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State of the Linn County Auditor’s OfficeBy Auditor Joel D. Miller21 April 2016Good afternoon! As Ben indicated, I am Joel Miller, your Linn County Auditor.The vision of the Auditor’s Office is: Every person engaged in local government! So I am going to talk about how we fulfill our vision.We engage our employees by managing to their strengths. How do we know their strengths? Every employee has taken a Gallup Strengths Finder and shared it with their manager. Like you, we do not always have the chance to assign every task based upon an employee’s strengths, but when we do have the chance, we match strengths to tasks. That’s called working smarter – not harder.Our employees are engaged. How do I know that? Because we’ve measured it using Q12. Gallup’s Q12 consists of 12 questions. Two years ago, every employee in the Auditor’s Office took the Q12 survey. We measured 4.14 on a 5 point scale then, and recently retook the survey and measured 4.24. We got better. We didn't regress. I think it’s important that you, the taxpayers, know that the employees of the Auditor’s Office are engaged in their work. And Q12 is a reliable and highly respected tool used by companies such as Wells Fargo.We cannot expect the public to engage with us if they have bad experiences when they come to us. We have to give them great service every time they contact us ... and not just when we’re on the ballot. So I initiated something this week that I call the Hy-Vee Initiative in honor of what I’ve experienced at Hy-Vee for the last 30 years. No, I’m not talking about the helpful smile in every aisle … although that would be nice. I am talking about ending the run-around that customers experience from time to time when dealing with government. What prompted this? Last week, a customer brought her mother to our counter after being told by another office that we could process an application for her. Unfortunately, she needed to go to another office in another building across town. A few months earlier, the same customer – not the mother - said she made 4 trips between our office and another office to resolve an issue. She was still upset. So when a customer comes to our counter and we hear they’ve been getting the “run around”, we’re going to deal with it. Maybe that means we walk them to another counter and stay with them until the issue is resolved. Maybe it means we get on a speaker phone with them and call another office. Maybe it means we get in a County vehicle and meet the customer across town to resolve an issue so someone doesn’t tell them to go back and see us. In any case, we’re going to stop the run-around. That’s what sets Hy-Vee apart from its competitors and that’s what going to set the Auditor’s Office apart from any other office that does not do the same thing. And that’s how you engage one person at a time in local government. Another way to engage the public? Have equipment that works right every time. We have new voting machines. We have the right equipment that we expect to work every time. You might have noticed them in the back of the room and they’ll be deployed in the June Primary Election. We have already tested these new voting machines and received lots of positive feedback from the public. They’ll be ready to go in June.Now I don’t want you to get the impression that the public is not engaging with the Auditors Office or vice versa.In fact the Elections Office processes over 300 changes to voter registrations per week. And that does NOT include the 7K changes processed due to the February 1st Iowa caucuses. In Accounting Services, the staff issues about 900 paychecks every two weeks and manages thousands of vendors. Over the last year or two, we increased the number of vendors paid electronically with over 2,200 vendors now paid electronically. Selling to the County? We'd like to sign you up for ACH electronic payments.Did you buy or sell real estate last year? The Real Estate & Property Tax Services area processed almost 9K deeds. On average, that’s 170 deed transfers per week. In addition, we processed almost 4K mailing address changes. We strive to send your tax bill to the correct address … so you can pay it on time.Probably one of the best ways we’ve engaged the public in the last year is by video recording the Board of Supervisors’ meetings. We turned on the camera on April 21st of 2015 and it’s still on – literally on – in the back of the room recording this State of the County. As of last night, that first video has been viewed 715 times. One of the videos has been viewed over 1,000 times. Seems to me that everyone loves video! Yes, the Auditor’s Office is engaged with the public and vice versa. We are fulfilling our vision of: Every person engaged in local government. You’re engaged in local government by being here today. Let’s engage every person – especially those who are not here today –those that don’t vote – and those that don’t vote often - in local government. You're Auditor's Office is ready!THANK YOU! ................
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