A special meeting of City Council was held Monday as an orientation for new candidates to become familiar with the city’s various departments and functions.

City Manager Mark Biernacki started the meeting with an overview of his role as city manager and the city’s budget. Biernacki said the city of DeKalb runs on a city manager format of government instead of a traditional mayoral format. The city manager in DeKalb is responsible for overseeing all of the city’s departments. Biernacki said the city has an overall annual budget of $80 million.

City Clerk Diane Wright said the clerk has a number of responsibilities including the keeping of various records and handling FOIA requests.

“A big job we handle is the request for information,” Wright said. “We take all FOIA requests that come to the city with the exception of those that go to the police department.”

Assistant City Manager Rudy Espiritu said his department supports the other city departments to keep them running.

“My department provides administrative support to make sure the other departments have what they need to do their jobs properly,” Espiritu said.

T.J. Moore, director of Public Works, said Public Works used to be two departments–community development and public works–but the two were combined due to attrition. Moore talked about the role of the Department of Public Works in overseeing the DeKalb Taylor Municipal Airport, actively pursuing economic development and maintaining public utilities like water.

Fire Chief Eric Hicks said the DeKalb Fire Department responds to calls in a service area of 77 square miles and operates under two divisions: administrative and operations. He also said there have been some recent changes to the ranks within the Fire Department.

“As of Jan. 1, we are approved to hire a training officer, so we brought back the assistant chief rank,” Hicks said.

Police Chief Gene Lowery said the DeKalb Police Department responded to 40,908 calls in 2012. Lowery said there are ongoing efforts being made to improve public safety, including those established in his 20/20 Vision, and gave an overview of the department.

“The theme of our department now is building partnerships and relationships,” Lowery said.

Lowery also said the volunteer officers in the police department are an often overlooked asset of the department.

“Here’s something you don’t hear much about,” Lowery said. “We have six volunteers in the police department. We train those volunteers like community service officers, and I don’t know what we would do without them.”