Created by the Fund for Our Economic Future, EfficientGovNow is a competitive grant awards program that encourages and accelerates government collaboration and efficiency by providing rounds of funding to government collaboration projects as selected by YOU, the residents of Northeast Ohio.
The first round of the program, held in early to mid 2009, attracted more than 255 local governmental entities from across the 16-county region to submit proposals to implement a wide array of collaborative projects. Collectively, the projects projected one-time savings of nearly $40 million and anticipated annual savings of more than $22 million. Equally exciting, nearly 13,500 citizens spoke out in support of the ideas.
In early December 2009, the Fund announced a second round EfficientGovNow. Northeast Ohioans – now is your chance to help get this round started.
1. Share your government collaboration and efficiency idea(s).
Comment on this blog post (and others) and tell us what idea(s) you have for how your local government can collaborate and become more efficient. For example, maybe you’ve thought about ways your local government could partner with another to work jointly on a program or project, thus freeing up dollars for opportunities such as fostering business creation or providing college scholarships. There’s no wrong answer – just keep it clean. Who knows, maybe your response will make into the news. So comment with your idea(s) or send us an e-mail at efficientgovnow@futurefundneo.org.
2. Write to a government official, encouraging participation in EfficientGovNow.
Don’t just share your idea(s) with us – encourage your elected official to take action! We’ve created a sample letter for you. Customize and deliver it by e-mail, fax or snail mail. Whatever you do, send it to your government officials soon, as the deadline for officials to tell us of their intent to submit a proposal is February 26, 2010.
3. Share the news with a friend.
Following the announcement of the second round, the editors of the Akron Beacon Journal wrote an editorial endorsing EfficientGovNow. We’re excited to see media speaking up again so quickly. Help spread the word by forwarding the story, or any of our other news coverage, to a friend.
4. Follow EfficientGovNow on Twitter.
We’re social. Tweet your ideas @EfficientGovNow and we’ll not only retweet it, we’ll share your ideas/support to the applicable government officials.
5. Write a letter to the editor.
During the first round, The News-Herald published a letter to the editor supporting EfficientGovNow from the Willowick Planning Commission’s chairman, who asserted that government, just as any business, should continuously strive for improvement and efficiency gains. Send a letter to your local editor with your ideas and/or support.
6. Become a fan of EfficientGovNow on Facebook.
Our fan page will deliver EfficientGovNow updates, opportunities and news straight to your Facebook live news feed.
7. Follow our feeds.
Subscribe to the feeds that meet your interests. EfficientGovNow offers RSS feeds for its news, press releases and blog. Additionally, feeds from the Fund for Our Economic Future and Advance Northeast Ohio may be of interest to you.
8. After February 26, check out the new EfficientGovNow projects.
In late February, we will be posting abstracts of the collaboration and efficiency projects submitted by Northeast Ohio’s government officials. Visit www.efficientgovnow.org to see who is participating and what ideas elected officials have for making government more efficient through collaboration. Post a comment on the idea(s), let them know what you think.
9. Comment on full project proposals submitted by teams of local government leaders.
Find out all of the details of the ideas submitted to EfficientGovNow after April 19, 2010, when the full project proposals will be posted on www.efficientgovnow.org for public review and comment.
10. Mark your calendar to vote for the best proposals.
The residents of Northeast Ohio will ultimately select which of the collaboration projects will receive funding. Visit www.efficientgovnow.org sometime May 1 – 31 to cast your vote for the best.
I would like to start off with the blog titled
$3 million grant to tap residents’ ideas to improve regional government
Thursday, January 07, 2010 by Pat Galbincea of The Plain Dealer.
Mr. Galbincea states, at the end, that “They recognize that the fragmented, costly system of local government that has evolved over the decades hurts our region’s ability to compete in the global economy.”
I do understand the heavily lopsidedness of NE Ohio’s economic struggles. For my community we have lost a large chunk of industries as well as population because we did not adapt toward being globally competitive.
