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EUGENE Public Works Maintenance Division City of Eugene MEMORANDUM 1820 Roosevelt Boulevard Eugene, Oregon 97402 (541) 682 -4800 (541) 682 -4882 FAX Date: March 6, 1998 To: Gary Gillespie From: Bob Hammitt Subject: Tree Crew I don't believe there is a short answer to your contracting question, so I am going to provide some detail about our current tree crew operations. We are certainly contracting out more tree work than in the past. We have no plans to eliminate the tree crew. Instead, our plans are to take improvement measures that will make them competitive with the private sector for similar work. During the fall of 1996, we did some reorganization in the division to improve service delivery to the public. As a piece of the reorganization, we moved the tree crew from the parks maintenance section, under Dick Morgan and directly supervised by Adrian Stansfield, to the maintenance support section, under Johnny Medlin and directly supervised by Scott Plamondon. My direction to Johnny and Scott, based on observations, was to evaluate tree crew processes and efficiency and implement any necessary changes. Observations included a backlog of pruning work, processes and practices that could be improved, an inventory of tree crew equipment that was larger than the employee base, etc. Based on ongoing evaluation, we have been implementing numerous changes. There is a backlog of priority tree pruning work. Eliminating hazardous conditions and making our urban forest healthy is of the highest priority. This is the type of tree work that requires the highest level of skill, and we consider skilled work the highest priority for utilization of the crew. We recently discovered the practice for assigning work to the crew while in the parks section, was to give the crew lead worker a handful of work orders in the morning and let him determine the sequence of the work. The lead worker often established the sequence in a manner that provided the crew with the most travel distance. We have changed this practice so that travel time is minimized and productivity time is maximized. The crew has been upset about this change as they desire to have as much travel time for rest as possible. We expect the crew to have as much productive time in an 8 hour shift as possible. Elimination of the travel time may require them to pace themselves in a different manner. They are now assigned pruning work on a block to block basis, which maximizes efficiency. In addition, request pruning is being held until we are in the area of the request. The crew is in disagreement with this practice as it also reduces their driving time. We have begun to contract tree removal, except those removals that require immediate attention because of a hazardous condition. There are several reasons for this decision. We are receiving good prices and quality tree removal work from local vendors. Tree removal requires less skill than pruning work and we want to maximize our skilled crew. City crews performing tree removals have caused us some public relations concerns. These concerns seem to be mitigated when private vendors are performing tree removals.