The headlines in last week’s newspaper talked about your perceived need to raise taxes due to the decreased property values on Marco Island. Instead of doing the easy thing and raise taxes, why don’t you do the right thing and cut expenses? The article in last week’s newspaper about LCEC not raising electric rates has clues about what you could do to demonstrate you really are sensitive to the needs of the people you serve. Why doesn’t the city implement these ideas that worked for LCEC:
• During a rigorous annual budgeting process, LCEC focused on controlling spending and contingency plans were made so that further spending reductions could be quickly implemented depending on the evolving economic environment.
• Budgeted capital expenditures were held at levels comparable with LCEC spending in 2004.
• During the first quarter of 2009, more than $2 million was trimmed from the LCEC expense budget.
• As a rule, vacant LCEC employee positions have not been filled.
• Nearly 10 percent of LCEC management positions were eliminated. Employees from within the organization took on additional responsibilities and cross-trained.
• All LCEC non-critical training and business travel was eliminated as was the company picnic and holiday event.
• Management and non-union employees were not awarded pay increases this year despite solid performance.
• LCEC made adjustments to employee schedules in an effort to reduce labor costs.
• Staggered shifts and work schedule adjustments were made when needed to reduce the cost of overtime pay.
I find it ironical that the City Council pursued the idea of taking over the electric service from LCEC which is obviously well run. Maybe we could send several of our city councilors, our city manager and our public works director to LCEC for some training ion how to run utilities and how to cut costs.
Dale Nicholas
Marco Island
May After Five, Marco Island Chamber
Catch of the Day: May 23, 2013
Scripps Interactive Newspapers Group
Comments » 2
lauralbi1 writes:
Dale: Great Letter. But, as Paul Harvey used to say, there is a "rest of the story". If you recall, awhile back I posted results of some research that I did on City Staff size for comparable cities with the same population, utilities and geographic area as Marco. This was a result of a conversation I had with our neighbor, Joe. What I found was that the Marco City Staff is MUCH lower in numbers than any comparable City. To the tune of 50% lower. Now there is no argument with trimming Building Inspectors or cross training them to do other functions. And I am certain that there are some areas where Marco could achieve savings. But, with the CAP in place since our inception, I believe we have been more efficient, out of need, than other cities and certainly LCEC. As a historical rule, Utilities have been very poorly managed and have been run very inefficiently as they are palying with other people's money. It is not surprising that LCEC can take all the steps they are taking and they should be commended and should have done it long ago.
I will talk to you more about this when we run into each other outside.
Ed Issler
marcoislandres writes:
Ed said
"Utilities have been very poorly managed and have been run very inefficiently as they are playing with other people's money."
And how is that different then our City counsel?
Share your thoughts
Comments are the sole responsibility of the person posting them. You agree not to post comments that are off topic, defamatory, obscene, abusive, threatening or an invasion of privacy. Violators may be banned. Click here for our full user agreement.