Residents Offer Cost Cutting Ideas and Ideas for Opportunities- Updated 3/6/10
This article is a small list of the more reasonable ideas submitted by residents to assist in locating money within the budget or recommending common sense approaches to invent new revenue for the city to assist in closing the city budget shortfalls as we receive more it will be updated.
The consistent theme we are seeing is a desire by residents to move toward a united belt of the cities of Troy, Rochester Hills, Rochester, Birmingham and the Bloomfields. In reality that may be the best option or at least one option to strengthen all communities involved and to utilizes the most appreciative aspects of each community in a collective manner to develop and enhance a central Oakland county region.
Birmingham and Rochester offer the downtown atmosphere Troy lacks with quaint small businesses and restaurants while Troy offers the likes of Somerset with premium mall centered shopping and premium chain restaurant offerings as just one example. Consistent regionalized marketing and integration of a unified belt could serve to integrate the image of a unified central Oakland upscale belt of opportunity. Troy is not a Birmingham or Rochester, but it fits a niche with Rochester Hills and Bloomfield Twp all of which are municipalities that lack certain aspects of a city or township that do not have a central stabilized downtown anchor and its the blending of resources and opportunity that could assist all municipalities on that list.
Troy city officials should start assembling focus groups to assist in identifying the areas where RESIDENTS and not council want to see cuts. The residents should decide what they can and cannot live without in this case as well.
- Aquatic Center: Open membership to the facility to all residents of Birmingham, Beverly Hills, Bloomfield Twp, Bloomfield Hills, Clawson, Royal Oak, Rochester / Rochester Hills, Oakland Township and others on a daily or seasonal membership with tiered pricing based upon type and length of membership
- Library: open the library from 2pm- 8pm M-F and 9-5 on Sat and Sun.
- Community Center: Open membership to the communities listed above in #1 on an annual, monthly or daily basis
- Eliminate one assistant city manager position or eliminate the city clerk and merge the responsibilities of both positions. Another option was to reduce the assistant city manager position to one part time position as a secondary option.
- City Attorney: contract all criminal and traffic matters to the Oakland County Prosecutor's office, retain civil with a contracted firm on an hourly basis eliminating the entire in house law department. Current rates being offered other cities are between $95 and $125 / hr which is a great rate and some of these rates are being provided by firms located in Troy and are name firms.
- Police: eliminate the city police department and contract to Oakland County or reduce staff by one division across all employee unions, dispose of the police vehicles and equipment or use it to offset part of the first years contract costs.
- Parks and Recreation: outsource all personnel relating to exterior and grounds maintenance, eliminate sports programs and enter into an agreement with RARA in Rochester to provide sports leagues and competitive recreational youth sports or another similar agency through a municipality the adjoins Troy.
- Golf Course: sell or land lease one course to an outside vendor
- Motor Pool: eliminate completely and outsource vehicle and fleet maintenance either though an onsite vendor utilizing the city garage on a lease basis or closing the city garage completely.
- Risk Management: eliminated and outsourced
- Raise all city fees for permits, police reports, inspections etc. by 20-25%
- Expand the cost recovery ordinance to encompass more routine items that utilize city resources that could be billed for against the cost of service.
- Reopen early retirement opportunities and retirement incentives to get long time city employees to retire.
UPDATES 3/6/10:
- Allow existing employees to buy service time to get to a full retirement early, similar to school teachers
- Begin strong recall efforts for 3-4 council members
- Freeze new fire apparatus purchases, major equipment and all non essential purchases through 2013
- Increase police vehicle mileage to 100,000 miles before retiring a vehicle
- Freeze all new vehicle purchases in Streets and DPW, major equipment and all non essential purchases through 2013
- Freeze all non critical or "beautification" projects that have not been already started or are not earmarked for funds that are unable to be reassigned to other areas of the budget
- Reduce total city hall personnel by 50% across all city departments excluding emergency services
- Create a citizen panel to advise council on recommended cuts
Birmingham and Rochester offer the downtown atmosphere Troy lacks with quaint small businesses and restaurants while Troy offers the likes of Somerset with premium mall centered shopping and premium chain restaurant offerings as just one example. Consistent regionalized marketing and integration of a unified belt could serve to integrate the image of a unified central Oakland upscale belt of opportunity. Troy is not a Birmingham or Rochester, but it fits a niche with Rochester Hills and Bloomfield Twp all of which are municipalities that lack certain aspects of a city or township that do not have a central stabilized downtown anchor and its the blending of resources and opportunity that could assist all municipalities on that list.
