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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Plans to shake up and improve city hall services are expected to come within the next year and a half, says the city's senior administrative officer.

Bob Long briefed councillors on the city's plans to provide "one-stop shopping" of municipal services and communication improvements to residents during the city council meeting Monday.

Mayor Gord Van Tighem said modernizing how the municipality serves residents had been a priority when Long was hired in July 2010.

"At the time, we said to him, 'this is how city hall functions but how should it be? And how can we come up with ways of providing better services to the community?'" said Van Tighem.

Currently, services are offered all over the building which has made things cumbersome for residents, said the mayor.

If a person received a parking ticket in town, for instance, he or she has to go to the first floor to have it validated and then to the second floor to pay for it.

With snowmobile licences, filling out forms has always been on one floor, while paying the bill and getting a sticker was on another.

"Everything from booking a room for a kid's birthday party to getting a development permit for a multi-million-dollar building will be done in one spot without having to ask 'where do I have to go and who do I have to talk to?'" said Van Tighem.

Long said over the past six months, the city has been doing quite a bit of work making improvements.

"We want to get people to go to one place to get all the services that they need regardless of what department or issue it is," he said. "We will have all the customer services reps cross-trained and supported and we are now implementing that."

Van Tighem said over the next year, some building renovations will be made so that people can walk into the first floor from Veterans Memorial Drive and do business in one place.

He says there will not be a lot of new hires as a result, however, staff will have a learning curve in becoming more acquainted with other municipal services.

"Before you had specialists and the public had to find them, depending on what they wanted," said Van Tighem. "Now, it is a matter of (staff) learning what tourists get, what developers get, where to look up tax information, or how much a parking ticket costs."

City councillor Bob Brooks asked if the project costs will be seen on this fiscal budget or the next. Long said some of it will probably be for this year but most of it in 2013.

Van Tighem said some money from the 2012 budget has been allocated for studying how the first floor of city hall can be renovated. However, most of the cost is expected to be laid out next year, depending on how the project evolves. Part of the effort to improve municipal efficiencies includes an integration of a communications office into the economic development department.

Advertisements have been put out in local media as well as national publications for a new communication's director who will oversee economic development. Long said a person should be chosen in probably a little more than a month, but that the department's role is changing.

"I take the view that economic development is communications in that we have been focusing up until now on communicating to the outside world the economic opportunities that are available here," said Long. "A lot of the materials we produce are focused on communications."

Van Tighem said the need for a new focus on communicating to the public stemmed from the city's communication plan from a year and a half ago.

"One of the things we were looking to do was improve the overall communications that go out from city hall because so frequently we hear (people saying they) didn't hear about things that come up. So in looking at how to get the message out better, economic development has been our corresponding communication vehicle where we tell people about the city and promote it."

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