The Park City Transit Department is getting a major overhaul and at Thursday’s meeting Transit and Public Works Director Blake Fonnesbeck told council they’re still training the staff, but the public should notice a difference by late fall. Melissa Allison has more:
Transit and Public Works Director Blake Fonnesbeck started working for Park City Municipal more than five years ago and began working toward reorganizing the department about four years ago.
He said he knew the transit staff, who had been untapped at that point - had the answer.
“Ultimately we have a huge amount of staff that have a lot of transit experience and one of the best things that we could do is actually find out form them what we needed to do," Fonnesbeck said. "We were seeing, with the growing pains and the sense of our managing our staff, our staff being engaged, those kinds of things. Yet, our transit system was running very well. – that goes to the pride that our staff have in the system that they have and the pride in doing a good job. They were doing their best with, with what they had. But, as I looked at that I said, ‘You know, we’ve got to figure something out. Figure out what would make them more engaged and what would make their quality of life better?’”
As a result, the city hired an outside consultant to meet with members of the staff for their honest feedback, good and bad, of how things needed to change.
Fonnesbeck says the information gathered from those confidential conversations was invaluable.
Those changes include creating three positions - a transit quality manager, a transit business manager and a transit system manager.
Mayor Andy Beerman says it should make for a better product.
“So, we think with the systems manager, that’s going to be overseeing personnel, the quality manager is going to be equipment and tech and the business manager is going to be the finances," Beerman said. "So that separates that into good categories and then we’re working on how we set up the internal teams. But we think it gonna, in the end, the important thing to the public is it’s going to provide better service, better efficiencies and better execution of our projects.”
But it wasn’t just the structuring of the department Fonnesbeck was concerned about. He told KPCW he wanted to make real changes that would improve the lives of his staff.
“I wanted to make sure that when people went home at the end of the day, while they might have a few bad days, for the most part they’re proud of what they do," Fonnesbeck said. "And they are able to share that with their family and their able to share that with their friends and able to say, ‘Hey, I am part of" Fonnesbeck said. "Park City Transit and it’s an amazing place to work and we’re doing amazing things for people.’”
Communication has been an issue for Fonnesbeck’s staff as well as keeping transit operators. He’s confident the changes will help turn that around and says everyone’s on board with what they’re doing.
“By setting it up into smaller teams, to where they now have somebody that they can talk to on a regular basis and actually work through issues or work through problems, or even bring up ideas too and…'" Fonnesbeck said. "We’ve basically set it up so managers aren’t going to take credit for other people’s ideas. We’re all about, let’s be fluid across and if someone comes up with a great idea, we’ll give them credit.”
The transit department has undergone a lot of changes in the recent past and Beerman said the public will continue to see the transit program evolve as the community grows.
“We’ve really been focused on our entry corridors, getting these express bus systems in, having the lanes for those, building the park-n-rides and that’s all coming together now," Beerman said. "In the next three years you’re going to see that transit center get built next to the Arts and Culture District in the center of town and that gonna change how we approach our bus routes because that will be a centralized hub that you’ll have rapid little trips going out to all of our commercial districts, going to each little resort and old town. And that allows us to bring those, use those entry corridors to bring the bulk of our workforce and our tourists into town as well as hopefully it's more convenient for the residents.”
Fonnesbeck said the changes were geared toward, not only creating a program their staff would buy into, but improved customer service for their riders.
I’m Melissa Allison, KPCW News.