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and efficient service delivery. Services currently in the project include fire services, police patrol and investigations, recycling/waste reduction, residential solid waste collection, street maintenance and yard waste and leaf collection. Staff continues to expand performance measurement efforts for all departments to make our organization more results oriented and to measure how well resources are being used. Performance measurement also involves customer satisfaction so citizen surveys will be used in the future. This is a goal for our citizen communications as well as performance and customer service improvement efforts. The Customer Care Center continues to be essential in providing a human contact to citizens with service needs. The Center now handles an average of 8,483 calls per month. We will now start using the information from the Call Center to measure h6w well and how fast we are responding to calls for service against set response goals. This will be an excellent way for departments to improve efficiency in the future. Another new feature that was included in the FY 2001-2002 budget but will not be implemented until the upcoming fiscal year due to the budget freeze is an electrical outage call management 'system. When there are, widespread electrical outages one of the biggest challenges is handling customer calls, many from the same impacted area. This system handles the c/tll and allows the customer to pinpoint the outage then calls back.once the power is back on to make sure power has been restored to each caller. The Call Center will be able to be a back up to this system so anyone that needs to talk with a representative will find one available. Of course, we will continue to focus on improvements in the Plans Review Center implemented this year. This. concept is just in its infancy in Concord and is expected to expand and improvement in streamlining the plans review process. It is 'important to note that along with it Council has adopted a goal of developing ways to insure that the consultants or staff that developers use for their plans do their job and do not waste the public's money by using staff time in responding to plans that have been developed with little attempt to relate them to City development regulations. FUNDING OF EXTERNAL AGENCIES The recommendations include $43,500 out of the $91,350 requested from the General Fund and $32,80.0 out of the $41,250 requested in Community Development Block Grant monies. Because of the loss of $1.7 million in state funds in FY 200'1-2002, it is recommended that many of these agencies receive cuts for FY 2002-2003. If more money is withheld in FY 2002-2003, cuts will be drastic to those receiving support from the General Fund. ENVISION CABARRUS AND REGIONALISM This budget message has identified many areas where regional cooperation could result in a better quality of life and more cost-effective service for Concord residents. The City of Concord is one of the local government sponsors of the Envision Cabarrus process. These efforts can sometimes be viewed as too esoteric because they deal with a vision of what we want to become rather than the nuts and bolts of day-to-day issues. However, if we are to work together on specific issues, we must be able to agree on an overall vision as a community. Hopefully this process will allow all segments of the community to agree on what we want to become so that the opportunities for regional cooperation will not be missed. Also, in order for us meet our goals, we must be able to forge more public/private partnerships. Government cannot and should not do everything that is needed in a.community. '~--' t 20