Here we need to take advantage of the fact that a lot of the older officers in desk jobs will be retiring in the next few years. By not replacing them we can keep our forces up on the street while cutting the payroll at the top where it saves the most.The police make up 32 percent of the 2003 property-tax-supported budget alone; they are getting 23 percent of the cuts. The next two biggest categories are fire and public works - which brings the budget slice to 59 percent.
We have so many chiefs that if they all mustered to the same fire they'd create their own traffic jam, and their getting near retirement too- another budget cutting opportunity. Another opportunity for saving is in equipment costs. About 2/3 of the calls Fire responds to are medical, yet we waste a couple hundred thousand dollar fire truck on these calls. A small pickup truck or van could carry everything needed for these calls, respond quicker, at a tenth the cost.According to the city's 5-year projections, they need to cut $55 million in anticipated spending growth. The police come in for $12 million in cuts, fire for $2 million
With our streets largely rebuilt in the last few decades some savings are possible here too. One possible source of savings would be fitting wing plows to the bigger trucks so they could clear nearly twice as wide a swath in each pass. This would allow one truck to do the work that now often requires two.and public works for $8.4 million.
I wonder how much of this is going directly (software) and indirectly (new hardware needed to run "bloatware" to support crash prone Micro$oft operating systems. By switching to Linux we would get free software that runs on legacy systems. We might not need to buy software or computers for years.Now you have to find $23 million in cuts from other departments: the next biggest are Info Technology ($13 million budget this year),
Another money saver- the company that bought Ricochet wireless broadband out of bankruptcy is offering free service to cities in return for the use of our lightpoles for antenna sites. The "poletop" transponders are already there, we just need to reach an agreement with the new owners of Ricochet to turn them on.
While we're at it lets cancel any expenditures for trunked public service radio systems- they cost million$ and work worse than the current systems.
We could save a lot of money by deregulating a lot of small routine work- a $600 project probably costs more to process and inspect than the permit fees.Inspections (also $13 million, slated for no cuts under the projection),
Licenses ($6 million),
This function should be entirely paid for by licence fees.
Finance ($5 million)
Plenty of room for savings here.
We could save a lot here by not prosecuting a lot of victimless crimes and piddly misdemeanors. Settling suits that we're going to lose anyway would save a lot here also.and City Attorney ($4.6 million).
A sure way to guarantee a strike during the next blizzard and probably a bout of "blue flue" too. City employees are largely underpaid- I'd be driving a city truck instead of a Postal Service one if the city's pay were competitive. And I'd make even more driving a UPS truck...> 2. Cut City employee pay by 2% across the board except for senior staff and
Labor costs are a large (and probably the largest) chunk of the city budget. We can save money relatively painlessly by not replacing all retirees. We also need to offer city employees something tangible to make up for the low pay- thing like low interest/no down payment loans come to mind.
Another huge driver of city costs is health care- perhaps we need to give city employees free walking shoes and bicycles, and let them take them home. We also need to reduce on the job injuries- I don't have the numbers but I suspect that worker's comp for departments like public works, fire, and police is costing us a fortune.
When a quarter of the workforce will be retiring in the next 5 years, who needs layoffs?Layoffs seem one obvious budget solution. They do mean less people doing work, though. This is obviously where union influence will be deployed. It will be interesting to see how strongly councilmembers resist layoffs, and what the public has to say about it.
NRP has been one of the city's most successful programs- perhaps instead of being gored it should be the model of how city services are delivered.That said, I'll repeat my wife's question over breakfast this morning: "If the budget is being cut so much, why SHOULDN'T NRP take its share of the cuts?"
David Brauer (the German spelling, with the "r") King Field
Thank you for advancing the debate David. Dyna Sluyter from Hawthorne -- _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
