Franklin Touts Park Hills’ Past Achievements, Future Direction

Check out this insightful article about Park Hills' past achievements and future direction, featuring an interview with Park Hills City Administrator Zachary Franklin.

In this interview with Daily Journal Editor, Kevin Jenkins, Franklin discusses the city's progress in 2023 and plans for 2024, including the construction of an aquatic park and other significant achievements.

It's a great read to learn more about the city's development and what's in store for the future!

*Photo Credit: Kevin Jenkins, The Daily Journal

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Credits mayor, board of aldermen for much of town’s progress

Park Hills City Administrator Zachary Franklin grew up in Desloge and graduated from North County High School. After high school, he earned his associate’s degree from Mineral Area College and then transferred to the University of Missouri-Columbia, where he subsequently graduated. While his fiancé finished her master’s program, Franklin began working for the City of Columbia.

The two married in October 2022, and since both were from the area, the couple decided that once the right opportunity came along, they would move back to the Parkland to be closer to family. The position of Park Hills city administrator became available, and Franklin applied for the job. His first day was May 1.

Daily Journal Editor Kevin Jenkins interviewed Franklin on Thursday about the city’s accomplishments during the year 2023 and the city’s plans for 2024 and into the future.

Acknowledging that he began his work as city administrator only seven months ago, he said, “So, per your request yesterday about wanting to go over the yearly wrap-up, you’re getting about a half-a-year wrap-up.”

Asked what he felt were the city’s greatest achievements he’d observed in his brief tenure with the City of Park Hills thus far, Franklin responded that there were several things that immediately came to mind.

Water Plant

“Some of them, to the credit of city leadership — our board and our mayor — were already in progress when I started, but I think they’re worth noting because it was still, I think, wins for our community, but specifically our city, our employees, and citizens overall,” he said. “One was a water plant. The existing water treatment plant was [put into service in] 1995, so it had been there a long time.

“And with ARPA funds coming in, the leadership prior to me, and I think more specifically the board, and maybe the utilities director at the time — I’m not sure who started the conversation — made the conscious decision to invest in our treatment plant, and specifically that building.

“So, it’s about an $800,000 project, so a very large-scale project that was very much needed. It looks great. The previous building had rust; it was leaking, and it was dangerous for our employees, so something that was very much needed. Again, not only for our community — but for our workforce.”

The city is in the process of constructing an aquatic park in Columbia Park that is expected to be open in time for the Memorial Day weekend

Aquatic Park

According to Franklin, another significant achievement for the city in 2023 was its decision to build a new aquatic park, now under construction in Columbia Park.

“I believe that is a great addition to the community,” he said. “There are a lot of different ways that communities can provide value to its current base of citizens, but also its future base. When people move to the county, they have a selection of where they want to live. They may work somewhere else, but they can pick where they want to live. It’s our job as a city to make our community desirable for people to want to live in our community, pay taxes, patronize our businesses, and such. I think the new Aquatic Center is going to be a great addition for our community and future citizens to experience. It’s unique. It’s going to be very unique compared to what else currently exists. This conversation started prior to my arrival, but I think it was very well thought out. They’re very methodical with their approach, and I think that’s extremely important because we want to make sure we’re not necessarily competing with the Farmington or Ste. Gen Water Park. Those are a beast in themselves for what they provide.

“The city had a normal kind of basic municipal pool before — similar to Desloge and Bonne Terre. I actually managed the Bonne Terre pool during my two years at MAC, so I have a little bit of experience with aquatics. So, with that said, I think that by using a very methodical approach to provide something for our community, people outside our community, and people who may consider moving to our community — this will offer a lot of the same amenities as the Farmington Water Park. There will be a lazy river there. There will be a slide. There will be a splash pad for younger children. There will be equipment for little children to play in, but it will be a fourth of the size; however, that will be reflected in the price. I think we’ll be offering a product that is very unique to the county where you can experience a lot of the cool things you can experience at the bigger facilities but at a more subsidized price that reflects what we’re offering.”

Commenting on the progress of the aquatic park’s construction, Franklin remarked that, as of today, he feels confident that it will open by Memorial Day weekend.

“That’s a big one for the city and, more specifically, our community. It was funded through general obligation bonds, so our community had to pass that to fund that project. So, kudos to the community for its forward-thinking. It’s something that comes at a cost, but, again, it’s something that’s great for the community, not just for the people that live here, but from a tourism aspect, to bring in people from outside of our community to do that and then maybe they’ll spend money downtown and such. A lot of good things come from investment in those things.”

Information Technology

Acknowledging that the city’s current Information Technology (IT) is outdated, Franklin noted that improvements are already underway.