In order for us to turn around and rekindle, we must look over our area and compare ourselves to other national and international Cities. We have to review what our competition is doing to be successful and orchestrate redevelop plains to correct ourselves. It’s a trying task but every time we review another City we bring back ideas to aid in ours. I’ve been doing this for past 4 years.
Let’s look at it this way. A sports team doesn’t go into a game without understanding the opponent. Why wouldn’t a City? To be investment friendly you have to know what others are offering and make comparable changes.
I lived in modern Vietnam and have the materials to know who, what and how the Social Republic has transformed itself for Foreign Direct Investments, but the also had to make interior changes in order to become attractable and WTO favored.
There are a lot of ideologies we can use to shore up our strengths and foundations for Vietnam.
Thank you for the time,
Shane
Glad to see you’re carrying of the tradition of Voices and Choices.
I lived near Indianapolis, Indiana in the early 70s when then Mayor Richard Lugar and Marion County officials put it up to the voters to start Unigov merging City and County governments to the benefit of both. Like to see some of that happening here.
My hot-button issues are transportation and SLO-GRO.
Here in Lorain County we’re looking at the slow death of our mass transit system because there aren’t enough riders and not enough money to keep it subsidized. I’m from Philadelphia (PA) where there are enough riders and subsidy funds so I understand why that’s happening here in Lorain County. But we need to find ways to keep buses and initiate mass transit rail or possibly fund an interim car pooling plan allowing the people who’re being cut-off from their jobs, job possibilites and education to hook-up with car-owning people to get where they need to go. That would be a stop-gap measure which is exactly what’s needed now.
Want to hear some come back on that, please.
Second is about locally grown food. I’m just back from Milwaukee, WI where I toured Growing Power, an urban farm employing 35 people with over a thousand volunteers growing crops, fish, goats, chickens, turkey, rabbits and even worms on three farms with over 100 acres. Been going since the mid-nineties. Its founder, Will Allen has gotten much well-deserved recognition for his work in Growing Power; running all of Milwaukee’s farmers’s markets that he also started; arranging the gathering of food waste from schools, hospitals, restaurants, etc for compost rather then waste dumps; selling locally grown food to local schools restaurants, etc; and working with educators to teach Milwaukee school, trade school, and college students how to develop and run their own local food programs.
Maurice Small (who’s a friend and colleague of Will Allen’s) has done a lot of that in Clwveland with City Fresh. Now he’s working with Brandon Rutherford in Elyria and Youngstown, I believe, to develop more urban gardens.
Here in Oberlin we have Oberlin College’s Jones Farm, and there are others such as Bryan Burges, Glenn Gall, and the people of the North Park Neighborhood Association developing community gardens and LO programs on private land.
Bottom line to all of this is that the Firelands can be broken up into proximal areas allowing different towns / groups to work together to the benefit of all.
Example could be Oberlin and Elyria growers join together using public and private lands. One of us now has a large tractor that could be transported to Elyria to till more land for cultivation while some of the people from Elyria could come to Oberlin or New Russia township to work with us on preparing our lands for spring planting.
All ideas, send ‘em in. We’ve got to work together to heal this ol’ Earth!
Ohio should require the county governments to consolidate into regional governments. Instead of having 88 separate county recorders, auditors, administrators, treasurers, etc. it should be cut down to 22 regional government offices. The reason for 88 was so that people could get to the county seat and back home during the age of transportation by horse. Today people can either contact the county/regional governments by phone internet or drive to the regional government center. This would cut down on the costs of administering government dramatically.
My company has recently been a participant in a Virtual Tradeshow for healthcare. As a result of participating in this event, I’ve come to the conclusion that within a decade, convention centers in mid-market cities like Cleveland will be dinosaurs, going the way of the horse for transportation.
Other than major convention cities like Las Vegas, Orlando, San Francisco, or San Diego, any city that spends 500 million dollars for a new convention center will never recoup that investment in civic dollars. Build the Medical Mart, but stop thinking about building a convention center.
Look at Pontiac, Michigan’s recent experience with its Silverdome to find a similar waste of taxpayer money.
