Mayor Joe Krovoza was not rushed through his presentation the second time through and took full advantage of his hour long speech to lay out the positive achievements of the past year. But it was the troubling budget picture that formed the backdrop of Tuesday night’s theme.
As he noted, 80% of the city’s general fund budget is labor costs. Mayor Krovoza noted, “To be sure that we have room in our budget for a lot of the amenities we have in the city of Davis, maintaining our parks, keeping our roads in good shape, we have to be focused on labor.”
He pointed out to the audience, both in the council chambers and those who will be watching in the coming weeks on Davis Media Access, that since 2007-08 when the city had 464 employees, it has reduced that number, mostly through attrition and a few limited other reasons, to the current 361 employees.
That represents a reduction of 22 percent of the city’s workforce. “It’s been very hard but I think we’ve done that in a way that has come close to or has maintained services within the city,” the mayor pointed out.
He continued, “Probably the most publicized of staffing cuts happened around our fire department where we used to have 12 firefighters on duty, 24/7, and now through council action we’ve reconfigured how we deploy our fire staffing and we’ve gone from 12 to 11.”
The mayor then made the point that, despite the controversy mostly generated by the firefighters themselves, the staffing cuts implemented this year on the fire department are “still much less of a staffing cut than the city as whole has had.”
He noted that the city has maintained its levels of fire service through the boundary drop with UC Davis. The city has also consolidated the upper levels of management with UC Davis, which, as the mayor pointed out, was suggested by Senator Lois Wolk back in 1994 when she was Mayor of Davis. The observant reader will of course note that Senator Wolk was among the signers of the letter in opposition to the move last fall.
The mayor noted that the staffing reductions will bring about $450,000 in savings coupled with the consolidation of upper management which could bring $220,000 in savings.
“As we will see as we go forward, those are really quite significant savings for the city,” the mayor stated.
The mayor noted that the city reached agreement with five of the seven bargaining units and had to impose contracts on two – DCEA and fire.
“If we hadn’t gone through all of the cost-cutting that we’ve gone through over the last 18 months or so, we would be facing probably about $5 million more in annual costs on our approximately $40 to $42 million general fund,” the mayor stated. “So really very significant savings that we’ve achieved.”
Mayor Krovoza added, “I want to say we’re getting as real as we can on accounting in the city, we don’t want a budget that is built on any kind of gimmicks.”
This is of course a welcome change from previous councils which were accused of balancing budgets using gimmicks and overly-rosy projections. Thus, the city budgets are already taking into account expected hits from the state on increased costs for PERS, finally directing employee shares to be picked up by the employees rather than covered by the city, as it has done for the last decade or so.
“Another thing we are doing as a city is making sure that we’re not deferring long term costs that we really should be spending dollars on today,” the mayor stated. “The biggest area for this is road and we’ve probably got a $30 million deficit in the amount of roads funding that we should have.”
The mayor illustrated the problem of deferred maintenance on pavement. “When pavement is in good condition, when it’s at maybe 40 percent of its life, you can maybe spend four dollars to $7.50 per square yard to slurry seal it or cap seal it,” he explained. “It doesn’t cost that much to keep it in good shape.”
“But if you wait until pavement is at 75% or 90% of its life, then the costs just become tremendous – $26-$27 per square yard, $61 per square yard when you get up into the 90% level,” he noted. “The city council has worked very hard to figure out where we’re going to find money so that we can repair our roads as soon as possible so that these costs don’t multiply.”
He estimates that we should be spending about $5 million to really get on top of the problem with our roads, but with current budget projections, “that is a lot of money, that’s well over 10% (of the current general fund budget). So we’re putting something around $2.5 million away to begin to stop the deterioration of our roads but it’s not going to begin to be as far as we want to go. It’s the best that we can do now.”
In addition to the shortfalls on road funding, the city, the mayor explained, is at about a $5 million structural deficit. “If we were to do nothing, we would be out in the 18-19 budget with a $28 million deficit,” he said. “Even with all of the belt tightening we are still looking at a situation like this.”
That means, he said, we are looking at some sort of revenue measure that he said “will come to the council actually next Tuesday night.”
