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PURPOSE <br />The goal of this analysis is to examine several alternative methodologies that <br />can accurately document the different costs, not including contractor's <br />charges, incurred by the City's Vegetation Management Program in the abatement <br />of vegetation nuisances on developed, undeveloped, and City owned properties. <br />Using program statistics and expenditures for calendar year 1989 for data, <br />this analysis shall attempt to logically structure and examine such data so <br />that costs for various program components and categories can be accurately <br />separated. Ultimately, these different costs will be used to calculate <br />program costs on a per abatement basis for the different property management <br />categories of the program. These methodologies can then be employed in the <br />development of a new billing schedule for City performed abatements. <br />OVERVIEW <br />The Vegetation Management Program is currently comprised of 3 fairly distinct <br />categories of responsibility: enforcement of developed property nuisances; <br />enforcement of undeveloped property nuisances; and maintenance of City owned <br />property. Due to the different time requirements involved in the management <br />and code enforcement for these different categories, total program costs must <br />be accurately divided among the 3 before we will be able to clearly determine <br />City incurred, per abatement costs in each category. To this end, this <br />exercise will examine the average time required for each enforcement function <br />by the use of an enforcement activity time matrix. The average function times <br />provided through the use of this matrix will enable us to not only calculate <br />the total annual operations time devoted per management category, but to <br />analyze the exact operations costs incurred in a typical abatement within each <br />category. <br />City incurred abatement costs per management category will be examined and <br />calculated using 3 differing methodologies. <br />The first methodology will be to determine a typical abatement cost per <br />category based on documented time and material expenditures for each type of <br />abatement. This method of analysis will look only at the costs, including <br />overhead, that are directly attributable to a single abatement, carried to <br />completion, as it would typically be performed in the course of this manage- <br />ment program. It will not address any costs incurred in dealing with all the <br />violations that do not end up requiring abatement, nor with the general <br />internal administrative costs associated with the program. As such, this <br />methodology is supportive of a billing structure based on the concept of per <br />abatement owner liability for only the time and material costs directly <br />related to the vegetation abatement on their particular property. <br />The second methodology will be to determine a typical abatement cost per <br />category that includes not only the expenditures, plus overhead, for all <br />abatements that are carried to term, but includes the expenditures, including <br />overhead, for all the notifications, postings, and inspections that did not <br />Vegetation Program <br />Cost Analysis 1 <br />