United States - and this accreditation program has been around for over ten years.

Now just to give you a visual of what it took to get accredited, I've brought some props - because not everybody really knows what went into it. Pretty impressive - but it wasn't easy - otherwise, everyone would be accredited.

Alright. We talked about why we're here today, where we started from and what we've been up to since we last got together for our All Hands Meeting. So where are we going?

We are going to continue to improve ourselves. We are going to continue with our original 4 strategic initiatives because I believe they pointed us in the right direction and we still have more progress to make in each of those 4 areas. However, I am also going to propose 3 new strategic initiatives today.

The first one, appropriately is "Safety First". I do not have to tell you that our work is dangerous. We all know that. Towards that end, and with the help of Risk Management, we've started our Safety Academy to provide necessary training to all. But I am still seeing too many accidents and injuries and hearing about near misses, so we need to somehow institutionalize all of that training so it becomes common practice. That will be our challenge.

The next initiative I'll call "Growing Our Own" which will be a commitment to staff development. With at least 32% of our staff eligible to retire within the next 5 years, it is imperative that we engage in a succession planning effort. There will be many opportunities in lead, supervision, and management positions. On the one hand we have an obligation to the taxpayers in Oakland to hire the very best, and the other hand a commitment to promote form within. With this initiative we hope the two will be one in the same. To institutionalize this "Growing Our Own" initiative, we'll be asking of all supervisory and managerial candidates, "what have you done to develop staff?" in our hiring interviews.

The third initiative supports all the others, and it is a commitment to continuous learning/continuous improvement so that we can become the "learning organization". We are all Public Works professionals - we get paid for what we do and what we know. Without this commitment to continuous learning we will not succeed at "Safety First" or at "Growing Our Own" nor will we stay an accredited agency. (We have to get re-accredited every 3 years.)

I just read the other day in Fortune Magazine that James McNerney, CEO at Boeing, expects to improve himself by 15% each year. I thought, "what a novel approach to continuous learning/improvement" to actually place a numerical goal on it. You can break that percentage down even more precisely by identifying the areas you want to focus on such as: safety practices, better communication, technical skills, supervision issues, etc. And this does not just apply to your work life, it can apply to all the other roles you have: spouse, little league coach/umpire, church elder, parent, etc. I challenge all of us to commit to a goal, and take the necessary action to accomplish it, you'll feel great - I guarantee it!

So what does the future hold for us? Well, politically at the federal level, there's been a big political paradigm shift. I think that the "blue regions" across the country should begin to receive a greater benefit for change, and with Mayor Dellums on a first name basis with our new House Speaker that should bode well for Oakland .

At the state level, addressing our neglected infrastructure is moving up in priority and getting a much more attention than it has for the past 30 years, so that should bode well for all of us in Public Works Agencies everywhere.

Locally, we have a new Mayor, which means a paradigm shift here. As you'll remember from our previous conversations about paradigms, when there's a paradigm shift, everyone goes back to zero - so we'll have to prove ourselves again. But, if we continue on our path with the original 4 strategic initiatives and pursue the additional 3, I am confident we'll be up for the challenge.

Our new Mayor has also challenged us to make Oakland a Model City , and given the vast scope of quality of life services we provide, we are sure to play a big role in this pursuing this vision. We can start today by committing to make ourselves into the Model Public Works Agency.

Thank you very much for your attention.