weoughtodryrun

Opportunity: Cities/Counties need good consultants. Consultants, especially small consultants, struggle to get known by cities that need their services.

We ought to (for these purposes) view ICMA more as a broker of services, instead of a provider of services. Basically, we should be eBay, not ICMA consulting services.

In this view of the world, ICMA finds itself at the intersection of two dynamic forces:
1. We have almost 8000 members in over 3000 cities that need grant writing services from time to time, varying in topic from Homeland Security to parks grants. Additionally, there are 1000's of governmental units that are in the market for consultants.
2. We have a number of grant writers/consultants, many of whom are former managers who work independently or with small groups as consultants. Additionally, if we specifically seek grant writers, we can solicit them.

There are a lot of ways to make this work. At its heart is a type of electronic marketplace, an ICMA/eBay for consultants where they will list themselves by topic, and by state/region. Users may search the data base for consultants. But the key—the value added by ICMA—is that past performance will be rated by cities. Just like sellers get a star rating on eBay, consultants will get stars from past clients/cities. They will be rated on timeliness, price, quality, value, or any other criteria we decide. This kind of city review will really help small cities, who don’t hire a lot of consultants, to sort through the list, and find good ones. (This feature won’t be available immediately—it is a data base that will have to be built over time—however, past performance could be collected, so we wouldn’t have to wait years for this feature to become relevant.)

There are a lot of ways for us to make money on this. We could:
**Sell it as a subscription to cities, or bill them each time they use the site.
**Bill each consultant a base fee for inclusion on the site.
**Bill a percentage of each sale to the consultant.
**Bill per click—every time a city went to the consultant’s web site, or clicked on the email address, we could bill them.
**Make ICMA corporate sponsors ‘preferred vendors’—thus getting more ICMA corporate sponsors.
**Build small websites (all would be the same) for small consultants that don’t have the capacity, and then bill them for hosting it.)
**This allows us to offer a service to all cities/counties/special districts, without regard to ICMA membership. Our revenue potential is not limited to membership!!! (Alternatively, we could limit to members, and make it a benefit/add-on to membership. But if we want to collect money from consultants, and not just members, then broad-based access is important).

Note: This idea builds on a previous idea to do grant-writing submitted by Barb and Shannon.

I’ve been thinking about a few other Web cast ideas – just something to throw in the hopper. I think it would be good to have these before key legislative milestones, with some action steps perhaps:

- Telecom legislation/rewrite (could be tied into when our white paper on that topic is finished). Key ideas would be the impacts of what current legislation will do to local government funding, and the importance of working with mayors/councils on their communications to federal legislators.

- Emergency management (same here – we are working on a policy white paper on this) – key issues here include regional cooperation and interoperability.

- PanFlu preparations, and general means of communicating with residnts and communities about/before major disasters.

Opportunity: We should reward ICMA employees who conceive, create, and bring to market new products that make money for the organization.

We ought to target 10% of GROSS revenues over a 7 year period for any new product to reward employees who conceive of and create new products that go to market. We ought to target 10% of NET revenues over a 7 year period for any new product to reward employees who take New Products to market and make a profit for ICMA.

In preparing for Restoration 2006, I was thinking that it would be great to offer a compilation of all the disaster preparation/homeland security/interoperability articles that have appeared in PM Magazine in a single booklet. There is a lot of great content spread out over several years of PM that is still useful, but takes a while to track down. Many managers may not keep each issue of PM, and new members won't have received past issues.

Topics with a lot of content could become their own "best of" book (emergency management, next generation, media relations, pensions and finance, etc.). We already have the content, so the only effort in creating this would be to write introductions to each volume, track down and select the best articles, devise a cover for the series, and develop a pricing plan. These could also be easily updated as new articles on a topic are authored and older ones become less relevant.

Opportunity: local government broadband and wireless Internet is heating up across the country with communities seeking to implement municiple service, and private industry working through state and federal legislature to stall or prevent such projects.

We ought to explore this issue for potential involvment. Publications, Web casts, possibly technical assistance and policy recommendations through the Big 7. Others are moving ahead:
http://www.broadbandcities.com/
http://www.muniwireless.com

Opportunity: As the New Products/Services team gears up, we know that our ‘team’ actually includes everyone on staff—it’s up to us all to create, and contribute, ‘new ideas’ to our organization. But we are also discussing how employees should benefit directly from their contribution—as in ‘show me the money.’ Or, as my daughter’s jazz mentor advises, ‘baby, follow the Benjamins.’

We ought to reward employees for new ideas. So—what kind of rewards should we offer for ideas that lead to new products? 1% of gross sales of new products? 10%? Over what period? (A new product make take several years to reach full potential). Should just the creator be rewarded? How about the folks who work to bring a new product to market?

