by Raul Godinez II, City of Oakland Public Works Agency Director
November 3, 2004
Henry J. Kaiser Events Center, Oakland, CA
APWA Northern California Chapter Website: http://www.apwanorcal.org/

Raising the Profile of Public Works:
The Key to Our Success

Learning Objective:  Establishing a long-range vision for our collective profession - Public Works

Good morning fellow public works professionals. Welcome to the City of Oakland. It is my pleasure to address colleagues who know first hand the dedication, commitment, and resilience it takes to care for infrastructure - especially with dwindling resources. When I was asked if I would speak to you today, I asked myself: "what can I share with an experienced and committed group of Public Works professionals who know their job better than I do?" After some thought, I decided that perhaps what I could do is share some big-picture perspectives that might be helpful to those of us in the Public Works profession; thus the topic "Raising the Profile of Public Works - The Key to Our Success".

Public Works employees have often been referred to as the unsung heroes who work quietly behind the scenes doing extremely important work. We are charged with ensuring that our citizens sustain a viable quality of life that includes essential services that keep them safe and clean, that keeps the traffic moving, pedestrians safe, our sewers and storm drains working, our garbage and recycling services operating, our municipal facilities operating, our parks open and all of the other functions that make cities great places to live, work, and play. Yet more times than not our work is unnoticed.

Let me pose this question: How many of you are tired of taking a back seat to Police and Fire Departments? Police and Fire Departments tend to get all of the attention and most of the funding. It is not that they don't deserve that attention and funding. Of course they do, because they too are important. But their importance is evident and visible. They respond to crises and urgent situations, that is their "normal" work. However, the work that we do is as important as that of Police and Fire. One could say that public works is the foundation that literally builds cities. It certainly is the backbone of cities. If one thinks about it, our cities cannot survive nor thrive without streetlights, traffic signals, streets, sewers, utilities; nor function without well-maintained municipal buildings; and they certainly wouldn't be very livable without parks and recreation facilities.In fact, in developing countries, the connection between infrastructure and economic development is very evident: unless you have the necessary power or water - you cannot build the factories and attract the industry you want. In this country, we have lost the sight of this connection between infrastructure and industry because we've been industrialized for so long. The bottom line is that the work that we do is essential; yet when budgets are cut, Police and Fire are often spared and the brunt of the cuts fall on Public Works and other departments.

Since the passage of Proposition 13, municipal resources have declined and we have consistently had to do more with less. In Oakland, we find ourselves with bare bone resources, the result of numerous budget cuts and the loss of key individuals over time. Yet we attempt to continue to provide the same level of service and so we struggle to keep up with an aging infrastructure and the demands it places on us along with new projects. I believe that this struggle to keep up with the demands of the same levels of service with dwindling resources has caused our residents to lose confidence and trust in our ability to get the job done. We can no longer afford to operate in this manner. We must manage expectations and be cognizant of our image as an important essential service, and of our reputation as public works professionals.

So how do we begin to change our predicament? We must improve our image - beginning with our visibility. If you ask everyday citizens what Public Works does, you'll find out exactly just how good or not so good your visibility is in your community. Compare that with Police, Fire, Park & Rec, or even Libraries and you'll begin to see just how big our challenge is. So how do we improve our visibility? We can start by really promoting our National Public Works Week. We can try and plan activities or events that educate folks about what we do. In Oakland this year, we had 3 Councilmembers and our City Administrator help resurface one of our streets - one that was on Chronicle Watch (Redwood Road for those of you familiar with Oakland). This of course attracted the media but it also helped educate the Councilmembers and City Administrator on just how hard and challenging our job is. Other ideas to improve our visibility include doing regular reports and perhaps a newsletter. Most utilities produce a very nice, glossy annual report; our sewer collection and storm drainage systems are utilities, so we could do the same. Last but not least, we need to acquire better media skills and develop better media relations.

Another strategy for improving our image and raising our profile is to develop stronger community linkages. Most police departments began implementing some sort of community policing years ago, and those programs proved to be hugely popular. In Los Angeles, when a new police chief began to dismantle this program, the community rose up in arms. This proved to be one of the most unpopular initiatives that chief proposed, and I believe it played a role in his not receiving a second term. Here in Oakland, in the most recent round of layoffs, we laid off half of our Litter Enforcement Officers (LEO's). We received a minor barrage of emails because these individuals had established strong linkages with the community. I would recommend to all of you to inventory the community groups in your city and plan on attending their meetings at least once per year. The bottom line is if Community Policing is so popular, why not Community Public Works?

This last strategy leads me to my next strategy for improving our image and increasing our visibility, and that is to foster advocacy groups for Public Works. There are friends of parks, friends of libraries, friends of various schools, friends of various creeks, why not friends of sewers, friends of storm drains? In Oakland, the Public Works Agency has recently taken over park maintenance responsibilities so we'll have an opportunity to foster and strengthen partnerships with the various park advocacy organizations such as Friends of Parks and Recreation and the Oakland Parks Coalition. We already foster and support various creek stewardship organizations and are working to help grow the Keep Oakland Beautiful organization. Police and Fire have a built in advantage because they come with built-in advocacy groups - their labor unions. These unions typically represent staff in just one department or agency, and thus, by advocating for those staff they advocate for those agencies. We in Public Works usually have our employees represented by one or two labor unions that represent staff in almost every other department within the city, with the exception of police and fire, so they cannot serve as public works advocacy organizations.

Another strategy is to focus on communication, by becoming better storytellers. Every Public Works department has a story to tell. You must decide what that is and then make sure that everyone in your agency knows the story, because your staff is a built-in public relations corps. In Oakland, for example, part of our story is that we're the second largest agency within the City (at 833 FTE), and that we got that big by re-organizations that added functions and responsibilities along the way. Twelve years ago the City disbanded its General Services Agency and most of those functions came to Public Works. Two years ago we took over park planning and now we've taken over park maintenance. We're now learning the park maintenance story because it is now part of Public Work's story. For example, I've learned that at one time Lake Merritt was nationally recognized and was featured in various publications like Sunset Magazine. They had twelve (12) Gardeners dedicated to the Lake back then; we now have two (2).

The last strategy I want to share with you is to be aware of your image and manage it. We need to be aware of our conduct and make sure we conduct ourselves in the most professional way. This can be about little things as well as big ones. For example, in a previous job, I was walking by a row of cubicles and noticed that a young engineer had just passed his Professional Engineer's exam. He had his certificate displayed on his wall - held up by two thumbtacks. I asked him if he had worked hard to achieve his P.E. license; he said he had worked hard for 4 years. I then asked him why he had not professionally framed his license? How would you feel if you went to your doctor's office and saw his/her degrees or licenses mounted by thumbtacks?

Field staff are the most visible, and we must make sure they comport themselves in the most positive way. We all must continue to focus on customer service and satisfaction because that is the best way to improve our image.

We've talked about some of the challenges we face in competing for the ever-dwindling pot of money to do the very essential work of maintaining our Cities' infrastructure. We've also talked about some strategies to overcome these challenges - namely increasing our visibility, developing stronger community linkages, fostering public works advocacy groups, focusing on communication and telling the Public Works' story in your community, and last but not least - being aware of our conduct and managing our image - both as individuals and as agencies. I would like to emphasize that this is not about survival. As long as we have infrastructure to maintain, we'll have some degree of job security. It's about really succeeding at what we do. It's about restoring the trust and confidence from our elected leaders and our community at-large. It's about better competing for the limited resources we need to do a better job, a job we can all be proud of.

Thank you for inviting me to share my thoughts with you. I really enjoyed the privilege. Thanks again.