Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 24, 1993 TAG: 9301240186
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: D7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAVID M. POOLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
COUNTY GETTING MOST OUT OF GREATEST NUMBER
Roanoke County Police couldn't crack The Case Of The Missing Crossing Guard.No foul play was involved, but Police Chief John Cease was stumped when no guard showed up to direct traffic at the entrance to Northside High School, located on heavily traveled Peters Creek Road.
As soon as Cease would hire a new crossing guard, the person would would quit because of the odd work schedule of two hours each morning and another hour in the afternoon.
The big break finally came - of all unlikely places - from the county planning department.
Jon Hartley, the deputy zoning administrator, suggested privatizing the service. Instead of hiring its own employees, why couldn't the county contract with a security guard company to provide crossing guards?
The idea worked. Security guards now direct traffic at three county schools.
Police chiefs usually do not take advice from outsiders. But Cease welcomed the suggestion.
"It helps to have people look at things from other perspectives," he said.
The crossing guard mystery was not solved by accident. It grew out of an 18-month program designed to foster teamwork between departments of county governments.
In 1991, Roanoke County became one of the first local governments in Virginia to embrace "total quality management" - a buzzword for non-traditional management techniques now in vogue.
The idea is to involve as many people from as many departments in the decision-making process, according to Assistant County Administrator Jim Myers, the program coordinator.
"You can work much better as a team than as an individual," Myers said.
The department heads are assigned to six teams that discuss problems and develop solutions. Some department heads assign their employees to the committees, which gives a voice to employees at various levels.
Myers said there have been a number of innovative ideas for providing services to the public.
The county Department of Social Services was able to continue its holiday tradition of providing toys to needy children. Budget cuts left social services without enough staffers for the gift project. So the Parks and Recreation Department recruited volunteers from its senior citizens program to wrap and distribute the toys.
An employee committee helped make recommendations for a no-smoking policy for government buildings, helping defuse an emotional issue.
A committee of all department heads, known as the "Gang of 40," grappled with personnel cuts last year that would eliminate 18 positions through attrition.
The next - and more difficult - step will be to involve more non-management employees in the team process, said Anne Marie Green, the county's public information officer.
The Police Department has drawn upon the team approach to solve several problems in addition to the missing crossing guards.
When the department needed new digital recording equipment for the 911 communications center, some members of the public safety team had the technical ability to review specifications that would meet the county's needs.
Cease, the police chief, said the decision in the past would have been made partly on instinct and guesswork.
"We're now making decisions based on facts instead of someone's inherent guesses," he said.
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Memo: Correction ***CORRECTION***