“The lead idea is probably a half cent sales tax increase that we could put on our June 3 election,” he said. “It could be a parcel tax. We’ll consider that as well.”
But the critical point by Mayor Krovoza was this: “If it were a half-cent sales tax that the council were to adopt, that might bring somewhere between $3.5 and $3.7 million a year into our general fund. That is quite frankly still not enough to meet this structural deficit.”
“So even with a revenue measure, we probably have to have a further belt tightening at the city,” he added.
So once again, the mayor lays out a rather bleak scenario that is actually quite understated. The $5 million deficit appears only to include about $2.5 million annually of what should be at least $5 million. It does not include the projected infrastructure needs for the parks and buildings.
The most likely revenue increase measure will only fund about 68% of the expected current year deficit, which means that the city will have to cut another $1.5 million at least just to pay its budgeted costs.
An economic development project is probably three to five years off in terms of being able to bring added revenue to the city. And the city has already cut 22% of its labor force through attrition.
That is the fiscal reality that we face in Davis, now more than five years after the Great Recession began in September 2008.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
While we are at it, let’s be clear that the Great Recession did not cause our city financial problems. The economy is always cyclical… it goes up and it goes down. We will have another recession and another. So, while we are talking about our general fund deficits, and our deficits for funding infrastructure maintenance, let’s not forget that we also need to rebuild an operating surplus that will carry us through those inevitable next economic downturns. Because tax increases should not be our piggy bank. Tax increases to solve for city fiscal problems that arrive during an economic downturn are punitive. They heap additional harm onto people already significantly harmed by the economic downturn. They favor one neighbor and the expense of harm to another neighbor.
So, to prevent this recurring need to raise taxes, we need to start looking at an operational reserve account as a necessity and part of our regular ongoing prudent fiscal management. And we need safeguards to prevent the use of those funds for anything other than to supplement our revenue during recessions.
Lastly, we need a constant and ongoing mantra in city management to always strive to do more with less. Fiscal responsibility is an ongoing process. We should not be spending one dime more than we have to to deliver needed city services. Unionized labor make this extremely difficult since constantly doing more with less requires a dynamic labor force and unionized labor resists dynamic change. So, if unionized labor will not agree to performance management and flexible work assignment, we should start outsourcing more of our city services to private companies that do this, and have a demonstrated track record for quality service at competitive cost.
Frankly, are you saying that the City of Davis has to both pay all its current bills and put money away into a savings account?
I don’t see how we could do that without raising taxes.
Yes. A savings account needs to be part of the plan. Why do we think that the city is immune to economic changes? All organization that require a budget also require some operational reserve. It is called “insolvency” when an organization runs out of cash to fund its operation. The difference with the business of government is that the politicians can shrug accountability and go back to raise taxes again and again and again. So, unless you support continued raising of tax rates, we need to have an operational reserve.
“While we are at it, let’s be clear that the Great Recession did not cause our city financial problems. ”
That’s an interesting point. In a sense, I agree, the bad policies of the previous decade were exposed when the economy stopped growing. Also, our method for handling the recession contributed to the current problem because instead of making structural changes, we balanced the book by deferring costs which are now coming in.
But I don’t see any way around raising taxes at this point.
I don’t disagree that city management should strive to do more with less; however, I don’t think that gets us to an additional $5 million in cuts.
Let’s assume that there are no unions involved.
I guaranty you that I could spend 2-3 months reviewing all the services and staffing, and cut out $5 million without impacting services in the long run. In fact, I would be that I could cut services and improve service in the long run.
Just off the top of my head, I think we have an assistant city manager that we are paying over $200,000 per year in gross comp. As I understand she is doing the work of an executive secretary. That is the rumor I have heard. I suspect there a lot of administrative jobs that could be consolidated and done away with. I suspect that outsourcing could be used to same money…. especially on the benefits.
But we have the unions.
Hence my opinion that the unions are the source of our problems.
I think we should bring back slave labor, that would solve all of our economic problems….
