2026-09-22 WS City Council Agenda
Richfield City Council Agenda
September 22, 2026 -- 5:30 PM
Richfield Municipal Center
Bartholomew Conference Room
6700 Portland Avenue South
1. Call to Order
2. Item Discussion
a. Essential Services Study
3. Adjournment
Auxiliary aids for individuals with disabilities are available upon request. Requests must be made at least 96 hours in advance to the
City Clerk at 612-861-9739.
Includes Materials - Materials relating to these agenda items can be found in the Council Chambers Agenda Packet book located by
the entrance. The complete Council Agenda Packet is available electronically on the City of Richfield website.
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City Council Meeting 9/22/2026
Agenda Section: Item Discussion
Agenda Item: 2.a.
Report Prepared By:
Courtney DesCamps, Senior Analyst
Department Director:
Katie Rodriguez, City Manager
Item for Consideration:
Essential Services Study
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Craig Rapp of Rapp Consulting Group will present the final Essential Services Study to
the City Council. The study was initiated as part of Strategic Initiative 1d of the City’s
2023–2026 Strategic Plan and provides a comprehensive inventory and classification of
City services.
The final report builds on the classification framework and service inventory presented
to the City Council in June and provides additional analysis of City services, including
budget flexibility, resource allocation, and potential alternative service delivery options.
At the work session, Rapp Consulting Group will present the study’s findings and
discuss how the framework and service inventory may be used to inform future
budgeting, planning, and service delivery discussions. The full report will also be
provided.
RECOMMENDED ACTION
No recommended action, for Council discussion only.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
The Essential Services Study was initiated as part of Strategic Initiative 1d of the City’s
2023–2026 Strategic Plan, which called for the development of an essential service
delivery plan by 2026. The City retained Rapp Consulting Group to inventory and
categorize City services using a consistent framework based on legal requirements,
operational necessity, funding structure, community expectations, and budget flexibility.
In June 2026, Rapp Consulting Group presented the classification framework and
Master Service Inventory to the City Council. The framework classifies services based
on the nature of the service rather than its importance and is intended to provide a
common foundation for understanding City services and the resources associated with
them.
Following the June discussion, Rapp Consulting Group completed the final report,
incorporating additional analysis related to budget flexibility, resources, and alternative
service delivery. The final report is intended to serve as a tool for future budget,
strategic planning, and service delivery discussions.
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EQUITABLE OR STRATEGIC CONSIDERATIONS OR IMPACTS
The Essential Services Study completes Strategic Initiative 1d of the City’s 2023–2026
Strategic Plan and provides a framework that can be used in future discussions
regarding service delivery, resource allocation, strategic priorities, and organizational
planning.
POLICIES (RESOLUTIONS, ORDINANCES, REGULATIONS, STATUTES, ETC.)
N/A
CRITICAL TIMING ISSUES
N/A
FINANCIAL IMPACT
The study itself does not recommend specific budget reductions or service changes.
Any future financial impacts would depend on subsequent City Council direction
regarding service levels, resource allocation, or alternative service delivery options.
LEGAL CONSIDERATIONS
N/A
ALTERNATIVE RECOMMENDATION(S)
N/A
ATTACHMENTS
1. Richfield Essential Services Study Report_September 2026
2. Richfield ESS — City Council Presentation 2026-09-22
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ESSENTIALSERVICESSTUDY
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Table of Contents
What This Study Is and Is Not ............................................................................................................... 3
Executive Summary ............................................................................................................................. 4
Section 1: Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 7
Section 2: Methodology ..................................................................................................................... 11
Section 3: Service Classification Results ............................................................................................... 17
Section 4: Departmental Profiles ........................................................................................................ 24
4.1 Fire Department ........................................................................................................................................................24
4.2 Police Department .....................................................................................................................................................27
4.3 Community Development..........................................................................................................................................31
4.4 Administration-Executive-Finance .............................................................................................................................35
4.5 Recreation Services....................................................................................................................................................39
4.6 Public Works ..............................................................................................................................................................42
Section 5: Analysis and Key Findings ................................................................................................... 46
Section 6: Strategic Considerations ..................................................................................................... 53
Section 7: Implementation Guidance................................................................................................... 60
Section 8: Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 65
APPENDIX A: Master Service Inventory................................................................................................ 68
APPENDIX B: Classification Methodology Details .................................................................................. 69
APPENDIX C: Glossary of Terms .......................................................................................................... 75
APPENDIX D: Applying the Framework ................................................................................................ 77
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NOTE TO THE READER
What This Study Is and Is Not
A note for anyone picking up this report for the first time.
This report classifies every service the City of Richfield delivers. Classification is easily misread, and
a few cautions are worth stating plainly before the results.
“Discretionary” does not mean unnecessary. The category describes the City's legal latitude, not a
service's value. Discretionary services include much of what residents most associate with living in
Richfield. Nothing in this report identifies a service as a candidate for reduction.
Identifying an alternative is not proposing one. The City assessed every service for whether
another delivery arrangement might exist. Recording that one exists is not a finding that the
current arrangement is deficient, and not an indication that a change is planned or under
consideration. In several instances the City recorded an alternative as available while noting that
the present arrangement is preferable.
Cost is not importance. Some services carrying modest budgets serve the residents with the
fewest alternatives. Budget size and community impact are different measures, and they point in
different directions.
Classification is not evaluation. The study records what each service costs and what constrains
that cost. It does not assess whether a service is well delivered, efficiently staffed, or appropriately
scaled, and no classification reflects a judgment about any department's performance.
The totals are not the City's budget. Figures in this report describe the services in the inventory on
an operating basis. They exclude capital outlay, depreciation, and interfund transfers, and they are
not the City's total adopted budget across all funds.
What the study does provide
An evidence-based picture of Richfield's service portfolio — what is legally required, what is
operationally essential, and where genuine flexibility exists. It contains no savings estimates,
budget targets, or implementation plans, and it makes no decisions; those rest with the City
Council, informed by its staff and the community it represents. The picture is designed to anchor
better conversations, not to substitute for them.
The findings begin with the Executive Summary.
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Executive Summary
When people hear “essential services,” they most likely picture Police and Fire. Reasonable, but not
quite right. Those services must be available to a community, but in Minnesota the choices behind them
are largely local: with Police the open question is who provides it, with Fire it is how. Most cities choose
to provide both, and the latitude behind those choices is largely invisible to the public. That discretion is
structural: Minnesota cities are political subdivisions, sometimes described as “children of the State,”
and it is ultimately the State that draws the line between what a city must do and what it may do.
For a city, then, “essential” is not a single legal category. Municipal services exist along a continuum —
from those required by law, to those necessary for the organization and community to function
effectively, to services and service levels a city has deliberately chosen to provide.
The City of Richfield engaged the Rapp Consulting Group to determine where its services fall along that
continuum — and what they cost. The result is a complete inventory of City services, the first of its kind
for Richfield, presented in Appendix A and summarized in this report.
What the Study Covered
One hundred fifty-five services were identified across the City's operating departments. Each was
described, classified, costed, and reviewed by the department that delivers it and by the City's Finance
staff. Together these services account for $76,114,998 in total service operating expenditures and
272.83 full-time equivalent positions, measured on the 2026 Adopted Budget.
These figures describe the services in the inventory on an operating basis and are not the City's total adopted budget
across all funds. Section 1.5 sets out the scope and basis in full.
How Richfield's Services Classify
Category Description Services Expenditures Share Predominant
Flexibility
CAT-1 Statutory / Legally Mandated 21 $5,671,172 7.5% Very limited
CAT-2 Core Services 28 $20,472,411 26.9% Limited
CAT-3 Discretionary / Enhanced 70 $15,318,815 20.1% High
CAT-4 Support / Enabling 26 $7,417,515 9.7% Moderate
CAT-5A Enterprise / Profit-Generating 1 $13,513,365 17.8% High
CAT-5B Self-Sustaining Utilities 9 $8,607,160 11.3% Very limited
— Multi-Category Division Operations — $5,114,560 6.7% Varies by service
TOTAL 155 $76,114,998 100.0%
Multi-Category Division Operations covers two Public Works divisions the City budgets at the division level while
classifying the individual services within them. Those services are counted in the categories above.
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What the Classification Shows
Service count and cost are not proportional. Discretionary services are the largest group by number —
45 percent of the inventory — but account for 20 percent of operating expenditure. The legally
mandated baseline is smaller than commonly assumed, at 7.5 percent. Where the City has the most
services, it does not have the most money committed.
Structural relationships cross departmental lines. Support services concentrate in two departments. A
group of services whose beneficiaries are the residents with fewest alternatives spans several
departments and categories at once. Enterprise revenue supports general fund services through a
transfer that appears in no departmental budget. None of these patterns is visible from within a single
department's request.
Principal Findings
Finding Substance
1 Fire workload is concentrated in one
service
EMS is roughly 78 percent of call volume. Fire prevention carries no separately
identified budget. All four Fire services are Category 2, drawing on one
allocation and staffing complement.
2 Support services are concentrated
and externally deliverable
Twenty-six Category 4 services, $7,417,515, in two departments; 16 carry City-
identified alternatives.
3 Budget neutrality is not impact
neutrality
Grant-funded public and environmental health services cost the general fund
little. Budget impact and community impact point in different directions.
4 Discretionary does not mean
reducible
Twelve Category 3 services carry only limited flexibility, clustered in facility-
bound Recreation.
5 Alternative delivery potential is
broad but uneven
95 of 155 services, 61 percent — from 73 percent of discretionary services to
33 percent of mandated ones.
6 The liquor enterprise is a revenue
source and a structural dependency
$13,513,365, nearly 18 percent of operating expenditures, with net revenue
transferring to the General Fund. They are represented in the budget as
administrative service credits.
Alternative Service Delivery
The City assessed all 155 services and identified an alternative delivery arrangement as potentially
available for 95 of them — highest among discretionary services, lowest among mandated ones, where
the question concerns delivery method rather than whether the service is provided at all. Contract
arrangements are the most frequently identified type, followed by regional and non-profit options. A
number of services are already delivered by parties other than City staff, so external delivery is part of
how Richfield operates rather than a departure from it. The City did not nominate priorities, and no cost,
feasibility, market, or community acceptance analysis was performed.
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Considerations
Thirteen considerations arise from these findings, set out in full in Section 6 and organized by the
horizon over which each might be taken up. They are considerations, not recommendations — the
classification shows where latitude exists; it does not determine what the City should do with it.
Horizon Considerations
Immediate (2) Fire Department EMS and prevention operations analysis · Interim fire inspection capacity
Short-term (5) Recreation Services net cost analysis · Alternative delivery options identified across departments ·
Information technology shared services review · Contract-based delivery for fee-based programming ·
Internal service cost allocation review
Medium-term (5) Equity impact assessment for service changes · Municipal liquor competitive and strategic review · Fleet
and equipment collaboration review · Capital asset lifecycle planning · Integration of the framework into
budget development
Ongoing (1) Annual inventory maintenance
Several would require analysis this study did not perform — cost modeling, market testing, feasibility
assessment, or community consultation — before any decision could reasonably be made.
In Closing
Richfield undertook this study as a fully developed city facing the circumstance that condition creates:
an established service portfolio, aging infrastructure, and a tax base that grows slowly. Those pressures
do not resolve through analysis. What analysis can do is ensure that the decisions made in response
proceed from an accurate account of what the City provides, what it costs, and where the choices
actually are. That account now exists.
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Section 1: Introduction
1.1 Study Background and Purpose
The City of Richfield commissioned this Essential Services Study as part of its 2023–2026 Strategic Plan,
specifically to fulfill Strategic Initiative 1d: establish an essential service delivery plan by 2026. The study
reflects the City's commitment to data-driven, transparent governance and its recognition that a fully
developed community faces resource decisions that benefit from an objective foundation.
Richfield engaged the Rapp Consulting Group in 2025 to lead a comprehensive classification of all City
services. The project represents the first systematic effort to apply a formal service classification
framework to the City's entire service portfolio — moving beyond informal budget judgment toward a
defensible, evidence-based reference.
1.2 Community Context
Richfield is a fully developed inner-ring suburb in Hennepin County, directly south of Minneapolis and
adjacent to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. The City covers approximately seven square miles
and is among the most densely developed municipalities in the Twin Cities metropolitan area.
Characteristic Description
Population 38,482 (Metropolitan Council estimate)
Geographic area Approximately 7 square miles; fully built out
County Hennepin County
Location Immediately south of Minneapolis; adjacent to MSP International Airport
Housing stock Predominantly mid-twentieth-century single-family and multifamily residential;
significant aging stock requiring ongoing investment and inspection
Form of government Council-Manager
Mayor Mary Supple
City Manager Katie Rodriguez
As a fully developed community, Richfield faces a distinct municipal finance situation. Its infrastructure,
housing stock, and service systems are aging on a common timeline, while the absence of undeveloped
parcels for new commercial or residential growth constrains expansion of the tax base. This is the
context in which the classification results should be read, and it recurs throughout the departmental
profiles in Section 4.
The City is also notable for its demographic diversity. Richfield has one of the most diverse populations
in the Twin Cities metropolitan area, with significant representation of communities of color, immigrant
and refugee households, and residents across the income spectrum. The City's Strategic Plan reflects
that composition in its stated commitments, and Section 5 addresses where the service portfolio
concentrates around residents with the fewest alternatives.
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1.3 Strategic and Policy Alignment
The study is grounded in the City's adopted strategic and policy documents. The classification and the
alternative delivery assessment were conducted within the context of these established priorities.
Reference Language or description Source
City vision "A resilient, purposeful, and forward-thinking community where all
are connected and can thrive."
2023–2026 Strategic Plan
City mission "To create equitable systems, infrastructure and services that
make our community better."
2023–2026 Strategic Plan
Strategic Initiative 1d "Establish essential service delivery plan by 2026" 2023–2026 Strategic Plan
Comprehensive Plan Establishes priorities for housing affordability and diversity,
economic development, and environmental sustainability — each
of which informs the classification of services in those areas
Richfield 2040
Comprehensive Plan
Budget environment The City has experienced multi-year pressure on the property tax
levy and sought objective data to support service delivery
decisions
City Manager's Office,
2025
1.4 Study Objectives
The study was designed to achieve four objectives.
Classify all City services. Apply a seven-category framework to every service the City delivers,
distinguishing legally mandated services from those that are locally essential, discretionary, internally
enabling, or operated as enterprises.
Identify budget flexibility. For each service, establish the degree to which spending is constrained by
legal mandate, operational necessity, or community reliance — and where genuine latitude exists.
Assess alternative delivery. Identify services where an alternative delivery arrangement appears
available, and of what type, without estimating savings or proposing implementation.
Provide a durable reference. Deliver a report and supporting inventory that the City Council, City
Manager, and department directors can use as an objective basis for budget deliberation and service
decisions over successive years.
1.5 Study Scope
The study covers all operating departments of the City of Richfield and all services delivered through
them, including enterprise operations and services delivered through the City's Housing and
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Redevelopment Authority and Economic Development Authority. Scope was established in the 2025
contract between the City and the Rapp Consulting Group.
Scope element Description
Departments covered All City operating departments: Administrative Services, Executive, Finance, Community
Development, Public Safety (Police, Support Services, and Fire), Public Works, and
Recreation Services
Services classified 155 services
Budget period 2026 Adopted Budget
Budget basis Operating expenditures — personnel plus the goods and services consumed in delivering
each service. Excludes capital outlay, depreciation, and interfund transfers
Data sources Department-submitted service inventories; structured consultant interviews; the 2026
City Budget Book; City-provided financial data reviewed and confirmed by the City's
Finance department
Legal mandate review Verification of federal and state citations for every Category 1 classification
Alternative delivery Identification of delivery options only; no cost estimates, savings projections, market
testing, or implementation planning
Not within scope Financial audit; community engagement surveys; peer city comparison; facilities
condition assessment; compensation study; technology systems review
Budget and staffing figures throughout this report are drawn from the service inventory in Appendix A and describe the
services classified in this study. Budget figures are reported on an operating basis and are not equivalent to the City's
total adopted budget across all funds, which includes capital, debt service, and other elements outside the scope of a
service classification. Staffing figures represent the full-time equivalent positions allocated to those services, including the
City's enterprise operations, as reported by departments and confirmed by the City.
1.6 Project Team
The Rapp Consulting Group conducted the study with a team of four consultants, each covering assigned
departments based on professional expertise and prior familiarity with municipal operations of
Richfield's type.
Team member Role Departments covered
Craig Rapp Project Principal Overall project management; framework design; integration and
synthesis; final report
Craig Waldron Project Consultant Planning, zoning, inspections, housing programs, business
assistance, redevelopment
Jay Lotthammer Project Consultant Street and park maintenance, utilities, recreation programs,
facilities
Scot Simpson Project Consultant Administrative functions, finance, elections, human resources,
information technology, liquor operations
Hugo McPhee Project Consultant Patrol, specialty functions, fire prevention, emergency response
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1.7 How This Report Is Organized
The report proceeds from method to results to interpretation.
Section 2 describes the classification framework, how the inventory was built, and how classifications
were verified. Section 3 presents the classification results — how services distribute across categories
and departments, and the budget flexibility profile that follows. Section 4 profiles each department in
turn. Section 5 interprets the results, presenting six findings drawn from patterns visible across
departments. Section 6 sets out considerations arising from those findings, organized by horizon.
Section 7 addresses how the City might apply the framework after this study concludes. Section 8 draws
the study together — what the inventory established, what the results show when the portfolio is
viewed whole, the boundaries within which those results should be read, and what the framework
offers the City going forward.
The complete service inventory is Appendix A. It is the foundation of everything in this report: every
figure presented here traces to an entry in it, and it is the document the City would maintain going
forward.
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Section 2: Methodology
This section describes how the service inventory was built, how each service was classified, and how the
classifications were verified. It is included so that the results in Sections 3 and 4 can be evaluated on
their method as well as their conclusions, and so that the City can repeat or extend the exercise in
future budget cycles.
