1999-2000 Ketner Award winners

Many county employees have done endless, repetitious paperwork. Many have answered the same question on the phone all day. Many have dealt with the frustration of clients who aren’t fluent in English.

A few, though, come up with ways to overcome these everyday problems. Some people use technology, while other relied on good ol’ common sense.

The Ralph W. Ketner Employee Productivity Award will be given Friday, Aug. 11, during the Association’s Annual Conference at the Sheraton in Research Triangle Park, Durham County, to 10 individuals or groups of county employees. Ralph Ketner, who is the co-founder of Food Lion Inc., is expected to present the public servants with $10,000 as a reward for their programs to provide services more efficiently and/or cheaper.

Following is a description of each of the winning programs.

Community Alternative Program Case Management and Time Management Database
Joanne Isenhour, Buncombe County

With her talents on the computer, Joanna Isenhour freed her colleagues in the Buncombe County Social Services Department from repetitive and error-prone paperwork by creating a database that automatically transfers critical Medicaid information to multiple forms.

Isenhour is a full-time case manager for the Community Alternative Program for Disabled Adults, a Medicaid program that provides services in the homes of severely disabled adults to enable them to avoid nursing home placement. The CAP is a cost-effective but a time-consuming and paper intensive process because much of the information must be identical on numerous forms. For example, the minutes spent with a client must be recorded in the case narrative, the report to the finance officer for reimbursement, and on the DSS-required day sheet. An error or omission can result in a state review and repayment by the county. The database reduces the chance for errors.

Each handwritten CAP assessment took 6 hours. Joanne’s process reduces that to 2.5 hours, saving taxpayers $29,561 annually in non-productive paperwork.

CAP case managers have also found that they are saving a tremendous amount of administrative time. A management report that once took 1.5 to 2 hours to complete now takes five minutes. Completion of day sheets that use to take a whole workday each month now can be done in two hours. Since these tasks were not billable to Medicaid, that portion of a case manager’s time had to be paid out of the ever-shrinking Social Services Block Grant. Staff can now spend more time on tasks that not only benefit their clients, but also are eligible for Medicaid reimbursement.

This means case managers can spend more time with clients, assuring they can remain safely in their home without being institutionalized. Because of the success of the CAP program, the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners has authorized a new CAP position. This means another 55 more people will receive services in their homes, approximately saving $260,575 in county Medicaid dollars.

In addition to CAP database, Isenhour has streamlined the CAP waiting list database that she developed two years ago. Now all staff can immediately access waiting list information for various programs via the computer. She even created a picture manual for the technologically challenged. Before Isenhour modified this system, staff had to manually check a notebook at the receptionist’s desk. This new system has improved customer service.

One of Isenhour’s colleagues noted, “In 23 years of client service and endless paperwork, no one has ever made my job easier before. Joanna’s system has allowed me to do more than the minimum requirements of the job because the computer handles much of the volume and precision. I can take the time to listen effectively to the concerns and problems of my clients and still be able to meet my job requirements.”

If you want more information on this award-winning program, call Joanna Isenhour at 828-250-5669.

New Focus-Diversion of Work First Clients
Sue Bullard, Regina Crowder, Rod Duncan, Lisa Fullerton, Jane Hartsell, Julie Hensley, Ruth Hinson, Dana Mullis, Susan Nunn, Lisa Purser, Catina Sherrill
Cabarrus County Department of Social Services

The department of social services created the New Focus Committee as a way to shift Work First participants’ focus away from cash assistance and dependency toward employment and comprehensive family services up-front. This philosophy wasn’t new, but the New Focus method made it much quicker and cost effective.

For one, each family receives a full assessment in which a social worker determines the needs of the entire family. This assessment gives the social worker a clearer picture of the entire situation and the family’s unique needs than the more standard public assistance applications. In turn, the social worker can refer people to more appropriate services.

In the first three months the program, February through April 2000, social workers diverted 161 families from cash assistance by providing the assessments, counseling and referral for short-term assistance. There were only 61 applications for cash assistance during that period.

The employment services unit and the crisis unit in the department have absorbed the extra work involved with the New Focus Committee without additional staff. There are two primary social workers and four social workers that provide backup. Meanwhile two contracted on-site Employment Security Commission staff placed a large number of applicants into employment immediately.

Another segment of the population is benefiting from the New Focus Committee. Families who are within the 200 percent federal poverty level guidelines are also receiving assessment services and being referred to short-term employment, transportation, child-care and other services. This decreases the likelihood of the client needing ongoing public assistance.

The savings to the county are significant. By diverting the 161 applicants from cash assistance, the county saved $198,030. The average cash assistance client receives an assistance check of $205 each month for six months.