Union’s themselves are not the problem, it’s certain union practices, keep the baby, throw out the bath water (accept this year you may want to consider collecting and storing that bath water in to use for it for irrigation)
This a serious question that I would really like to know the answer to. If we don’t raise taxes, realistically, what other option do we have that will allow us to pay our bills over the next few years? Can the city borrow money? Could we just not fix the roads? Could we just slash services?
That’s the point that I’ve been making. The city has to balance its budget. On option is to borrow to pay for the capital projects like road repairs. If we don’t fix the roads, the costs will sky rocket. Drive down Olive Drive and turn right onto Richards and look at how bad the roads are.
All of those. We could try to get some economic growth too.
Could we get enough revenue through economic development, say, in the next 2 or even 5 years to cover the projected budget deficit?
I think we’re looking at a situation where in five years maybe a few million dollars in revenue will be realized if everything goes well. I don’t see how we get through the next five years without tax revenue, and I don’t see how we get through without more cuts.
It does not have to be five years. With a sense of urgency, it can be 2-3 years.
Well, we could have not sold off our $100 million dollar land asset for $3.5 million. I think almost everyone opining for tax increases also opined to prevent economic development on Mace 391 and to secure more land for the farmland moat. That move was just a continuation of the same fiscal irresponsibility that got us here.
In essence, because of the Mace 391 decision by the council, additional tax increases will be accurately labeled as to compensate for a $100 million dollar give away to the land preservation extremists, and an extension to the cost of measures R and O. And with this point, it is clear that measures R and O are primary contributors to ongoing fiscal irresponsibility.
My thinking is that there is significant risk that tax increase measures would be defeated… especially when folks like me put significant resources into explaining to the voters how the city gave away a $100 million asset at this time when we were bleeding red ink. But also because of the crappy state of the economy, and the existing family financial pain from all the state and Federal tax increases, and the increase in water and sewer rates…. and the expectation that we are going to need yet ANOTHER bond measure to help the local schools that cannot seem to live within their means.
To hedge the risk that tax increase measures fail, we will have to do five things:
1. Freeze existing pay and city benefit costs for all classes of city workers.
2. Implement a continuous improvement practice in city management to strive to always do more with less.
3. Make it impossible for the existing or future councils to use any of the revenue from the tax increase to fund any new expenses.
4. Make the tax increase temporary.
5. Tie the tax increases to a rigorous economic development plan.
If we do these five things, it will help insure that the tax increase measures will pass.
Frankly, I’m getting mixed messages….
“My thinking is that there is significant risk that tax increase measures would be defeated… especially when folks like me put significant resources into explaining to the voters how the city gave away a $100 million asset at this time when we were bleeding red ink.”
“If we do these five things, it will help insure that the tax increase measures will pass.”
Yes – that was my point. If we do all or most of these things, it will help convince enough voters that tax increases are a good idea. Otherwise, I think we risk the tax increase measures failing.
It is interesting to me how some will post something like 22% of Davis kids are on economic assistance, and sometimes the same people will opine that Davis is filled with people that will gladly pass tax increases and write checks to keep Davis from growing or changing. I think there are extremes at both ends, but there is a bigger set of pure middle class voters that are more fiscally challenged these days and that will play a big part in their voting. They will be thinking “hey, I had to cut more than 10-15% from my budget, so why can’t the city do the same?”
So we better convince these people that there are enough other contributors to long-term fiscal stability in addition to tax increases.
“They will be thinking “hey, I had to cut more than 10-15% from my budget, so why can’t the city do the same?”
To anyone, what percentage of the city budget has been cut?
The mayor said that over 100+ employees positions have been eliminated and new labor contracts have been implemented.
People seem to make a big deal over the fact that we have cut 100+ employee positions in the last couple of years. If we are getting along fine without them now, then why did we hire those people in the first place? I’m willing to bet that we could cut another 100 employees through outsourcing without losing anything in terms of quality of service. Vehicle & equipment maintenance and parks and rec are two places that are ripe for consideration, but I’m sure there are many others.
Our biggest liability by far is employee compensation. Reduce the number of employees and we reduce the magnitude of the problem without the need of renegotiating contracts or changing pension law.
The question we should be asking is what jobs should we not outsource?