“When you think of IT, a lot of the times, it can go unnoticed,” he said, but it’s something you use on a daily basis. It’s extremely important to your daily operations, especially from an administrative perspective, but it’s something that maybe isn’t a focal point. We got to the point where — not only in our office here but in a lot of our departments — we started noticing that we were falling way behind.

“We also weren’t getting everything we needed out of our managed service provider, so we recently switched to a new one. What that entails will be updating our infrastructure and looking at moving to more modern software that will streamline our operations. It’s no different than investing in painting a street or putting in a new water line. It is of the same importance. By doing this, we’re hopefully making all of our staff’s lives easier from their daily work perspective. I am so very much looking forward to that switch.”

Budget Evaluation

Prefacing his comments by saying the city is on an Oct. 1 to Sept. 30 fiscal year, Franklin said, “I presented our budget in October and had to evaluate a lot of things, and I’m continuing to evaluate a lot of things. We’re in a unique place where revenues have been fairly stagnant. It’s like any business or public entity — everybody’s experiencing the same things. Everything’s getting more expensive. When you face that issue, I see it as my job to break that down and see where we are at and where we can address it. Some things you can’t. We’re operating at 70% payroll in the general fund. The only way to fix that is through attrition of people leaving or evaluating if you need certain jobs. Of course, we were not near ready, nor are we right now, to make that decision.

“So, let’s look at things we can control. I’m a big believer in controllables. Our budget book for FY ’24 is currently being published. We use Thurman, Shinn and Schweiss for accounting, and we work with them on that book. In the book, they highlighted that some of our significant expenditures are insurance and employee uniforms. Of course, there are other ones, but those are two noteworthy ones. So, we were able to get out of our current uniform contract at no cost to the city — we paid no penalty to get out of it. Then we were able to go to a new vendor, we sourced some of it internally, and then we’re working with another vendor to source some of our stuff. And we’re actually going to get better quality product than we were previously getting at a $22,000 a year savings. That doesn’t sound like a ton, but it goes a long way.”

According to Franklin, the city is also making some strides in cutting health, as well as general liability insurance, including automotive and worker’s compensation.

“The city hadn’t bid out their insurance in years, so we were able to bid that out, and we are staying with our current general liability and auto provider,” he said. “We actually switched our workers’ comp insurance, and through switching workers’ comp insurance, we were able to save roughly $50,000 — and including the uniforms, that’s over $70,000 in savings. Those are just some quick controllables we were able to address immediately. Some of the other budget issues are just things that are going to take longer to evaluate, so we make sure we’re making correct decisions, as opposed to just making quick decisions that maybe aren’t best for city service.”

Five-Way Intersection

“Another area we’re working on is the MoDOT Traffic Engineering Assistance Program (TEAP),” Franklin said. “That is an engineering grant that we were awarded this year as well to hopefully identify a solution to the Municipal and Main Street intersection right up here from City Hall. That’s probably one of the only five-way intersections in the state. It has a lot of blind spots on it because of all the corners.

“I’ll have some coffee meetings up at RaeCole’s — not as much in the winter as in the fall — and if you sit there for two minutes, you hear a lot of horns, you see a lot of things. So, it’s something we definitely needed to address. We were awarded that grant to be able to partner with an engineering firm, and we’re currently in the process of identifying who we’re going to utilize to propose some solutions for that intersection to hopefully make it safer.”

Wastewater System

Another grant we were awarded through the Department of Natural Resources was a Clean Water Engineering Report Grant to identify issues within our wastewater system. We don’t have the official report, so we can’t say exactly what all the issues are, but we’ve seen a lot of things already. We were not necessarily that surprised, but it really makes you think, ‘Well, we probably should have done this 10 years ago.’ Heartland Engineering is the one conducting that grant for us, and they’re also conducting a Water Engineering Report Grant.

“When they came down for a site visit to talk with us and do some initial evaluation of our system, they realized pretty quickly into the conversation, along with the things they observed, that our water probably needed addressing as well. Again, it was not breaking news to us. We knew that. But we actually didn’t qualify for the water grant, so DNR has one for wastewater and water, but our population is too large for the water, which is kind of weird, but just the way it works. We used ARPA funding to pay for them to conduct a water report as well. We’ll have both of those reports at the end of January.

Franklin said there are four areas where he, as well as the board of aldermen and mayor, will be focusing — infrastructure, economic development, working on the city budget, and creating a comprehensive plan for the city.

