We Are Halfway to Our Enterprise-Wide Goals

We're over halfway through Fiscal Year 2023, and now that the budget numbers are in for December, it's a great time to check in on our Strategic Business Plan Enterprise-Wide Goals. As you may recall, these goals are important not only because they relate to the level and quality of service SD1 provides, but also because there are staff incentives attached to them.

If we meet at least three of these goals, staff will receive a bonus vacation day in Fiscal Year 2024. If we meet all five goals, staff will receive two bonus vacation days in FY24. And those bonus vacation days are treated just like any other vacation day - they can be taken, cashed out or rolled over to the follow year.

So let's take a quick look at how we're doing so far.

Our FY23 goal is to improve our overall customer satisfaction score, which was 78% on our most recent survey.

Stakeholder Engagement

Raise our customer satisfaction score

We won't know for several more months whether we've continued to raise our customer satisfaction score on our Comprehensive Customer Survey, but we're making efforts every day to improve the customer experience, such as launching a new billing system and customer portal and converting many of our forms to online. The overall customer satisfaction score in our previous survey was 78 percent.

The survey will be conducted in April.

This chart shows monthly paper usage. For the year, we're about 38% ahead of our goal of reducing paper usage by 20%.

Operational Efficiency

Reduce copier/printer paper usage by 20%

SD1 is committed to engaging and serving our community as effectively and efficiently as possible. This includes using data and technology to serve our customers better and faster. Automation allows us to improve dated processes, and when we do that, we use less paper.

And make no mistake - this is an ambitious goal. Our goal for this year is to eliminate one out of every five pages printed here at the District. That's a lot of paper reduction!

And I am proud to report that we are crushing this goal. We have printed 116,398 pages so far this year. That puts us about 38 percent ahead of our goal of 20% paper reduction. Keep up the good work!

We're on pace to finish about 4.9% below our approved operating budget.

Fiscal Responsibility

Finish below our operating budget

This one is pretty straightforward - our goal is to finish below our operating budget. We protect the resources our region invests in SD1 by continuously improving efficiencies across all aspects of our work.

Every dollar we save through innovation, sound financial management, continuous improvement and waste elimination is one less dollar we must collect from our ratepayers.

And we're ahead on this goal also. Halfway through FY23 (budget totals are not finalized until the following month), we are $3.157 million under budget. We've seen savings in salaries, wages and benefits; we've cut costs in professional and contractual services; and we've saved on numerous other line items. Our fiscal year projections have us finishing at about $43.167 million, which would be 4.6% below our approved budget.

Again, keep up the good work!

We're on pace to meet this goal!

Workforce Empowerment

Improve retention rate to at least 85%

We are cultivating a productive workforce that is empowered, equipped and encouraged to serve our community with pride. The best measurement for whether our efforts are succeeding is our retention rate - people stay here when we empower them to do their jobs and show our appreciation for the work they do.

In FY23, our goal is to improve that rate to 85%. We've taken numerous steps to address retention over the past couple of years, and our work is paying off. As of February 1, our rate is currently 91.77%.

We're on our way to beating our 2023 Clean H2O40 metrics.

Environmental Leadership

Beat our Clean H2O40 metrics

As environmental leaders in our region, SD1 is dedicated to the protection of our local waterways.

Our Clean H2O40 program seeks to reduce sewer overflows using smart-sewer technology to keep wastewater where it belongs - inside the sewer system. The goal of Clean H2O40 is to eliminate typical-year (TY) sanitary sewer overflows (SSOs) and to capture at least 85% of TY combined sewer system flow by the year 2040.

In the meantime, our first five-year milestone will help ensure that we are progressing toward that goal. By July 1 of this year, we aim to beat our Clean H2O40 metrics by eliminating 20% of TY SSO and capturing 67% of TY combined system flow.

We're on our way. Thanks in large part to the completion of the Licking River Siphon and Wilder EQ Tank, we have already surpassed the 2023 Clean H2O40 goal of eliminating 20% of TY SSO. In fact, we've already eliminated more than half of our TY SSO volume! On the CSO side, our goal is 67% capture of TY combined system flow, and we are currently at about 65.4%. We're on target to meet this goal by the end of the fiscal year.