privatized it to a single company.... no competiton? no choice? Who in city government was the owner related to?
That was my first thought too.
The town sounds like it is well run but you do have to question at what cost?
From the article that you apparently didn’t bother to read
When the project first started, the University of Georgia estimated that the city would need 828 employees. But because the town is managed by a private company, they’ve cut their workforce down to just 471 people. Besides fire and police, the city only has eight full-time public employees.
Because of this efficiency, Sandy Springs generates huge surpluses. They have no unfunded liabilities. The city specifically decided not to use the traditional pension model – a model which has put almost every government across America in an unsustainable pension crisis. Instead, employees can choose their own 401K package to prepare for retirement, if they wish.
This has given the town of Sandy Springs lots of extra cash to work with – a surplus that they put into building for the future. According to Sharon Kraun, “The city, as a matter of policy, sets aside 25% of revenues into a reserve during each budget planning cycle. Capital improvements have been a major focus during our first eight years, with more than $185 million invested in capital infrastructure.”
Just because a private company is running the city doesn’t mean it is sole sourced
I am curious about this as well. I hope they have a yearly renewal contract.
We just went to privatized housing at my base. The company that won the contract promised much. As for their service, I no longer live on base.
Horrible.
come on it’s a start. everyone knows private parks are better than the public ones. you can always split it up as you go along if service declines. proper monitoring trust but verify.
” If part of the government performs poorly, the city can fire that company, and bid the contract to another company In 2011, the city said farewell to the main company that was managing the vital functions of government CH2M Hill, and opted to go with another company. This saved the city over a million dollars.”
Sounds to me exactly what I would have suspected from a city that privatized damn near everything properly. It would be nice to see this catch on, but I doubt if the bureaucrat's and politicians in most places would stand for it. I would be interested in seeing the party makeup of the City Counsel. Libertarian majority?
This is certainly no problem...Put the contracts up for bid every year. Running government departments is not complex and people running it have no business making life long careers out of it.
This is a huge part of the problem with the corrupt running govenrment at ALL levels, as it exists now.
——Who in city government was the owner related to?-—
In a city manager governed city, the CM could establish a corporation and then transfer tasks to the corporation by contract.