Urban Legends

City government in-plants have to be fast, flexible and politically savvy.

By Mike Llewellyn

IT WASN'T too long ago that brush fires were gorging themselves on Southern California scrub and turning the nation's attention to the seemingly endless struggle firefighters had set before them.

As the nightly news broadcast eerie aerial shots of glowing fire lines snaking their way across mountainsides, in downtown San Diego, uncomfortably near the blazes, Mayor Dick Murphy put in a call to the city manager's office. If the mayor and other city leaders were to decide how to address the wildfires, they had to work from the same report. And the city manager had to get that report fast.

That's where the city's in-plant came in.

"The report on the fires was a relatively small job, but we had to rush it out the door," recalls Liam McGuigan, director of Printing and Graphic Services for the city of San Diego. "Around here, run lengths don't dictate priorities."

When the city manager called the in-plant that day, the job got a first-priority stamp, and it pushed its way to the front of the 37-employee print shop's queue. It's that flexibility that McGuigan says sets city in-plants apart.

"How we're different has a lot to do with the priorities of an organization," he explains. "There's no corporate focus here on 'Who's our biggest client?' It has a lot more to do with politics."

Politics. Gritty, hard-nosed and at times chaotic, the machinery of power in cities affects every level of government, right down to the in-plants. Sometimes the effect of that power frustrates the smooth operation of a print shop. But when it comes to wildfires, it's good to know the mayor has the sway to get things done. And it's good to know there's an in-plant nimble enough to keep up.

Flexibility Is The Key

Over 3,000 miles away from the SoCal desert, smack dab in the center of the political hub of the nation's largest city, Bruce Krueger runs the in-plant for the New York City Department of Health. The very existence of his in-plant is testimony to the need for city in-plants to stay flexible.

"There's no central in-plant in the city," he says. Instead, a handful of in-plants have taken over because a network of shops has proven more responsive to the city than a central facility. Affiliated with particular departments and scattered across Manhattan, they handle a large amount of work for their parent agencies and for each other.

For instance, the 17-employee, $1.4 million-a-year Department of Health in-plant has won bids several times over for a city-wide business card contract. It hasn't got the contract this year, but it did manage to hang onto one rather prestigious client that had found its way into one of the contracts: the United Nations, which stands on the island's east side and employs thousands.

Armed with a handful of presses, the Department of Health's in-plant also takes on work from digital-heavy in-plants elsewhere in the Big Apple.

Healthy Partnership

Clifford Harvey, graphics department director, runs one of those in-plants—for the Department of Sanitation—and he says his shop has enjoyed a partnership with the health department since 1996. But just because he's farming out offset work, doesn't mean the eight-employee operation can rest on its laurels. The sanitation department is one of the only city agencies to interact with most city residents almost daily. So public communication is an important part of the agency's business model.

"We're a strictly digital operation," says Harvey, "and a large part of the work we do is flyers to notify the public of changes in service."

In a five-borough city of 8 million, that's no small feat, and the in-plant relies on Xerox DocuTech 5100s and 5385s to get the information out the door.

As for city politics in Gotham? The health department's Krueger says bring it on.

"The good thing about city politics is that you've got a new boss every four years or so," he says. As a result, Krueger explains, city in-plants often see a burst of activity just after elections followed by a "settling-in process" that keeps the shops busy.

Playing Politics

Busy isn't the word down in Miami. The weather may be friendlier, but that's about the only thing that makes life easier for Milton Mizell, superintendent of the Graphics Reproduction Division. He's been in the business for 20 years, but every day is a new challenge, and lately Mayor Manny Diaz has effected enough change city-wide to result in a big boost of work for the eight-employee facility.

"One of our biggest challenges is the increasing expectations for turnaround times," says Mizell. "The mayor has a lot more projects going on [than past mayors] and he wants the agencies to be more proactive in communicating to the public what they're doing."

He says that as a result of the spike in customer expectations ("They need their jobs back the same day"), the in-plant is migrating a good deal of color work from a two-color Heidelberg to a Xerox DocuColor.

"And by doing that, the designer can just print his job right away," notes Mizell, explaining that his designers are responsible for a lot of work the in-plant prints.

And while the upside of producing for a political system is the full workload, the downside is bureaucracy: Paperwork, and lots of it.

"There is a significant amount of paper we have to generate just to buy something," says Mizell, adding that the city has made some effort to clip away red tape. Nonetheless, because renewable contracts mean less paperwork, the shop tends to buy the same accessories (paper, blankets, etc.) repeatedly. That's fine most of the time, but if a job requires, say, specialty paper, it's time to start jumping through hoops.

Far from hurricane country but no less rainy is the all-purpose workhorse City of Portland Printing and Distribution department, in Portland, Ore. It's a small city by New York standards, but all that means to Manager Ron Hadduck is that the shop can load on outside work.

"We are the in-plant for all city agencies, and many small, quasi-governmental organizations, as well as parts of state and county government," he says.

In fact, a full third of the in-plant's $6 million in revenue comes in from outside the city.

"It's not too big of a challenge to pull in those jobs from around the state," says Hadduck. "Most of the time, we have them submitted over the intranet."

How those jobs get printed once they're in the shop is where city politics affects the business. Like Miami's Mizell, Hadduck has issues with paper, but here in lumber country, it's a little different.

