Well its not insignificant that Launceston commenced the new financial year by sacking 11 ‘asphalters’ for apparently being too expensive to keep.
It’s the same old, same old economic rationalism that usually ends up demonstrating the opposite to what is promised.
However, just for a moment let’s imagine that the strategy works as general manager Robert Dobrzynski promises.
After that take the argument to somewhere interesting in regard to managing the city’s budget.
Rumour has it that the LCC staff ratio between doers (outside workers) and administrators (desk workers) is currently around about 20 something percent doers, 70 something percent desk workers.
To be generous, the LCC bureaucracy appears to be overblown.
Any bureaucracy needs to administer itself but the key is what percentage of its budget is invested in maintaining the ‘bureaucratic machine’. A good proportion of the 70 plus percent of desk workers will be dedicated to bureaucratic machine maintenance.
It would be interesting if LCC’s aldermen had the bottle to demand an credible audit of the relative costs of bureau maintenance, ratepayer admin services and practical service deliverers.
The result would be interesting for all to see.
However, if the audit ever gets to be done, ratepayers are highly unlikely find out even the smallest detail even if they take out an FOI.
However presuming for a moment this information gets to see the light of day, with that kind of information to hand the next proposition aldermen might consider is what money could be saved, and how much the ratepayers would save, if LCC was economically rationalised under a new business model dedicated to delivering value for money.
The first department that could be rationalised would be LCC’s Finance Dept. There is a number of external service providers that could handle this and very competitively. LCC ratepayers would win and a nonperforming operation could be dismissed and replaced with an operation that could deliver.
After that, LCC’s Waste Management could be outsourced, sorry, rationalised. This might even mean that the infrastructure committed to waste management could be reconfigured to resource recovery with the operator paying dividends to investors, the region’s waste being managed sustainably and the ratepayers having a financial burden relieved.
After that, Infrastructure Management could also be outsourced. Reportedly there are contractors available to take on the work with plant and equipment in hand. The competition for contract work would ensure savings to ratepayers resulting in reduced need for rate increases and possibly better quality work on the ground.
After that, LCC’s Parks and Recreation team could be replaced with outsourced contractors. Clearly there would be savings to be had here also and there would be opportunities to upgrade the service outcomes to boot.
After that, LCC could contract out its Security Services and Compliance Policing. Plus, there are additional opportunities to rationalise LCC’s so called services towards achieving more affordable and better quality services to the city’s ratepayers and in ways that would be fully accountable.
However, LCC’s current operational managers are not likely to facilitate any such audit that would point towards delivering services in this kind of way and more affordable too. Why? Well its quite simple really as the argument for consistently increasing responsibilities, and thus bigger salaries, would be counteracted along with unsustainable administration being put to one side for the benefit of ratepayers.
Another thing, currently the people employed to manage and deliver various services need the assistance of consultants to tell them how to do their job – the one they are salaried to do. Outsourced service providers are unlikely to afford the luxury of consultants employed to do their work for them. That would mean large chunks of cash could be saved, $30K to $50K at a time, thus saving ratepayers a zillions.
Gordon Yates July 2013
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