May 28, 2009 in City

Doug Clark: Saving money and brain cells: Now that’s efficient

• Print
• Email
• Share

Proving that they’re gol-darned serious about saving our tax dollars, Spokane City Council members voted Tuesday night to hire a new efficiency expert.

And they’re going pay this person about $120,000 a year (in wages and benefits) until he or she comes up with some really terrific ways to save money.

You know, sometimes I have this horrible nightmare. I dream that something happens to our politicians and they all suddenly start making sense.

Which would leave me with nothing to write about.

It’s awful, I tell you – just awful.

I always wake up, thank God. Then it takes me a moment or two to stop shaking. Once I calm down I realize what a silly dream it was and start laughing.

Making sense? Politicians?

Whoa. No more before-bed pepperoni and pineapple pizza for Doug.

City Hall is never going to stop handing me material.

That’s because getting honest work out of a politician is like getting a retirement fund out of a slot machine.

Now I realize that economics is a complicated subject. I was a music major in college before I decided that a journalism career would pay more.

That should tell you all you need to know about my business acumen.

But though I hardly qualify as an efficiency expert, I think I can come up with a few ways to help the council trim the fat.

First let’s take a look at the facts.

Spokane has been hit hard by the recession. The situation is so bleak that city leaders expect a budget shortfall next year. We may have to lay off a bunch of city employees, and that really sucks.

So what can we do?

Hey. Wait a minute.

Now this is just coming off the top of my head. But I think we can save about $120,000 by …

NOT HIRING an efficiency expert.

I’m sort of surprised no council members saw this, too.

But that’s what happens once you win an election and start representing the people.

You lose your sense of reality as well as your soul.

Take that aforementioned figure – $120,000.

That’s a pile of money to you and me. To an elected official, however, $120,000 is just a couple of numbers followed by some zeros.

This isn’t the first time Spokane has wasted a ton of money to become more financially responsible.

Earlier this year, for example, the council agreed to give some Indiana outfit up to 90 grand to help 16 city workers become better people.

Weird, I thought that’s what the Miss Manners column was for.

And Spokane Mayor Mary Verner decided to ignore that dubious efficiency report from a California consulting group for which Spokane had previously coughed up $260,000.

I wouldn’t have gone along with either one of these boondoggles – especially that California report.

California may be the most mismanaged state in the nation. The only thing running well in California is Arnold Schwarzenegger’s limo.

So, um, let me do some calculating.

Oh, my gosh! I just saved Spokane $470,000.

Well, whattaya know. Becoming more efficient is a lot less costly than you’d think.

Doug Clark is a columnist for The Spokesman-Review. He can be reached at (509) 459-5432 or by e-mail at dougc@spokesman.com.

Two comments on this story so far. Add yours!

• 

  George_Sands on May 28 at 1:16 p.m.

  Isn’t their “efficiency” expert a realtor? and if he was REALLY efficient, he would not cost $120K. Heck for that much we could get his face on 1000 benches for a month or one bench for 1000 months.

  They (the City) would have been better served to have just followed Deming’s 14 points instead of some snake oil salesman pushing bunk.

  1.”Create constancy of purpose towards improvement”. Replace short-term reaction with long-term planning.

  2.”Adopt the new philosophy”. The implication is that management should actually adopt his philosophy, rather than merely expect the workforce to do so.

  3.”Cease dependence on inspection”. If variation is reduced, there is no need to inspect manufactured items for defects, because there won’t be any.

  4.”Move towards a single supplier for any one item.” Multiple suppliers mean variation between feedstocks.

  5.”Improve constantly and forever”. Constantly strive to reduce variation.

  6.”Institute training on the job”. If people are inadequately trained, they will not all work the same way, and this will introduce variation.

  7.”Institute leadership”. Deming makes a distinction between leadership and mere supervision. The latter is quota- and target-based.

  8.”Drive out fear”. Deming sees management by fear as counter- productive in the long term, because it prevents workers from acting in the organisation’s best interests.

  9.”Break down barriers between departments”. Another idea central to TQM is the concept of the ‘internal customer’, that each department serves not the management, but the other departments that use its outputs.

  10.”Eliminate slogans”. Another central TQM idea is that it’s not people who make most mistakes - it’s the process they are working within. Harassing the workforce without improving the processes they use is counter-productive.

  11.”Eliminate management by objectives”. Deming saw production targets as encouraging the delivery of poor-quality goods.

  12.”Remove barriers to pride of workmanship”. Many of the other problems outlined reduce worker satisfaction.

  13.”Institute education and self-improvement”.

  14.”The transformation is everyone’s job”.

• 

  ChefGus/ John Olsen on May 29 at 7:17 a.m.

  “Efficiency Experts” are usually hired guns/hatchet staff, that are put on the payroll to come into any organization and make the obvious cuts without the managers that are charged with being efficient and streamlined to not have to step up to the plate and do their jobs. Wimpy managers bound up by “union contracts” define the system. g