[Durham INC] Lets stop insulting city employees: let's help the City with ideas...

[Kelly Jarrett]

Randy and fellow citizens.

Cut the advertising on the fleet. Fine. Cut down the size of the fleet. 
Fine. But I must take exception to the suggestion and tone of item #3 
here. First, in a recession where millions of Americans have lost jobs, 
including some of our friends and neighbors, to snidely call for the 
termination of city employees in a public listserv like this is not even 
remotely funny. The people whose jobs you're glibly threatening here are 
neighbors and colleagues and people likely to be answering the phones to 
respond to your demands and inquiries. After reading this, I know how I 
would respond to you were I an employee--so thank God I'm not and those 
who are will maintain a professional demeanor with you.

Moreover, given the staff reductions that have already occurred through 
elimination and vacancy of empty positions, many of the front line 
workers in these jobs have already had to take on additional job 
responsibilities--usually with no financial compensation--and many 
offices are already, as you say, "lean." Perhaps part of what's making 
you unhappy with city employees is that many are already working hard 
every day and cannot keep up with the demand for more and more services 
from fewer staff with less resources.

It is true that you can sometimes encounter an employee--at the city or 
anywhere else--who is having a bad day and whose attitude or performance 
may be less that excellent. However, in my experience, this is the 
exception rather than the rule when I've had to deal with Durham city 
employees. I've had workers and administrators from several city 
departments contact me to follow up on Durham One-Call reports I've 
filed . . . . and on one occasion this call came on a Saturday morning.

I encourage the city council, manager, and budget department to do 
everything they can to avoid any layoffs.

Best,
Kelly Jarrett


Randy Pickle wrote:
> 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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