Photo and story by Karly Cordell / MTSU Sidelines
The Murfreesboro City Council discussed the heightening of City Hall security, streamlining departments and more topics during a meeting at City Hall on Thursday.
The City Council hopes to improve multiple aspects in the Murfreesboro community, with the managerial and administrative sides of things being their main topics of discussion at this meeting.
“One of the biggest changes is the restructure of our administrative side of the government,” said City Manager Craig Tindall. “We’ve evolved over time as the city has grown, and we need an administrative structure that really meshes well with our growth.”
Citizens being served in the most efficient manner was their biggest concern, and the proposed changes will not have any real impact on city employees; only on how the city operates.
“We’re streamlining things and putting together departments into divisions to allow them to prioritize their work and schedule,” Tindall said. “Primarily, the purpose is to make sure we’re giving the best customer service and experience that we can to the people we serve.”
Other topics of interest were remodeling and heightening of the City Hall security measures, creating more office space and calculating the cost of short-term building rehabilitation of the City Hall until a long-term solution is found.
“From a governmental and administrative standpoint, what we want to see is that we’re giving excellent customer service in the most efficient manner that we possibly can and be respectful of the public’s money,” Tindall said.
Improvements for the public infrastructure in the Highland neighborhood area such as signals, parking and streetscapes were discussed. Changing downtown’s permitted parking time from one hour to two hours was also discussed.
According to Tindall, rapid population growth is what sets Murfreesboro apart from other cities.
“Murfreesboro is a great place to live and a great place to raise a family, and that’s been shown by the growth we’ve experienced over the last few years,” Tindall said. “We’re going to keep growing and continue to address the growth that we have in order to provide the proper customer service that we need to provide.”
In the summer of 2017, Murfreesboro was ranked the 10th fastest growing city in the nation in a report by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Future City Council workshop schedules were set in place and will be held on the second Wednesday of each month at 11:30 a.m. in the City Council Chambers starting in August.
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