[Durham INC] let's help the City with ideas...

[Randy Pickle]

to make the budget ends meet. I've been saying this everywhere I go. Surely
as a collective unit we can tell them where we see pork or come up with some
place to save some cash.

Here's my 3 ideas:

1) We have a fleet of new garbage trucks; they have yet to get the massive
graphics package that you regularly see on the trash can end of the truck.
So what... We all know it's a garbage truck. Leave the fancy graphics off.
Maybe that will even help with resale...

2) Fleet says we have 2100 units in service as a City; 500 are fire and
safety. Let's leave those alone. That still leaves us 1600 units. Let's cut
that by 25% (down to 1200 units). Between the fuel, maintenance, and gift
giving of them to other cities, that's bound to be a big figure... Fleet
told Budget they needed $7M this next year. When ask how they came to that
figure they were told the computer program they use told them. Budget told
them to tell the computer to figure out how to pay for them since it was so
smart and reduced it to $1M.

3) Employees... IBM laid off a 1000 workers recently. It's the fastest way
to make government leaner (and with less vehicles, that works out as well).
I personally would help add some of those employees to a list (since I have
found recently that some seem to take their jobs for granted). There's no
tenure in government and some off the folks we have working for us have
fallen into a comfort zone where they just think showing up enough. As far
as I know, we still think of it as work. And it's time to get back to it...

We started off the budget process with a $16M gap; at the neighborhood
Engagement Workshop we heard it was $13M; in the budget prep meetings this
week it's now down to $8+M. So we're getting there.

Send me your ideas (not your jokes about it all; be serious) and I'll
forward them on to their targeted individuals. Maybe someone out there has
just the idea that will make it all work. Otherwise get ready to pay more in
property taxes. They never seem to go down, only up... And you have to pay
them every year... So once they go up, we're stuck.

RWP
27 Beverly
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