Mayor Jones Touts CitiSmart Successes of the Past Year

Feb 15th, 2012

Mobile Mayor Sam Jones released Wednesday how city employees used accountability measures to save tax dollars and created innovative measures to deliver positive results to citizens, despite the city’s dwindling revenue sources.

As part of the city’s CitiSmart accountability program yearly analysis, department heads pointed to savings in overtime, departmental budgets and innovative programs that will yield positive results for Mobile.

“Though the downturn in the national, state and local economy has presented many challenges, we are extremely pleased that city departments tightened their fiscal belts and continued to deliver positive results to citizens,” the mayor said. “However, as we go into the rest of this fiscal year and next year, services will likely be reduced or eliminated.”

Some of the new innovative initiatives spearheaded under Jones’ vision included:

 The creation and implementation of the Neighborhood Renewal Program, which will transform blighted neighborhoods into revitalized areas for additional residential housing and commercial ventures. The NRP will cost the city very little, but it will likely yield a huge transformation of blighted areas;

 The installation of e-Citation/e-Swear software in some traffic officers Police cruisers. The new software automates how citations are issued in the Police Department. The Police Department issues thousands of traffic citations yearly, which were handwritten in the past. With the new software, they are now issued timely, and the process eliminates paper. E-Citation is the initial stage of making the city’s Municipal Court system paperless;

 The development of a web portal on the city’s website, which gives developers a comprehensive tool in transacting business with the city as it relates to permitting, engineering and development. The web portal reduces staffers time and expense in answering/addressing developers’ concerns;

 The development of eMobile, an online sales tax filing system for area businesses. The online filing system has been available since December 20, 2011. Since the system has been online, eMobile has collected $1,659,004.69. In April, the city will partner with the Mobile County License Commissioner’s office to give county businesses online filing capability;

 Mobile 311 implemented a quality assurance recording system into the department’s management protocol. Mobile 311 has logged more than 100,000 telephone calls from citizens last year;

Savings

 Mobile Fire and Rescue returned $3.7 million to city coffers, due to the close management/supervision of department overtime and attrition;

 In collaboration with Mobile Police and Municipal Information Technology, the city’s Municipal Court was able to collect nearly $650,000 in delinquent fines and cleared 3,506 cases under the Amnesty Program;

 The city’s Environmental Services department was awarded a 1.9 million Propane Conversion grant to retrofit nearly 17 vehicles with propane tanks, a move that will save on the cost of gasoline;

 The installation of DriveCams in trash trucks, which has been proven to reduce accidents and led to better safety measures;

 The creation and implementation of e-Checks, a paperless application for the city 2,000 plus employees’ payroll checks. The new application will save the city $4,000 in blank check stock and countless staff hours.