Maximus Inc., a Reston, Va., consulting firm, on Thursday gave officials in East Chicago, Gary, Hammond, Hobart and Whiting the full 1,800 pages of its six-month study of government processes.
It recommends a number of changes that could unlock a total of $8 million in untapped public funds through the reduction of duplication of services and the increase of user fees. None of the recommendations involves raising new taxes.
Local officials received an executive summary of the report last month and said they welcomed the free advice they are receiving.
U.S. Rep. Pete Visclosky, D-Ind., praised the cooperation city employees gave Maximus investigators during the course of more than 400 interviews.
Visclosky and Edward Charbonneau, executive director of the Indiana University Northwest's Local Government Academy, spearheaded the study.
The second phase of the study will begin later this year. It takes on the larger job of studying county government.
The study states Hobart has an inadequate software to manage the city's financial transactions and has been cited as a deficiency in state audits.
It also said Hammond needs more advanced financial reporting to understand the government's financial health. It said the time it takes Hammond to pay its vendors' bills and receive tax revenues also hurts finances. Efforts should be found to streamline those processes.
It recommends the cities study the true cost of city services and adopt a new fee schedules. That could generate between $100,000 and $225,000 in additional revenues next year in Hobart and between $373,000 and $747,000 in Hammond.
Maximus states both Hammond and Hobart need to develop a long-term information technology plan that could budget for future automation needs. Maximus said software incompatibility and the collection of irrelevant data are problems in the cities.
The cities should provide goals for each city employee and job performance evaluations to ensure the goals are met so city resources are wisely spent. They said job freezes or cutbacks result in inadequate staffing in some departments.
The cities can increase citizen access and input through automated e-government measures, such as the use of the Internet. This could reduce the number of trips residents would need to make to city hall and the time employees spend face-to-face or on the phone with residents.
Maximus said the city spends $1.1 million a year on garbage collection. It said the enactment of a $5 monthly solid waste collection and disposal fee and an increase in other fees for the more than 9,700 customers could generate $700,000 that would reduce tax subsidies for the service.
Maximus said this will prevent a reduction in the Public Works Department service level and permit the city to buy new equipment in a more timely fashion.
Maximus also recommends Hammond combine the costs of maintaining fleets of trucks used to maintain city water and sewer utilities, as well eliminating the Hammond Sanitary District's system administrator and a clerk.
It also recommend the installation of an automated records system in the Hammond Building Department that would improve enforcement of building codes and crack down on repeat violators.
The Good Government Initiative investigated 13 municipal government agencies:
- East Chicago Civil City Government
- East Chicago Sanitary District
- East Chicago Library
- Gary Civil City Government
- Gary Sanitary District
- Gary Public Transportation Corp.
- Hammond Civil City Government
- Hammond School
- Hammond Library
- Hammond Sanitary District
- Hobart Civil City Government
- Hobart Schools
- Whiting Civil City Government
Read all of the full reports online!
Autor: Bill Dolan
Quelle: The NWI Times, 17.03.2006