2.1 Classification Framework Development
Framework foundation.
The classification framework used in this study draws on established practice in municipal finance,
public administration, and service delivery analysis. It reflects two primary influences.
Governmental Accounting Standards Board guidance for enterprise fund accounting informed the
distinctions drawn between profit-generating enterprises, break-even utilities, and regulatory revenue
services. These distinctions matter because each type carries different strategic implications for budget
decisions and financial sustainability.
Organizational study practice contributed lessons drawn from service delivery analyses conducted
across Minnesota and nationally, including prior work by Rapp Consulting Group in Troy, Michigan; St.
Louis Park, Edina, and Wayzata, Minnesota.
Why seven categories.
The traditional approach to classifying municipal services uses a binary mandatory-or-discretionary
distinction. That is a reasonable starting point, but it creates three problems in practice: it groups legally
required services together with services that are practically essential but not legally mandated; it treats
all discretionary services as equally flexible; and it does not account for the distinct financial logic of
enterprise and revenue-generating functions.
The seven-category framework addresses those limitations by recognizing four realities of municipal
operations.
First, not all non-mandatory services are equally discretionary. Some — basic police patrol, road
maintenance — are locally essential in ways that make elimination practically equivalent to a crisis, even
where no statute requires them. Others genuinely are optional quality-of-life enhancements.
Second, support services have a different character than direct services. They cannot be eliminated
without crippling the organization, but they offer significant opportunities for efficiency improvement.
Treating them as either mandatory services or discretionary programs obscures both their importance
and their optimization potential.
Third, enterprise services must be evaluated on their own financial logic. A service that generates profit,
a utility intended to break even, and a regulatory program that generates franchise or permit revenue
each present different decision-making considerations.
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Fourth, budget flexibility is not binary. Decision-makers need to know not only whether a service is
required, but the degree of latitude that actually exists — from very limited through limited and
moderate to high.
The seven categories represent a deliberate balance between a two-category system too blunt to guide
decisions and a twenty-category taxonomy that becomes unmanageable in practice.
2.1.1 The Seven Categories
Category Name Definition
CAT-1 Statutory / Legally Mandated Required by federal or state law, with no discretion to eliminate or
substantially reduce. The City faces legal penalties, loss of state aid, or loss
of governmental authority if the service is not provided.
CAT-2 Core Services Locally deemed essential to the basic mission of municipal government.
Not legally required, but elimination would create an immediate public
safety, health, or operational crisis. Very high community reliance and
expectation.
CAT-3 Discretionary / Enhanced Enhances quality of life but is not essential to basic municipal function.
Valuable and often highly desired, but can be reduced or eliminated
without creating immediate crisis.
CAT-4 Support / Enabling Internal organizational services that enable delivery of all other municipal
services. These do not directly serve residents but are essential to the
organization's functioning.
CAT-5A Enterprise / Profit-Generating City-operated services intended to generate a financial return above cost.
These function as business-type operations and are evaluated on financial
performance.
CAT-5B Self-Sustaining Utility Enterprise-fund operations intended to break even through user fees —
typically water, sewer, and stormwater — where the goal is full cost
recovery rather than profit.
CAT-5C Revenue-Generating Regulatory Services generating revenue through fees, permits, franchise agreements,
or regulatory assessments priced above the cost of regulation. Regulatory
in nature rather than service delivery.
No Richfield service was classified CAT-5C. The category is retained in the framework because it describes a real municipal
pattern — franchise or right-of-way fees priced above the cost of administering them — and because its absence is itself
informative: Richfield sets such fees at cost recovery rather than as a revenue source.
Budget flexibility implications by category.
Each category carries a different practical reality for budget decisions. For CAT-1, the only latitude is in
how a service is delivered, not whether. For CAT-2, service levels, delivery methods, and staffing models
can be adjusted, but elimination creates crisis and any change requires careful communication and
transition planning. CAT-3 is where genuine budget discretion resides — the City may maintain,
enhance, reduce, charge fees for, restructure, or eliminate. CAT-4 services generally cannot be
eliminated but offer meaningful opportunity for efficiency, consolidation, and cost reduction; the
question is not whether to provide them but how to provide them more efficiently. CAT-5A operations
should be evaluated on financial performance, with poor performers restructured, contracted, or exited.
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CAT-5B operations must continue, but rate structures and delivery models can be optimized and cost
increases pass to users through rates.
2.2 Data Collection Process
Data collection proceeded in three stages: document review, departmental service inventory
submission, and structured interviews.
Document review.
The consulting team reviewed the City's adopted budget, including the General Fund, enterprise funds,
and the Economic Development Authority and Housing and Redevelopment Authority budgets; the 2040
Comprehensive Plan; the Strategic Plan; organizational charts and staffing documentation; and relevant
ordinances and statutory references. This review served two purposes: it allowed consultants to enter
departmental interviews with an informed baseline, and it provided an independent check on
departmental claims of legal mandate.
Service inventory submission.
Each department completed a detailed Municipal Service Inventory form covering all services it
provides. For each service the form captured a description, estimated budget and staffing allocation,
funding source, the department's initial proposed classification, and any notes on legal requirements or
alternative delivery considerations. Consultants reviewed all submitted inventories before conducting
interviews, preparing clarifying questions and flagging areas where a proposed classification appeared
inconsistent with the framework criteria.
Departmental interviews.
Structured interviews were conducted with department heads and key staff across all City departments,
following a consistent protocol: review of the submitted inventory, discussion of services proposed for
Category 1 with particular attention to verifying the legal citation, exploration of borderline and split
services, and discussion of alternative delivery possibilities. Interviews were conducted by the assigned
consultant for each departmental cluster, with the principal consultant participating in cross-cutting
discussions and follow-up sessions.
2.3 Verification and Classification Process
Classification decisions were made through a structured process applying the same decision sequence
consistently across every service.
Decision sequence.
The first question is whether a specific, verifiable mandate in federal or state law requires the service. If
so, the service is Category 1. If not, the next question is whether elimination would create an immediate
public safety, health, or operational crisis within thirty days. If so, the service is Category 2. If the service
is an enterprise or revenue-generating operation, it is evaluated against the Category 5 definitions
according to its financial model. If it is an internal function enabling other services rather than serving
the public directly, it is Category 4. Everything remaining is Category 3.
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Legal mandate verification.
For every service proposed as Category 1, the team applied a verification standard requiring three
elements: identification of the specific statute by citation, description of what the mandate actually
requires as a minimum service standard, and identification of the consequence of non-compliance.
Services for which a specific citation could not be confirmed were reclassified to Category 2 or Category
3 as appropriate.
A framework decision made during the study is material to interpreting the results. Local ordinances are
treated as implementation mechanisms rather than independent mandate sources. A service grounded
solely in local ordinance does not meet the Category 1 threshold, because the City retains authority to
amend its own ordinances. Several services initially proposed as Category 1 on the strength of a local
code provision were accordingly reclassified to Category 2 — not because they are unimportant, but
because the obligation is one the City imposes on itself rather than one imposed upon it.
This verification step was intentionally conservative. Many municipal services are widely assumed to be
legally required based on long practice or professional norm. The framework distinguishes deliberately
between services that are legally required and services that are prudent, expected by best practice, or
practically essential but not legally mandated.
Cross-consultant review.
Because the study team included four consultants working across different departmental clusters,
classification consistency was maintained through periodic team review. Services with borderline
classifications, split characteristics, or high potential for disagreement were flagged for collective
discussion. The principal consultant made final determinations where judgment calls were required.
City review and confirmation.
Following the consulting team's classification work, the completed inventory was returned to the City
for departmental review. City staff verified service descriptions, corrected budget and staffing figures,
and adjusted classifications where the initial assignment did not reflect operational reality. The City's
Finance department separately reviewed every budget and staffing figure in the inventory for
consistency. The classifications presented in this report reflect that review; where the City's
determination differed from the consulting team's initial assignment, the City's determination governs.
2.4 Alternative Service Delivery Analysis
The alternative service delivery analysis was conducted as an identification and screening exercise, not a
feasibility or cost study. The distinction matters for how the findings should be used.
What was done.
Every service in the inventory was assessed for whether an alternative delivery arrangement is plausible,
and where one is, the type of alternative most applicable was identified — contracting with a private
provider, a regional or shared-service arrangement, consolidation with another City function, or delivery
by a non-profit partner. Consultants developed the initial assessment; the City subsequently reviewed
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and completed it for every service, identifying specific providers or partners where they exist. In a
number of cases the City noted that a service is already delivered under contract.
What was not done.
Consistent with the study scope, the team did not estimate specific cost savings, did not conduct market
testing to verify contractor availability or pricing, did not assess political feasibility or community
acceptance, and did not evaluate labor relations implications. Each of these would be required before
any decision to pursue an alternative delivery model could be acted upon.
How the findings should be used.
The alternative delivery candidates identified in this study should be understood as a starting list for
further exploration. They represent services where an alternative appears to exist and may be worth
examining. They are not recommendations to change service delivery models, and the identification of
an alternative should not be read as a judgment that the current arrangement is deficient. In several
instances the City has identified an alternative as available while also indicating that the present
arrangement is preferable.
2.5 Quality Assurance
Independent legal verification.
The legal mandate verification standard described in Section 2.3 served as the primary quality assurance
check on Category 1 classifications. By requiring specific statutory citations rather than accepting
departmental assertions, the study ensures that claims of legal mandate are documentable and
defensible.
Consultant peer review.
The multi-consultant team structure provided a built-in peer review mechanism. Consultants with
expertise in specific service areas reviewed each other's borderline classifications, and team check-in
meetings allowed for cross-departmental consistency review.
Internal flagging.
Each consultant was asked to provide internal observations alongside formal analysis — specifically
flagging services that may have been overstated as essential, enterprise services with apparent financial
performance issues, and classifications likely to generate disagreement. These observations informed
the synthesis process so that the report addresses the most consequential findings directly rather than
avoiding them.
Reconciliation to the inventory.
Every figure presented in this report is drawn from the final service inventory in Appendix A and was
verified against it. Where a figure could not be derived directly from the inventory, it is not presented.
This applies particularly to citywide totals: the inventory records a number of budget and staffing entries
as text rather than numbers, because the underlying cost sits at a division level rather than with an
individual service, and totals were computed only from entries the inventory states as figures.
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2.6 Study Limitations
Five limitations should be understood in reading this report.
Classifications represent professional judgments. While based on objective criteria applied consistently,
some services fall into gray areas requiring interpretation. Reasonable experts may disagree on
borderline cases, and the report identifies those cases where they arise.
Budget data originates with the City. All financial analysis relies on budget figures provided and
reviewed by the City of Richfield. Independent verification of expenditure data was outside the scope of
this engagement.
Legal interpretations are not legal advice. Mandate classifications were verified using publicly available
statutes but do not constitute a legal opinion. The City should seek independent counsel before treating
any classification as a legal determination.
Alternative delivery findings are preliminary. Any savings figures developed in subsequent analysis
would require detailed procurement processes and market analysis to confirm.
Implementation complexity is not modeled. Acting on the considerations in Section 6 may reveal
practical, contractual, or organizational challenges that were not apparent during the classification
phase.
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Section 3: Service Classification Results
3.1 Overview
The Richfield Essential Services Study classified 155 city services using the seven-category framework
developed for this study. This section presents the results of that classification: how many services fall
into each category, how they are distributed across departments, and what the resulting pattern says
about where the City has budgetary latitude and where it does not.
The classification was grounded in documented legal requirements, interview data, review of City policy
documents, and departmental review. Every service in this section traces to a corresponding entry in
Appendix A, and every figure presented here is drawn from that inventory. Where a service's
classification rests on a specific statutory or regulatory obligation, the governing authority is cited in
Appendix A.
Budget figures throughout this section reflect the 2026 Adopted Budget on an operating basis —
personnel, together with the goods and services consumed in delivering each service. Consistent with
how the City tracks these costs, the figures exclude capital outlay, depreciation, and transfers between
funds. Total service operating expenditures across the inventory are $76,114,998.
The complete service inventory is presented in Appendix A. This section provides the narrative synthesis.
3.2 Summary of Classification Results
3.2.1 Services by Category
The table below summarizes the distribution of Richfield's 155 classified services across the seven
categories, with the operating expenditures attributable to each.
Category Description Services Expenditures Share Predominant Flexibility
CAT-1 Statutory / Legally Mandated 21 $5,671,172 7.5% Very limited (18 of 21)
CAT-2 Core Services 28 $20,472,411 26.9% Limited (26 of 28)
CAT-3 Discretionary / Enhanced 70 $15,318,815 20.1% High (58 of 70)
CAT-4 Support / Enabling 26 $7,417,515 9.7% Moderate (22 of 26)
CAT-5A Enterprise / Profit-Generating 1 $13,513,365 17.8% High
CAT-5B Self-Sustaining Utilities 9 $8,607,160 11.3% Very limited
— Multi-Category Division
Operations
— $5,114,560 6.7% Varies by service
TOTAL 155 $76,114,998 100.0%
Multi-Category Division Operations comprises the Street Maintenance and Park Maintenance Divisions of Public Works.
The City budgets these two divisions at the division level, while classifying the individual services delivered within them.
Their operating expenditures are therefore reported here rather than distributed across categories; the services
themselves are counted and classified in the categories above.
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Several patterns in the distribution warrant attention.
Category 3 contains the most services by a wide margin — 70 of 155, or 45 percent of the inventory —
but accounts for only 20 percent of operating expenditures. The largest group of services the Council
may adjust at its discretion is not where the money is concentrated.
Categories 1 and 2 together account for 49 services, just under a third of the inventory, and 34 percent
of expenditures. These establish the operating baseline the City must maintain, either as a matter of law
or as a matter of practical necessity.
Category 5A consists of a single service — Liquor Operations — which alone represents nearly 18
percent of total service operating expenditures. No other individual service approaches this scale, and
its enterprise character means it is evaluated on different terms than tax-supported services.
Category 5B represents 11 percent of expenditures across nine water and wastewater services. These
are rate-funded and structured for full cost recovery, so they sit outside the tax-supported budget
conversation entirely.
3.2.2 Services by Department
The table below presents the distribution of services by department and category, ordered by operating
expenditures.
Liquor Operations is shown separately. It reports through Administrative Services, but it is an enterprise retail activity
rather than an administrative function, and at $13.5 million it would otherwise account for the majority of that
grouping's expenditures and obscure the distribution.
Department Total CAT-
1
CAT-
2
CAT-
3
CAT-
4
CAT-
5A
CAT-
5B
Expenditures
Public Works 54 11 13 10 11 0 9 $17,511,240
Police 13 1 8 4 0 0 0 $13,750,537
Liquor Operations-Administrative
Services
1 0 0 0 0 1 0 $13,513,365
Community Development 11 3 0 8 0 0 0 $10,235,200
Administration-Executive-Finance 26 6 2 7 11 0 0 $8,770,771
Fire 4 0 4 0 0 0 0 $6,641,729
Recreation Services 46 0 1 41 4 0 0 $5,692,156
TOTALS 155 21 28 70 26 1 9 $76,114,998
Two departments account for nearly two-thirds of the inventory by count. Recreation Services carries 46
services and Public Works 54, together 100 of 155. Their profiles are very different: Recreation's services
are overwhelmingly discretionary, with 41 of its 46 in Category 3, while Public Works spans every
category and holds the majority of the City's mandated obligations.
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Expenditures follow a different distribution than counts. Public Works and Police carry the largest
operating budgets among tax-supported departments, at $17.5 million and $13.8 million. Recreation
Services, despite holding the second-most services, accounts for $5.7 million — reflecting that
discretionary programming is numerous but individually inexpensive. Administration-Executive-Finance
accounts for $8.8 million once the liquor enterprise is set aside.
3.3 Category-by-Category Results
3.3.1 Category 1 — Statutory / Legally Mandated Services (21 services)
Twenty-one services are classified as Category 1, meaning they are required by federal law or state
statute. The City has no discretion over whether to provide them, though in many cases it retains
discretion over how. These services represent $5,671,172 in operating expenditures, or 7.5 percent of
the total.
Category 1 services are concentrated in four departments. Public Works carries 11, Administration-
Executive-Finance carries 6, Community Development carries 3, and Police carries 1.
Public Works.
Public Works holds the largest share of mandated services, and stormwater is the single greatest source.
Seven of its eleven Category 1 services arise from federal NPDES requirements and the Minnesota
stormwater permit: the Storm Utility Division itself, grit chamber and catch basin cleaning, stormwater
facility operation, pond maintenance, utility locates, regulatory compliance, and administration of the
Richfield-Bloomington Watershed Management Organization. The remaining four are the Engineering
Division, right-of-way tree maintenance, pavement marking, and street and traffic signal repair.
Administration-Executive-Finance.
Six Category 1 services sit in this grouping: City Clerk functions, public records management, election
administration, governance and policy support, executive leadership and administration, and the
finance, accounting, treasury, budget, and payroll function. These are the statutory machinery of
municipal government — the obligations that attach to being a city rather than to any particular service
choice.
Community Development.
Community Development has three Category 1 services: Planning and Zoning, both grounded in
Minnesota Statutes Chapter 462, and Building Inspections under Chapter 326B.
Police.
Police has one Category 1 service, Emergency Management, grounded in Minnesota Statutes Chapter
12.25.1.
3.3.2 Category 2 — Core Services (28 services)
Twenty-eight services are classified as Category 2: locally deemed essential to the basic mission of
municipal government, with high community reliance and significant consequence if withdrawn, but not
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compelled by statute. These services represent $20,472,411 in operating expenditures — 26.9 percent
of the total, and the largest share of any category. The classification carries an important implication:
the City must continue providing these services in some form, but retains real latitude over how they are
delivered.