For more information on this award-winning program, call Cabarrus County Department of Social Services at 704-939-1400.

Newspaper Advertising Cost Savings
Stacy Lowes Martin, Cumberland County

As an office assistant in Cumberland County, Stacy Lowes Martin handles lots of projects. Little did Martin know that when one of her departments asked her to place an ad for a position vacancy, she would save the county more than $6,000 and win herself a Ketner award.

The Human Resources Department of the Mental Health Center asked Martin to help type position vacancy ads. When calling the newspaper for ad rates, she discovered that the county’s normal “display” ads, which are generally boxed, was more expensive than the cost of a “line” ad.

Martin began experimenting with layout and different fonts to create a new eye-catching design for county ads. Not only did she design a more attractive advertisement, it was a money saver as well. Additionally, Martin recommended that the county advertise on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays rather than seven days a week. This yielded more cost savings.

Martin created template on the computer so that any other departments in the county could use the “line ad design.” The county manager’s office adopted it as its model and estimates savings of $6,009 a year. During a department head meeting, the county manager encouraged other departments to adopt this style of advertisements.

Savings are now being used for staff training to increase productivity and enhance service delivery.

For more information on this award-winning program, call Stacy Lowes Martin at 910-323-0601.

GIS on the Internet
Tobin Bradley, Ronald Bruzzese, Eric Cavanough, Mathew Crisp, Tammy Dixon, Chaula Jain, Jerry Shidal, Todd Wilson
Mecklenburg County

“What is the assessed value of my property?”

“How much did my neighbor pay for his house?”

“Where do I vote?”

“Who are my representatives?”

“What school is my child assigned to?”

“What parks are within three miles of my house?”

So many questions, and now thanks to Mecklenburg’s GIS employees and the wonders of GIS technology, the citizens of Mecklenburg County have the answers at their fingertips. Over the past year Tobin Bradley, Ronald Bruzzese, Eric Cavanough, Mathew Crisp, Tammy Dixon, Chaula Jain, Jerry Shidal and Todd Wilson have placed a number of GIS applications on the Internet including the GIS Real Estate System, the Student Assignment Express, the Voter Information Express, the Park Facility Locator. The e-web sites receive more queries than any other web pages supported by Mecklenburg County.

This systems allows people access to county documents 24 hours a day from their homes and offices, thereby reducing trips to county offices and waits. Meanwhile, county staff can spend more time on keeping information current and serving citizens in other ways.

What does it mean?

Taxpayers can compare their property values to other properties in the area and present compelling logic that can be used in appealing high land values.

Realtors can use the system to locate properties, view current tax information, and determine how to price new real estate sales.

Lawyers, paralegals, and surveyors use the system to perform real estate research relative to property transfers. Land developers use the system to locate potential development projects.

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg School System uses a GIS application to publicize its student assignment decisions and to provide students, parents, teachers and school administrators accurate information about school assignment boundaries.

The Voter Information Express gives information about precincts, precinct locations, names of representatives and the areas that they represent by street address.

The Park Facility Locator quickly helps residents find nearby parks and other facilities. The Government Facilities Locator identifies county buildings and individual departments. An Internet Routing Application plots and maps driving directions between any two addresses in Mecklenburg County as well as the United States.

Mecklenburg County has managed to consolidate all of its GIS technical services into the Information Services and Technology Department. This means the county has saved hundreds of thousands of dollars it would have spent for IT in other departments. Departments do not have to budget for GIS database design, GIS application development software, GIS database design, GIS application routing and communication equipment and software, GIS technical support and GIS application development salaries and contractor expenses.

This allows other county departments to spend time on maintaining GIS data layers and content and not on technical issues.

GIS on the Internet has dramatically decreased citizen visits to certain county offices, such as the elections office, the tax office, etc. This in turn has allowed staff to focus on more useful customer projects. By using the GIS application on the Internet, the Tax Office can provide map products that are always current, something they could never do before.

GIS technology has enabled Mecklenburg County to provide innovative and state-of-the-art services to its citizens in a cost-effective manner.

For more information on this award-winning program, contact Jerry Shidal at 704-336-4453.

Agricultural Water Quality Enhancement Using GPS & Computer Mapping
William D. Norris III and Donna Card, Onslow County

Last year the Onslow Soil & Water Conservation District purchased a Global Positioning System (GPS) and ArcView software to use in the county’s agricultural water quality improvements program. They found that space age technology makes mapping a lot easier.

By using the GPS, William D. Norris III, an environmental technician, and Donna Card, a clerk, found they were able to map out the agricultural land features in fewer man-hours with better accuracy and at a lower cost. The process reduced the man-hours in the field, travel, training, and data entry in the office.

