BY RICHARD WINGER/GUEST COLUMNIST

On May 15^th, the City Manager sent a memo to his department heads directing them to prepare budget cuts of no less than 10.9 percent and as much as 14.9 percent beginning October 1, 2013.  In my opinion this move was premature.

There are two ways for the City of Vero Beach to decrease expenses.  One is to do less for the citizen.  An alternate approach, and one most commonly used by successful businesses, is to do more with less by increasing productivity.

All my years in business, I found giving customers less really equated to forfeiting customer approval, and that inevitably resulted in declining sales and profits. Taken to the extreme, reducing product quality and levels of service leads to business failure.  I don’t think the citizens of Vero Beach want to see their city fail them.

There is an obvious alternative grounded in our American way of life.  All the increases in living standards over the past 100 years are the result of our great American Experiment in free enterprise – producing more with less.  In other words, achieving success through increased productivity.

Consider Henry Ford and his innovative automotive assembly line.  Rather than cutting wages or laying off workers, Ford built a profitable business by making it possible for his employees to be more productive. That, fellow citizens, is exactly what Vero Beach’s government needs to do.

Our municipal services are second to none.  I believe before the City asks its citizens, to do with less – or pay more to do the same – it should restructure how it operates to maximize productivity.

I am willing to bet that we, as a city, are doing 95 percent of what we do because our citizens want the services we provide.  As examples, some of the City’s much valued services include twice-a-week garbage pick-up, the cleaning of public restrooms twice a day, well manicured parks, guarded beach, and the best police protection possible.  Make no mistake about it; Vero Beach has the finest police force on the Treasure Coast.  Can we provide those services more productively?  Of course we can.

The City is currently implementing a formal plan to restructure and optimize our Water and Sewer Department.  In doing so, we have proven that ways can be found to operate more efficiently.   So, why are we not applying that same time-proven American approach to other departments rather than forcing deep, across-the-board spending cuts?

I have suggested that a city with offices in ten locations, with six levels in its organization chart, with too many accounting units in its chart of accounts, and a myriad of vacant offices, is prime for the same sort of restructuring and optimization as is being achieved in the Water and Sewer Department.

In other words, there are big economies to be achieved by reorganizing the entire structure of our city government before sacrificing the level of service our citizens expect.  We should use the Water and Sewer success as a template.

Our 50-year-old organizational structure is not serving us well today, and it needs to be restructured.  If it were up to me, I would gather the department heads together and we would brainstorm how to streamline the City’s operations.  We would discuss what buildings to use, who needs to be working near whom, the cost of each building, and so on.  Next, I would ask each department manager to work with their employees to identify ways of working more efficiently.  The Japanese learned long ago how to create more efficient production lines by listening to the people in the best position to know how to make improvement – the workers.

For instance, between Water and Sewer and Public Works, we have two departments with significant engineering needs.  However, the staff for these two departments is scattered across four different offices.  That is inefficient and costly. Staffing should be in as few locations as possible, not spread out across the city.

Currently, some employees have multiple offices, so they can theoretically be in two places at once.  City workers often need to drive across town to attend a meeting, or go to a different floor to interact with a co-worker.  This shouldn’t be necessary.  We have plenty of vacant office space that should be rearranged and assigned to prevent this kind of inefficiency.

The city manager’s May 15^th memo to department heads has understandably demoralized staff and has made our customers, the citizens, fearful.   I am grateful to be receiving so many calls from citizens voicing their concerns.  Citizens, keep it up!   Then you are making democracy work for you!  Your voices will ultimately be heard and after all, you are the boss!  This is your city government and you are paying for it!

The essential first step in solving our budget challenges, is not to take a meat cleaver to the budget demoralizing citizens and staff alike, but to REORGANIZE the City.

Editor’s Note:  Richard Winger is a member of the Vero Beach City Council.