Public Works carries thirteen, spanning street maintenance functions — lighting, plowing, road repair,
debris collection, trail maintenance, graffiti removal, diseased tree inspection — and park maintenance
functions including mowing, building maintenance, play feature maintenance, and paved court
maintenance, together with engineering permitting and redevelopment review.
Police carries eight: police administration, records, patrol operations, investigations, police services,
business licensing, environmental health, and public health. Fire carries four: emergency response
together with fire safety, training and standards; fire prevention and inspections; EMS response; and risk
reduction and education.
The remaining three are legal counsel and prosecution services, both delivered under contract by
outside counsel, and organized hauling in Recreation Services.
3.3.3 Category 3 — Discretionary / Enhanced Services (70 services)
Seventy services are classified as Category 3: they enhance quality of life but are not essential to basic
municipal function, and the Council has full discretion over whether and at what level to provide them.
They represent $15,318,815 in operating expenditures, or 20.1 percent of the total.
Recreation Services accounts for 41 of the 70 — the full range of fee-based and free programming,
Wood Lake Nature Center operations and education, ice arena and pool programming, community
events, facility rentals, and sustainability outreach. Public Works contributes 10, largely park and
boulevard amenity work such as field maintenance, irrigation, outdoor rinks, plantings, and sidewalk
plowing. Community Development contributes 8, all in the housing and economic development arena.
Administration-Executive-Finance contributes 7, including motor vehicle and passport services, public
meeting broadcasts, and community engagement. Police contributes 4.
The concentration of Category 3 services in Recreation reflects both the breadth of recreation
programming and the reality that recreation is where discretionary municipal activity naturally
accumulates. It should not be read as a judgment about value. Section 3.4 addresses an important
qualification: discretionary does not necessarily mean reducible.
3.3.4 Category 4 — Support / Enabling Services (26 services)
Twenty-six services are classified as Category 4: internal organizational functions that enable the
delivery of all other services but do not themselves serve the public directly. They represent $7,417,515
in operating expenditures, or 9.7 percent of the total.
Administration-Executive-Finance holds eleven, reflecting the breadth of its internal role: information
technology, human resources, insurance and workers' compensation, dental self-insurance, flex
benefits, building services, internal and external communications, customer service, and departmental
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administration. Public Works holds eleven, spanning fleet management through the Central Garage
Division, vehicle maintenance and purchasing, facility maintenance, GIS and asset management,
specialized training, water quality monitoring, the Traffic Control Committee, and Public Works
administration. Recreation Services holds four.
These services represent the City's most concentrated efficiency opportunity. They cannot be eliminated
— they enable everything else — but they are the strongest candidates for restructuring, automation,
shared service arrangements, or consolidation.
3.3.5 Category 5A — Enterprise / Profit-Generating Services (1 service)
One service is classified as Category 5A: Liquor Operations, the City's off-sale retail liquor operation. At
$13,513,365 it represents nearly 18 percent of total service operating expenditures — the largest single
service in the inventory.
As an enterprise operation, Liquor Operations is properly evaluated on business terms rather than
service-delivery terms: whether it generates a competitive return, whether the City is well positioned to
continue operating it, and what the opportunity cost of the capital and management attention would be
elsewhere. Its scale means that changes in its performance affect the City's overall financial position
more than changes in any other single service.
3.3.6 Category 5B — Self-Sustaining Utility Services (9 services)
Nine services are classified as Category 5B, all in Public Works: the Water Utility Division and its
sampling, hydrant repair, utility locate and billing functions, and the Wastewater Utility Division with its
inspection, locate, and billing functions. They represent $8,607,160 in operating expenditures, or 11.3
percent of the total.
These services are funded through rates rather than the tax levy and are structured to recover their full
cost. They do not cross-subsidize general fund operations, and general fund resources are not used to
subsidize them.
One classification distinction merits explanation. The Stormwater Utility's operating services are
classified as Category 1 rather than 5B, while Water and Wastewater are 5B. All three are enterprise-
funded utility divisions. The distinction rests on what drives the activity: stormwater operations exist
principally to satisfy a federal permit obligation, and the permit dictates the work regardless of the
funding mechanism, whereas water and wastewater operations are structured primarily around
delivering a metered service at full cost recovery. The categories describe the nature of the obligation;
the funding source is reported separately in Appendix A.
3.4 Budget Flexibility Profile
The classification results translate into a budget flexibility profile. Flexibility is assessed by the City for
each individual service, and reflects the practical latitude available to change what is spent — not
merely whether the service is legally required.
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Because flexibility is assessed service by service, it varies within categories. That variation is informative
rather than inconsistent, and the report presents it as found rather than normalizing it to a single value
per category.
Category Services Predominant flexibility Variation within the category
CAT-1 21 Very limited (18) 3 services assessed as limited
CAT-2 28 Limited (26) 1 very limited, 1 moderate
CAT-3 70 High (58) 12 services assessed as limited
CAT-4 26 Moderate (22) 3 limited, 1 high
CAT-5A 1 High —
CAT-5B 9 Very limited (9) None — uniform
Two patterns in this profile deserve the Council's attention.
Discretionary does not always mean reducible.
Twelve Category 3 services carry only limited budget flexibility. They cluster tightly: the Community
Center, field and facility rentals, Wood Lake Nature Center operations, ice arena maintenance, general
pool operations, and park development, together with three Community Development regulatory
programs. What these share is that their costs are embedded in buildings and grounds. The City could
choose to stop offering the programs, but it cannot meaningfully reduce the underlying cost while the
facility stands and must be maintained. Discretion over the service is real; discretion over the spending is
not, at least in the short term.
Mandated does not always mean fixed.
Conversely, three Category 1 services are assessed as having limited rather than very limited flexibility:
executive leadership and administration, emergency management, and right-of-way tree maintenance.
In each case the obligation to provide the service is settled, but the manner, staffing level, or scheduling
of the work leaves the City some room to maneuver. The mandate governs whether, not always how
much.
Taken together, these two patterns argue against using category alone as a budget instrument. The
categories establish what the City must do and what it chooses to do. Flexibility, assessed service by
service, establishes where change is actually achievable — and the two do not align as neatly as the
framework alone would suggest.
3.5 Alternative Service Delivery Potential
As part of the study the City assessed each of the 155 services for whether it could be delivered through
an alternative arrangement — contract, regional partnership, private provider, or non-profit. Ninety-five
services, or 61 percent of the inventory, were identified as carrying alternative delivery potential.
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The distribution follows the classification pattern closely, which is what gives the finding its credibility.
Category Services Alt delivery Share Interpretation
CAT-1 21 7 33% Mandated services; delivery method occasionally
adjustable
CAT-2 28 15 54% Must continue; how they are delivered is open
CAT-3 70 51 73% Discretionary services; the widest range of options
CAT-4 26 16 62% Internal functions; shared services and outsourcing
CAT-5A 1 1 — Enterprise operation
CAT-5B 9 5 56% Rate-funded utilities
TOTAL 155 95 61%
Discretionary services show the highest potential at 73 percent, and mandated services the lowest at 33
percent — the pattern one would expect if the assessment was applied thoughtfully rather than
mechanically. The presence of any alternative delivery potential among Category 1 services reflects that
a legal obligation to provide a service does not always dictate who performs the work.
It should be noted that identifying alternative delivery potential is not a recommendation to pursue it.
Several services already operate under contract, and in a number of cases the City has assessed an
alternative as available while judging the current arrangement preferable. Departmental discussion of
specific opportunities appears in Section 4.
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Section 4: Departmental Profiles
This section profiles each of the City's departmental groupings. Each profile presents the department's
operating context, a snapshot of its scale, the classification of its services, the rationale behind those
classifications, and the alternative delivery options identified during the study. Service counts, budgets,
and staffing figures are drawn from Appendix A and reflect the 2026 Adopted Budget on an operating
basis.
4.1 Fire Department
4.1.1 Department Overview
The City of Richfield is a first-ring suburb of Minneapolis, and its Fire Department is responsible for the
core functional areas typical of a modern urban department: emergency fire response and rescue,
emergency medical first response, fire prevention and code enforcement, community risk reduction and
public education, and firefighter training and standards compliance.
Fire personnel respond to over 5,100 calls for service annually, of which approximately 78 percent are
medical in nature. That distribution — a fire department whose predominant workload is medical
response — is the single most consequential fact about the department's cost structure, and it shapes
much of the analysis that follows.
4.1.2 Department Snapshot
Services in inventory 4
Total authorized FTEs (2026) 32.00 (1 Chief, 2 Assistant Chiefs, 3 Captains, 3 Lieutenants, 22 Firefighters, 1
Administrative Assistant)
Operating expenditures (2026) $6,641,729
Annual call volume 5,416 projected (2026) | 5,083 actual (2024) | approximately 78% EMS /
22% fire
Stations and operations Two stations, 24/7 operations; 9 firefighters per shift; 2 engines and 1 rescue
unit
Primary funding source Property tax
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4.1.3 Service Classification Summary
Fire delivers four services, all classified as Category 2. The department is not budgeted at the individual
service level; personnel and operating costs are carried in a single departmental allocation, and the
services below draw on the same 32.00 FTE.
Service Category Operating Budget FTEs Flexibility
Emergency Response, Fire Safety,
Training, and Standards
CAT-2 $6,631,729 32.00 Limited
Fire Prevention and Inspections CAT-2 Incl. in Emergency
Response
Incl. Limited
EMS Response — Basic Life Support
(BLS)
CAT-2 Incl. in Emergency
Response
Incl. Limited
Risk Reduction and Education CAT-2 $10,000 Incl. Limited
TOTAL $6,641,729 32.00
4.1.4 Classification Rationale
All four Fire services are classified as Category 2 — locally deemed essential to the basic mission of
municipal government, with high community reliance and significant consequence if withdrawn. The
classification reflects a consistent judgment: the City must maintain fire protection capability, but the
statutory framework establishes the obligation at a level that leaves the City meaningful latitude over
how that capability is organized, staffed, and delivered.
Emergency response, fire safety, training, and standards.
This service comprises emergency fire and rescue response together with the internal training,
certification, and standards compliance that sustain it. It carries the department's full staffing
complement and nearly all of its operating cost. Elimination is not a realistic option; the practical
questions concern staffing model, station configuration, and mutual aid posture rather than whether
the service exists.
Fire prevention and inspections.
Inspection and enforcement of the fire code in commercial and residential properties. The service
carries an identified alternative delivery path — contracting the function or re-prioritizing existing staff
— making it among the more adjustable services in the department.
EMS response — basic life support.
Emergency medical first response at the basic life support level, accounting for approximately 78
percent of annual call volume. Hennepin County Medical Center holds the Primary Service Area license
for advanced life support coverage in Richfield, which means the City's BLS first-response posture
operates alongside, rather than in place of, a licensed provider. This is discussed further in Section 4.1.5.
Risk reduction and education.
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Community fire prevention education, carrying a $10,000 operating allocation for materials and supplies
with personnel time drawn from the department's general complement.
4.1.5 Borderline and Split Services
EMS response presents the department's most significant structural question. It consumes the majority
of the department's call volume while being delivered by the same personnel and within the same
allocation as fire suppression, which means its true cost is not separately visible in the budget. Because
HCMC holds the Primary Service Area license for advanced life support, the City's first-response role is a
locally chosen service level rather than a jurisdictional necessity.
This is not a recommendation to change the department's EMS posture. It is an observation that the
largest single driver of Fire Department workload is also the service whose cost is least visible and whose
delivery model has the clearest parallel alternative. Any serious examination of Fire Department cost
structure will need to begin there.
4.1.6 Alternative Service Delivery Opportunities
Two of the department's four services carry identified alternative delivery potential.
Fire prevention and inspections.
Contracting with a qualified private inspection firm, or participating in a regional fire inspection
cooperative, is a structurally viable option. Re-prioritizing existing staff toward the function is the
alternative identified within the department.
EMS response.
The parallel ALS coverage held by HCMC represents the clearest alternative delivery consideration in the
department. Evaluating it would require analysis beyond the scope of this study — including response
time modeling, community expectation, and the fiscal effect of changes in EMS billing revenue.
Emergency response and risk reduction carry no identified alternative delivery path. Regional
cooperation and joint powers arrangements remain theoretically available for fire suppression, as they
do for any municipal fire service, but no specific option has been identified for Richfield at this time.
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4.2 Police Department
4.2.1 Department Overview
The City of Richfield Public Safety Department provides a full suite of law enforcement services typical of
a first-ring suburban department of comparable size: patrol and criminal investigations, specialty law
enforcement functions, records and administrative support, emergency management, and an integrated
support services function encompassing environmental health, public health, and business licensing.
Richfield Public Safety is notable for its intentional integration of quality-of-life and social services
policing alongside traditional enforcement. This includes embedded social workers, public health
Administrator, and environmental health and nuisance abatement — reflecting the department's
recognition of the socioeconomic complexity of the community it serves.
The department is resource-intensive, serving a high-density first-ring community with a demanding call
load. Its support services function is structurally distinctive: the public health and community health
components are substantially grant-funded through state and county reimbursements, which means
their reduction would have limited direct effect on the general fund while measurably reducing services
to lower-income residents.
4.2.2 Department Snapshot
Services in inventory 13
Total authorized FTEs (2026) 69.05
Operating expenditures (2026) $13,750,537
Classification profile 1 Category 1, 8 Category 2, 4 Category 3
Alternative delivery potential 6 of 13 services
Primary funding sources Property tax; fines and forfeitures; grants; special revenue
Distinctive features Integrated public and environmental health; embedded social workers; Joint
Community-Police Partnership (one of seven in Hennepin County)
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4.2.3 Service Classification Summary
The department delivers thirteen services across three classification categories. Emergency
management is the department's single Category 1 service. Core law enforcement and support services
functions are Category 2. Programming and specialty functions that enhance outcomes beyond a
baseline law enforcement operation are Category 3.
Service Category Operating Budget FTEs Flexibility
Emergency Management CAT-1 $58,660 Incl. (30
volunteers)
Limited
Patrol Operations CAT-2 $6,900,218 36.00 Limited
Police Administration CAT-2 $1,886,321 7.00 Limited
Investigations CAT-2 $1,752,212 9.00 Limited
Records CAT-2 $1,025,556 6.75 Limited
Police Services CAT-2 $352,350 1.00 Limited
Public Health CAT-2 $689,641 1.00 Limited
Environmental Health CAT-2 $547,384 4.60 Limited
Business Licensing CAT-2 $210,100 1.20 Limited
Social Workers and JCPP Worker CAT-3 $186,000 2.50 High
Crime Prevention, JCPP Programming,
Community Oriented Policing
CAT-3 $142,095 Incl. High
Specialty Functions CAT-3 Incl. in Police Operations Incl. High
Ancillary Roles CAT-3 Incl. in Police Operations Incl. High
TOTAL $13,750,537 69.05
Specialty Functions and Ancillary Roles are delivered through fractional assignments distributed across the department's
operational units; their costs and staffing are carried within those units rather than separately budgeted. Emergency
management is staffed the same way, supplemented by approximately 30 volunteers.
4.2.4 Classification Rationale
Patrol operations.
Patrol is classified Category 2. No statute requires the City specifically to maintain a municipal police
force — patrol functions could theoretically be provided through county or regional arrangements —
but Richfield patrol is locally deemed essential and its elimination would create an immediate public
safety crisis. Community reliance and expectation are high, and there is no indication of dissatisfaction
with current delivery that would prompt exploration of alternatives. Transitioning patrol to an adjacent
agency would carry significant cost and would likely generate substantial community opposition; it is
also unclear whether the Sheriff's Office or another provider has the budget and operational bandwidth
to absorb the work.
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Emergency management.
Emergency management is the department's single Category 1 service, required under Minnesota
Statutes Chapter 12.25.1. It covers preparedness for disasters, community events, and other
emergencies, and is supported by reserve officers and approximately 30 volunteers.
Police administration, records, investigations, and police services.
These functions are classified Category 2. While no individual statute requires them at the city level,
they are essential to the effective functioning of patrol and investigative operations, and their reduction
would directly impair other Category 2 and Category 1 functions. Investigations include background
investigations and back-up patrol capacity; records carries the department's data management
obligations; police services covers chaplaincy, education pay, leave, and overtime.
Public health, environmental health, and business licensing.
These three services are classified Category 2 and grouped as support services. Richfield Environmental
Health addresses nuisance abatement, proactive ordinance enforcement, vacant and problem property
identification, and compliance work across alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis licensing. Bloomington
Environmental Health provides food, pool, lodging, body work, and massage inspections via a contract.
Public health services are provided through a shared services agreement with Bloomington, and related
partnerships. Business licensing processes and renews over 1,000 licenses annually.
Richfield's integration of public health into the police function is distinctive among Minnesota first-ring
suburbs. The practical consequence is that eliminating the grant-funded components would have limited
budget effect — the costs are substantially pass-through — while reducing real services to vulnerable
residents, with no local provider positioned to absorb them.
Social workers, crime prevention programming, specialty functions, and ancillary roles.
These four services are classified Category 3. They meaningfully enhance safety and quality-of-life
outcomes but represent enhancements beyond what a baseline law enforcement operation would
provide. Social workers are contractual employees shared with Hennepin County and the City of Edina.
Crime prevention programming includes Night to Unite, the Citizen Police Academy, and juvenile
diversion work, and receives approximately $48,250 in annual donations.
4.2.5 Borderline and Split Services
The grant-funded components of public and environmental health present a distinctive budget flexibility
dynamic. Reducing or eliminating these services would not meaningfully improve the operating budget,
because the costs are largely reimbursed — but it would reduce real services to residents. Decision-
makers should understand that budget neutrality is not the same as impact neutrality.
Ancillary roles present a reasonable case for Category 4 rather than Category 3, given that several of the
functions enable other core services rather than serving the public directly. The Category 3 classification
is applied consistently across the cluster.
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4.2.6 Alternative Service Delivery Opportunities
Six of the department's thirteen services carry identified alternative delivery potential. Core law
enforcement functions — patrol, administration, records, investigations, and police services — do not.
