The City Management Academy's 3rd weekly Wednesday evening class brought the diverse group of 30 community association, organization and agency leaders together for the first of several off-site meetings this week.

Who knew how vast the city's Corporation Yard (on 24th Street south of Fruitridge) actually is: 20+ buildings containing shops, offices, storage, and more are spread across acres abutting the neighboring Executive Airport.

Some factoids we learned from city department heads this evening included:

• Our city owns 2000+ parcels of land, containing more than 400 properties to maintain.
• The city's amazing 311 Call Center receives 30,000 - 40,000 calls every month.
• They answer an average of 10,000 calls JUST on trash pick-up issues every month! And yes, that means every day more than 300 city residents call about their garbage service -- every day!
• We're one of only a handful of municipalities who manufacture our own street signs.
• As budgets and need permit, we're replacing outdated & costly traffic signals AND street lights w/ incredibly efficient LED-based lamps.
• Sacramento's Dept of Parks & Recreation maintains more than 220 city-owned parks (without Amy Poehler!)

Informative & interesting presentations were made to the group about:

• Utilities (our water, sewer, and garbage services)
• Fleet Management (the purchase & maintenance of our police cruisers, fire engines, commercial service equiment, etc.)
• The transportation department (paving, concrete, sidewalks, curbs, street lights, street signs, traffic signals, cameras, and computerized underground pressure-sensing devices at major traffic intersections which activate signals as vehicle traffic flow warrants!)
• The 311 Call Center struggling to maintain service levels with rapidly shrinking budgets and staff.
• Our park & pool facilities (many more likely to be closed this coming summer season, again due to the still tanking tax revenue base and resulting cuts another fiscal cycle in the offing).

Various departments on site hosted lively "insider" tours of the mechanics' & street sign making shops, hi-tech traffic signal controller equipment (those refrigerator-sized shiny silver boxes we see at traffic intersections) and more from truly enthusiastic folks who were clearly proud to share their work environments with us.

Lots of questions came from CMA members wanting to connect the information being presented with issues of concern in their individual neighborhoods and organizations. There's a clear sense from many in the group of using these unique opportunities to communicate with and improve understanding between our city's staff and the residents, workers and stakeholders they represent.

Next week: we're back on the 5th floor of New City Hall for two presentations by the City's director of Economic Development and the Housing & Redevelopment Agency executive director.