"You can't just run a business. You've got to run it P.C. It gets in the way, at times, of sound business decisions," he says. "For instance, you want to use the best, lowest-cost paper." But the city has dictated that all paper used by its agencies must contain a certain percentage of recycled content. That might be good news for trees, but Hadduck says it's a hassle for an in-plant manager trying to save money on supplies.

City government takes it one step further in Houston, Texas, where the six-employee, offset-only in-plant has no choice but to use supplies from vendors with whom the city has signed contracts.

Moreover, the mayor elected two years ago is combatting a tough economy with broad budget cutbacks, leaving Print Shop Supervisor Brenda Regan with a bare-bones staff.

"The biggest challenge has been the amount of personnel as a result of the budget shortage," she says.

Still, there is plenty of forms work and documents required by the Department of Health and other agencies to keep the in-plant busy and on its toes.

You Can't Fight City Hall

Way up north in Green Bay, Wis., the city has the mayor's Chief of Staff Grant Staszak overseeing the diminutive two-employee in-plant directly. Appointed by the mayor, Staszak has held the office for the past seven months.

"The shop is basically for duplicating," says Staszak. "It's general, basic printing. We don't print color."

But the shop does print for the whole city, and that includes periodic mailing of agendas and the minutes of council meetings.

Contrary to what city in-plant managers around the country report, Staszak says, "The mayor's office has no effect on the printing division; the mayor does not affect printing."

Regardless, Staszak also reports that his office just received approval to have a consultant evaluate the role of the in-plant in city government.

"We're going to need to either re-invest or look at other avenues for our printing needs," he says, citing aging equipment as a major drain on efficiency.

"For me to manage a printing division, we need to know that we're doing it efficiently," he explains.

Down in Phoenix, Ariz., 10 blocks from City Hall and breathing a little easier than the Green Bay shop, is the city's Printing Services department.

"The biggest challenge around here is that we're always in competition with printing companies," says Foreman Frank Lopez.

Printing for all departments in the city, Lopez is responsible for getting jobs out to agencies like the Department of Public Information, the Public Works Department, the Police Department and the Fire Department.

To do that, the 18-employee facility relies on offset presses from A.B.Dick, Toko, Itek and three from Ryobi. Additionally, it boasts two Xerox DocuTechs and a DocuColor.

Like New York's Krueger, Lopez says the one major effect that politics has on his operation is that when a new administration sweeps in, it means a big boost in work.

Go West, Young Man

But for Cliff Portley, print shop manager for the city of Wichita, Kansas, city politics means very tight deadlines. Running three Hamada presses and a Multilith press for forms and covers, Portley says, "Meeting budget deadlines is critical, and the deadlines are very short."

A lifelong resident of the city that Wyatt Earp and Billy the Kid once called home, Portley says the laid-back pace of his hometown doesn't spill over into the fast-paced in-plant. The tiny, two-employee shop has to churn out 500,000 impressions a month to keep up with demand, and Portley is responsible for maintaining copier contracts throughout the city.

Another city lighting the old frontier is Colorado Springs, at the base of Pike's Peak, and home to the 18-employee City of Colorado Springs Office Services department.

"We're kind of a large town. It's a wonderful community," says Office Services Manager Liz Hunter, who is responsible for getting 194,000 mail pieces out the door each month in addition to all the print jobs the in-plant has to run on its four-color and two-color Hamadas, and Xerox 6100 and 6135 DocuTechs. In many ways, it's a busy, well-run in-plant like any other. But there is that difference:

"We have to be very aware of what the political climate is," says Hunter. "This year we had a 15 percent budget reduction. We had to be aware of what services we would reduce as a result—certainly not those for the city manager."

But she says her staff is always up to the challenge. Handling everything from graphic design to finishing and mailing, the team "really makes me feel like I'm working with the cream of the crop," says Hunter.

Another team that seems to do it all is that at the country's largest city in-plant: City of San Francisco Reproduction and Mail Services. Manager David German, running the shop that edged in at number 50 on last month's IPG Top 50, ranks Web design as one of the major contributors to the in-plant's success. The shop's Web designers have built more than 30 sites, including those for the police and fire departments.

German's in-plant boasted one of the most dramatic growth rates nationwide last year. With 26 employees and a comfortable $8.3 million in sales, the shop has watched an annual 20-percent growth in color work and a blooming insourcing business rivet it into its place as the major print provider for one of the country's largest cities.

Running close behind as the second-largest city in-plant is Liam McGuigan's shop down the coast in San Diego. With the fires doused, the city, and its in-plant, are back to business as usual. For McGuigan, that means sometimes proving the worth of his shop to politicians in the mood for budget cuts.

"Over the past 10 years there have been four attempts to privatize us," he says. But every time, the in-plant stood its ground. As a matter of fact, there was one time the mayor's office decided to check us out," says McGuigan. It was part of an initiative to evaluate all of the city's services. "We ended up getting one of the more glowing reports."

Routinely offering a 30-percent savings over outside printers, the San Diego in-plant, like city in-plants all over the country, is finding success in flexibility.

"We can respond to the city's needs immediately," he says. "The city manager can't do that with commercial printers."