Environmental health and public health.
Environmental health is already delivered under contract with Bloomington Environmental Health.
Public health operates through a shared services arrangement with Bloomington and Edina — an
arrangement believed to be one of only two of its kind operating in the state. If specific grant programs
expire or are not renewed, these services could theoretically transition to county, municipal, or
nonprofit delivery, though understanding the real versus perceived value of altering the model would
require work beyond the scope of this study.
Category 3 programming.
Social work services and Joint Community-Police Partnership both carry contract or regional delivery
potential, as do specialty functions and ancillary roles. Because these services sit at Council discretion,
the relevant question for most of them is service level rather than delivery mechanism.
4.2.7 Department Findings and Observations
Police staff perform well and carry a demanding call load; quality of service delivery is not in question.
The department collects and reports a significant volume of operational data. Continued analysis of that
data to measure targeted outcomes will be beneficial, particularly in assessing effectiveness and
progress against strategic goals.
The department's grant-funded health services represent a genuine analytical complexity for budget
decision-making: they are among the least expensive services to the general fund and among the most
consequential to the residents who use them. Any evaluation of these services should be framed in
terms of community impact rather than budget savings, because the savings available are small.
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4.3 Community Development
4.3.1 Department Overview
The Community Development Department coordinates land use planning, zoning administration,
building inspections, housing programs, business assistance, and redevelopment. The department
operates through multiple funding vehicles — the General Fund, the Economic Development Authority,
and the Housing and Redevelopment Authority — reflecting the breadth of its regulatory and
programmatic responsibilities.
Richfield is a fully developed first-ring suburb with a dense, aging housing stock and commercial
corridors under active redevelopment pressure. Community Development plays a central role in
implementing the 2040 Comprehensive Plan and the 2023–2026 Strategic Plan, particularly the housing
and economic development priorities of both.
The department has consolidated all inspections functions under the Building Official, creating cross-
training and efficiency opportunities. Capacity constraints in human resources, finance, and information
technology have been an ongoing operational challenge across service areas.
4.3.2 Department Snapshot
Services in inventory 11
Total authorized FTEs (2026) 18.60
Operating expenditures (2026) $10,235,200
Classification profile 3 Category 1, 8 Category 3 — no Category 2, 4, or enterprise services
Alternative delivery potential All 11 services
Primary funding sources Property tax; user fees; federal grants; EDA and HRA levies; tax increment
financing
Distinctive features All inspections consolidated under the Building Official; every discretionary
service grounded in adopted plans
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4.3.3 Service Classification Summary
Community Development delivers eleven discrete services spanning two classification categories. Three
are Category 1, grounded in state statute; eight are Category 3, anchored in the City's Comprehensive
Plan and Strategic Plan. The department has no Category 2, Category 4, or enterprise services — and it is
the only department in which every service carries identified alternative delivery potential.
Service Category Operating Budget FTEs Flexibility
Planning CAT-1 $432,350 2.20 Very limited
Zoning CAT-1 Included with Planning See Planning Very limited
Building Inspections CAT-1 $1,005,589 5.00 Very limited
Federal/State Rental Housing Assistance
(Section 8)
CAT-3 $3,309,257 2.30 Limited
Redevelopment CAT-3 $2,989,162 2.00 High
Ownership Housing Programs CAT-3 $1,290,592 1.45 High
Business Service Assistance CAT-3 $397,730 1.20 High
Rental Licensing and Inspections CAT-3 $323,453 2.50 Limited
Local Housing Assistance CAT-3 $176,673 0.15 High
Rental Housing Programs (Remodeling) CAT-3 $155,676 0.30 High
Point of Sale Inspections CAT-3 $154,718 1.50 Limited
TOTAL $10,235,200 18.60
A practical note on discretionary flexibility: although most Category 3 services carry high flexibility, the Section 8 program
at $3.3 million is federally grant-funded with limited local discretion, and Point of Sale and Rental Licensing are fee-
supported regulatory programs. The effective locally controllable discretionary budget is therefore substantially smaller
than the Category 3 total suggests.
4.3.4 Classification Rationale
Planning and Zoning — Category 1.
Both are mandated under Minnesota Statutes Chapter 462, which requires municipalities to develop
and maintain a comprehensive plan and to administer zoning. In a first-ring suburb such as Richfield,
zoning carries significant community impact and substantial resident expectation. There is no flexibility
to eliminate either service, though delivery method may be adjusted. Planning and Zoning are budgeted
together.
Building Inspections — Category 1.
Required under Minnesota Statutes Chapter 326B, which mandates state building code administration
and enforcement. The service is fully fee-supported and protects public health and safety. All
inspections functions have been consolidated under the Building Official, improving cross-training and
operational resilience.
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Regulatory inspection programs — Category 3.
Point of Sale Inspections and Rental Licensing and Inspections are classified Category 3 and are fully
supported by user fees. Both are critical to preserving Richfield's housing stock, and both carry limited
rather than high budget flexibility: the licensing fee structure has limited capacity to generate revenue
above current levels, and the staffing pool is shared between the two programs.
Housing programs — Category 3.
Ownership Housing Programs, Rental Housing Programs, and Local Housing Assistance are discretionary
but strategically central to a first-ring suburb, and each is directly aligned with adopted Comprehensive
Plan housing goals. They operate at a net loss supported by property taxes, EDA levy, and grants,
providing homeownership assistance, rehabilitation incentives that maintain home values and tax
capacity, and shallow rent subsidies for working families with children in Richfield schools.
Federal/State Rental Housing Assistance — Category 3.
Non-mandatory at the local level but contractually obligated through HUD participation. The program
administers the Housing Choice Voucher program and is entirely grant-funded, leaving limited local
flexibility. It is administratively burdensome relative to its local policy discretion, and assumption by the
Metro HRA has been identified as a viable alternative.
Business Service Assistance and Redevelopment — Category 3.
Both are discretionary programs aligned with Comprehensive Plan and Strategic Plan priorities for
business growth, tax base enhancement, and job quality. Business assistance is funded through the EDA
levy. Redevelopment is funded primarily through tax increment financing and grants, which makes its
budget volatile year to year as districts open and close.
4.3.5 Borderline and Split Services
Code enforcement is currently administered by the Police Department rather than Community
Development. A structural case could be made for locating housing code enforcement within
Community Development, which administers the underlying ordinances, but the current arrangement
functions effectively and relocating it would create significant pressure on an already capacity-
constrained department. This is noted for information; no reclassification is proposed.
4.3.6 Alternative Service Delivery Opportunities
Every service in this department carries identified alternative delivery potential — the only department
in the study for which that is true. The options below are identified for consideration; this section does
not constitute a recommendation.
Planning and Zoning: use of consulting firms for overflow capacity and specialized projects rather than
full outsourcing. Administrative streamlining — expanding the approvals the Director may handle
without full Planning Commission or Council review — represents the most viable near-term efficiency
gain.
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Inspections: contracting with adjacent municipalities or private inspection firms is structurally feasible
across Building Inspections, Point of Sale, and Rental Licensing. Given the recent consolidation under the
Building Official, the preferred path is to build on integration efficiencies rather than fragment the
function.
Federal/State Rental Housing Assistance: transferring administration to the Metro HRA would reduce
staff burden and is a near-term evaluation candidate, though it could affect delivery of other rental
assistance programs.
Ownership Housing Programs: expanding hours for current part-time staff is the most cost-effective
near-term option, given present challenges deploying new state funding.
Business Service Assistance and Redevelopment: contracting with consultants is structurally possible but
likely costlier and would reduce City control over strategic priorities. Retaining these functions in-house
is preferred while staffing capacity allows.
4.3.7 Department Findings and Observations
Lean staffing model.
The department delivers eleven distinct service lines with 18.60 FTE — a notably lean ratio that reflects
both the consolidation of inspections under a single Building Official and reliance on grant-funded and
part-time staff in housing programs.
Strategic alignment.
All eight Category 3 services are directly grounded in the 2040 Comprehensive Plan and the 2023–2026
Strategic Plan. This provides clear policy authority for budget prioritization decisions and makes the
department's discretionary spending unusually well documented.
Inspections consolidation.
Bringing Building, Point of Sale, and Rental Licensing under a single Building Official creates cross-
training and backup capacity, increasing service reliability and reducing single-point-of-failure risk.
Funding structure.
As tax increment districts age out and close, the administrative funding pool supporting Redevelopment
shrinks. Identifying a replacement funding strategy before that occurs would avoid an abrupt capacity
reduction in a function central to the City's development strategy.
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4.4 Administration-Executive-Finance
4.4.1 Overview
This section covers three related organizational units. Administrative Services is the broadest by service
count and is overseen by the Assistant City Manager. The Executive office comprises the City Council,
the City Manager, and supporting functions. Finance is reported as a single consolidated service line.
Together they deliver 26 classified services and form the City's core governance, administrative, and
internal-support infrastructure.
Liquor Operations reports through Administrative Services but is reported separately throughout this
study. It is an enterprise retail activity rather than an administrative function, and at $13.5 million it is
larger than the twenty-six services in this grouping combined. Reporting it within Administration-
Executive-Finance would put the grouping at $22.3 million and make the City's administrative overhead
appear roughly two and a half times its actual size. Separated, this grouping accounts for $8,770,771, or
11.5 percent of total service operating expenditures — a figure consistent with general and
administrative overhead in comparable organizations. Liquor Operations is addressed in Section 4.4.5.
Prosecution Services is a public safety function administered through the City Manager's Office. It is
reported here rather than under Police for that reason.
4.4.2 Department Snapshot
Services in inventory 26 (excluding Liquor Operations, reported separately)
Total authorized FTEs (2026) 35.15
Operating expenditures (2026) $8,770,771 (11.5% of citywide total)
Classification profile 6 Category 1, 2 Category 2, 7 Category 3, 11 Category 4
Alternative delivery potential 20 of 26 services
Primary funding sources Property tax; user fees; interfund allocations; employer and employee
contributions; cable franchise fees; investment earnings; charges to the School
District
Organizational note Administrative Services reports through the Assistant City Manager; the
Executive office is the City Manager's office
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4.4.3 Service Classification Summary
The grouping spans four categories. Its distinguishing feature is the concentration of Category 4 support
services — eleven of the City's twenty-six — reflecting that this is where the City's internal infrastructure
resides.
Category Description Count Expenditures FTEs Share of
grouping
CAT-1 Statutory /
Mandated
6 $1,798,393 10.50 20.5%
CAT-2 Core Services 2 $362,700 — 4.1%
CAT-3 Discretionary /
Enhanced
7 $1,212,903 8.85 13.8%
CAT-4 Support /
Enabling
11 $5,396,775 15.80 61.5%
TOTAL 26 $8,770,771 35.15 100.0%
The two Category 2 services — Legal Counsel and Prosecution Services — are both delivered by outside counsel under
contract and carry no City staffing. Their cost appears as dollars rather than headcount.
4.4.4 Classification Rationale
Statutory functions.
Six services are Category 1. City Clerk functions, public records management, and election
administration rest on Minnesota Statutes Chapters 13 and 13D and on federal and state election law.
Governance and policy support and executive leadership are grounded in Chapters 410 and 412.
Finance's consolidated service line is mandated under Chapter 275 and Chapter 412. None can be
eliminated, though delivery method may be adjusted in some cases — executive leadership carries
limited rather than very limited flexibility, reflecting latitude in how the office is staffed and organized.
Legal counsel and prosecution.
Both are Category 2. The City must have legal representation and must prosecute ordinance and
misdemeanor matters, but neither requires in-house staffing, and both are currently delivered by
outside counsel. Hennepin County does not provide prosecution for petty and misdemeanor offenses,
which is the majority of the municipal caseload — so the function must exist locally even though its
delivery is contracted.
Fee-supported and discretionary services.
Seven services are Category 3. Motor Vehicles and Passport processing are cost-recovering fee services
with private and public alternatives readily available to residents; they are discretionary because their
elimination would not create a crisis. School Board election administration is fully reimbursed by the
School District, leaving the City no net cost. The remainder — public meeting broadcasts, community
engagement and events, social service grant administration, and equity and inclusion coordination —
are policy-driven programs at Council discretion.
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Internal support services.
Eleven services are Category 4, representing 61.5 percent of the grouping's expenditures. They comprise
information technology, human resources, insurance and workers' compensation, dental self-insurance,
flex benefits, building services, internal and external communications, customer service, and
departmental administration. These cannot be eliminated without impairing every other City service,
but they are the most amenable to restructuring, shared delivery, or market comparison.
4.4.5 Enterprise Services — Liquor Operations
Liquor Operations is the City's off-sale retail liquor enterprise and the sole Category 5A service in the
inventory. At $13,513,365 and 23.90 FTE it is the single largest service line in the study, representing
nearly 18 percent of total service operating expenditures.
Municipal liquor operations are permitted in Minnesota but relatively uncommon, and where they exist
they are typically organized as distinct enterprise operations. Richfield's reports through Administrative
Services. For this study it is reported on its own line in all summary tables — not to suggest a
reorganization, but because its scale and enterprise character would otherwise distort the
administrative grouping and obscure the distribution of expenditures across departments.
The operation runs three retail locations and generates net revenue transferred to the General Fund.
One location borders a competing municipal operation, which shapes its trading position.
As an enterprise, Liquor is properly evaluated on business terms rather than service-delivery terms. The
relevant questions are whether it generates a competitive return, how the individual locations perform
relative to one another, and what the opportunity cost of the capital and management attention would
be if deployed elsewhere. Its continuing viability as a net-positive enterprise is the primary criterion for
its retention; its scale means changes in its performance affect the City's overall financial position more
than changes in any other single service.
4.4.6 Alternative Service Delivery Opportunities
Twenty of the grouping's twenty-six services carry identified alternative delivery potential — the highest
proportion of any department in the study apart from Community Development, and a reflection of how
much of this grouping is internal support rather than direct public service.
Prosecution Services.
The County Prosecutor is an available alternative for a portion of the caseload, though the County does
not handle petty and misdemeanor matters that make up most municipal prosecution. The trade-off is
reduced local control over prosecution priorities and case strategy.
Motor Vehicles and Passport processing.
Both services are available from private providers and other public agencies; the City's value proposition
is convenience and bundled customer service. Both are fee-supported, so any transition would reduce
cost and revenue simultaneously. Net impact depends on whether savings exceed revenue loss, and cost
recovery figures reflect direct costs only — a fuller analysis would be required before any decision.
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Information technology.
The largest Category 4 service at $1,758,083 and a candidate for partial or full managed-service delivery.
A substantial share is recovered through interfund allocations, indicating the service is largely self-
funding across departments. A managed-service arrangement could reduce infrastructure overhead,
though specialized municipal system knowledge would need to be weighed against consolidation
efficiency.
Insurance, dental, and flex benefits.
The self-insured programs together represent roughly $1.6 million and are candidates for administrative
overhead comparison against the market, including participation in a public entity insurance consortium.
Human resources.
Multiple departments identified HR responsiveness — particularly position filling — as a constraint on
their operations. Full outsourcing is unlikely to resolve this, but a shared services arrangement with an
adjacent municipality or a more structured internal service agreement may be worth evaluation.
4.4.7 Findings and Observations
The portfolio is diverse and clearly delineated among mandated functions, enterprise operations, and
internal support. Fee-recovering services perform well, reducing reliance on the property tax for service
delivery, though recovery calculations reflect direct costs only.
Two systemic issues surfaced across departments during the study. HR responsiveness in position filling
was raised by multiple departments as an operational constraint, and information technology's cost
recovery through interfund charges makes the true cost of IT to individual departments difficult to see.
A clearer allocation methodology would improve budget decision-making.
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4.5 Recreation Services
4.5.1 Department Overview
The Recreation Services Department provides recreational, social, environmental, and educational
services to the Richfield community. The department manages operations and maintenance of the
Community Center, Wood Lake Nature Center, the Ice Arena, the Adventure Gardens mini-golf facility,
and the outdoor pool, and oversees programming and use of the City's parks. It also administers the
City's recycling, organics, and sustainability programs.
Recreation Services advances City goals by promoting community well-being, expanding access to
recreation, and modeling environmental stewardship. The department works collaboratively with other
City divisions to support major community events and to implement sustainability initiatives.
With 38.63 FTE, Recreation Services is mid-sized by staffing but the broadest in this study by service
scope, inventorying 46 distinct service lines. Park maintenance is delivered by Public Works and is
addressed in Section 4.6, though it directly supports Recreation's programming.
4.5.2 Department Snapshot
Services in inventory 46 — the second-largest count in the study
Total authorized FTEs (2026) 38.63
Operating expenditures (2026) $5,692,156
Classification profile 1 Category 2, 41 Category 3, 4 Category 4
Alternative delivery potential 24 of 46 services
Primary funding sources Property tax; user fees; special revenue funds; donations; grants
Major facilities Community Center · Wood Lake Nature Center · Ice Arena · Outdoor Pool ·
Adventure Gardens · 21 park areas
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4.5.3 Service Classification Summary
Recreation Services has the most distinctive classification profile in the study: 41 of its 46 services are
Category 3, and the department holds no Category 1 services.
Category Description Count Expenditures FTEs Share of
grouping
CAT-2 Core Services 1 $104,200 0.79 1.8%
CAT-3 Discretionary /
Enhanced
41 $4,980,556 35.14 87.5%
CAT-4 Support /
Enabling
4 $607,400 2.70 10.7%
TOTAL 46 $5,692,156 38.63 100.0%
The single Category 2 service is Organized Hauling, the City's solid waste collection program. Solid waste management is
a compliance obligation; organized hauling is the delivery choice the City has made to satisfy it.
4.5.4 Classification Rationale
Facility operations.