As an example, Norris and Card offer a 100-acre swine farm with buildings, lagoons, pumps, waste application fields and irrigation systems. The farm might be missing existing aerial photographs.

They found that a two or three man surveying crew with standard equipment would require approximately four to six hours to survey a new swine operation. One person can complete surveying the same 100-acre farm in approximately two hours using GPS.

Using the older techniques, a person back at the office would draw the survey engineering design to scale. This would take approximately three to hours to finish. Using GPS software, a person can download the information from GPS onto the computer and have the software draw the design to scale in 30 to 35 minutes. All told, staff expenses for conventional surveying and mapping would run $440 for the swine farm project; use of the GPS and computerized mapping costs only $50.

Norris and Card found that additional features could be added to the computerized map for more complete tracking and reporting. Earlier hand drawn designs couldn’t be modified easily.

The GPS also allows higher services in terms of up-to-date mapping of best management practices, reduces the need to update aerial photos, and shows underground items that may not be visible in a normal photo.

Norris and Card estimate that GPS has increased productivity by 50 percent, decreased labor by 75 percent, decreased time by 75 percent, improved service by 50 percent, and improved accuracy.

For more information on this award-winning program, contact William Norris or Donna Card at 910-455-4472.

Paramedic Initial Response Program
Nick Waters, Orange County Emergency Medical Services

As part of a strategic planning process, Orange County’s emergency medical services program was restructured away from being based solely on response time. Instead of the traditional call to 911 bringing the ambulance wailing with lights flashing for transportation to the hospital, Orange County’s EMS focuses on appropriate treatment and transportation for each patient.

To do this, the county established an emergency medical dispatch that prioritized each call based on symptoms described to the 911 center. Paramedics were taken off ambulances and placed in zone cars.

An early responder program of specially trained firefighters with training in basic life support and operation of automatic defibrillators was put into place for acute calls such as someone having chest pains. And finally a transportation plan had to be developed.

Paramedics are empowered to offer patients alternatives to going to the hospital in an ambulance and to refuse to provide transportation to patients who do not require follow-up treatment at the hospital.

In the end, the project has allowed paramedics to manage resources better and has allowed EMS to handle growth without having to add staff. Other success measures include:

• The cardiac arrest save rate has increased from 6 percent to 20 percent since the implementation of the program.
• Response time for emergency calls has decreased on average by 1.5 minutes, or 22 percent.
• The number of light-and-siren responses decreased by 60 percent, thereby reducing the county’s liability risk.
• Paramedics no longer immobilize every patient from a car crash. Instead they rule out spine injuries through advanced assessment techniques. This reduces the use of backboards and collars.

Based on call volume and population, under the old EMS system, the county would have had to invest in three new ambulances, 18 new full-time employees and two new emergency medical services bases. Costs for these components come to $870,000 in capital costs over three years and an annual investment of $1.04 million. The Paramedic Initial Response Program saves the county over $1.25 million a year by those standards.

For more information about this award winning program, contact Orange County EMS Director Nick Waters at 919-732-8181.

Contractor Registration Program
Judy Caldwell, Donna Tripp and JoAnne K. Burgdorff, county attorney, Pitt County

Watching its residents suffer emotionally and financially after Hurricanes Dennis and Floyd, Pitt County did not want to see people hurt even further by fly-by-night contractors. History shows that unscrupulous contractors invade areas after natural disasters preying on people at their weakest moments.

Wanting to do everything in its power to prevent this, Pitt County initiated the Contractor Registration Program as a way to create a clearinghouse of information and to raise public awareness about doing business with legitimate contractors.

Contractors were asked to register with Pitt County at the county’s Recovery Operations Center, where they obtained information about building codes and permits. They had to provided photo identification, social security card or a second form of information, vehicle identification number, and a thumbprint for possible criminal background check.

The contractors receive a badge that includes their business names and a placard for their vehicles indicating they are county-registered contractors.

This system gives citizens a databank of information from which to select a contractor. If something goes wrong, the county has a means of locating the company and pursuing criminal prosecution.

Pitt County also opened a citizen information line where people can call in positive and negative comments about contractors’ work, unfinished work, price gouging and other types of incidents.

The intent of the program was two-fold: to give residents a greater level of confidence as they rebuilt from the devastation and to ward off potential bad actors who would not want the extra government scrutiny.

While the county attorney’s office led this critical initiative, a number of other county departments pitched in to ensure its success. Emergency management volunteered its camera equipment to create the photo identification badges. The sheriff’s department furnished fingerprinting instructions and equipment. The engineering department and the public information officer provided extensive publicity. The printing department made flyers that were distributed to all the grocery stores and convenience stores. Public awareness notices appeared in the newspaper, on television and on the radio. The county also coordinated contractor registration with its cities to make sure all contractors obtained the necessary municipal permits as well.