In what way would you say we’re getting along fine without them? I think it is more correct to say that the city has managed the best it can without them, it probably did over grow the employee base. But how much further can we go down without having services suffer?
It is called outsourcing David. You replace a City employee with a contracted one. Services stay the same, or in many cases improve. Expenses drop since we won’t have the long-term liability. We don’t need to have a City employee maintain a car, truck or piece of equipment when there are local services available. We don’t need a City employee to trim the trees or mow the lawn when we can contract for the same, or better service for less money. How many other examples do you need? We should limit City employees to those services that absolutely require the control of a City employee, and then outsource the rest.
“People seem to make a big deal over the fact that we have cut 100+ employee positions in the last couple of years”
Frankly suggested that the city needs to tighten it’s belt, I would say getting rid of 20% of it’s work force qualifies as belt tightening.
I don’t think the City budget – the General Fund – has been cut; it has probably increased over the past few years. But salaries and benefits have been going up much faster than revenues, and CalPERS asks for more money each year. And don’t we still have to pay a share of the retirement benefits of employees moving to new jobs or to retirement?
The Aquadarts were just told by the City that it was closing Community Pools, or the Aquadarts had to pay for their operation. The summer program there is huge – close to 700 kids get lessons from about 100 older kids who thus have a summer job of sorts. So City programs are beginning to be impacted.
“Especially when folks like me put significant resources into explaining to the voters how the city gave away a $100 million asset at this time when we were bleeding red ink.”
I hope you are also explaining $100 million is an estimated projection, and that numerous hurdles would have to have been jumped, including a continuous Measure R vote, before we saw this type of revenue generation out of Mace 391.
I’d guess that residents would’ve been likely to approve a Measure R vote regarding this property if we had been given the full economic and social options facing the city.
Instead, the council decision rested on only $1-million (the tiny federal easement payment) and the “honor” issue (keeping earlier agreements made with almost no public awareness).
I’d guess we’ll look back on this pressured decision in a couple decades and wonder how we could have missed such an economic opportunity for the city. But, the deed is done–no need to agonize over it a few months later.
B. Nice, when we look at the current fiscal situation, the hurdles that exist are just as high or higher for any revenue increase via taxes. A Measure J/R vote only requires “50% plus one” Approval of a Parcel Tax takes 66.7%. Hurdles, Hurdles everywhere.
Just want to make sure Frankly is giving people the entire story, I have a feeling he is leaving out some of the details….
Well the same thing can be said for the people who shepherded through the Mace 391 decision. A textbook example of how to keep an issue under the radar for a long enough time so that when it finally does become visible there isn’t enough time to give any alternatives due consideration.
It was a $96.5 million example of “playing hardball.”
I will also be on the side of transparency, and accurate representation of the facts.
I didn’t want to keep Mace 391 open space, but as a result of the decision to put in a conservation easement, I think we need to pay up and raise taxes to cover our obligations.
We also cut car taxes when Arnold came in even though the budget was upside down. Does anyone know if cutting the car tax hurt our road budget?
And to illustrate the point that Democrats and lefties are in a tax-increase frenzy to bail them out of the decades of unsustainable gubment employee payola and entitlement spending…
http://la.streetsblog.org/2014/01/08/is-california-ready-to-raise-its-vehicle-license-fees/
The way this works… the lefty politicians take the tax revenue money that should have been spent on infrastructure and instead hand it over to the unions in the form of fat pay and benefits that then get converted into Democrat campaign donations.
Then the lefty politicians come back crying a river that our roads and building are broken and we have no money to fix them and so they need to increase taxes.
By the way with the stock market up around 30% last year, we can expect state tax revenue to exceed expectations. I don’t know if that will help us out, but with the end of state and UC furloughs, and some new shopping choices near Target, we may also see some upside to our local sales tax revenue.
That will only be true Toad if the holders of those stocks actually cash out their holdings and take the capital gains. Otherwise that run up in value is only a “paper gain” … and you can’t spend paper gains … and if you can’t spend it, it won’t generate any sales tax.
One more point, I have heard posters claim that tax increases are not the answer, but I have yet to see any of these people offer a viable short term solution.