Why doesn’t someone start removing all the different layers of government.
Police and fire fighters come to mind first. Do Really need Akron, Barberton, Green, New Franklin, Hudson, Summit County Sheriff, etc. etc. etc. Why can’t one professional police agency for summit county minimize administration and beef up actual feet on the street.
I’m with Jim. Let’s look at Indiana, where they are trying to eliminate Townships altogether. I know of a specific local project where two rural townships (less than 2,000 residents) who also share a fire department, can apply for this grant project with their County Commissioners assistance to perform a merge audit and consolidation project. This project would work to combine the two townships into one township, eliminating the need for 3 Trustees and a Fiscal Officer, saving almost $50,000 per year.
I’m not saying eliminate staff. In fact, with the savings, they may be able to hire an additional employee and get more things done. The only catch is that the residents are the ones who would have to vote on the elimination of their Townships. These types of local government consolidation efforts would be great, but they aren’t going to happen because some of our elected officials are making good money and why would they want to support this type of project and eliminate their jobs?
Suggestion – In light of the fact that the state legislature has not resolved school funding problems, school districts should approach each other and consolidate human and capital resources. Administrative and clerical functions such as personnel, accounting, purchasing,transportation, psychological services, therapy, testing,and specialized academic programs can be shared among districts. In many cases, only two or three districts would need to share in order to save money. Similar school communities such as Fairview Park/Rocky River, North Olmsted/Olmsted Falls, North Ridgeville/Midview, etc. could even share resources such as auditoriums for performances and meetings. Networking and simplifying communications systems and eliminating paper could expedite the flow of requests and information for purchasing and other functions.
Two ideas:
First, regionalism needs to start with a few projects that either have no losers or one or two willing to “take one for the team”. When the advantages become evident, it will be easier to move on to more difficult changes where there really will be some losers.
Second, a specific idea for collaboration between local governments: Currently, contractors need to separately register and become bonded in each jurisdiction. This is very expensive and cumbersome, especially for smaller businesses which may do only very small or few projects in any one jurisdiction. Allowing for a central registration and single bond to cover multiple jurisdictions within Cuyahoga County or even a portion of it (or any other part of Northeast Ohio) would make the process more efficient and less expensive and so increase compliance. Homeowners would have better information and enforcement would be streamlined – a complaint in one jurisdiction would be known to all. Since most if not all of the revenue from contractor registration is presumably limited to the costs of administration, individual jurisdictions would have little to lose and much to gain from collaboration.
Make fire departments go to 8 hour shifts (instead of 24 hours on, 48 hours off), it will cut down OT costs tremendously, and save cities tons of money. Good luck persuading the unions however….
I am a graduate student at the University of Akron, and before that, I completed my undergraduate degree at Ohio State University.
I believe that the city of Akron and the university could combine their busing services, using the Ohio State University model. In fact, it would be great if the city of Kent and the Kent State University would also collaborate.
At Ohio State, students pay a bus fee every quarter, and that fee goes to the public busing system. Students then get to ride the buses for free, so long as they have a valid University ID.
If Kent State University and the University of Akron both collected student fares, and the cities of Akron and Kent combined their busing system, this would provide increased mobility for students to travel between both campuses, and it would ease the University of Akron’s severe traffic congestion if students were able to ride public transportation to school. Plus, the added money from student fees would provide a subsidy for public transportation for the rest of the Akron/Kent community, so that expanded service in and between the two cities would reduce general traffic congestion.
Of all the possible solutions to our current economic woes, I believe consolidation of public services as being in the forefront. First should be the school districts. The costs needed to maintain this multitude of “scholastic fiefdoms” is enormous. And there is little to show in the current state of our schools and how they are funded. Eliminating all of these unnecessary administrative positions and becoming leaner is what is needed to streamline and make our education system ready for the next century.
The next step would be to consolidate fire and police districts to form one police and fire department serving an entire county. These are changes that translate into real money and spend the most for the services needed by the citizens.