Community Center operations, Wood Lake Nature Center facility operations and grounds, ice arena
maintenance and rental, and general pool operations are Category 3. Each is a common municipal
function residents expect and support, and each is grounded in the 2040 Comprehensive Plan. Reduced
operation of these facilities would create maintenance and safety issues and shorten useful life. Notably,
all four carry only limited budget flexibility despite being discretionary — the reason is discussed in
Section 3.4 and again in Section 4.5.5.
Programming.
The department's programming — youth and family, adult and older adult, adaptive, fee-based and free,
Wood Lake education and school programming, skating lessons, and community events — is Category 3
throughout. These services enhance quality of life and expand access, and their reduction would narrow
recreational and enrichment opportunities, particularly for residents with the fewest alternatives. Free
programs are grounded in the social equity goals of the Comprehensive Plan.
Revenue-generating activities.
Concessions, rentals, ticket sales, skate sales and sharpening, and lane rentals are Category 3. Several
are net revenue generators supported by fees and special revenue funds rather than the tax levy.
Eliminating them would reduce expenditures and offsetting revenues simultaneously.
Solid waste and sustainability.
Organized Hauling is Category 2 as the City's chosen mechanism for meeting solid waste management
obligations. Sustainability education and outreach and the organics and recycling drop-off programs are
Category 3, partially supported by SCORE grants.
Departmental support.
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Four services are Category 4: the City program guide and promotion, grant writing and management,
internal sustainability initiatives, and department administration. These enable the department's
programming rather than serving the public directly.
4.5.5 Borderline and Split Services
The department's facility-based services present the clearest analytical tension in the study. Community
Center operations, Wood Lake facility operations, ice arena maintenance, general pool operations, field
rentals, and park development are all classified discretionary, yet all carry only limited budget flexibility.
The reason is that their costs are embedded in buildings and grounds that must be maintained whether
or not programming occurs. The Council retains full discretion over whether to offer these services; it
has considerably less discretion over what they cost while the facilities stand.
This distinction matters for budget deliberation. A reduction in Recreation programming produces
savings roughly proportional to the programming reduced. A reduction in facility operations does not,
unless the underlying facility decision changes.
4.5.6 Alternative Service Delivery Opportunities
Twenty-four of the department's forty-six services carry identified alternative delivery potential. Several
are already delivered under contract, and the options identified fall into three distinct groups.
Services already delivered externally.
Portable toilets and the organics and recycling drop-off programs operate under private contract, and
skating lessons are contracted. These reflect existing practice rather than opportunities for change.
Facility-based services.
For the department's facility-based services — the Community Center, Wood Lake Nature Center, the
ice arena, and the pool — the alternatives identified apply to the concession, rental, lesson, and
programming lines attached to each facility. Because the cost of these services is largely embedded in
the facilities themselves, any alternative arrangement would need to be evaluated at the facility level
rather than service by service.
Programming and events.
Fee-based contract programming for both youth and adults already uses private contractors alongside
in-house delivery, and the appropriate mix is a continuing operational judgment rather than a one-time
decision. The Farmers Market and Community Garden carry non-profit operator potential. Special
events are delivered by City staff with substantial volunteer assistance, and the volunteer contribution is
itself a factor in how they are best delivered.
Twenty-two services carry no identified alternative — principally the free programming, facility rentals,
and warming house operations. The specific alternative identified for each service appears in Appendix
A.
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4.6 Public Works
4.6.1 Department Overview
The Public Works Department delivers and maintains the infrastructure, utility, and environmental
services foundational to the safety, mobility, and quality of life of Richfield's residents. It is the City's
largest department by both service count and operating expenditure, carrying 54 of the 155 services in
the inventory and $17.5 million in operating cost, and it spans every classification category in the
framework.
The department is organized into eight divisions. Street Maintenance, Park Maintenance, Engineering,
Central Garage, and Public Works Administration are tax-supported; Water, Wastewater, and Storm
operate as enterprise utilities. Park Maintenance sits in Public Works though its services directly support
Recreation's facilities and programming.
As a first-ring suburb with a largely built-out infrastructure network developed in the mid-twentieth
century, Richfield faces sustained reinvestment demands across aging streets, utilities, and facilities. The
department responds through proactive asset management, competitive pursuit of state and federal
capital grants, and regional transportation partnerships.
4.6.2 Department Snapshot
Services in inventory 54 — the largest count in the study
Total authorized FTEs (2026) 55.50
Operating expenditures (2026) $17,511,240 (23.0% of citywide total)
Classification profile 11 Category 1, 13 Category 2, 10 Category 3, 11 Category 4, 9 Category 5B
Alternative delivery potential 31 of 54 services
Divisions Street Maintenance · Park Maintenance · Central Garage · Engineering · Water
Utility · Wastewater Utility · Storm Utility · Public Works Administration
Primary funding sources Property tax; utility enterprise funds; internal service fund (Central Garage)
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4.6.3 Service Classification Summary
Public Works is the only department spanning all classification categories, and it holds the majority of
the City's legally mandated services. The table below presents the department by division.
Division Services Expenditures FTEs Predominant categories
Wastewater Utility 4 $4,589,240 8.62 CAT-5B
Water Utility 5 $4,017,920 10.62 CAT-5B
Street Maintenance 15 $3,315,230 13.47 CAT-2 (7), CAT-1 (3)
Park Maintenance 11 $1,799,330 8.67 CAT-3 (7), CAT-2 (4)
Storm Utility 8 $1,768,960 2.07 CAT-1 (7)
Central Garage 4 $1,185,780 4.00 CAT-4
Engineering 4 $607,220 6.05 CAT-2 (2)
Public Works Administration 3 $227,560 2.00 CAT-4
TOTAL 54 $17,511,240 55.50
Street Maintenance and Park Maintenance are budgeted at the division level, as the City could not divide their costs
among sub-services with confidence. Their two division rows are therefore reported as Multi-Category Division
Operations in the citywide category table and are not counted among the 155 classified services. The remaining six
division rows are themselves classified services and are included in both the count and the division totals above.
Staffing notations in Appendix A for individual Public Works services describe staff assigned to an activity rather than full-
time equivalents. Because many employees contribute to several activities — snow operations draw broadly across the
department — these figures exceed division FTE totals and should not be summed.
Wastewater is the department's largest division by expenditure, reflecting Metropolitan Council Environmental Services
treatment charges of $2,629,750 that the City accounts for as operating cost. Vehicle purchasing within Central Garage is
a capital expense and is excluded from the operating figures throughout this report.
4.6.4 Classification Rationale
Mandated services.
Eleven services are Category 1. Street and traffic signal repair and pavement marking are required by
federal law and the Minnesota Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices; noncompliance risks federal-
aid funding and creates liability exposure. Right-of-way tree maintenance rests on state statute. The City
Engineer function is a statutory position. The remaining seven are stormwater services — grit chamber
and catch basin cleaning, facility operation, pond maintenance, utility locates, regulatory compliance,
and administration of the Richfield-Bloomington Watershed Management Organization — all driven by
the federal NPDES program and the Minnesota stormwater permit.
Core infrastructure services.
Thirteen services are Category 2. Street lighting, plowing, road repair, trash and debris collection, and
trail maintenance are basic municipal functions with high community reliance; their elimination would
affect traffic and pedestrian safety and residents' ability to reach work and school. Park mowing,
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building maintenance, play feature maintenance, and paved court maintenance carry the same
character on the parks side, where deferral creates safety hazards and shortens asset life. Diseased tree
inspection, graffiti removal, and engineering permitting complete the category.
Enhanced services.
Ten services are Category 3, concentrated in park and boulevard amenity work: field maintenance,
irrigation, outdoor rinks, park snow plowing, ornamental and median plantings, city events support,
special projects, sidewalk plowing, and forestry tree maintenance beyond the right of way. These
enhance quality of life, and their reduction would narrow recreational opportunity and affect
community appearance without creating an immediate crisis.
Internal support.
Eleven services are Category 4. Fleet management through the Central Garage — vehicle maintenance,
purchasing, and facility maintenance — supports delivery of every other City service, including
mandated ones. GIS and asset management, specialized training, water quality monitoring, the Traffic
Control Committee, redevelopment review, customer service, staff report preparation, and
departmental administration complete the category.
Utility services.
Nine services are Category 5B, covering water and wastewater operations: sampling and reporting,
hydrant repair, utility locates, service inspections, and billing and metering. These are funded through
rates on a full cost-recovery basis. They do not cross-subsidize general fund operations, and general
fund resources are not used to subsidize them.
4.6.5 Borderline and Split Services
The stormwater utility presents a classification worth explaining. Its operating services are classified
Category 1 while water and wastewater are Category 5B, even though all three are enterprise-funded
utility divisions. The distinction rests on what drives the activity: stormwater operations exist principally
to satisfy a federal permit obligation, and the permit dictates the work regardless of funding mechanism.
Water and wastewater operations are structured around delivering a metered service at full cost
recovery.
Specialized training is classified Category 4 although the licenses it maintains support Category 1
activities. The training itself is an enabling function; the mandated work is classified where it occurs.
4.6.6 Alternative Service Delivery Opportunities
Thirty-one of the department's fifty-four services carry identified alternative delivery potential — the
largest number in the study, though that reflects the department's size as much as its structure. Several
services already use contractors alongside City crews.
Maintenance operations.
Private contract alternatives are identified across street and park maintenance: plowing, road repair,
trail maintenance, debris collection, mowing, building and play feature maintenance, field and irrigation
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maintenance, plantings, and forestry work both within and beyond the right of way. Pavement marking
already uses a private contractor. These represent the broadest concentration of contractable work in
the City, though each carries the standard trade-off between cost and responsiveness — particularly for
snow operations, where the City's ability to mobilize broadly across departments is itself a capability.
Fleet and facilities.
The Central Garage Division, vehicle maintenance, and facility maintenance all carry private contract
alternatives; vehicle purchasing uses state contract. The trade-off is responsiveness: the division
maintains equipment for around-the-clock operations and emergency response, and any contracted
arrangement would need to guarantee comparable availability.
Engineering.
Both the Engineering Division and redevelopment review carry private consultant alternatives. The City
retains an in-house engineering staff, which is typical for cities of Richfield's size, and overflow and
specialized project work is a natural candidate for supplementation rather than replacement.
Utility operations.
Utility locates for both water and sewer are performed by a 1 FTE staff position. Utility billing for both
systems carries a private billing service alternative, and sewer service inspections carry a private
contractor alternative. GIS and asset management carries a shared services or contract alternative.
The twenty-three services with no identified alternative are concentrated in stormwater regulatory
compliance and the mandated street functions — work where the obligation, the liability, or both make
direct City delivery the practical choice.
4.6.7 Findings and Observations
Public Works carries the broadest classification range of any department, holding eleven of the City's
twenty-one mandated services alongside ten discretionary ones. That range means budget
conversations about Public Works are really several distinct conversations — about compliance
obligations, about core infrastructure, and about amenity levels — and they should not be conducted as
one.
The department's utility enterprises operate independently of the tax levy on a full cost-recovery basis,
and together account for $10.4 million, or 59 percent of the department's operating expenditures.
Decisions about utility service levels are therefore rate decisions rather than levy decisions, and they
reach residents through a different mechanism than general fund choices.
Aging infrastructure is the department's defining structural challenge. Much of the operating work
catalogued here maintains assets that will require capital reinvestment regardless of how efficiently
they are maintained. The operating classification in this study addresses the cost of maintenance, not
the cost of eventual replacement.
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Section 5: Analysis and Key Findings
5.1 Introduction
Where Section 3 reported the classification results and Section 4 described each department, this
section interprets them. What does the distribution of services across categories show about how
Richfield's service portfolio is structured, and where does that structure create tension between what
the City is obliged to do, what it has chosen to do, and how its resources are actually deployed?
Six findings are presented, each grounded in the departmental data and in patterns visible across
departments rather than within any one of them. This section reports what the classification reveals.
Considerations that follow from these findings — matters the Council may wish to take up, and in what
sequence — are presented in Section 6.
5.2 Budget Flexibility Analysis
5.2.1 The mandatory baseline
Richfield's 21 Category 1 services account for $5,671,172 — approximately 7.5 percent of total service
operating expenditures. That is a low share, and it is characteristic of an established city whose legal
mandates are largely process obligations: records management, elections, financial reporting,
permitting, and code administration. Mandates of that kind consume staff time and administrative
infrastructure rather than large program budgets.
Stormwater is the exception. Seven of the eleven Public Works Category 1 services arise from the
federal NPDES program and the Minnesota stormwater permit, and unlike the City's other mandates
these carry a cost trajectory shaped by external factors: continued development of impervious surface,
aging infrastructure, and changes in storm frequency and intensity. Permit obligations of this kind have
historically tightened rather than relaxed. Richfield's participation in the Richfield-Bloomington
Watershed Management Organization forms part of the same obligation structure.
The implication is that the mandatory baseline is small but not static. The City's legal obligations
consume a modest share of operating expenditure, while the component of that baseline most likely to
grow is also the one least responsive to local discretion.
5.2.2 The discretionary pool
The 70 Category 3 services account for $15,318,815, or approximately 20 percent of operating
expenditures. Forty-five percent of the City's services carry 20 percent of its operating cost.
That relationship cuts in two directions. It indicates a broad quality-of-life portfolio built without
committing a disproportionate share of resources to it. It also means that reductions across
discretionary services produce less fiscal effect than their number would suggest — a large count of
Category 3 services could be reduced for a modest result.
Three characteristics of the discretionary pool qualify how it can be read as available capacity.
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Many Category 3 services generate revenue.
Ice arena concessions, pool programming, facility rentals, and Wood Lake paid programming are
classified discretionary but offset their own costs to varying degrees. Reducing them lowers expenditure
and revenue at the same time, so the net effect of any change is smaller than the gross figure and in
some cases could run the other way.
Not all discretionary services are flexible.
Twelve Category 3 services carry only limited budget flexibility, and they cluster in facility operations —
the Community Center, Wood Lake, the ice arena, the pool, field rentals, and park development. Their
costs are embedded in buildings and grounds maintained whether or not programming occurs. This is
developed in Section 5.3.4.
Some discretionary services carry equity weight.
Free youth, family, and older adult programming and free school skate lessons are classified Category 3
because the City is not obliged to provide them. They are also the recreation services most used by
residents without paid alternatives. Classification measures legal and operational necessity; it does not
measure who bears the consequence of a change.
5.2.3 Support services
The 26 Category 4 services account for $7,417,515, or under 10 percent of operating expenditures. They
cannot be eliminated — they enable the delivery of everything else — but they are distinguishable from
direct services in that the question they pose is how they are provided rather than whether.
The concentration is notable: eleven sit in Administration-Executive-Finance and eleven in Public Works.
The administrative cluster covers information technology, human resources, insurance and self-insured
benefit programs, building services, and communications. The Public Works cluster covers fleet
management through the Central Garage, facility maintenance, GIS and asset management, and
departmental administration.
Sixteen of the 26 carry alternative delivery potential as assessed by the City. These are also the functions
that comparable municipalities have examined for shared arrangements — information technology,
fleet management, geographic information systems, and human resources administration are the
categories most commonly explored among Twin Cities communities at Richfield's scale.
Two characteristics bound what this represents. The category totals $7.4 million, so proportional change
produces correspondingly modest amounts. And several of these functions were identified by the
departments that depend on them as sources of operational friction — human resources responsiveness
in position filling was raised independently by multiple departments — which is a service-quality
observation rather than a cost one.
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5.3 Key Findings
5.3.1 Finding 1 — Fire Department workload is concentrated in one service, and resources are
distributed differently
All four Fire Department services are classified Category 2 — core services the City must continue in
some form, none compelled by a specific statutory mandate. Within that set, workload and resourcing
do not align.
EMS response accounts for approximately 78 percent of the department's roughly 5,100 annual calls.
Hennepin County Medical Center holds the Primary Service Area license for advanced life support in
Richfield, so the City's basic life support first-response role operates alongside a licensed provider rather
than in place of one. The City has identified that parallel coverage as an alternative delivery
consideration.
Fire prevention and inspections carries no separately identified budget, and risk reduction and
education carries a $10,000 allocation for supplies with no dedicated personnel. Both are classified
Category 2 alongside emergency response. The department has identified this capacity gap and has
recorded contracting and staff re-prioritization as available paths, both of which appear in the service
inventory.
The implication is structural rather than evaluative. The service driving the majority of departmental
workload is the one whose cost is least visible in the budget, because all four services draw on a single
allocation and a single staffing complement. The classification places them in the same category; the
budget structure does not distinguish between them. Separating prevention within the budget structure
would make its resourcing visible, which is a precondition for resourcing it deliberately.
5.3.2 Finding 2 — Support services are concentrated and externally deliverable
The 26 Category 4 services are concentrated in two departments and represent under 10 percent of
operating expenditures. Sixteen carry alternative delivery potential as assessed by the City.
Information technology is the largest at $1,758,083 and is substantially recovered through interfund
allocations, meaning it already operates as a shared internal service funded by the departments that use
it. Fleet management through the Central Garage carries a private contract alternative. GIS and asset
management carries a shared services alternative.
The implication is that this is the part of the portfolio where delivery method is most separable from
service level. A change in how these functions are provided does not alter what residents receive, which
is not true of most other categories.
5.3.3 Finding 3 — Budget neutrality is not impact neutrality
The Police Department's public health and environmental health services are substantially grant-funded,
with costs flowing through from state and county reimbursements. They are classified Category 2 and
together account for approximately $1.2 million.
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This creates a distinction the budget flexibility rating cannot capture. These services cost the general
fund very little, because the funding largely originates elsewhere. A reduction would therefore produce
minimal general fund effect while reducing services delivered to lower-income residents, and the study
identified no local provider positioned to absorb them.
Richfield's integration of public and environmental health into the police function is distinctive among
Minnesota first-ring suburbs; the arrangement with Bloomington and Edina is believed to be one of only
two of its kind in the state. The implication is that for this group of services, budget impact and
community impact point in different directions and by different magnitudes.
