Community Development Management Consulting

As public servants, everything we think, say, and do starts with the customer in mind. One of our team members is the country’s leading authority on customer service in the public sector. Our team has instituted customer service improvement initiatives in dozens of cities and counties. Our team ensures that services to all customer groups are recognized, monitored, reported out, and continually improved. We emphasize keen management of the credibility, timeliness, predictability, and sensitivity of development, special studies, and environmental review processes. We provide rapid problem-solving and early assistance techniques than can be institutionalized to ensure applications and projects are not unnecessarily delayed.

Sample Community Development Reports

Citygate develops a profile of your organizational and functional structure to gain an understanding of how functional responsibilities are distributed and determine how these structures and responsibilities support responsiveness to the stakeholders and customers. We assess what work units perform specific services, the level of functional interdependence, areas of potential overlap or duplication, formal and informal communications, and the effectiveness of interdepartmental coordination.

Sample Community Development Reports

We define the most contemporary and useful recommendations possible by (1) presenting “best practice” techniques used in comparably-sized and comparably-growing agencies regionally and throughout the U.S., and (2) understanding the state-of-the-art standards promoted through published journals (including the APA), national data, and case studies. Members of Citygate’s team have had numerous books published by the APA. In addition, they have authored many articles that have been printed in the APA’s national journal, and have presented regularly at APA annual conferences.

Sample Community Development Reports

We help everyone involved in the development review permitting process see and understand the big picture. We help agencies vastly improve their development review-permitting program by tearing down the formal and informal walls that exist between functions. We put the customers’ needs first, and focus on eliminating “second bites at the apple” (multiple rounds of plan check and application corrections).

Sample Community Development Reports

Our specialty is closing the gaps that create interdepartmental coordination problems. We eliminate dysfunctional silos! We have helped institute many highly focused and well-disciplined interdepartmental Development Review Teams that routinely exceed customer expectation.

Sample Community Development Reports

Everything we do is aimed at increasing productivity, without sacrificing quality. We can streamline processes, dramatically improve permit approval time and accuracy, eliminate wasteful meetings, and increase employee engagement. We know how to use information technology, e-government, and social media to make permitting processes and procedures more efficient and effective, to promote civic engagement, and to improve customer service.

Sample Community Development Reports

We help community development departments create financial independence to achieve a business-like environment. We help agencies find ways for: (1) new development to fully pay for itself; (2) the development review permitting process to operate “like a business”; (3) good urban planning and good civil engineering to no longer compete for resources with police and fire services; (4) staff to have a stake in operational efficiency and effectiveness; and (5) financial accountability and compliance with state law to increase.

Sample Community Development Reports

Strategic plans define your overall mission, guiding principles, strategic initiatives, and required disciplines. Focusing on environmental preservation, quality of life, economic development, and fostering livable communities is central to development. Citygate always develops recommendations that support your strategic goals and reinforce the required disciplines. Our recommendations are designed for implementation: we show the relative priority of each recommendation, the anticipated benefit, the party responsible for implementation, and how implementation should be monitored.

Sample Community Development Reports

The involvement of stakeholders, both internal and external, is essential for a study to have a successful outcome and to produce tailored recommendations that will address the real issues in the community and Department. The first principle of customer-centered public service is the essential prerequisite of listening to customers, really hearing them, and then aggressively responding to what you hear, see, and learn. To facilitate this, we conduct confidential Internet-based citizen/customer surveys, employee surveys, and focus groups of varying customer types (residential, commercial, industrial, and “mom and pop” development).

Sample Community Development Reports