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Issued: March 2001

SUMMARY

The Public Works and Transportation Department (PWTD) has made important progress in each area we reviewed. However, based on our analysis and review we consider three of the nine recommendations to be only partially implemented at this time. Additionally, one of the recommendations was accomplished by using an alternative strategy, which did however accomplish the initial intent of the recommendation. Furthermore, this report contains a new recommendation for the Director of the PWTD addressing the need to ensure that the revenue generated from the Street Damage Recovery Cost fee is collected in a timely manner and is used to maintain deteriorated streets.

Management in the Public Works and Transportation Department has made improvements related to the recommendations.

The Public Works and Transportation Department (PWTD) has partnered with Water and Wastewater and other relevant departments to perform several activities to implement the nine recommendations and can be credited with a number of relevant accomplishments and improvements.

• The Street Cut Ordinance was revised to ensure consistent requirements for all utilities and to better protect the City’s street infrastructure.
• Revisions made to the Utility Criteria Manual (UCM) help ensure consistent, high-quality street cut repairs.
• An Administrative Bulletin was issued requiring street cuts made by City departments to be held to the same standards as non-City owned utilities. Furthermore, to increase coordination and communication among stakeholders, a comprehensive strategy was developed, which included the creation of the Utility Location Coordination Committee (ULCC). The purpose of the ULCC is to review and discuss projects that require construction within the public right-of-way.
• The street cut repairs backlog has been significantly reduced by reallocating PWTD resources internally.
• The Street Damage Recovery Cost (SDRC) fee has been introduced which allows for the recovery of costs associated with street damage restoration.

Although significant improvements have been made in the following areas, further progress is needed to fully implement the remaining recommendations.

• The PWTD has developed a program performance plan with a goal to reduce the percentage of cuts in new streets and included the goal in the draft of the FY 2001-2002 business plan; however there are no mechanisms in place to ensure that other relevant departments do the same.
• The Information Systems Department (ISD) has been working with the PWTD to improve the reliability and availability of information related to street cuts; but the systems are not adequately addressing the needs of the users, which results in manual tracking of some information.
• Improvements have been made in strengthening controls over the billing process and ensuring compliance with the City’s cash - handling policy; but additional segregation of duties is needed.

Click here to go to our audit request form to request a hard copy of this report (Report No. AU01207). Click here to download the full text of the The Street Cuts Management Audit Follow-Up Report (Size: 346 KB) in Adobe Acrobat. Click here to view original audit report issued in November 1998. You will need Adobe's Acrobat Reader to view these files.

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