Town Budget - Becoming more Efficient

The town budget is ever increasing. Our taxes are continually being increased to meet this exorbitant spending habit. I believe government is by nature inefficient. I believe if we look and evaluate our town processes, inefficiencies can be identified and new technologies and changes in processes will reduce town expenses without reducing the services we have come to enjoy. Just because we have been doing something the same way for decades does not mean there is no other, more efficient way, it can be done.

The best people to identify these inefficiencies and to identify ways to improve the processes and reduce costs are by asking those currently in charge of these areas. If we offer these directors and people some sort of financial incentive to reduce the amount, they spend from their budgets, they will find a way.

For example, if a department spends $50k less then budget, we could give the director 10% of the savings or a $5k as a bonus as their reward. The taxpayer saves money, the level of services remains high, and the individual is rewarded for coming up with the savings plan. Everyone wins.

I have direct, real world experience, at the Federal Level, making a portion of the government more efficient. While working for the Department of Veterans Affairs, (the largest signally managed network in the world) I was able to roll out and implement an IT project which allowed the IT staff throughout the entire VA, globally, to operate more efficiently and be proactive instead of reactive. I took a process which took over a month to complete and reduced the response time down to less than a week. While this project was aimed at making IT management response times shorter, it had an additional side benefit of reducing the need of IT staffing by at least 30%. So, I do have real world experience and confidence that bringing efficiency and savings to government is possible. It cannot happen without the support and mandate from the top levels of government.

As Council Person, I will advocate to create a program which provides incentives to directors and/or staff who come up with and implement ways to reduce expenses resulting in lower taxes while providing the same or better services to our community.