Cities Rent Police, Janitors to Save Cash

Wall Street Journal ^ | 07/19/2010 | Wall Street Journal

[The Magical Mischief Tour]

Faced with a $118 million budget deficit, the city of San Jose, Calif., recently decided it could no longer afford its own janitors. So the city's budget called for dropping its custodial staff and hiring outside contractors to clean its city hall and airport, saving about $4 million.

To keep all its swimming pools open and staffed, the city is replacing some city workers with contractors.

"These are cases where the question is being asked, 'Is this a core service at the city level?' " said Michelle McGurk, senior policy adviser to the San Jose mayor.

After years of whittling staff and cutting back on services, towns and cities are now outsourcing some of the most basic functions of local government, from policing to trash collection. Services that cities can no longer afford to provide are being contracted to private vendors, counties or even neighboring towns.

[pepsionice]

Probably the right move, but twenty years too late. And it takes care of paying for retirement in the years to come for city workers.

[JerseyHighlander]

THe sociopaths in New Jersey during the last lame duck session before Gov Christie was sworn in, passed and signed a law that requires that contracted non-union labor must be paid the prevailing government union wage scale and benefits for any job any and every government entity in New Jersey hires them to perform.

There are non-union janitors in NJ who make more than union doctors now.

Gov Christie can not propose legislation, and until the NJ legislature puts forth a bill to repeal this monstrosity, New Jersey is hamstrung by this labor inflexibility in a year where the state budget requires a 33% cut.

San Jose and the other locales should feel so lucky they can find flexibility in labor costs, the only other solution is the widescale reduction of government services. Gov Christie shut down highway reststops because the cost for maintenance staff skyrocketed due to this new law. So now NJ has only three highway reststops in the entire state.

[DemforBush]

I used to work in HR/staffing for a several service-sector contract businesses. This is a good idea for the city.

The savings a client sees by not having to pick up the cost of benefits and retirement can be considerable. There is also often a greater scheduling flexibility for a client that with an in-house staff. If a client needs extra security for a weekend or a cleaning person to work a split shift for a couple weeks., a contractor can usually provide that with little lead time.

The only caveat I would add is, beware of the sharks. The low-end service sector industry operates on thin margins and cutthroat competition. Some of the shadier operators will offer bids that seem too good to be true. They are. These folks generally hire the absolute dregs that no one else will hire. It’s also pretty common to see contract shenanigans, all basically geared towards eliciting a much higher billing rate than was initially agreed to by the client.

[chadwimc]

Until the administrators who caused the problem are outsourced, I’ll hold my cheers.

[Tzimisce]

Oh no!

But I’m used to the kind of quality and service that comes with the Union label!

This is truly a dark day. :(:(:(

/sarc

[Domangart]

Rancho Cordova Ca has been staffed by contractors since it became a city. No problems. Sacramento nothing but problems. They are attempting to rebuild downtown again.