5.3.4 Finding 4 — Discretionary does not mean reducible
Recreation Services carries 46 services, 41 of them Category 3 — the largest concentration of
discretionary services in the City. The department accounts for $5,692,156, or 7.5 percent of operating
expenditures.
Twelve Category 3 services citywide carry only limited budget flexibility rather than high, and they
cluster almost entirely in Recreation: Community Center operations, Wood Lake facility operations, ice
arena maintenance, general pool operations, field rentals, and park development. What these share is
that their cost is embedded in buildings and grounds. Programming at a facility can be discontinued;
maintaining the facility cannot, while it stands.
The implication is that reductions in Recreation do not scale uniformly. Programming reductions
produce savings roughly proportional to what is reduced. Facility operations do not, unless the
underlying decision about the facility changes. These are different kinds of decision with different
timelines and different consequences, and the classification separates them only indirectly — through
the flexibility rating rather than the category.
A related characteristic: many of Recreation's services generate offsetting revenue through fees, special
revenue funds, and donations. The inventory records funding sources but not net cost by service, so the
degree to which individual services are self-supporting is not established by this study.
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5.3.5 Finding 5 — Alternative delivery potential is broad but unevenly distributed
The City assessed all 155 services for alternative delivery potential and identified 95 — 61 percent of the
inventory. The distribution tracks the classification pattern closely.
Category Services Alt delivery Share Character of the alternative
CAT-1 21 7 33% Delivery method, not whether the service is provided
CAT-2 28 15 54% Service continues; how it is delivered is open
CAT-3 70 51 73% Widest range, including service level
CAT-4 26 16 62% Shared services, consolidation, managed contracts
CAT-5A 1 1 — Enterprise operation
CAT-5B 9 5 56% Rate-funded utility functions
TOTAL 155 95 61%
That discretionary services show the highest rate and mandated services the lowest is the pattern one
would expect if the assessment was applied thoughtfully rather than uniformly. Two observations follow
from the detail behind the figures.
External delivery is already established practice.
A number of services are currently delivered by parties other than City staff. Environmental health
operates under contract with Bloomington. Portable toilets, organics and recycling collection, skating
lessons, and pavement marking are contracted. External delivery is part of how Richfield already
operates rather than a departure from it.
The alternatives identified span several types.
Where the City identified an alternative, it also identified the type most applicable — private contract,
regional or shared-service arrangement, or delivery by a non-profit partner. Contract arrangements are
the most frequently identified, followed by regional options and a small number of non-profit
possibilities. The specific alternative identified for each individual service is recorded in Appendix A.
Identification is not recommendation, and the assessment does not rank. The City recorded, service by
service, whether an alternative appears to exist and of what type. It did not nominate priorities, and in
several instances recorded an alternative as available while indicating the current arrangement is
preferable. No cost, feasibility, market, or community acceptance analysis was performed as part of this
study.
5.3.6 Finding 6 — The liquor enterprise is both a revenue source and a structural dependency
Liquor Operations is the City's sole profit-generating enterprise and, at $13,513,365, the largest single
service in the inventory — nearly 18 percent of total service operating expenditures. Net revenue from
the operation transfers to the General Fund.
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Two structural characteristics follow. The first is competitive: the off-sale retail market in Minnesota has
changed substantially since most municipal operations were established, and Richfield operates four
locations, one of which borders a competing municipal operation. The second is that general fund
services supported by liquor transfers carry a dependency that appears in the budget as administrative
service credits.
This study classifies the service; it does not evaluate the enterprise's financial performance. Net margin,
location-level results, and transfer history would be required for that, and none falls within the scope of
a service classification.
5.4 Cross-Cutting Observations
5.4.1 The fully developed city
Multiple departments independently identified the same underlying condition. Richfield is a fully
developed first-ring suburb. There is no undeveloped land to generate new tax base, the residential and
commercial base is mature, and infrastructure built during the City's period of growth is aging on a
common timeline.
This does not affect the classification of any service. It does shape the context in which the classification
is read. Community Development, Public Works, and Recreation each described a version of the same
constraint from their own vantage point: sustaining an established asset base and service portfolio
against a revenue base that grows slowly.
5.4.2 Equity is concentrated in specific services
The classification process surfaced a group of services whose primary beneficiaries are lower-income or
otherwise vulnerable residents: free youth, family, and older adult recreation programming; public and
environmental health services in the Police Department; federal and state rental housing assistance and
local housing assistance in Community Development; and organized hauling, which serves residents who
would otherwise arrange collection individually.
These services do not share a category. They span Category 2 and Category 3, and their flexibility ratings
range from very limited to high. An exercise organized purely by category would reach them unevenly
and without reference to who relies on them.
The framework is deliberately silent on this dimension. It measures legal obligation and operational
necessity, not distributional consequence — and it would be a less reliable instrument if it embedded
value judgments. The implication is simply that the equity dimension sits alongside the classification
rather than within it.
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5.5 Summary of Findings
Finding Substance
1 Fire Department workload is
concentrated in one service
EMS is approximately 78% of call volume and operates alongside
HCMC's licensed ALS coverage. Fire prevention has no separately
identified budget; risk reduction carries $10,000. All four services are
Category 2 and draw on a single allocation and staffing complement.
2 Support services are concentrated and
externally deliverable
26 Category 4 services, $7,417,515, in two departments, 16 with City-
identified alternatives. Delivery method is more separable from service
level here than in other categories.
3 Budget neutrality is not impact neutrality Grant-funded public and environmental health services cost the general
fund little. Budget impact and community impact point in different
directions and by different magnitudes.
4 Discretionary does not mean reducible 12 Category 3 services carry only limited flexibility, clustered in facility-
bound Recreation. Programming and facility costs behave differently
under reduction.
5 Alternative delivery potential is broad
but uneven
95 of 155 services (61%), from 73% of discretionary services to 33% of
mandated ones. Contract arrangements are the most frequently
identified type, followed by regional and non-profit options.
Identification is not recommendation, and the assessment does not
rank.
6 The liquor enterprise is a revenue source
and a structural dependency
$13,513,365, nearly 18% of operating expenditures, with net revenue
transferring to the General Fund. They are represented in the budget as
administrative service credits.
These findings describe the structure of Richfield's service portfolio as the classification reveals it.
Section 6 presents considerations arising from them, organized by the horizon over which each might be
taken up.
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Section 6: Strategic Considerations
6.1 Introduction
The considerations in this section arise from the findings presented in Section 5. They are organized by
the horizon over which each might reasonably be taken up — immediate, short-term, and medium-term
— rather than by department or category.
They are considerations, not recommendations. The distinction is deliberate and reflects the scope of
this study. The classification framework identifies the role each service plays in Richfield's portfolio and
where latitude exists; it does not determine what the City should do with that latitude. Several of the
items below would require analysis this study did not perform — cost modeling, market testing,
feasibility assessment, or community consultation — before any decision could reasonably be made.
Each consideration states what prompted it, what taking it up would involve, and what it would
produce. Where a consideration depends on another, that relationship is noted.
6.2 Summary of Considerations
Consideration Horizon Arises from
1 Fire Department EMS and prevention operations
analysis
Immediate Finding 1
2 Interim fire inspection capacity Immediate Finding 1
3 Recreation Services net cost analysis Short-term Finding 4
4 Alternative delivery options identified across
departments
Short-term Finding 5
5 Information technology shared services review Short-term Finding 2
6 Contract-based delivery for fee-based
programming
Short-term Finding 5
7 Internal service cost allocation review Short-term Finding 2
8 Equity impact assessment for service changes Medium-term Finding 3
9 Municipal liquor competitive and strategic review Medium-term Finding 6
10 Fleet and equipment collaboration review Medium-term Finding 2
11 Capital asset lifecycle planning Medium-term Findings 4 and 5.4.1
12 Integration of the classification framework into
budget development
Medium-term The framework itself
13 Annual inventory maintenance Ongoing The framework itself
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6.3 Immediate Considerations
Two considerations concern operational questions where information is already available and where the
passage of time affects the options.
Consideration 1 — Fire Department EMS and prevention operations analysis
What prompts it.
EMS response accounts for approximately 78 percent of Fire Department call volume while operating
alongside HCMC's licensed advanced life support coverage. Fire prevention and inspections carries no
separately identified budget, and risk reduction carries $10,000. All four services draw on one allocation
and one staffing complement, so the relationship between workload and resourcing is not visible in the
budget. The department has identified the prevention capacity gap and recorded contracting and staff
re-prioritization as available paths.
What it would involve.
A targeted operations analysis addressing three questions: what the practical difference is between
Richfield's basic life support response and HCMC's advanced life support response for the call types
Richfield typically attends; what a change in first-response medical posture would involve operationally,
contractually, and in public communication; and what the staffing and cost implications of each
alternative would be. Separating prevention within the departmental budget structure would support
this work, and would make prevention resourcing visible independently of any change in EMS posture.
What it would produce.
Quantification of a question the department has already identified. The City and the department both
recognize that inspection capacity requires attention; what is not yet established is the scale of the
reallocation involved, what it would cost, and what effect a change in medical first-response posture
would have on service to residents. The analysis would move the question from acknowledged to
actionable.
Consideration 2 — Interim fire inspection capacity
What prompts it.
Fire prevention and inspections is a Category 2 service without dedicated resourcing. The department
identified the gap and recorded contracting or staff re-prioritization as available paths; both options
originate with the department rather than with this study.
What it would involve.
Determining whether interim inspection capacity is needed and, if so, engaging a qualified private
inspection firm or a regional cooperative on a temporary basis while Consideration 1 proceeds.
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Relationship to Consideration 1.
These are separable. Interim capacity could be arranged without waiting for the operations analysis, and
doing so would not constrain its outcome. Alternatively the City may prefer to await the analysis so that
any arrangement reflects its conclusions.
6.4 Short-Term Considerations
Five considerations concern analysis or exploration that would strengthen the evidence available for
subsequent decisions. Each could be initiated within the current planning cycle.
Consideration 3 — Recreation Services net cost analysis
What prompts it.
Recreation carries 46 services, 41 of them Category 3, and many generate offsetting revenue through
fees, special revenue funds, and donations. The inventory records funding sources but not net cost by
service. Twelve Category 3 services citywide carry only limited flexibility, and they cluster in this
department.
What it would involve.
A service-level and facility-level analysis distinguishing services that substantially support themselves
from those carrying general fund subsidy, and separating programming cost from the facility cost that
continues regardless of programming.
What it would produce.
The evidence base for targeted rather than proportional decisions. Without it, changes in Recreation
would be made without knowing which services are self-supporting, which are subsidized, and which
cannot be reduced at all while the underlying facility operates.
Consideration 4 — Alternative delivery options identified across departments
What prompts it.
The City assessed all 155 services and identified 95 as carrying alternative delivery potential, spanning
private contract, regional or shared-service, and non-profit arrangements. The assessment records
whether an alternative appears to exist and of what type; it does not rank them or nominate any for
action. A number of services are already delivered externally.
What it would involve.
Treating the identified alternatives as a menu available for future exploration rather than a queue. Any
individual option would require cost comparison, market testing, service continuity assessment, and
consideration of community expectation before it could be evaluated — none of which was performed
as part of this study. The alternative identified for each service is recorded in Appendix A.
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What it would produce.
A basis for treating delivery method as a variable in future budget cycles, applied where the City judges
it useful. The value lies in the breadth of the assessment rather than in any particular option within it.
Consideration 5 — Information technology shared services review
What prompts it.
Information technology is the largest Category 4 service at $1,758,083 and is already substantially
recovered through interfund allocations, meaning it operates as a shared internal service funded by the
departments that use it. It is among the functions most commonly examined for shared arrangements
among comparable municipalities.
What it would involve.
Evaluating whether a shared arrangement with one or more neighboring municipalities, a county
partnership, or a state cooperative program could maintain service quality at lower cost. Any such
review would need to treat law enforcement technology separately — computer-aided dispatch, records
management, and body camera infrastructure carry requirements that may not suit consolidation.
Consideration 6 — Contract-based delivery for fee-based programming
What prompts it.
Richfield already uses contracted instructors for some fee-based programming, and both youth and
adult contract programming appear in the inventory alongside their in-house equivalents. The contract
model converts fixed staff cost into variable cost and allows programming to expand or contract with
demand.
What it would involve.
A pilot across a limited number of Category 3 fee-based programs, structured to produce information on
cost, participation, service quality, and operational flexibility before any broader change. The central
design question is whether the City retains programming design and quality control while contracting
delivery, or contracts both.
Consideration 7 — Internal service cost allocation review
What prompts it.
Cost recovery practice varies across support functions including human resources, information
technology, finance, and administrative services. In several cases the allocation methodology appears to
reflect historical practice, and interfund charges make the true cost of some support services to
individual departments difficult to see.
What it would involve.
A review of allocation methodologies for Category 4 services, establishing what each support function
actually costs the departments that consume it.
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What it would produce.
Clearer information for any subsequent conversation about shared services or restructuring.
Consideration 5 in particular is difficult to evaluate without it.
6.5 Medium-Term Considerations
Six considerations concern capabilities and information that would strengthen decision-making over
more than one budget cycle.
Consideration 8 — Equity impact assessment for service changes
What prompts it.
The study identified a group of services whose primary beneficiaries are lower-income or otherwise
vulnerable residents — free recreation programming, public and environmental health services, housing
assistance, and organized hauling. These services span categories and flexibility ratings, so an exercise
organized by classification alone would reach them unevenly. The framework measures legal obligation
and operational necessity; it is silent on distributional consequence, deliberately.
What it would involve.
Developing a simple assessment applied when evaluating service changes that may disproportionately
affect lower-income households, transit-dependent residents, seniors, youth, or other identifiable
groups.
What it would produce.
A means of holding the equity dimension alongside the classification rather than expecting the
classification to carry it.
Consideration 9 — Municipal liquor competitive and strategic review
What prompts it.
Liquor Operations is the City's sole Category 5A enterprise and its largest single service. Net revenue
transfers to the General Fund, creating a dependency that does not appear in departmental budgets.
The off-sale market in Minnesota has changed substantially since most municipal operations were
established.
What it would involve.
A review of competitive position, financial performance by location, and revenue trajectory — including
the magnitude of General Fund reliance on transfers and what would follow if that revenue narrowed.
What it would produce.
A current, evidence-based understanding of the enterprise's position. The purpose is informational: this
study classifies the service but does not evaluate the business.
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Consideration 10 — Fleet and equipment collaboration review
What prompts it.
Fleet management through the Central Garage Division carries an identified alternative, and public
works functions are frequently regional in character.
What it would involve.
An exploratory review of shared fleet arrangements, equipment partnerships, or collaborative
maintenance agreements with neighboring jurisdictions, assessing operational compatibility before any
formal discussion. The division maintains equipment supporting around-the-clock operations and
emergency response, so availability guarantees would be central to any arrangement.
Consideration 11 — Capital asset lifecycle planning
What prompts it.
This study addresses services, not the physical assets that support them. Several findings point at the
same boundary: facility-bound services cannot be reduced while the facility operates; stormwater
obligations carry capital implications; and Richfield's infrastructure, built during a single period of
growth, is aging on a common timeline.
What it would involve.
A lifecycle assessment for key facilities — the outdoor pool, the ice arena, park buildings, and core
Public Works infrastructure — establishing condition, remaining useful life, and projected capital
requirements.
What it would produce.
The missing half of the picture. Service classification establishes what the City provides and where
operating latitude exists. It does not establish what the underlying assets will require, and for a fully
developed city those two questions are difficult to separate in practice.
Consideration 12 — Integration of the framework into budget development
What prompts it.
The classification exists as a completed analysis. Its continuing value depends on whether it becomes
part of how the City works rather than a document produced once.
What it would involve.
Incorporating the classification into the annual budget cycle as a standing reference: departments
confirm classifications and flag changes at the outset; discussion concentrates where latitude exists;
mandated services are addressed in terms of delivery method rather than whether to provide them.
Section 7 sets out the mechanics in more detail.
What it would produce.
Budget conversations that begin from an agreed picture of where discretion actually lies, rather than
from a proportional reduction target applied across departments.
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Consideration 13 — Annual inventory maintenance
What prompts it.
Classifications are not permanent. Legal mandates change, services are added and discontinued, and the
operational necessity of a service can shift over time.
What it would involve.
An annual review in which departments confirm their entries, flag additions and deletions, and note any
change in legal or operational status. This does not require a repeat study — the framework and
decision sequence in Section 2 and Appendix B provide what is needed to make those determinations
internally.
6.6 Note on Sequencing
These considerations differ in purpose, complexity, and horizon, and they are not of equal weight.
Consideration 1 stands somewhat apart. It concerns the department where workload and resourcing are
furthest apart, and it is the one item already identified by the department itself. That gives it a running
start: the question is not whether attention is warranted but what scale of response the facts support.
Several considerations are sequential rather than parallel. The cost allocation review informs the shared
services review. The capital lifecycle assessment informs any question touching facility-bound services.
The Recreation net cost analysis informs how any alternative arrangement for a Recreation facility could
be compared to present practice. Undertaking a dependent item first would produce a decision made
without the information that would have shaped it.
Considerations 12 and 13 differ in kind from the rest. They are not evaluations of particular services but
the means by which the framework remains useful after this study concludes. Their value is cumulative
and depends on repetition rather than on any single application.
The considerations that follow from this study are, finally, a product of what the classification revealed
— not a program the City is obliged to undertake. The framework's purpose is to make the structure of
Richfield's service portfolio visible, so that whatever the City decides to do proceeds from an accurate
picture of what it currently provides, what it is required to provide, and where its latitude actually lies.
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Section 7: Implementation Guidance
7.1 Purpose of This Section
The preceding sections report what Richfield provides, how those services are classified, and what
considerations follow. This section addresses a different question: how the City might use the
framework after this study concludes.