Help us figure this out. What motivates you? What is fair? We really don’t want to decide this in a vacuum—we want the WHOLE team to help decide, and this is your chance to give us some input.

Opportunity: Managers are retiring faster than you can say ’30 and out’. Retired managers should be encouraged to remain active members in their association, and they also give us a large new group of customers for which we might develop products

We ought to look at retired managers the way universities look at graduated students as a group to keep involved as advocates—and to look to for money. Ideas include:
***Alumni status in the association as a special category. Benefits might include special dues, breaks for conference attendance, a reception at the conference, special ‘look back’ articles in PM about things that managers have accomplished that reflect our tradition of excellence, etc.
***Encouragement to ‘endow’ one year fellowships in a ‘give-back to the profession’ effort. This could be done by managers during their career, after their retirement, or in their will. For instance, I might endow a 1 year fellowship in City Management for a graduate of Indiana University—so we could get an ICMA and university linkage working together. It might not be a ‘full ride’, but even $10,000 to allow a student to work in a local government for a year would be pretty cool. (Seems that if we did this to protect the profession that we have shown the ability to deliver on ideas bigger than ourselves.)

Dave Childs and Jon Bormet, driven by a need to keep older members hanging around so they aren’t the oldest guy in the room, will lead this effort and report back to the Membership Team. But you need not have gray hair, remember the Kennedy administration, or know a time when horses could talk, to contribute. Leave those ideas right here!!!!

Opportunity: Indiana is a state with a lot of small towns, very few managers, a great Public Administration School at IU, and Orville Powell. ICMA has a lot of connections to the state, and it’s a perfect place to experiment with product marketing, next generation, and membership building.

We ought to see what we can do in Indiana, and apply those lessons nationwide. Mike Lawson, Jon Bormet, and Nish Keshav, Hoosiers all, will lead the effort, and be reporting back to the Membership Team. Ideas? Comments? Contacts? Let us have them!!

Note: This posting is way too long--keep scrolling--there is stuff below.

Opportunity: Cities have a lot of surplus equipment that could be conveyed to international communities.

We ought to consider our involvement in moving faciliating equipment donations from US to international cities. From time to time, ICMA is involved directly or indirectly with cities that wish to ship surplus material overseas. We have not become involved in most of these efforts, for they take an incredible amount of time and effort on our behalf. A couple of things have happened over the past few months to make me wonder whether we should re-visit our stance. Specifically:

*The City of West Bend, Wisconsin has sent 4 containers of computers and other equipment to Bulgaria over the last couple of years. This effort has been taken solely by the City (and a really dedicated city manager), without any significant help from ICMA. The effort has been warmly received by the Bulgarian recipient, and USAID has been very receptive as well.
*I was contacted by a city in North Carolina, which has sent fire trucks to Nicaragua. After receiving some publicity, they have been approached by a number of other cities interested in donating their surplus equipment, and the City Manager wants ICMA to help.
*The City of Great Falls wanted to send a trash truck to Kyrgyzstan, but found too many obstacles. They ended up selling the truck for $17,000, and buying a truck in Kyrgyzstan, which was a great solution.
*We worked with Athens, Georgia to donate 6 pickups and 5 dump trucks (all used) to Bamako, Mali. The cost of shipping was approximately $175,000. The estimated value of the trucks was a total of $75,000. USAID agreed to pick up the cost of the shipping, but the deal fell through when the Athens Law Director intervened. But the fact that USAID would pay so much for shipping got my attention.

Everyone likes these programs—the US city feels good when they give away equipment that is still useful, but no longer meets their needs. The international city likes it, because they get equipment that they need desperately, and would never have the chance to acquire otherwise. And USAID likes it, because it connects US cities internationally, and there is a tremendous amount of good will created for the Mission and Embassy. So why aren’t we involved if everyone likes it so much?

In my experience, the effort can be very time-intensive and costly, and there can be some significant downside. For instance, the City of Kabul has received significant donations of trucks, but they are too large to use everyday, they are very expensive to fuel (the trucks are huge, and so is the quantity of fuel needed) money that the City doesn’t have. Also, Kabul doesn’t have a garage or even electricity—when a tire goes flat, they have to pump in up manually. Also there is no supply of parts readily available, from oil filters to engine belts. The trucks simply cannot be sustained. This is the most recent example I have seen, though cities internationally are littered with equipment that was given by a donor, with no real maintenance/upkeep planned, leading to a premature death/underuse. In Sofia I saw a $50,000 filter mechanism from Japan still in the crate (the city couldn’t afford the electric to run it); $100,000 GIS systems that were turn-key in the Philippines, but no one had time to maintain the data; a $150,000 ‘mulcher’ that broke after a year’s use and was never repaired; and multimillion dollar waste treatment systems in Thailand that had never been started because they weren’t connected into the sewage collection network, they were too expensive to operate, and no one knew how to maintain them.