I have asked those opposing taxes to float an alternative balanced budget approach and have yet to see a viable one.
Wow, is that ever disingenuous.
The problem here is that you (and David) still seem to think there is a short-term solution. Those of us who oppose your ‘tax first’ approach are saying that taxes alone will not do the job, whether you are looking at years 1-5 or years 10-20 and beyond.
We need a comprehensive approach that includes investing in economic development, including both an increased marketing efforts to bring new consumers and businesses to town in the short-term, and the development of significant space for a business park to allow existing companies to grow in place for the long-term.
It requires reducing expenses, which primarily means reducing our long-term liabilities for pensions and health care through collective bargaining, pension reform, and outsourcing.
It also means short-term tax increases solely intended to bridge the gap until the longer term efforts come to fruition.
Notice I listed tax increases last. Not because they are not necessary in the short-term, but because they should be viewed as the least desirable aspect of the program. If we are unwilling to implement the more important aspects of the comprehensive approach, economic development and decreased expenses, then tax increases are a completely inappropriate approach as they will not solve the problem.
“The problem here is that you (and David) still seem to think there is a short-term solution.”
Mark, the city is required by law to balance the budget. In short-term, we need to increase revenue to do it. In other writings I have suggested it come with heavy conditions, but at the end of the day, we end up needing to bridge the gap. I don’t disagree with much of the rest of what you say.
“The problem here is that you (and David) still seem to think there is a short-term solution. Those of us who oppose your ‘tax first’ approach are saying that taxes alone will not do the job, whether you are looking at years 1-5 or years 10-20 and beyond.”
I have actually never said that ALL we need is a short term solution. What I have said is that we need a short term solution while we pursue longer term economic growth options.
If anyone disagree’s with this my question to them is without a short term tax increase how do they purpose the city finical survive the next 2 years?
I repeat, there is no short-term solution. Why that is so hard for you to comprehend is beyond me. We only have one option and that is a comprehensive solution that works for both the near-term and the long. Focusing on the short-term is really why we are in this mess after all.
Yes, David, the City is supposed to balance the budget each year, and had they done so honestly in the past we would not be in the financial hole we are in now. Due to this past failure we have no other option but to raise taxes in the near term, and I don’t hear anyone disputing that fact. The difference is you seem to view raising taxes as a first choice solution, when those of us who oppose new taxes view it as a last choice desperate band-aid.
The solution is to have the City Council and Staff fully acknowledge and deal with our liabilities in an open and honest way. Once we know what those liabilities really are, we then need to solve our fiscal problem by reducing our expenses, in particular our un-funded compensation liabilities, and bringing in new revenues through economic development.
Raising taxes is not a solution in either the short or long term.
What I’m having a hard time comprehending is how you think the city is going to survive fiscally over the next couple of years.
Are you saying that they can make up a 5 million deficit by “reducing our expenses, in particular our un-funded compensation liabilities”, because, from what I do understand new revenues through economic development is going to take a while.
Did you read my comment?
I was going to ask you the same thing:-).
California and Federal Law requires cities in our situation to not only have, but implement, a short-term solution. Running a deficit General Fund balance is against the law.
So, its not that there isn’t any short-term solution, it is that all the short-term alternatives are either bad or very painful.
You miss the point. You and others are focused on the immediate cash-flow issue. I am focused on the repair of the City’s overall fiscal problems. Short-term cash-flow directed steps will not help with the long-term repair, in fact, if all we do is the short-term cash-flow fix, we make the long-term issues worse. There are no short-term solutions to the City’s fiscal health issue, just cash-flow Bandaids. We need to plan for the long-term and take care of the entire problem, not just the current fiscal year. A short-term approach to problem solving is what got us into this mess in the first place.
“Short-term cash-flow directed steps will not help with the long-term repair, in fact, if all we do is the short-term cash-flow fix, we make the long-term issues worse. ”
While I agree with this point, do you also agree that the city needs to balance its books in 2014-15 and the only way to do that is a tax increase?
