9:30am | With all the Breakwaterpalooza of this past week’s City Council meeting, an important special meeting session slipped under the radar.
City Manager Pat West presented his plan to combine some departments and services in order to create a more lean and efficient government, as the process of approving a Fiscal Year 2011 Budget draws near. West mentioned that Councilmembers have approached him about government realignment ever since he became City Manager in 2007. The presentation was given to Councilmembers during a Budget Oversight Committee meeting just before the regular Council meeting.
West unveiled his plan for a five-pronged budget strategy earlier this year, one of which was Department Reductions. This was the prong that he focused on during Tuesday’s meeting.
West made the case that the elimination of more than 650 City positions since 2004 has created redundancies and inefficiencies in some departments. The time is now for realignment, he said, and West believes that department changes could save between $500,000 and $1,000,000 for the Fiscal Year 2011 budget.
“[The loss of positions] has taken a toll on our operations and in some cases has resulted in a less than efficient service delivery structure,” said West. “Our City Government must adapt its structure. These changes are paramount to our ability to provide the best services possible with the resources available.”
What he means by that, essentially, is West plans to eliminate or merge several city departments and absorb their arms into other departments in order to minimize redundancies and reduce overhead costs. West said that Long Beach is one of the state’s only cities with a separate Civil Service Department and proposed merging it into Human Resources. That move was proposed to City Staff in 2008 and West said he expects a savings of $400,000 annually once fully implemented.
Here are three slides that show West’s vision for department realignment.
As you can see, arms of Community Development, Civil Service, Health & Human Services, Development Services , Financial Management, Human Resources and Parks, Rec & Marine would be moved to already existing departments in an attempt to simplify City government.
West also included ideas for the future that include combining the gas utility and water utility, and combining Library Services with Parks, Rec & Marine.
He also introduced the ideas of creating a two-year budget instead of the currently annual process, and proposed that the responsibility of sidewalk repair and street trees be turned over to homeowners.
West said that not all of the proposed ideas would save money immediately, but were long-term strategies as budget deficits appear to be imminent for the next several years.
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