Hey the big issue these days is how can the city save money.  It seems that every elected official and politician is saying the city is broke and needs to save money. 

Now it may be true the city is broke and it’s always true that any entity should save money. The problem is that it’s the very same elected officials and politicians that put the city in this financial mess. Now they want to tell you they can fix it. 

First lets all agree on one thing — politicians lie! If this is something we all agree on, then why would we believe they can fix a financial problem? That’s like asking a bank robber to fix the bank’s security system after they just got caught robbing it. 

I know there’s a lot to talk about when it come to the financial problems the city is facing, but lets just start with one – Outsourcing.  This is by far an absolute scam! Yes in the beginning there will be some money saved by the city when it outsources some of it services, but those savings will soon disappear in a couple years or less, then the balloon payment hits. Oh yes, it’s just like an adjustable rate loan with a teaser rate that will be followed with a balloon payment that will completely wipe you out.

Lets first understand what the real purpose of outsourcing is all about. It was intended to be a temporary fix for an immediate, one-time only emergency. You own a business,say it repairs motors and you are one of a few businesses that repair motors. One day your shop is completely booked with motor repairs, and a regular customer comes in with a bad motor that needs to be fixed immediately, you want to keep their business, so you take it in. What do you do? You call up one of your competing businesses and send it out to be repaired so that you don’t lose that customer. That is outsourcing.  Now by doing that one time you keep your customer and your business.There are a few  other considerations that come into play here - (1) Your shop is still liable for the repairs, so you still have to warranty the work (2) how much more did you have to pay to send it to the other shop.(3) this will cut into your profit margin. These points may not be any problems at all, that is if you only have to do it once in an emergency. 

Now look at it as a regular everyday operation. You hire a company to do your work, you have a contract with that vendor.They agree to a certain price and other terms and conditions. Now in order to keep the price down, the outside vendor must keep their overhead cost low so that they can make a profit — the key here is PROFIT! The city doesn’t need to make a profit on their work. Businesses must make a PROFIT, if they don’t they will go out of business. As cost go up the vendor has to pass on those increased cost to the city and that means raising the cost in the contract – if they don’t they go out of business. The city doesn’t care, they just find another vendor. This becomes a big bad problem when there is a limited number of vendors that do the work or for that matter even bid for the work due to the conditions set by the city. The city then falls at the mercy of the limited number of vendors that do that work, so it doesn’t matter what the city wants to pay, the vendor knows that they have the city over a barrel. This places the city in a difficult situation and having to pay more for the service.  Now the city can’t go back and do the work themselves because they got rid of all the workers and equipment that did that work. Now they’re stuck and it cost more than it did before they started outsourcing. (Here’s a little secret, the city will not disclose this information until those that put this plan in place are long gone.)

This may not appear to be a big deal, but consider who this affects – you the taxpayer/citizen. The quality of work will eventually decline, the time it takes to receive service will increase – longer wait times. The citizen that needs the service now gets low quality work and longer delays in getting service. What once took a day now takes a week, what once was a courtesy service now the citizen must pay a fee. Now who’s saving money?  Who benefits from this outsourcing solution? Not the citizen. Taxes will go up but your service will go down. But you were told that it will save the city money.  Who actually benfits when the city says they need to save money. The vendors will make more money from the city, they will start getting fat contracts with inflated costs and those same vendors might just happen to get some internal help in gaining those contracts. The vendors win, the politicians win and the citizens lose.

This is not a good solution – nor does it save the city money. It only puts more money directly into the pockets of individuals and certain companies. Again, what did we agree on in the beginning. There is a better solution, which would not take anything away from the citizens and save money. Its very simple - hold all supervisors accountable for their departments production. Increased cost come most often from undisciplined operations. The employee moral would improve immediately if they would stop using the workers as the reason for the city’s financial problems, stop taking benefits away and stop cutting pay.

Here’s the Truth — There is nothing being presented by the politicians running for office that will fix our financial problems. They are simply trying to get taxpayer approval to allow them to take money out of the city treasury and give it directly to individuals and specific companies to make them wealthy or wealthier. Don’t fall for it, you’re only going to lose more.