The Observation Deck

Danielle Masters wrote:

I am not sure it is conflicting. What I have found and I am getting closer is that funding was dropped and cut. We have asked for some of the paperwork, and hope to go through it tomorrow.

Could you explain what was the conflict you see is?

One problem I am having is that it claims "summer help" including city parks, streets, etc. So it might come through the employment office.

The conflict I see is that the letter says "The Parks Division has hired temporary student laborers to help maintain Lakewood Park and our other city parks." The letter seems clear to me that these employees were already hired as the letter is in past tense. It also says the students were hired to maintain parks. It doesn't say anything about other places they may be employed.

I am glad you are looking into this because I feel that if the Director of Public Works sends me a letter I should be able to believe what he says. You are saying his letter is false, that is where I see a conflict.

Danielle

I will say that none of my information is coming in from the parks. It could be simple mix-up.

I am willing to bet that no one in the room was more upset than Tony Beno. I have worked with Tony many times, and spent time with him at Mahalls. Tony loves this city, as a mother would a baby.

Last night I learned that the city hall(all) have looked at cuts and money saving opportunities.

Maybe the parks cut too much or became the easy out for others. I was speaking with someone at city hall today that mentioned another service parks employees do that seemed a stretch.

This would be an interesting Bill Call/Don Farris discussion. Both have said to me you can cut 10% of every budget. I always wondered if you could cut 10% of a budget that has been cut 10%, and could you then cut that budget?

It is now time to look at budgets in the light of day so that we can all understand how these choices are made. Does cutting the Kenilworth Fire Station give us clean parks? what does?


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Well Jim, since Bush has been in office, I've gotten pretty good at 10% of 10% cuts. Part of the problem with this whole notion is that it is not too sexy to save money.

You have indicated and I have every reason to believe that the bulk of our costs are in employees and benefits.

Lynn's idea is solid. Replace full time employees with benefits and overtime with part time employees - no overtime and lower benefits. You immediately lower your costs - while increasing employees. And quite possibly you increase the actual number of hours worked.

Staff so that you do not need to pay overtime.

Consider hiring College Work study students for jobs - you only pay a fraction of their salary. (10 - 30%)

Do not attempt to save money by letting urinals run all year - it doesn't work.

Review the vehicles that you currently have. (Does anyone actually know how many vehicles we have?) Do you need all of them? - everywhere I go even in Lorain county - I see Lakewood vechicles. Why do we have so many. Let's pare these down to what we really need - reduce the cost of maintaining so many. If we only need a special vehicle a few times a year, consider renting it instead of buying it. Extend the life by a year or so of the ones that we currently have. Then replace the oldest vehicles with more energy efficient models.

Review the energy costs of the buildings. How can we save money here? We have several buildings that for a reasonable investment could possibly have a significant reduction in energy costs. Start with the worst ones first. See if we can get some grants to do this. Federal and State grants may be available.

Go back to RITA.

Don't sell property or give it away for less than market value. (Medical Center on Detroit). That alone would have paid for the parks for several years.

Eliminate the mainframe if it is still there and replace it with Intel based servers. Everything that goes with a mainframe is significantly more expensive. Extend the life of the PC's in the office 1 additional year.

Consider all of the options in Citisat and seriously do citistat in all departments. Use college work study people to gather the information. Note, I'm not saying to change everything - just seriously consider them.

On the revenue increasing side, consider competing with Cleveland for the sale of water and sewer.

Start Lakewood Muni Power with Sustainable energy.

Build the pennisula.

Provide incentives for Lakewood employees to move to Lakewood and fill our housing. Employ Dept. Administrative heads that live in Lakewood.

Host seminars on bringing your business to Lakewood. Again, we don't need all huge companies - lets fill up the store fronts with businesses.

Likewise host seminars on buying and renting in Lakewood.

Writing tickets and fining people that are DUI, public urination, noise polluters, underage serving, overserving etc. Basically enforce existing laws. I find it difficult to believe that the police aren't earning more than their own salaries by just enforcing the law. Maybe I don't understand this enough.

Ask the people that work at city hall how to save money I bet they have great ideas. I would venture to guess that most of them could figure out how to cut 10% out of their department's budget and not lose anything. Incentivize them for money saving ideas or money generating ideas instead of punishing them for it. (I don't know if they are being punished for it - but that happens in many companies)

Ask citizens for their ideas. Have a contest - actually the Observer could sponsor one and city council could vote on the best ones. Try them. See if they work.

Rather than hire expensive consultants to do studies that we sit on shelves and ignore, consider utilizing local university students to assist with projects. These can be from Cleveland State, CWRU, John Carroll, Oberlin, BW, CIA, Kent, Ohio State, etc. Or ask talented citizens to donate their time. (Just add up the cost of studies in the last 10 years that we are ignoring - and it would fix the park easily.)

On the positive side - offer internships (free salary and no benefits) to some of these students to look into some of our most serious problems and see what ideas they come up with. These students normally have a wealth of professors with a wide range of experience with whom they can consult.

Sell the property north of the Lakewood Center North garage. We don't use it in anyway. People aren't using it as a park either. We took more land than we needed and now it should revert back to being used. Talk to a developer about what they can do with this - homes, condos, what have you.

Raising taxes makes it more difficult to attract residents and businesses. While, we do have good values and shorter driving distances normally than outer suburbs. The truth is that Lakewood has high taxes. The total cost of ownership may not be higher but the perception is that it is.

Convince yourself that you can make cuts that won't affect anyone or affect them only in a very small way. Like anything else, People that think they can do it and people that think they can't are normally right in both cases.

Lynn Farris wrote:You know I keep hearing these stories too that the union won't allow this and that and the other thing. I can't believe that the union has this much control.

This City is run for the benefit of its employees. Most Cities have a bureaucracy in Lakewood the bureaucracy has a City.

Part time employment, outsourcing, job sharing, departmental consolidation, private security services, proper control of overtime, policing of sick time abuse and management actually in control are ideas whose time will never come. The people who run this City, the employees, will never permit it.

Think of City unions as a giant boa constrictor, whenever they see signs of life they squeeze a little bit harder.

Bill -

Part time employment, outsourcing, policing of sick time.

What the heck.

Do you or did you work a part time job? If so did you or your family benefit from all the perks?

Outsourcing - hmmm - maybe we could contract with China.

Policing of sick time - Do you know for a fact that there is abuse? If not why would you infer something like that. Guilty until proven innocent?

Unions a boa constrictor? Ah yes, they have ruined the work ethic of American by bringing about such atrocities as workers comp., eradication of child labor, health care benefits, vacations, pensions, credit unions, etc.