The distinction matters because the classification has two lives. The first is the analysis presented here
— a picture of the service portfolio at a point in time. The second is as a working tool the City applies in
subsequent budget cycles, when evaluating new service requests, and when service circumstances
change. The second is where the durable value lies, and it depends entirely on whether the framework is
used rather than filed.
Nothing in this section is prescriptive. It describes practices that have proven workable elsewhere and
tools produced as part of this engagement. How much of it Richfield adopts, and in what form, is a
matter for the City.
7.2 Prioritization and Sequencing
The considerations in Section 6 differ in cost, complexity, organizational impact, and timing. Where the
City wishes to compare them, a structured approach makes the basis of comparison explicit and open to
debate — which is more useful than an implicit ranking nobody can examine.
7.2.1 A scoring approach
One workable method scores each item against a small set of weighted criteria — financial effect,
implementation complexity, service and community effect, and alignment with adopted priorities. The
City would set the criteria, the scoring range, and the relative weight given to each dimension.
A weighted score is a decision-support device, not a decision. It orders items for discussion; it does not
substitute for judgment about operational necessity, regulatory requirement, or political timing. Its main
value is that it forces the criteria into the open, so that disagreement can be about weightings rather
than about unstated assumptions.
7.2.2 Sequencing principles
Beyond any numerical ordering, five principles bear on sequencing.
Recognize dependencies. Some items produce the information that others require. Undertaking a
dependent item first yields a decision made without the analysis that would have shaped it — Section
6.6 identifies where these relationships exist among the considerations.
Match pace to organizational capacity. Several considerations would draw on the same small group of
staff. Sequencing them to avoid concurrent demands matters more in an organization of Richfield's size
than in a larger one.
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Pilot where feasible. A limited-scope trial produces operational data at low risk and reduces the chance
of committing to an arrangement that proves unsuitable at scale.
Maintain continuity in core services. Changes affecting Category 1 and Category 2 services warrant
transition planning proportionate to the consequence of interruption.
Allow early results to build confidence. Items that produce visible progress support the credibility of
longer-running work, which matters when a program of change extends across more than one budget
cycle.
7.3 Change Management
Implementation depends not only on the soundness of a decision but on how it is communicated and
managed. Well-founded decisions fail when the people affected encounter them without context.
7.3.1 Within the organization
City employees are the most directly affected by service delivery changes, and department heads and
frontline staff need to understand both the reasoning and the process.
Communicate before rather than after. Staff who learn of changes through rumor resist more firmly
than staff who were told directly, whatever the merits of the change.
Explain the framework, not only the conclusion. When employees understand that a classification rests
on documented criteria applied consistently, they are more likely to accept an outcome they dislike than
when it appears arbitrary.
Involve department heads in implementation design. Even where a decision is settled, its execution can
usually be improved by the people closest to the work — particularly on timing, sequencing, and risk.
Consider workforce effects deliberately. Where services are restructured or contracted, redeployment,
transition support, and attrition are worth examining before reductions.
Allow time for transition. Complex changes generally require several months of preparation.
Compressed timelines increase risk and reduce the likelihood of realizing the intended result.
7.3.2 With the Council and the community
Decisions informed by this framework will sometimes be uncomfortable. The classification may show
that a visible and popular service is discretionary, or that a service the City treats as routine carries a
legal obligation it has not fully resourced.
Establish shared understanding of the framework before discussing specific services. A conversation
about categories is easier to have in the abstract than in the middle of a decision about a particular
program.
Frame discussion around where latitude exists rather than around what to cut. The first invites policy
deliberation; the second invites defensive advocacy.
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Separate acceptance of the framework from decisions made using it. The Council can adopt the
classification as an analytical basis without committing to any particular change.
Prepare the rationale for contested classifications in advance. Where a department head or Council
member is likely to dispute a category, the documented reasoning should be available before the
discussion rather than assembled during it.
7.3.3 Implementation risks
Common risks and the practices that address them:
Risk Practice that addresses it
Service interruption during transition
between delivery models
Require an overlap period; do not conclude existing arrangements before an
alternative is operational.
Quality decline following a change,
from inadequate standards or
oversight
Define measurable performance standards in any agreement, with a cure period
and termination for cause.
Transition and management costs
exceeding assumptions
Model full transition cost — including staff time, procurement, and ongoing contract
management — before committing.
Community or Council opposition,
particularly for visible services
Communicate early using the framework; present the matter as a policy choice
rather than a reduction.
Loss of institutional knowledge
through restructuring or attrition
Assess reversibility before changing delivery. For critical services, retain core in-
house capability.
7.4 Performance Monitoring
The framework's continuing usefulness depends on whether results are monitored and the classification
adjusted when circumstances change.
7.4.1 Principles
Align measures with service purpose. Different categories call for different indicators. Statutory services
are measured by compliance; core services by service level and reliability; discretionary services by
utilization, cost recovery, and community benefit; support services by internal service quality and cost
per unit; enterprise operations by financial performance.
Establish a baseline before changing anything. Current cost, service level, response time, utilization, and
outcome data make subsequent comparison meaningful. Without a baseline, the effect of a change
cannot be evaluated.
Measure outputs and outcomes both. Outputs describe what the City delivers; outcomes describe what
results. Either alone gives a partial picture.
Report consistently. Regular reporting supports accountability and informs subsequent budget
discussion, and it accumulates a record that makes trends visible.
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Revise measures as circumstances change. Indicators that no longer inform decisions should be replaced
rather than maintained out of habit.
7.4.2 An annual review
A concise annual review incorporated into the budget and planning cycle would keep the framework
current without requiring substantial effort. Six elements would cover it: any services reclassified during
the year and why; budget performance and cost recovery by category; selected service level indicators;
financial performance of enterprise and utility operations; progress on any considerations taken up; and
new services or operational pressures affecting future resource allocation.
The purpose is maintenance rather than analysis. An annual review of this kind is what keeps a
classification from becoming a historical document.
7.5 Tools for Ongoing Use
Three tools produced through this engagement support continued use of the framework.
The Master Service Inventory.
Appendix A is the foundational document. It records every Richfield service with its classification,
budget, staffing, funding source, legal citation where applicable, alternative delivery assessment, and
supporting rationale. It serves as the primary reference for budget development, service evaluation, and
new service requests, and it is the document the annual review updates.
The classification decision sequence.
Appendix B sets out the decision sequence used in this study. It supports three recurring uses:
evaluating a proposed new service before it enters the budget; reviewing a department's request to
reclassify an existing service, with documented answers at each step; and building shared understanding
among department heads about how classification works.
Applying the framework going forward.
Appendix D outlines one approach to applying the framework after this study concludes, including a
service level options format for presenting the realistic alternatives for a service side by side before a
decision is made.
7.6 Integration with Existing Processes
The framework works best incorporated into processes the City already runs rather than added
alongside them. Four points of integration are natural.
Budget development. The classification serves as a standing reference at budget kickoff, with
departments confirming classifications and noting changes as part of their submissions.
Capital planning. Capital projects supporting mandated and core services carry different weight from
those supporting discretionary ones — the classification makes that distinction explicit rather than
implicit.
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New position requests. Requests that identify which service and category a position supports, together
with the classification rationale, allow staffing decisions to be evaluated on the same basis as service
decisions.
Contract renewals. When a contracted service approaches renewal, re-running the classification and the
alternative delivery assessment provides a periodic check that the arrangement still fits, rather than
renewing by default.
7.7 Communicating Results Publicly
The framework is most useful when it supports honest public discussion of services and tradeoffs.
Residents do not need the seven categories explained in detail; they need clear answers to three
questions.
What does the City actually do? The inventory answers this — 155 services, described plainly, with what
each costs.
What is the City required to do? The classification answers this, and the legal citations support it.
Where does the Council actually have a choice? This is the question the framework is best suited to
answer, and the one most often obscured in budget discussion.
Two cautions apply to public communication. First, classification informs decisions rather than
determining them — describing a service as discretionary is not a statement that it should be reduced,
and that distinction is easily lost in summary. Second, discretionary does not mean unimportant. Many
Category 3 services are highly valued and contribute substantially to quality of life. The classification
identifies where the Council holds authority to make adjustments; it says nothing about whether
adjustments are warranted.
Presenting budget choices within this framework is more candid than presenting each as a crisis, and
more useful than presenting none of the reasoning at all. It allows residents to direct their attention to
the services where different members of the community will hold genuinely different views.
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Section 8: Conclusion
8.1 What the Study Established
The City of Richfield now has a complete, verified inventory of the services it delivers. One hundred fifty-
five services are identified, described, classified, and costed, each traceable to a departmental
submission, a structured interview, and a review by the department that delivers it and by the City's
Finance staff. That inventory did not exist before this study.
The classification distinguishes what the City is legally required to provide from what it has chosen to
provide, and separates both from the internal functions that enable service delivery and the enterprise
operations that run on their own financial logic. Twenty-one services rest on a verified federal or state
mandate. Twenty-eight are locally essential without being legally compelled. Seventy are discretionary.
Twenty-six are internal support. Ten are enterprise or utility operations.
Together these services account for $76,114,998 in annual operating expenditures and 272.83 full-time
equivalent positions, measured consistently across departments on the 2026 Adopted Budget.
8.2 What the Results Show
Three characteristics of the portfolio emerged that were not visible before the services were classified
and costed together.
The relationship between service count and cost is not proportional. Discretionary services are the
largest group by number — 45 percent of the inventory — but account for 20 percent of operating
expenditure. The mandatory baseline is smaller than might be assumed, at 7.5 percent. Where the City
has the most services, it does not have the most money committed.
Category and flexibility are not the same measure. The classification describes obligation; the flexibility
rating describes practical latitude, and the two diverge in both directions. Twelve discretionary services
carry limited flexibility because their costs are embedded in facilities that must be maintained regardless
of programming. Three mandated services carry more latitude than their category implies, because the
obligation governs whether a service is provided rather than at what level. A budget exercise organized
on category alone would reach the wrong services.
The portfolio contains structural relationships that cross departmental lines. Support services
concentrate in two departments and represent the part of the portfolio where delivery method is most
separable from service level. A group of services whose beneficiaries are the residents with fewest
alternatives spans several departments and several categories at once. Enterprise revenue supports
general fund services through a transfer that appears in no departmental budget. None of these
patterns is visible from within a single department's request.
8.3 Services and Assets
One boundary bears restating, because several findings press against it. This study addresses services
rather than the assets that support them. Facility condition, remaining useful life, and capital
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requirements fall outside a service classification, yet they shape what several of the services described
here actually cost to sustain — a relationship the capital planning consideration in Section 6 takes up.
8.4 The Framework Going Forward
The classification has value beyond this report, and that value depends on use rather than on the
document.
A completed inventory answers questions that recur in every budget cycle: what does this service cost,
is the City required to provide it, and where does the Council actually hold discretion. Answering those
questions once, consistently, and with documented reasoning is more useful than answering them
separately each year under time pressure.
Its durability depends on maintenance. Legal mandates change, services are added and discontinued,
and a service that was optional can become necessary. An annual review in which departments confirm
their entries and note what has changed would keep the inventory current without repeating this study,
and Section 7 sets out what that would involve.
The framework is also a communication instrument. Budget decisions are difficult to explain when every
reduction is presented as a crisis and every service as essential. A classification that distinguishes
obligation from choice — and says so publicly, with reasoning attached — allows residents to direct their
attention to the decisions that are genuinely open.
8.5 Closing
Richfield undertook this study as a fully developed city facing the circumstance that condition creates:
an established service portfolio, aging infrastructure, and a tax base that grows slowly. Those pressures
do not resolve through analysis. What analysis can do is ensure that the decisions made in response
proceed from an accurate account of what the City provides, what it costs, and where the choices
actually are.
That account now exists. It is documented in Appendix A, explained in the sections preceding this one,
and available to the City to maintain and apply as it judges useful.
About the Preparation of This Report
Section 1.6 identifies the consulting team that conducted this study. This note describes the tools used
in producing it. The Rapp Consulting Group used AI tools, including Anthropic’s Claude – to check
spreadsheet calculations, test the service delivery inventory for internal consistency, and prepare drafts
of the report text from the firm’s data, analysis and direction. The classification framework, the analysis,
and the conclusions are the firm’s own.
No finding, figure, or recommendation in this report rests on an AI output that a consultant did not
review. Service data was developed with and by City departments and verified with City Staff, and the
final classifications in Appendix A were settled by the City. The Rapp Consulting Group is responsible for
the content of this report and for the professional development judgement it contains.
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Richfield Essential Services Study
2025 – 2026
APPENDICES
Supporting Technical Documentation
This document contains the supporting technical appendices for the Richfield Essential Services Study.
Appendices are provided as a companion to the main report. Appendix A (Master Service Inventory) is
available as a linked spreadsheet.
Appendix A: Master Service Inventory (provided as a linked spreadsheet)
Appendix B: Classification Methodology Details
Appendix C: Glossary of Terms
Appendix D: Applying the Framework
Prepared by Rapp Consulting Group • September 2026
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APPENDIX A: Master Service Inventory
Appendix A is the complete Master Service Inventory: every service the City of Richfield delivers, with its
department, description, classification, legal citation where applicable, annual budget, staffing, budget
flexibility rating, funding sources, alternative delivery assessment, and supporting rationale.
It is provided as a separate spreadsheet rather than reproduced here. At 155 services across twelve
fields, the inventory is a working document — intended to be sorted, filtered, and updated — and it
serves that purpose in its native form. Every figure presented in this report traces to an entry in it.
File: Appendix A — Master Service Inventory (Richfield Essential Services Study, 2026).
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APPENDIX B: Classification Methodology Details
This appendix documents the classification framework and the decision logic used in the Richfield
Essential Services Study. Section 2 of the main report summarizes the methodology for a general
audience. This appendix is intended for audiences who want to examine the criteria behind the
classifications, verify specific classification decisions, or apply this framework in future work.
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B.1 Complete Category Definitions
Each category is defined by specific criteria applied consistently across all services. The following
detailed definitions guided all classification decisions.
Category 1: STATUTORY / LEGALLY MANDATED
Budget Flexibility: ⛔ VERY LIMITED
Services required by federal, state, or local law. The municipality faces legal penalties, loss of state aid, or loss
of governmental authority if these services are not provided.
Key Criteria:
• Required by federal law, state statute, or local ordinance
• No discretion to eliminate the service
• Minimum service standards set by external authority
• Legal penalties exist for non-compliance
• Mandate explicitly stated in statute or ordinance
• IMPORTANT: Many services FEEL mandatory but are not Category 1. Only specific legal citation with
identifiable penalty qualifies.
Examples: Elections administration · Annual financial audits · Property assessment · State-mandated reporting ·
Required inspections · Pension contributions · Workers compensation
Category 2: CORE SERVICES
Budget Flexibility: ⚠️ LIMITED
Services locally deemed essential to the basic mission of municipal government. While not legally required,
elimination would create an immediate public safety, health, or operational crisis. The '30 -Day Test': what
happens in the first 30 days if we eliminate this service?
Key Criteria:
• Locally deemed essential to mission
• High community reliance and expectation
• Elimination creates immediate crisis (within 30 days)
• Central to basic municipal function
• Often no realistic alternative providers
• 30-Day Test: Public safety/health crisis = Cat 2 ● Major disruption, high expectation = Cat 2 ● Complaints
but manageable = Cat 3
Examples: Police patrol and investigation · Fire suppression and EMS · Road maintenance and snow removal · Street
lighting · Basic parks and facilities · Emergency management
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Category 3: DISCRETIONARY / ENHANCED
Budget Flexibility: ✅ HIGH — PRIMARY ZONE FOR BUDGET DECISIONS
Services that enhance quality of life but are not essential to basic municipal function. Can be reduced or
eliminated without immediate crisis. Council has full discretion over service level, delivery method, fee
structure, or continuation.
Key Criteria:
• Optional at council discretion
• Enhance quality of life but not essential to safety/health
• Can be reduced or eliminated without creating crisis
• Private/nonprofit alternatives may exist
• May serve specific community segments
• Generates complaints, not crisis, if eliminated
Examples: Advanced recreation programs · Special events · Economic development · Historic preservation ·
Beautification · Community gardens · Arts programs
Category 4: SUPPORT / ENABLING
Budget Flexibility: ⚡ MODERATE
Internal operations supporting and enabling all other services. Not directly public-facing. Cannot be eliminated
entirely but offer significant efficiency improvement opportunities.
Key Criteria:
• Internal operations, not public-facing
• Cross-cutting functions supporting all departments
• Enable delivery of other services
• Cannot be eliminated but can be optimized
• High overhead (>30% of dept budget) may signal inefficiency
• Key question: not WHETHER to provide but HOW most efficiently
Examples: Human Resources · Information Technology · Finance and Accounting · Fleet Services · Facilities
Management · Legal Services · Risk Management · City Management
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Category 5A: PROFIT-GENERATING ENTERPRISE
Budget Flexibility: ✅ HIGH — BUSINESS DECISION
Services operated specifically to generate net profit that subsidizes general fund operations. Competes in the
marketplace. Should be evaluated as business investments.
Key Criteria:
• Operated to generate profit
• Net revenues transfer to general fund
• Competes in marketplace
• Business risk/return model
• Red flag: losing money 3+ consecutive years
• Red flag: general fund subsidy required
Examples: Municipal liquor stores · Golf courses · Convention centers · Ice arenas (if profitable) · Parking operations
(if profitable)
Category 5B: SELF-SUSTAINING UTILITY
Budget Flexibility: ⛔ VERY LIMITED
Break-even utility operations where full cost is recovered through user rates and fees. Often legally required.
Goal is cost recovery, not profit. Financial sustainability is mandatory.
