In a move that would seem to be just the beginning of a push to reduce the number lower-paid City of Carlsbad employees, the Carlsbadistan City Council last night voted to “pursue outsourcing of all parks maintenance work” according to a Barbara Henry story in the North County Times.
The move came just a few weeks after city-hired consultants issued a report showing the city could save between $1.7 million and $3.68 million by outsourcing all parks maintenance work, including tree-trimming, lawn mowing, irrigation system repairs and weed prevention. . . Council members emphasized that the ultimate decision to outsource wasn’t happening Tuesday night —- their move simply starts that process and will give them more data on potential cost savings.
According to the story, outsourcing the park maintenance could affect 48 dedicated, skilled City of Carlsbad workers. Hopefully, the council will remember that our parks look as great as they do because we have people who care working on them. All outsourcing does is take our public funds and channel them directly into the hands of private corporations who profit by not paying their workers a living wage. It also pushes accountability further and further away. On the other hand, think of all the money the City could save if it outsourced all of its administration functions?
[Link: North County Times]
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Have you ever looked at the City’s org chart? If you take a close look, you’ll see that Carlsbad is most definitely top heavy. I have an idiot neighbor who works as a manager for the City and apparently has no one actually reporting to her. As a senior consultant for a large accounting firm, it drives me crazy to think that my tax dollars are paying her management salary, health benefits, and pension. And she likes to tell the story of how she has “the system” figured out by getting cash for something called e-leave.
There are plenty of examples of government agencies who have looked closely at their span of control and have enacted cost savings measures by getting the ratio closer to 1:10 or 1:11. I don’t know exactly what Carlsbad’s ratio is, but if there are other “managers” like my neighbor in the City’s ranks, I would fully support an effort by Council to take a closer look. Instead of outsourcing the frontline staff, who are most likely less expensive, clean house of useless middle management.
Opening the door to more undocumented workers. There’s nothing that draws a crowd of illegals like cash.
Why don’t we outsource the city council too?
I work there, and littlebro is EXACTLY correct about supervisiors and middle managers at the city.As a matter of fact if the parks supers and managers were doing anything at all, the baker-tilly report would have looked completely different. Those up the chain of command are the people who will retire with fatass pensions, some as high as $200,000. a year !!! the workers they are targeting don’t make squat in todays economy and will have to get a new job AFTER they retire from the city just to make ends meet. It just blows my mind how uninformed the city manager and council are when it comes to what is really going on here. All of us worker bees took cuts last jan. and now pay much more for what will amount to a small pension should any of us get lucky enough to make it to retirement. WHAT A LEGACY THOSE ON THE COUNCIL WILL LEAVE !
In five years they discover that they had the best workers ever and will start to hire new employees but by then the damage has been done, and they economy will continue to struggle.