As York County’s new deputy county administrator settles into her job, County Administrator James McReynolds’ new program, Managing Performance for a Lean Government, continues to take shape.
The county welcomed Vivian Calkins-McGettigan in early April, her hiring coming at a time when McReynolds had shifted around part of the administrative structure of the county. He said he wants to devote more time to long-range planning, and by installing McGettigan in a position where she can oversee community services, human resources, computer support services, emergency communications and the financial department, he can do just that.
The county’s Board of Supervisors had expressed interest in establishing a formal performance management system, a tool that would allow the county’s administration to continuously monitor and tweak the county’s operations while planning for the future. McReynolds announced the creation of the performance program in March.
Along with her responsibilities in managing the operation of the departments under her purview, McGettigan is also one of the key players in the establishment of the performance program. As it would turn out, this isn’t the first time she has been involved in the creation of a system designed to allow administrative figures to peer deeper into their own operations.
Before joining York County, she served as chief internal auditor of the Prince William County Public School System, an organization that employs more than 15,000 people. That job saw her create the school system’s office of internal audit, an office tasked with looking at the school system’s operations for ways to improve performance and add value.
“I’ve always liked numbers,” McGettigan said of her decision to become involved in public administration. She had her eyes on accounting when she got out of school, but after a brief stint at a Washington, D.C., firm that exposed her to local government, she knew where she wanted to be.
“I love local government in that we do so much and touch so many people’s lives,” McGettigan said, citing the breadth and scope of services offered by local governments. In the private sector, many companies focus on specific activities, and if one of them isn’t profitable, they can move on. In the public sector, however, state and federal laws mandate that local governments provide certain services even if they require the locality to operate at a loss.
As one of the leaders in the county’s new performance management program, she has already started to break down how the county can operate more productively while keeping an eye on the future. McReynolds and McGettigan hope the program will allow them to speak with every employee of the county so they can begin to get a better idea of concerns and suggestions from throughout each department.
She said she ran focus groups as part of her responsibilities in Prince William County. What surprised her the most was that when she would ask management what they thought were concerns and suggestions employees might bring forward, their answers were almost always different from what she heard from the employees. By using a similar strategy in York County, the administrators hope they can find ways to improve value.
For example, if they are able to identify ways to save five or 10 minutes out of somebody’s day, 15 minutes out of someone else’s day, so on and so forth, those savings would add up big over time for the close to 700 employees in the county. McReynolds said their look at processes might reveal hard-cost savings by identifying programs or processes that could be cut altogether.
“We get into these patterns and routines, and the reason we might still be doing something is because it’s what we’ve always done,” McReynolds said. “We’re doing this to figure out how to best serve our customers.”
McGettigan said the county will begin using a five-year operating budget that’s tied to the Capital Improvements Plan, a guiding document that outlines potential infrastructure spending the county may face over time. The current year-to-year budget process will remain in place, while the 5-year plan will allow county officials to better monitor trends and potential expenses that may arise down the road.
The five-year budget is one of a series of metrics the administrators will use to gauge the state of the county now and in the future. They will also develop bond rating presentations in the hopes of securing an AAA rating for the county from the major credit rating agencies. These presentations will be available for the public to view on the county’s website, and the hope is that by pushing for an AAA rating, they can attract more businesses to the county.
McReynolds said one of the first questions a company asks when looking at an area is whether the locality has the AAA rating.
Citizens will eventually be able to monitor the progress of the program through a number of items that will be posted to the county’s website. Along with the bond rating presentations, the administration will post financial reports, performance reports and a series of dashboards that will allow citizens and the administration to look at data in real time.
McGettigan, who once served as Fauquier County’s government and schools finance director, said that in the days before the economic crisis started in the last decade, there was a sharp decline in the rate of landfill drops in Fauquier County. That decline was indicative of a crumbling market for new home construction, which proceeded the burst of the housing bubble. By tracking these metrics—which citizens will also eventually be able to see online—they hope to be in a better position to make decisions.
The administrators hope to begin speaking with county employees in the coming months. The development of the documents will also take time, however they stressed the program is a permanent change of pace — there’s not a point where they will say they are finished with the work. Instead it will continue indefinitely in what they hope will constantly improve the county.
McGettigan’s career has taken her throughout Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C., where she has been involved in public administration and finances for more than 25 years. She has also served as Hanover County’s director of finance and as president of the Virginia Government Finance Officers’ Association. She received her bachelor’s degree in accountancy and MBA in accountancy from the George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
