Agenda - Council - 12/22/1981 - Laserfiche WebLink

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.! ITwo employees of Tampa's water de- rtment, Bonny, 4 (above, looking up), d Bootsie, 10 months, go about their work at a water-treatment plant. lean workers used to cut the grass and eds on the dikes surrounding a score sludge beds. But last year the water department realized that goats cut Irass, too-ywithout demanding vaca- ons, unions, work rules, or pension enefits. All they want is grass. So the city acquired three goats and rented 60 more from a farmer for a total of $50 a month. They trim' the dikes' steep slopes more dexterously than men on mowing machines, say- .lng 300 man-houi's and $3,000 a year. A few kids died in the cold last winter and some of their elders strayed onto a neighboring golf course, but otherwise the experiment has been a tidy ~uccess. Now if goats would eat red 'tape... ~'inancially pressed old cities like Bos- George Moscone recruited as deputy may- ton find it harder to achieve break- toughs .in productivity than prosperous ~lung cities like Phoenix. New York is still handicapped by' inefficiencies de- lned into the subway system at the turn the century, when labor was cheap. e man can operate a modern subway train; New York's require two. ifrit;g watched municipal services de- during six years of fiscal tur- moil, New Yorkers may be surprised to lnrnm that their city's productivity pro- is highly regarded by administra- s elsewhere. The trouble is that the program is long on reports about meth- los ~mprovement, integrated financial re~ rting, and intervention models, and rt on results that the man in the street' can grasp. New York has replaced po- linen on traffic duty with lower-paid nts and reduced some garbage-truck crews from three men to two. But all the forts have hardly affected poor work bits, patronage, d~ferred maintenance, d other city ailments. San Francisco, with a government al- t~eSt as Byzantine as New York's, woke to its productivity problems late, but n decided on nothing less than a com- plete shake-up in the way government is Inaged and financed. The late Mayor or a CPA and business professor, Rudy Nothenberg, who believes that "just be- cause you're a liberal Democrat doesn't mean you have to be a fiscal slob." Noth- enberg recalls, "We hhd to start from nothing. We began with no system. We couldn't define output. There had been no attempt to define management. We didn't know who the managers were." The books were so muddled that San Francisco couldn't put out timely financial statements. In 1978, 'the year Dianne Feinstein became mayor after Moscone's murder, productivity got a strong push from Proposition 13, which, threatened the city's budget. With considerable help from a business-backed Fiscal 'AdvisorY Committee and other private organi- zations, San Francisco trained its man- agers, automated and consolidated its bookkeeping, and implemented a .new budgeting system. Rather than rely sole- ly on a "line" budget, which apportions money in categories like salaries and supplies, the city has adopted a "func- tional'' budget that breaks down costs by service--fire prevention, maintaining Golden Gate Park, and so forth. City man- agers now negotiate objectives' and are judged on how' well they achieve them. Mayor Feinstein reviews the perfor- mance o£ department heads every quarter. The city is instituting an imaginative in- centive program. Officials who join the Se- nior Management Service will be eligible for above-average raises if they perform well and no increases if they don't. In- stead of just percolating up through the ranks over the years, they will ride a fast track but be subject to demotion or dis- missal. All in all, San Francisco is treat- ing its managers in a most uncivil-service- like manner. Gains are. beginning to pile up, small and large. The new accounting system freed $30 million that had been tied up un- necessarily--and helped convince many old hands in the controller's office that re- form wasn't all bad. Building permits are issued faster, police response time has been cut, and checks coming in to pay for property taxes are deposited in three rather than 15 days, .yielding an extra $300,000 a year in interest. The Fiscal Ad- visory Committee figures the city is al- ready saving about $43 million in an - annual budget of $1,.2 billion. / What works San Francisco, Phoenix, and North Car- olina are among the exceptions. The great majority of states and municipalities have no productivity program at all, not even the kind of leader]ess experimentation seen in the federal government. Judging by what is (and isn't) working around the country, the elements of a suc- cessful program seem fairly dear. When management'-by-0bjective is laid over a functional budget, as in San Francisco, taxpayers can see if they're getting what they're paying for and officials can be held accountable. Giving government manag- ers specific goals is a wise, if somewhat novel, idea. Achievement can be further stimulated by bonuses, faster promotions, - passing out a share of savings, or all three_ With these reforms and others, poli- tidians can alter bureaucratic incentives and behavior. But unless they lend the task their committed long-term leader- ship, efficiency in public work will be hothing more than a passing slogan. [] 158 FORTUNE ,4a~t,st ~o, m~