I read that Cleveland actually has to PAY some recycling companies to take collected recyclables off of the city’s hands and haul it away to recycle them because the demand for recycled materials has gone way down in this region for some odd reason. I would like to suggest that a system be put in place whereby recyclables can be hauled to areas of the country or the world where they are more in demand than here, or else bring those industries into the area that will be able to produce products made from recycled materials for use elsewhere. I notice freight trains that have a lot of empty railroad cars on them that just might be used to haul recyclables to better markets across the country and possibly save the railroads some of the burden of hauling empty weight.
Today there are more than 30 Chiefs of Police or Fire in Summit County alone. Every locality and many organizations enjoy the prestige, independence and recognition that come with their own safety force, but the costs in personnel, equipment and training are enormous. The Summit County Sherriff’s Department alone consumes more than one-third of the County budget, which shows how expensive such forces are. This situation leads to separate SWAT teams, separate K-9 units, separate radio systems, separate vehicle fleets, duplicate training schedules, etc., etc. Add the problems of coordinating these forces – joint training, liaison officers, exchanging data, communicating, coordinating command structures – and the time consumed by internal management issues starts to reduce efficiency.
The labor intensive nature of public safety forces makes them more expensive than many other services. That is to be expected. It is also the best argument for reducing complexity in this area in particular.
Combining and simplifying these systems would save money, reduce bureaucracy and in many cases improve service. The political opposition is huge, of course.
All the communities and counties in NEO should get together and create a bench mark database. The database would show how much each community spends per person on fire protection, police protection, garbage removal, mayors court, etc. It should include all the services offered by the communities and counties and account for all revenue collected from all sources and generated through user fees by the communities and counties. After the database is completed the communities could use it to see who is providing the most efficient services and then share ideas to reduce costs.
To put it briefly, in my opinion, the best way to lower costs and boost efficiency in our region is to consolidate. Look at Jacksonville FL, Louisville KY, and Lexington KY. City-county government merged, and you now have one large urban area. Without going into extraordinary detail, the services that can benefit include police/fire protection, water/sewage, road maintenance, and most importantly, schools. Consolidating school districts in Cuyahoga County, for example, could severely decrease the gap of funding that schools receive. Poor inner city schools will no longer receive less state funding because of the lower property tax base. The idea of consolidation is, unfortunately, far-fetched. People in the suburbs who are concerned with losing their identity, and are for the most part, only concerned because of that. We are all still in a region with a functioning core of CLEVELAND. If Cleveland fails, we all will fail eventually. Merging the city and county would form one of the largest cities in the nation with much more efficient services. Why should we have a city and dozens of suburbs within one county, all of which require their own services? Why should a small suburb have three expensive fire trucks, when in reality, those three could serve three other similar-sized suburbs as well? A mega-urban region “Cleveland-Cuyahoga” would prove to be much more efficient. Lexington and Louisville are doing fairly well, and their consolidations have proved to be good moves so far. Why are we always lagging behind? Casinos? Too late, most other states have them. Vibrant waterfront? Our pitiful leaders can’t get that done either. Good schools? Ohio’s school funding system is out-of-date and unlawful. It’s time to utilize the entire region’s resources, bring them together, and make a new efficient governing body that lies at the center of the Northeast Ohio economy. There is no reason we should not start consolidating our cities. Youngstown could consolidate with its neighboring cities. Akron could consolidate with places like Barberton, Cuyahoga Falls, Tallmadge, Coventry TWP, Green, Springfield TWP, Copley TWP, and Fairlawn. Cleveland could consolidate all of its suburbs.
–
Derrin Smith
Department of Geography
Kent State University
Combining the Code Enforcement Division (of the Canton City Building Department) with that of the Canton City Health Department. Cost savings would be realized due to the fact that many functions of the Code Enforcement division are similar in nature to the health department’s (specifically Environmental Health) mission (and current nuisance abatement duties). There would be little in the way of transitional training since there are no education or licensure requirements to work in Code Enforcement. As opposed to health departments where this work must be done by a State licensed Sanitarian.