David, I have stated repeatedly and consistently that the City will need to raise taxes to deal with the cash flow problem in the early years, most recently above where I stated:
“Yes, David, the City is supposed to balance the budget each year, and had they done so honestly in the past we would not be in the financial hole we are in now. Due to this past failure we have no other option but to raise taxes in the near term, and I don’t hear anyone disputing that fact.”
Raising taxes however will not be sufficient, even in the short-term. We still need to control spending and look to increase revenues in other ways, including the improved marketing efforts that have been put forth by a variety of groups.
My point all along however has been that these short-term efforts are not a solution to our fiscal problem. They are only a band-aid, with the solution requiring many more steps that we all need to commit to up front or we are doomed to fail.
I’d like to see what the staff has come up with on their identification of ideas to reduce 10-15% from current spending. I’m convinced that employees know best from where the least painful cuts could come. Let’s see the results of this exercise. Has it been completed?
The terrible fiscal situation doesn’t have a single solution, even short term.
Past city managers and councils have put off needed items to balance the budget. Kicking the cans yet again is a short-term solution (even if it’s a bad one, making the long-term problem worse).
Voters considering new tax increases need to know that city leaders have done everything else before going this short-term route.
How much do you project 10%-15% cut in spending will save the city?
According to the mayor’s speech last night the projected earnings from a half cent tax increase will not cover the 5 million deficit the city is facing. So additional staff spending cuts may still be necessary.
The general fund budget is $40 million per year give or take. $5 million is 12.5%
I’ll take a few;-)
Since I don’t have the figures, I’ll go with Frankly’s $5-million per year. Will that help? But, maybe just $3-million would give voters the confidence they need to approve some additional taxes. My guess is that a significant amount of street repair and other items gets pushed into the unfunded pile to get through the next two years.
Putting off street repair would be unfortunate, as apparently repairs get exponentially more expensive the longer you wait. I’d rather pay less upfront, then more over the long term, which is why I avoid credit card balances and loans when possible. If a sale/parcel tax now means we are able to fix our roads at a significantly cheaper price it seems like a wise fiscal move.
Absolutely right B. Nice. The fiscal implications of a decision to further defer street maintenance are frightening if you look at the graph below:
http://vanderhawk.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/ConditionCurve21.png
The Pavement Condition Index (PCI) of our streets is already at the level of the low 60’s, which is right on the border between Fair and Poor, which is also the point where the cost curve changes dramatically as the graphic clearly shows. Choosing not to spend $1 now in exchange for spending $4 to $5 in the very near future is not a fiscally wise decision.
Well there is another way to frame your last point Matt.
Our road maintenance deficit derives from a structural fiscal deficit. And that structural fiscal deficit is derived from too little revenue to the city combined with too much spending on city labor. The road maintenance deficit did not derived from too low tax rates. There was never any previous discussion about Davis having too low tax rates.
There is an ethical and moral argument in using tax increases as a sort of “bailout” for those two previous failures to perform. And frankly it is not that we just discovered this deficit. Previous councils ignored it. And they very well ignored it because they knew good people like you and B. Nice would make the same arguments being made that we “have to” raise taxes.
And if we do, they would be correct. And lessons will not be learned because they were correct.
So are you saying the city needs to declare bankruptcy in order to learn its lesson?
I’d have more sympathy with your argument if voters had re-elected the people that you say caused these problems. But they didn’t. They voted in council members committed to fixing problems and who have taken significant steps to do so.
Like vote to keep Mace 391 as the revenue cash cow it was?
And if we are going to make the case about fiscally-wise decisions… let’s consider Mace 391.
“I’d like to see what the staff has come up with on their identification of ideas to reduce 10-15% from current spending. I’m convinced that employees know best from where the least painful cuts could come. Let’s see the results of this exercise. Has it been completed?”
Do you know if staff has ever been asked to this? My guess is that you are correct they may have good insight on ways to save money in a painless way.
“Do you know if staff has ever been asked to this?”
I believe staff has been asked this regularly for quite a few years now. The easy cuts have all been made.
I would have assumed this to be the case. I’m wondering if iPad Guy has reason to believe otherwise.
Mr./Ms. Nice, is it your suspicion that iPad Guy has access to inside information?
I’ve got suspicions but they are not about iPad Guy.