Infrastructure

“I’m going to start with infrastructure because it kind of transitions right from that grant,” he said. “So, one of the big ones is going to be our water and wastewater system, and we’re conducting this report to say we know there’s problems. Anybody can say there’s a problem, but we really need to identify it, and that’s what this report will do. It’s really going to break it down for us where problems exist and what we can do to move forward to address them. It’s not just going to be a 2024 goal. Depending on what the report says, it may be a decade-long goal to phase it out and address it appropriately. But you have to start somewhere, and so our goal is to at least start planning. Even if it’s not executing actual infrastructure improvement, we can at least start with the initial planning phase of how we’re going to tackle the issue.

“We’re currently in conversations to see if it’s one we want to pursue,” he said. “They have multiple different grants within that, but one we want to look at is paving, and it’s a $750,000 grant. The way it’s been described to me is that it’s $500,000 for actual construction for infrastructure and $250,000 for engineering and grant administration. It’s not a matching grant, but they do ask that for your application. There’s not an arbitrary amount you’ve got to put this, but they do ask that you put money towards the grant — whatever you feel — and that goes on top of the construction. So, say if we put $20,000 towards it, that $20,000 would be on top of the $500,000. It compounds, which is good. It lets you get more done.

Economic development

We have a couple of different opportunities for economic development that I’ve identified, and the board and mayors have identified in the city,” Franklin said. “One that is focused on industry is the glass factory. The glass factory shut down and was purchased by Phoenix Investments. They’re currently the owner of that building, and we’ve been working closely with them on filling that space. We’re very much in conversations with them and assisting and helping identify potential tenants. I think it’s probably going to look a little different than it did before.

“I believe they’re going to parcel off the building, so there will be multiple tenants in there as opposed to one large one, which isn’t a bad thing. With one big company, you are probably creating a wide range of jobs. You have a lot at the top and a lot at the bottom. I would be willing to bet the average paying wage — parceling it off like that with different businesses — would be higher than just if it was one big tenant. So, there’s a lot of opportunity here. We’ve worked on a couple of projects, and my hope is — and I feel very hopeful —  we’ll definitely see some wins based off of our collective efforts to fill that space.

Franklin moved to another area of economic development — retail.

“The city spent a lot of money developing the fairgrounds area — I believe, 10 to 15 years ago — somewhere in that time frame. There’s been a lot of money invested in there, and, as of today, there is no development out there. That property is owned by three investors right now. We’ve created an informal committee, and we meet a couple of times a month to actively identify a plan to execute that space and bring more retail to the city of Park Hills.

“I personally think that was a good project. I know there are mixed feelings about it. Did the city waste money, or did they not? The reality is that we have Parkway Drive for highway access, but that’s all we had. Anyone familiar with the Parkway Drive development knows that it pretty much became an extension of our industrial park in a way, which is a good thing, too. Ameren was able to relocate out there and that’s an important tenant to keep in the city limits. There’s a new trucking company that went out there, and there’s going to be some other things going on out there that’s on the horizon that will be very positive for the city.”

Franklin admitted that, although the project had its good points, the city needs to focus on generating retail tax revenue.

“At this time, the fairgrounds is our only opportunity to do that as far as highway access goes, and that’s what these retailers want. They want to be on the highway. So, we’ve been working and planning, and I think we’re in a very good place and we’ll continue this into ’24. We actually have a meeting next week to continue to try to make that vision become a reality for the city. So, we’re very excited about that.

City Budget

“We’re all living in a world with limited resources, and we really are in a place right now where we have to make our dollar go further,” Franklin said. “One of the biggest things we want to do is continue to monitor and evaluate the budget and to identify cost savings, but we want to ensure that our citizens are still getting the same service that they expect and deserve, and that’s a tough balance. That’s why we’re here to try to identify that balance and make it happen, but that’s something we’re going to continue to have to do for years to come. Again, 70 percent of our budget is in payroll and insurance, and 30 percent for operations for nine departments isn’t a ton. We have to spend smartly, but we’ll continue to work to hopefully free up some dollars to put back into operations.”

Comprehensive Plan

“I don’t know if for 2024 if this will be a reality,” Franklin said. My hope is that it is. We should at least start the conversation and potentially work it into the FY ’25 budget, which will be calendar year ’24, to partner with an organization to assist us in creating a comprehensive plan.  There are so many things right now, so many directions we could go with a lot of different issues that we see. We’re not alone in that. Every city has issues, and a lot of times we’re not facing different issues than any other city is facing. Most of the time, you realize pretty quickly that a lot of the issues you face are issues everybody else is facing. I think the comprehensive plan will allow us to create a bigger vision so that no matter who is here, they will be able to continue moving the city in the right direction for growth because that’s really what needs to be done.”

Tag: Kevin R. Jenkins is the editor of the Daily Journal. He can be reached at kjenkins@dailyjournalonline.com.