Troy city officials should start assembling focus groups to assist in identifying the areas where RESIDENTS and not council want to see cuts. The residents should decide what they can and cannot live without in this case as well.
Posted by InfoSource at 3/6/2010 12:38 PM 
Categories: uncategorized
Tags: Troy Millage City of Troy Troy budget cuts Troy Budget Options
Categories: uncategorized
Tags: Troy Millage City of Troy Troy budget cuts Troy Budget Options
Across the US City/Municipal governments are facing similar problems. If they are not faced in a responsible manner the cities are forced into bankruptcy. Under bankruptcy the city can then renegotiate contracts with unions and employees. Hopefully we can follow an enlightened approach and keep the best parts of city services. This is a new reality the we all face in Michigan. This requires creative thinking from our leaders.
Clearly we should consider:
* Develop a base or essential budget to use as a road map or tool for decision processes.
* Develop volunteer programs for library, parks, neighborhood surveillance, and museums
* Develop a work for property tax credit equivalency program (credit folks for performing current city employee functions, even if we credited the same rate of pay for current employees the savings would accrue through nonpayment of benefits currently paid to employees. We have many talented people who are under employed or retired who seek to contribute to our City.)
* Significant reductions in the police budget via consolidation and use of Oakland County Sheriff. Judging from the comments of many citizens we need to restrict the Police department's aggressive traffic violations efforts. The Police should never be regarded with fear by its citizenry.
* Identify areas of excellence within our current City government and determine if these areas or departments can be marketed to other cities as a part of consolidation the of services process. Likewise we need to put a metrics in place for identification existent city services offered by other cities that can replace inefficiencies in our current city government system.
* In the absence of a determined effort to reduce city employee to a level competitive with the average citizen, we need to outsource those functions to competitive private bid process.
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After all the decpetion the city coolectively tried to pull, we should send the uions a strong mesage that this city belongs to the residents. Fire szerlag and work down the line from there.
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I agree with dave. After what the police unions did, what the heck how could we do worse with oakland county and its cheaper to boot. I would consider it looking at the cost savings projectged we would be in great shape.
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As a longtime resident of Troy, I watch other cities around us and shake my head as a professional female looking at our council. They remind me of an organized crime syndicate and not a public body. They act like a bunch of thugs ready to use their police department as a bunch of enforcers or strong arm mob.
As far as cuts go, I agree with a focus group approach and getting the residents to decide how the majority of the cuts should be implemented and a genuine understanding that council will adhere to those recommendations. I realize with this council that could probably never happen but it would go a long way in showing transparency.
As far as recalls and firing Szerlag, recalls take too long but massive groups of people showing up at council meetings expressing their displeasure and getting media attention on city hall nonsense could almost garner the same result, the will of the people.
With the police department comments, I have to admit as much as I once loved our police department, their image is really taking a hit. For god sake it sounds so polluted that starting over may be the best answer. The public is weary of the police here now. They are acting like children during this millage issue. I worked for GM and hey, if the money isn't there you had better start being workable and reasonable. The lack of reasonableness significantly hurt their image and this guy Redmond, what a baffoon. If this is the president what was the pool of candidates?
I love Troy but my patience with city hall is growing very thin and my skepticism is increasing by the day!
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I think we should look at Oakland County for police services. I also think we should lean out city hall first from all their hefty salaries and perks. If the Troy Citizens United numbers are correct and Szerlag is making over $200K he has to go now. We should keep the community center and aquatic center and open them up as suggested. The nature center and museum could be closed for a year or two. The library should remain open as is or limited basis as well. The big savings as I see it from all the information out there is the police. If even half that savings is realized, our budget is fine and life goes on without more cuts. I think council is making this tougher than it has to be. The unions went against the citizens so why should we now not look at Oakland County? Just a thought.
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I sincerely believe that until any recall efforts start and these council people see their power being threatened nothing will change. It is clear they are so out of touch with the will of the people that it is scary that these seven people, a couple guilty by association, have no intent on following the millage directive. Szerlag is just the bag man and fall guy for the council's objectives and is being rewarded handsomely based upon the compensation numbers I saw for him. I wonder if he is going to cut his pay proportionately as the city ranks are thinned with job cuts and downsizing? Doubt it!
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Most of these sound like good ideas that will save the city a lot of money. What I do not understand is why didn't they make these cuts and improve efficiency and get rid of excess staff years ago?
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