New Search
The chart shows the engineering and planning expenses broken out into categories for <br /> ' separate discussion. <br /> GIS and Data services costs are -.u~,t~ ~ . <br /> those costs allocated to the road GIS. &bata Services. $229,773 <br /> fund and can only be reduced Infrastructure Planning $158,652 ' <br /> through cost savings in that Land Use Review Services $87,805 <br /> Transportation Planning $387,043 <br /> function. Project Planning $197,459 <br /> Tragic Engineering $587,260 <br /> Infrastructure Planning is related to Total Engineering $1,647,992 <br /> un-reimbursed engineering costs for <br /> projects and could be charged <br /> against specific projects, however, those projects are primarily funded by the road fund <br /> and therefore no net gain would result. <br /> Land Use Review Services is that portion of development review that is un-reimbursed. <br /> Much of this expense is due to general citizen questions for which it is impractical to <br /> charge. ' <br /> Transportation Planning is that activity related to longer-range transportation issues and <br /> is dependent on growth and quality of life issues that are current priorities. <br /> i <br /> Project planning is similar to Infrastructure planning but is more focused on the traffic <br /> j engineering elements of a project. <br /> Traffic engineering is the traditional function of signal design and optimization and <br /> general traffic analyses including such things as neighborhood traffic calming. <br /> Contracting Options: <br /> Specific projects and studies can be contracted to private engineering firms. That portion <br /> of the work that is part of traffic operations analysis or that is necessary to handle public <br /> <br /> f inquiries is not contracted usually because it doesn't work well. <br /> Most of the work in this area is demand driven either by development activity levels or <br /> citizen study requests. Private engineers are used by most cities for workload balancing <br /> when there is sufficient budget but insufficient staffing to do the work or when a <br /> particular expertise is required that cannot be economically maintained on staff. <br /> Efficiency Opportunities: <br /> • There are ongoing reviews of efficiency measures such as the recent staff <br /> consolidation at the Pearl Street building. It is too early to judge if that effort will <br /> lead to significant gains, however. <br /> • There may be an opportunity to achieve some reduction in equipment costs in <br /> Transportation Engineering by trying to duplicate the vehicle rental practices used in <br /> the General Engineering Department. Tracking vehicle utilization rates for a <br /> reasonable sample period should tell if this is practical. <br /> 30 <br /> <br />