Opinion: Sharing services makes sense in era of deficits
By Paul Saffo
Small-town living has long been part of the American dream, but amid California’s fiscal crisis, it is becoming a nightmare. Cities like Vallejo have declared bankruptcy as municipal deficits deepen. Others, like Maywood in Southern California, have fired their city employees and outsourced everything from police and fire protection to pothole filling.
Cities all over the state are contemplating similar measures, but the Bay Area is particularly at risk of further municipal bankruptcies. Quite simply, the Bay Area has too many cities, and if serious steps aren’t taken to consider all options – from sharing services, to merging municipalities and even disincorporation – the list of bankruptcies is certain to grow.
The nine counties of the Bay Area are home to 6.9 million residents, living in 101 cities. By contrast, Los Angeles County has nearly 10 million residents living in 88 cities, while Orange County’s 34 cities represent 3 million residents. Over a third of Bay Area cities have populations of less than 20,000 residents, and nearly a quarter are smaller than 10,000 citizens. Among these are more than a few micro-cities like Belvedere, with just over 2,000 residents, and tiny Colma, whose population of just over 1,000 citizens is outnumbered 10-to-1 by a silent majority interred in the town’s cemeteries.
Paul Saffo is managing director of foresight at Discern, an institutional investment research firm based in San Francisco.
Mr. Saffo,
I must respectfully disagree with you. City governments are what makes this country great, exerting local control. Why would a small town cede control of its destiny to a state or federal government? Because some city governments have failed to manage money correctly, they should be abolished? No, those who failed should be held accountable, and replaced. Additionally, most citizens begin serving their communities locally. Take for example our current president. Mr. Obama began giving back to his Chicago suburb as a “community organizer.” Cities are where REAL progress & change take place, as opposed to your view, where these concepts are dictated down from the state & federal levels. Our federal government is bankrupt, should we abolish it too?
Some of this makes sense, it would be a lot cheaper then having all separate entities, but I also understand that a city would want to remain independent, and not have it’s needs squashed by a larger area encompassing it.
Maybe a place could remain it’s own self, but contract with other cities as a group to have more bargaining power to get costs down, and not duplicate some services that could be shared.
Like owning a particular piece of equipment that is non-emergency, like a special back-hoe, or lift, or maybe a cities web designer could be bargained down to a better price, because they are doing 3-4 cities web pages.
Agree with Dealmein that there is great value in having a city where ideas can be implemented at the community level but his is an interesting idea. What if a city was still a city but shared the costs of being a city with other cities and counties.
In other words a city can keep its structure i.e., a city council that can manage the city, take input from citizens, start new programs and be held accountable for its role in managing the city. But share the costs of operating a city. Just for the sake of discussion is it necessary to have two human resource departments, two finance departments, two recreation departments etc., etc. Very interesting government operating model, maintain the control a community wants but share the expenses.
One private sector example of shared expenses that I can recall is the SF Chronicle and Examiner for years shared the same printing presses. Very interesting.