Given the misguided but well-intentioned efforts of international donors (and US cities), I have always maintained that we should stay away from the effort. Seeing a system that is so broken, I thought this to be a rational stance. Is it time to re-think that stance, and helping to fix the situation? For instance, we could explore:
*Creating an effort that would allow US cities to donate their excess equipment to ICMA (much as non profits in the US encourage people to donate cars and boats) and then ICMA reselling the equipment. Before you think me nuts, it seems like we could list the stuff on E-Bay, and require the successful bidder to pickup the equipment from the donor city. Our only costs would be the administrative time it took to monitor the auction and process the payments. We could then take the money and buy equipment internationally to give to cities. This might have the further benefit of allowing us to purchase equipment internationally, avoiding “Made in America’ rules that make the most basic of equipment very expensive to buy/ship, and often times introduces equipment into a country for which there are few parts/supplies available. We have floated the idea of the Great Falls model—selling the equipment and donating the money—but most cities can’t do it because once they generate real dollars, they aren’t giving it away. This idea might give the cities another option that would work.
*Alternatively, should we get involved in the current ad hoc efforts, and lead the way in showing cities how to donate equipment? Should we create a model? With a bit of work, we could capture what has been done, the lessons learned, and provide the path for US cities to follow.
*Should we emphasize to USAID the need for supporting this equipment, either new or used? This could be as simple as a questionnaire for the international city to respond to, to determine whether they had a need for the equipment, and the capacity to maintain, before a donation could be made (Question: You wish to receive dump trucks: Do you have a garage? Do you know how to maintain hydraulics? Where will you get parts for this truck? Question: You wish to receive computers. What access to electricity do you have? Who will maintain the computers?
*We could also propose that USAID provide training support—through CityLinks the donating city could send a mechanic to train the recipient on maintenance of the equipment. It would greatly increase the likelihood of success. And it would cover a US city concern—they will donate the equipment, but they would rarely incur the cost of sending someone to train people in maintenance.

These are just some thoughts. I think there is a lot of equipment out there that US cities would donate—or money that could be generated from equipment donation. And we know USAID loves it. Yet it sometimes falls short of meeting the real needs of international cities. Do we want to continue to stay hands-off, or should we consider getting more involved and try to fix a system that appears to be broken?

If we are going to get engaged, the time is now. Kabul has a great need, we have staff here that can evaluate the need and know what would be useful, it will resonate with US cities, and I think there should be military flights that we can use to ship. Whether or not we should broker donated equipment on E-Bay is a separate question.

What do you think?

Opportunity: Managers get fired--a lot!!!

We ought to see if there is some way to insure the risk of termination--and sell termination insurance. There are a couple of different ways this might work:
**A city manager could buy a termination policy. S/he could decide whether to insure 100%, 75%, or 50% of his salary. There would be a sliding monthly payment—just like RC.
**City Councils may be inclined to insure their risk by buying insurance to cover some portion of their termination costs.
**Could we structure it kind of like ‘whole life’ insurance, so that if a manager wasn’t fired, it could become an additional payment to the CM after some period of time?
**Could a city that paid insurance and never fire a manager, get credit for the amount previously paid when the manager leaves voluntarily, and they wish to provide the same benefit for the next manager?
***

Opportunity: The ICMA Newsletter hasn’t changed format in years. A change in format—especially in the electronic version- would give us the opporutniyt to send a message to members that ‘the times they are a changin’ while at the same creating a much more user-friendly electronic document.
We ought to re-format the ICMA Newsletter asap—at least the electronic editions—so that is looks new, clean, and most of all, so the user can quit scrolling back and forth between articles/job ads. (I know of no one who reads the ‘print version’ of the Washington Post Online, as it has the same problem as our Newsletter—columns don’t work on line). Possible new design elements are:
**List all of the jobs in one area, and just link in the document to see the description—just like Management InSite—
**In the jobs section, link to the City’s web site so an interested person could check it out very quickly—this would be an easy way of suggesting change is happening—
**Putting in short/timely articles, and not just Bulletins—it seems like there is a gap between PM and the Newsletter that should be filled. Couldn’t the Newsletter be more than job announcements, board announcements, and sales pitches for ICMA products?
**Consider putting in some pictures in the electronic version, and some news about what is going on in cities.