5. EDSR 07-29-2013 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Elk REQUEST FOR ACTION River To ITEM NUMBER Economic Development Authority 5. AGENDA SECTION MEETING DATE PREPARED BY July 29, 2013 Brian Beeman,Director of Economic Development ITEM DESCRIPTION REVIEWED By Discuss 2013 EDA Intern Job Description and Funds Transfer Jeremy Barnhart,Deputy Director, Community Operations and Development Director REVIEWED BY ACTION REQUESTED Information presented for discussion only. Action is to be taken at the August 19 EDA regular meeting. BACKGROUND/DISCUSSION An intern was not budgeted for the EDA in 2013.The HRA budgeted for an intern in 2013,primarily for housing. Since the 2013 budgets were prepared, the economy has taken an upswing and EDA staff has completed more business subsidy projects in 2013 that the past four years combined. Instead of an intern, the HRA is considering hiring a housing consultant to write and administer a housing grant for 2014. The consultant will take on most of the duties that the intern was scheduled to do.The combination of the consultant,workload, employee transition, and shifting priorities, has caused a shift in staffing recommendations. EDA/HRA staff has been overwhelmed with projects, and this means that other projects have been neglected, such as marketing, filing,property inventory records, social media,web updates and a variety of other tasks. Many of the duties that were neglected are in marketing efforts. Falling behind on the initiatives means that there are unutilized dollars in the EDA's marketing line item with only about $23,000 of the budgeted$75,000 spent through June of 2013. The idea is to utilize marketing funds to hire an intern to do a variety of EDA marketing duties. The attached job description details the duties of the intern. Staff plans to have the intern focus on marketing duties such as updating the city's website and GIS property database,preparing materials for distribution and the MNCAR expo,promotion of Minnesota Manufacturer's week,and other marketing tasks.This will require a budget amendment to transfer marketing funds to part-time pay under personal services in order to pay an EDA intern for the fall semester of 2013. Staff will seek approval for the transfer at the regular August EDA meeting. If supported, Staff intends to advertise for the position as soon as possible in order to complete the 2013 EDA marketing initiatives within the budget year. Staff hopes to have the intern in place by Monday, August 26 to get caught up right away allowing staff to focus on priority projects and complete other projects. Staff would like the EDA to approve the job description as a consensus recommendation to the IPOIEREI I i NAME