SLT city manager talks about consolidating services
Dear Publisher,
As I mentioned at our recent public workshop on the new RDA Project Area last week, it is time for STPUD and city officials to seriously explore developing joint facilities and exploring the option of a merger and consolidation of services. While we could have done so earlier, it is never too late.
STPUD and City government should not be or appear to be competing. We both have valuable services needed by our customer base.
Do we have to have two “city halls”, two corporation yards, two road maintenance crews, two finance operations, two clerical staffs, etc.? How much can we save by consolidation of services and maybe even agencies? Is it possible that by coordination and consolidation of services and agencies those taxpayers in the county and city will benefit in their pocket books by avoiding yearly utility rate and other fee increases? Is it possible that with one-stop district and city permitting as part of an overall efficiency improvement plan for our organizations, we can better serve our customer base and reduce our overall operational costs?
We will never know unless we take a serious look at this option.
There are examples of this going on all over California as noted in the article below. Has our time arrived?
Dave Jinkens, city manager South Lake Tahoe
Jinkins, are you OK? Please also look at consolidating the bigger more expensive stuff-police, fire, road, planning. These are we/you can save a bundle of money.
It’s about time. There is no logical reason for the enormous duplicity of overlapping services and positions at South Lake Tahoe. Even a costly consultant would be aghast.
STPUD would be stupid to do such a thing. This is brought to you by the guy who helped install the stateline hole.
Sounds like Dave could be pushing for one water company – without Lukins. Sounds great! Condemn the Lukins system and then have STPUD take over without a buyout warranted. Who else would run a business without putting their profits back in to the business. Condemn Lukins! Condemn Lukins!
STPUD doesn’t want a 28 million dollars loser like Lukins without being paid to upgrade it without burdening their ratepayers with the expense. Cudos! STPUD why should we (STPUD ratepayers) pay to upgrade a worn out, run down system like Lukins. Lukins ratepayers laughed for decades at the higher rates paid by STPUD customers. We will not pay, but we will not laugh at your Rube Goldberg system either.
Why would anyone want to consolidate services with the City of South Lake Tahoe. About 6 years ago the City of SLT paid big bucks to City Gate Consultants for a consolidation study to consolidate the City Fire Department with the Lake Valley Fire District in the county. The city manipulated the data so that it could never happen. They spent somewhere around 50K to do a study for consolidation they the city FD knew would never happen. Now they are a grasping at any way to survive. Jenkins
obviously doesn’t know this has been brought up before. Hey Dave keep your bad politics in the city limits. There’s a reason we live in the County!
How about because I’m sick of wasting money by STPUD and the County. The County doesn’t spend any money here in the basin and STPUD keeps raising rates just because they can, but this time I’m going to protest this recent rate increase.