If the county had not started the Contractor Registration Program, officials estimate citizen complaints would have required them to hire another person just to handle contractor issues. Instead, the county was able to establish a proactive program with existing staff.

For more information on this award-winning program, contact the county attorney’s office at 252-830-6374.

Hurricane Relief Funding Project
Melonie Bryan, Dee Bowling, Margaret Dixon, Michael Taylor, Donna Davis and Ron Crisp
Pitt County

The Pitt County residents who lost everything in the hurricane needed money fast. The people administering the Hurricane Relief Fund at the state level wanted Hurricane Floyd relief money distributed fast.

So who was going to make that speedy process happen? The county officials in Pitt.

The Department of Social Services was designated to review applications for citizen relief. Its staff quickly realized that they needed to create a central repository of information about the disbursement, including basic demographics of the citizens receiving the money and the type of problems targeted with the dollars.

The financial services department had to produce the checks quickly once citizens were approved for funding. But the department did not want to clutter its files with information that would be used only once. Plus, the department did not have the manpower to handle data entry for processing 12,000 additional checks.

So the county’s financial services department got together with its DSS and MIS departments to come up with a solution.

MIS developed a database that allowed a DSS worker to enter basic demographic information for each citizen being interviewed during the application process. The data file also contained other pertinent information such as funding source and the type of problem that needed relief. The database could be expanded as other funding sources became available.

Once people were approved to receive relief, MIS extracted information from the database to generate a file for producing checks on the county’s mainframe. This information was also imported into the county’s general ledger, such that data was only keyed one time.

Using this system, the MIS department printed more than 3,400 checks in a matter of hours. Finance reviewed supporting documentation and authorized releasing the checks all in the same day. As other sources of funding became available, MIS modified the system to account for, and disburse these new monies.

By eliminating dual data entry and redundant check reviews, Pitt County estimates it has saved more than $14,000 using this system.

For more information on this award-winning program, contact Pitt County Financial Services Manager Dee Bowling at 252-830-6315.

Pretrial Release Services
V.T. “Buddy” Poplin, Rita Foil, and the Criminal Justice Partnership Board, chaired by the Honorable Larry Ford, Chief Resident Superior County Judge
Rowan County

Rowan County was experiencing overcrowding in its detention center and faced expanding it by 42 beds at a cost of $1.2 million.

Looking for solutions, the county found that one of every four jail residents was a pre-trial inmate who was eligible for pre-trial release. Most of these detainees had been charged with misdemeanor offenses. Although the detainees were placed under low bonds, they couldn’t afford to pay the bondsman’s premium.

Rowan County decided to address this problem with available state money and use of its inmate concession fund.

To implement its pretrial release program, the county used money from the State’s Criminal Justice Program to hire a pretrial service coordinator who identifies the eligible detainees and works closely with professional bondsman in securing their early release. The county’s detention center’s inmate concession fund reserve is used to pay the bond premium to the professional bondsman for those detainees who can’t afford the small premium. The released detainee then agrees to repay the loan to the concession fund.

The county manager directs the program with an advisory board being comprised of the district attorney, the chief resident superior court judge, the chief resident district court judge and the Rowan County sheriff.

In the six weeks of intensive study to formulate the program, the county researched and produced a policy and procedures manual to guide the program’s operation. The advisory board approved the manual in May of this year. In just over three weeks, 17 detainees were released and two others were deemed eligible for assistance by the program. In that short time, the project saved the county $39,396.

For more information on this award-winning program, contact Rowan County at 704-636-0361.

Spanish Communication to Improve Understanding
Debra Fox, Clara Banks, Shelia Bradley, Kay Canipe, Ken Mathis, Royce Whitson
Yancey County

The Yancey County Transportation Authority van drivers had a dilemma. They wanted to provide quality customer-service to all of their human resources clients, but they were having trouble communicating with their Spanish-speaking riders. Because of the communication gap, there were time delays on the routes and frustration on both sides – drivers and passengers – as they tried to communicate with one another.

To solve the problem, the Authority sought the help of a Spanish teacher and reference books at the library to develop a list of common words and phrases. Now, the vans carry flash cards to help the driver can communicate when a Spanish speaking rider boards the bus.

Common phrases include

• Good afternoon! Hola!
• Cost of ride – el viaje cusesta.
• Do you have an infant car seat? – Tiene UD. Un auto-asiento para un nino.
• Are you going to the grocery store? – Va usted al supermercado.

The authority also publicizes this program in both English and Spanish in an effort to improve customer service and understanding. This unique program not only reduces anxiety and frustration for both the driver and the rider but also reduces route delays and service inconvenience.

For more information on this award-winning program, contact Kay Canipe at 828-682-6144.