Thanks a lot. Actually, I read in The Vanguard recently that just such an assignment has been given to the staff (per David).
Easy or not so easy, they would have valuable insight about what things should be targeted next.
See also, Jim’s comment. Most city employees are busy doing their appointed tasks. Continually looking how to “do more with less” takes away from that. If Frankly and others are having staff looking for doing more for less, they are either uncompensating their staff (volunteer or lose your job), paying overtime, and/or have more employees than they need.
hpierce, there is a serious logical disconnect in the argument you put forward here. There is copious documentation that all the measures of Productivity in the US Economy (both at the macro and micro levels) show that Productivity is increasing, and has been increasing steadily and markedly over the past three decades. A simple definition of Productivity is a combination of “doing more with what you have” and “doing more with less.” Resource allocation to the achievement of a specific set of goals is a dynamic process. You appear to be arguing that in Davis that process is no longer dynamic, rather it is static. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Davis is committed to innovation, and innovation produces Productivity gains, and Productivity gains allow us to do more with less.
hpierce, I don’t know what your professional background is, but I have been managing teams, departments, divisions and companies to constantly do more with less as a standard performance requirement for most of my working life.
Today one name given the principle is LEAN Operations.
Lean operations are business practices that use as little time, inventory, supplies and work as possible to create a dependable product or service. The less that is used, the less waste occurs, and the more money the business saves.
The principles of Lean Operations derived from Lean Manufacturing which derived from Six Sigma which derived from Process Reengineering which derived from Total Quality Management, etc., etc., I have been through it all throughout my career.
Usually, the pushback against any of these attempts to get a workforce to do more with less is simply a sign that there are poorly motivated and uninspired employees… it can include management too.
Inefficiencies grow like weeds in every organization. There are many reasons for it, but suffice to say that managing to peak performance and peak efficiency rubs against the grain of human nature. More precisely, it is the tendency for experienced workers to seek the path of least resistance, to monopolize information and to build controlling bureaucracies. Once those people dig in, it is very difficult to implement change. In private non-unionized companies there tends to be some turn-over when the organization transforms to LEAN principles of management. With some exception, unionized companies generally don’t attempt it unless there is a financial crisis in the company that results in massive layoffs and rebuilding. More senior workers can be convinced that they are already working as hard as they can and they have zero capacity to take on another task. More senior workers have a greater tendency to resist change where they sense risk to their perception of achieved power and pecking order.
What many companies do to transform a bloated workforce to a lean operation is to outsource. Call it shock treatment. When the employee gets assimilated by the outsourcer, it immediately destructs the monopolies and pecking orders, and it causes an almost immediate transformation of the worker mindset. In some cases the outsourcer provides new career options previously unavailable to the employees. In other cases, the change provides perspective for what the new job requirements are and those that can do, and those that cannot, leave.
I have never failed to get my teams to do more with less. There is always some inefficiency to cut and trim. I am guessing that there is still copious inefficiency within many departments of the city.
Now, one consequence of doing more with less includes automation. And automation is the single biggest killer of jobs as we have moved to an information-based economy.
The idea is that you do more with less to grow an organization… to provide better service, to build more advanced products that the workforce can handle because they constantly shed unnecessary duties and fix inefficient processes.
I suspect most people with their professional experience in the public sector will struggle to comprehend these concepts because theirs was a history of constantly doing less with more while complaining that they still never had enough.
I was in a building the other day when an energy audit was being conducted. It was recommended that at the moments the lights did not need to be on because the numerous large windows provided plenty of natural light.
The response from one of the people who worked in the room was that when the blinds were open the room got to hot, I need to point out that while she was saying this the heat was blasting.
This to me is an example of someone in appropriately digging in their heels.
Agree. That is an example. And the employees fond of digging in his heels will do it for almost everything that appears it will require some extra effort.
hpierce, if city employees aren’t seriously engaged in planning for improvements in the operations they handle, we’d be missing out on an important source of knowledge. Strategic planning takes some time away from “doing appointed tasks,” but it’s worth the effort even if the fiscal house isn’t in crisis.
Well said iPad Guy. Very well said.