Key Criteria:
• Break-even operation target
• Full cost recovery through rates
• Often legally required to provide
• Capital-intensive with long-term assets
• Red flag: general fund subsidy required
• Rate increases require public process
Examples: Water treatment and distribution · Wastewater collection and treatment · Stormwater management ·
Solid waste collection · Transit systems
Category 5C: REVENUE-GENERATING REGULATORY
Budget Flexibility: ⚡ MODERATE
Regulatory authority generating revenue above the cost of regulation. Functions as indirect taxation. Revenue
transfers to general fund. Subject to legal and competitive constraints on fee levels.
Key Criteria:
• Regulatory authority generates revenue
• Revenue typically above cost of regulation
• Limited by state law or charter authority
• Competitive implications: fees too high may drive activity elsewhere
• Legal challenge risk if fees deemed excessive
Examples: Electric/gas utility franchise fees · Cable/telecom franchise fees · Right-of-way fees · Building permits
(above cost) · Business licenses (above cost)
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B.2 Classification Decision Tree
The decision tree was the primary classification tool used at every department interview. It routes any
municipal service to one of the seven categories by answering six sequential questions.
Question Answer Classification / Next Step
Q1: Is this service required by
federal, state, or local law?
YES → CATEGORY 1: Statutory/Legally Mandated Verify: specific
citation + identifiable penalty
NO → Continue to Q2
Q2: Does this service primarily
generate revenue or operate on a
business model?
YES → Continue to Q3 (Enterprise)
NO → Continue to Q4
Q3: What is the primary revenue
purpose?
A. Generate profit to
subsidize other services
CATEGORY 5A: Profit-Generating Enterprise
B. Break-even / cost
recovery for utility
CATEGORY 5B: Self-Sustaining Utility
C. Regulatory fees or
franchise revenues
CATEGORY 5C: Revenue-Generating Regulatory
Q4: Is this service internal /
administrative support (not public-
facing)?
YES → CATEGORY 4: Support/Enabling Services
NO → Continue to Q5
Q5: Would elimination create an
immediate public safety or health
crisis? (30-Day Test)
YES → CATEGORY 2: Core Services
NO → Continue to Q6
Q6: Is there strong community
expectation that this service will
be provided?
YES → Likely CATEGORY 2: Core Services (high community
reliance indicator)
NO → CATEGORY 3: Discretionary/Enhanced
Applying the Decision Tree: Important Notes
• Document the rationale at each decision point. Classification without documented reasoning is not
defensible.
• When a service fits multiple categories, classify by its PRIMARY purpose. Split the service into components
if the secondary purpose is significant.
• The 30-Day Test (Q5): Ask what happens in the FIRST 30 DAYS without the service. Public safety or health
crisis → Cat 2. Significant disruption + high community expectation → Cat 2. Complaints but manageable
→ Cat 3.
• Example of service splitting: Building Inspections may split into ‘Building Inspections – Legally Required’
(Cat 1) and ‘Building Inspections – Enhanced Consulting’ (Cat 3).
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B.3 Data Collection and Verification
Each department participated in structured interview sessions conducted to a consistent format across
all four consultants. Sessions confirmed the straightforward classifications drawn from each
department’s written submission and concentrated the available time on borderline services, where the
distinction between one category and another required discussion.
Financial and staffing data were reconciled against the City’s budget documents and personnel records.
Claims of legal mandate required a specific statute or ordinance; where no citation could be identified,
the service was classified on other grounds. Differences between a department’s written submission and
the information developed in interview were documented and resolved before the data advanced.
To keep the framework applied consistently across four consultants and multiple departments, the team
reviewed borderline classifications collectively and compared analogous services across departmental
lines — administrative support in Public Works against administrative support in Administrative Services,
for example — so that similar work received similar treatment regardless of where it sat on the
organizational chart.
Preliminary classifications were shared with departments and with the City Manager for correction of
factual error. The City subsequently conducted its own review of the complete inventory, and the
classifications, budget figures, and staffing counts presented in Appendix A reflect the City’s final
determinations.
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APPENDIX C: Glossary of Terms
The following terms are used throughout the Richfield Essential Services Study. Definitions reflect the
specific meanings given to these terms within this study’s framework; some terms may be used
differently in other contexts.
Term Definition
Alternative Delivery A service delivery model in which a municipal service is provided by a third party rather than
directly by city employees. Options include contracting/outsourcing, regional
cooperation/shared services, public-private partnership (P3), and managed competition. The
term refers to the method of delivery, not elimination of the service.
Budget Flexibility The degree to which a city can exercise discretion over a given service — whether to provide
it, at what level, and through what delivery method. Ranges from Very Limited (legally
mandated, cannot eliminate) to High (discretionary, full council authority).
CAT-1 / Category 1 STATUTORY / LEGALLY MANDATED. Services required by federal, state, or local law. Budget
Flexibility: VERY LIMITED. The city must provide these services; the only discretion is in how
they are delivered. Requires specific statutory citation to qualify.
CAT-2 / Category 2 CORE SERVICES. Services locally deemed essential to basic municipal function. Not legally
required but elimination creates an immediate public safety or operational crisis (the 30-Day
Test). Budget Flexibility: LIMITED.
CAT-3 / Category 3 DISCRETIONARY / ENHANCED SERVICES. Optional quality-of-life services valued by the
community but not essential to basic function. Elimination generates complaints, not crisis.
Budget Flexibility: HIGH. Primary zone for budget decisions.
CAT-4 / Category 4 SUPPORT / ENABLING SERVICES. Internal operations (HR, IT, Finance, Fleet, etc.) that enable
all other services but are not directly public-facing. Cannot be eliminated entirely but offer
significant efficiency opportunities. Budget Flexibility: MODERATE.
CAT-5A / Category 5A PROFIT-GENERATING ENTERPRISE. Services operated to generate net profit that subsidizes
general fund operations. Competes in the marketplace. Budget Flexibility: HIGH. Evaluated as
a business decision.
CAT-5B / Category 5B SELF-SUSTAINING UTILITY. Break-even utility operations where full cost is recovered through
user rates and fees. Often legally required to provide. Budget Flexibility: VERY LIMITED. Must
achieve cost recovery.
CAT-5C / Category 5C REVENUE-GENERATING REGULATORY. Regulatory authority generating revenue above the
cost of regulation (franchise fees, permits, right-of-way). Functions as indirect taxation.
Budget Flexibility: MODERATE.
Classification Decision
Tree
The six-question sequential tool used to classify any municipal service into one of the seven
categories. Questions address legal mandate status, revenue model, internal vs. public-facing
function, and community impact. See Appendix B.
Classification Rationale The documented explanation for why a service was assigned a particular category, referencing
the specific framework criteria applied. Every classification in the Master Service Inventory
must have documented rationale.
Cost Recovery The percentage of a service’s total cost covered by user fees, charges, or enterprise revenues,
rather than by property taxes or the general fund. A 100% cost recovery rate means the
service pays for itself. Category 5B utilities are expected to achieve full cost recovery.
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Term Definition
Enterprise Fund A fund used to account for operations that are financed and operated in a manner similar to
private business enterprises. Enterprise funds are used for Category 5A, 5B, and 5C services
where revenues cover (or are intended to cover) costs. Contrast with General Fund.
Essential Services Study A structured analysis of all services provided by a municipality that classifies each service
using objective criteria and identifies the degree of budget flexibility available. This study is
the first comprehensive Essential Services Study conducted for the City of Richfield.
FTE (Full-Time
Equivalent)
A unit of measure for workforce capacity. One FTE = one full-time employee working a full
year. Part-time positions are expressed as fractions (e.g., a half-time position = 0.5 FTE). Used
to quantify staffing across all services.
General Fund The primary operating fund for most city services. Revenues come primarily from property
taxes, intergovernmental aid, and local option taxes. Contrast with Enterprise Fund. Category
1, 2, 3, and 4 services are typically funded from the general fund.
Legal Mandate A requirement imposed by federal law, state statute, or local ordinance that requires a
municipality to provide a specific service. To qualify as Category 1, the mandate must be
verifiable through a specific statutory citation with an identifiable penalty for non-compliance.
Master Service Inventory Appendix A of this report. A comprehensive spreadsheet listing every service provided by the
City of Richfield with its classification code, budget, FTE count, funding sources, legal citation
(where applicable), and classification rationale. Designed as a living tool for ongoing use.
Multi-Category Division
Operations
The line shown in this report’s citywide category tables for the Street Maintenance and Park
Maintenance Divisions of Public Works. The City budgets these two divisions at the division
level while classifying the individual services delivered within them, so their operating
expenditures — $5,114,560 — are reported on a single line rather than distributed across
categories. The services themselves are counted and classified within the categories above
that line. See Section 3.2.1.
Operating Basis The measurement convention used for every budget figure in this report. Figures reflect the
2026 Adopted Budget on an operating basis — personnel, together with the goods and
services consumed in delivering each service — and exclude capital outlay, depreciation, and
transfers between funds. Figures reported on this basis are not equivalent to the City’s total
adopted budget across all funds. See Sections 1.5 and 3.1.
Service Level The defined quantity and quality of a service provided by the city. For example: road
maintenance frequency, police response time targets, park mowing cycles, or hours of
operation for a facility. Service levels can be adjusted within any category without changing
the classification.
Shared Services An alternative delivery model in which two or more municipalities jointly provide a service,
sharing costs and resources. Also called regional cooperation. Examples include shared
dispatch centers, animal control, and building inspection services.
Total Service Operating
Expenditures
The sum of the annual budgets assigned to the 155 classified services: $76,114,998. Both
words are deliberate — “operating” states the measurement basis, and “service” states the
scope, which is limited to what appears in the service inventory. The figure is not the City’s
total budget, and it is not the equivalent of the City’s own total operating expenditures. See
Section 3.1.
30-Day Test The primary diagnostic test for distinguishing Category 2 (Core) services from Category 3
(Discretionary) services. The test asks: “What happens in the first 30 days if we eliminate this
service?” A public safety or health crisis indicates Category 2. Significant complaints but no
crisis indicates Category 3.
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APPENDIX D: Applying the Framework
Section 7 describes how the City might apply the classification framework after this study concludes.
This appendix shows one instrument that supports it. Where a specific service is under discussion,
presenting the realistic options side by side — rather than a single proposal — lets a decision-maker see
the trade being made. The format below sets the current service level alongside reduced, enhanced, and
alternative-delivery arrangements, each with its cost, staffing effect, and service consequence. It is
illustrative: the options that belong on any given sheet depend on the service, and the City would adapt
the format to its own processes.
Service Information
Service Name:
Department:
Classification: CAT-___ | Budget Flexibility: _______________
Current Annual Budget: $_________ Personnel: $________ Operating: $________
Current FTEs:
Funding Source: ___% Tax-funded ___% Fee-funded ___% Grant ___% Other
Option Description Annual Cost ($) FTE Impact Community / Service Level Impact
A. Current Level Continue as-
is
$_________
(baseline)
N/A Baseline
B. Enhanced Level $_________
(+$_______)
+___
C. Reduced Level $_________ (-
$_______)
-___
D. Alt. Delivery (specify
model):
$_________
(±$_______)
±___
Staff Analysis — Preferred Option: Option ___
Rationale:
Implementation Complexity: Low / Medium / High (circle one) Estimated timeline: _______ months
Key Risks:
Council Decision: Option ___ Date: ___________
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CITY OF RICHFIELD
Essential Services Study
City Council Work Session · September 22, 2026
P REP ARED BY
RAPP CONSULTING GROUP
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ORIGINS
From Strategic Plan to Final Report
2023–2026 STRATEGIC PLAN · INITIATIVE 1d
“Establish essential service delivery plan by 2026”
2023
Strategic Plan
City directs essential
service plan by 2026
September 2025
Project begins
Departments submit their
service inventories, budgets
and staffing
2025–26
Inventory built
Department interviews;
services classified, costs, FTEs,
and alternatives verified
June 2026
Preliminary review
Preliminary inventory
presented
Sept 2026
Final report
Final Report delivered
Rapp Consulting Group Page 82 of 94
HOW TO READ THIS
Cautions
!“Discretionary” does not mean unnecessary
!Identifying an alternative is not proposing one
!Cost is not importance
!Classification is not evaluation
!The totals are not the City's budget
What it does provide
An evidence-based picture of the service
portfolio — what is legally required, what is
operationally essential, and where genuine
flexibility exists.
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WHY THIS STUDY
Determining “Essential”
Commonly assumed:
Police, Fire, e.g.- public safety and health - Essential
Minnesota law:
Those services must be available to a community
•Who provides them (City, County, or another entity)
•At what level
Largely a matter of local choice.
Minnesota cities are political subdivisions.
Services sit on a continuum
1 Required by law
No discretion to stop providing it
2 Necessary to function
Not legally required, but the organization and
community depend on it
3 Deliberately chosen
Provided because the City decided to provide it
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THE PROCESS
Creating the services inventory
1
Departments submitted
Services, budgets and
staffing from every operating
department
2
Department interviews
Legal basis, costs, FTEs and
alternatives reviewed
service by service
3
Classified and detailed
One of seven categories,
with rationale and legal
citation
4
Verified and finalized
Reconciled to the 2026
Adopted Budget; finalized by
the City
One consistent framework, applied across every department
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THE FRAMEWORK
Seven categories, applied to every service
CAT-1 Statutory / Legally Mandated
Required by federal, state or local law
CAT-2 Core Services
Not legally required, but absence creates an immediate crisis
CAT-3 Discretionary / Enhanced
Valued quality-of-life services the City chooses to provide CAT-4 Support / Enabling
Internal functions that let every other service operate
CAT-5A Enterprise / Profit-Generating
Operated as a business; net revenue supports the General Fund
CAT-5B Self-Sustaining Utility
Rate-funded; full cost recovery is the target
CAT-5C Revenue-Generating Regulatory
Retained in the framework — no Richfield service falls here
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The Big Picture
155
Services
identified, described and classified
$76.1M
Total operating expenditures
on a 2026 Adopted Budget basis
272.83
Full-time equivalent positions
allocated to those services
A note on the totals
Operating basis only — excludes capital outlay, depreciation and interfund transfers. Not the City's all-funds budget.
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RESULTS
Richfield's services by classification
Category Services Expenditures Share Budget flexibility
CAT-1 Statutory / Legally Mandated 21 $5,671,172 7.5%Very limited
CAT-2 Core Services 28 $20,472,411 26.9%Limited
CAT-3 Discretionary / Enhanced 70 $15,318,815 20.1%High
CAT-4 Support / Enabling 26 $7,417,515 9.7%Moderate
CAT-5A Enterprise / Profit-Generating 1 $13,513,365 17.8%High
CAT-5B Self-Sustaining Utilities 9 $8,607,160 11.3%Very limited
—Multi-Category Division Operations —$5,114,560 6.7%Varies by service
TOTAL 155 $76,114,998 100.0%
Multi-Category Division Operations: Street and Park Maintenance, budgeted at division level; services within them are classified individually.
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RESULTS
Services and spending by department
A work in progress
Service areas reflect how each
department organizes its work — some
detailed, some consolidated. Refined over
many iterations, and still evolving.
What this shows
The number of services a
department lists says little about
where the money is.
34.8%
29.7%
16.8%
8.4%
7.1%
2.6%
0.6%
23.0%
7.5%
11.5%
18.1%
13.4%
8.7%
17.8%
Public Works
Recreation Services
Admin–Exec–Finance
Police
Community Development
Fire
Liquor Operations
Share of services Share of spending
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WHAT THE CLASSI FICATION SHOWS
Service count and cost are not proportional
Why this matters
Future budget deliberations aimed at
discretionary services would touch
many services to reach a small share of
the budget.
13.5%
18.1%
45.2%
16.8%
0.6%
5.8%
—
7.5%
26.9%
20.1%
9.7%
17.8%
11.3%
6.7%
CAT-1 Mandated
CAT-2 Core
CAT-3 Discretionary
CAT-4 Support
CAT-5A Enterprise
CAT-5B Utilities
Multi-Category Ops
Share of services Share of spending
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PRINCI PAL FINDI NGS
Six findings from the classified portfolio
1 Fire workload is concentrated
in one service
EMS ≈ 78% of call volume; all four Fire
services are Category 2
2 Support/Enabling services are
concentrated and externally
deliverable
26 services · $7.4M · 16 with a City-
identified alternative
3 Budget neutrality is not impact
neutrality
Grant-funded health services — little
General Fund cost, real community
impact
4 Discretionary does not mean
reducible
12 of 70 Category 3 services carry limited
flexibility
5 Alternative delivery potential
is broad but uneven
95 of 155 services — 73% of CAT-3, 33%
of CAT-1
6 The liquor enterprise is both a
revenue source and a
structural dependency
$13.5M · 18% of operating expenditures ·
a single service
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ALTERNAT IVE SERVI CE DELIVERY
Alternative Service Delivery - what it reveals
95 of 155
61% of services
carry a City-identified alternative
delivery option
The distribution follows the classification
CAT-3 Discretionary 73%
CAT-4 Support / Enabling 62%
CAT-5B Utilities 56%
CAT-2 Core 54%
CAT-1 Mandated 33%
What this does not mean
Options identified — not proposed. No cost, feasibility or market analysis performed.
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WHERE THI S POI NT S
Future considerations, by time horizon
Considerations, not recommendations
Immediate 2
•Fire Department EMS and
prevention operations
analysis
•Interim fire inspection
capacity
Short-term 5
•Recreation Services net cost
analysis
•Alternative delivery options
identified across
departments
•Information technology
shared services review
•Contract-based delivery for
fee-based programming
•Internal service cost
allocation review
Medium-term 5
•Equity impact assessment for
service changes
•Municipal liquor competitive
and strategic review
•Fleet and equipment
collaboration review
•Capital asset lifecycle
planning
•Integration of the framework
into budget development
Ongoing 1
•Annual inventory
maintenance
Each described in Section 6 of the report
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IN CLOSING
The City now has…
1 A complete inventory 155 services, with costs, FTEs and alternatives
2 A shared vocabulary Clarifying obligation from choice
3 A work in progress Service areas refined with each budget cycle
Its value depends on maintenance, not on the document.
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