Jon Lynch is concerned that when Midland residents notice the different-colored buses traveling local streets, all they really see is green.
Lynch is not a professional artist or aesthete. For five years, he’s been Midland’s city manager and he and other local leaders are focusing on bus color as an opportunity to save taxpayers some greenbacks.
“The key focus for us is transportation right now,” he explained. “For taxpayers in general, when they see buses go by in different colors (for schools, transit agencies, etc.), they ask why do we need all these different-colored buses? Why not one system? We are just at the beginning stages of research on a consolidated approach on transport.”
Lynch and his colleagues in the Midland area are not alone in such endeavors. All across Michigan, local governments squeezed by the economy and slumping property values are looking for more ways to save dollars and public services. And Gov. Rick Snyder wants them to try even harder.
In his special message on local government in March, Snyder stated “By Jan. 1, 2012, municipalities must develop plans to consolidate services that will result in taxpayer savings. The plans should make a good-faith effort to estimate potential savings and costs associated with sharing critical services at the local level.”
Arnold Weinfeld of the Michigan Municipal League says local governments have long been aware of the need for greater collaboration. In the administration of Gov. Jennifer Granholm, MML and other groups joined with state officials to ponder ways for the state to boost service-sharing. From that sprung the Shared Public Services Initiative. It offers seed money to communities that want to pursue collaboration.
“We have three projects under way — the Onekama consolidation, a project in the Ingham Intermediate School District and the Hazel Park-Ferndale fire services sharing,” he explained.
In Manistee County, the village of Onekama may end up making the ultimate move in collaboration: disappearance.
Working with the Citizens Research Council of Michigan, the village and neighboring Onekama Township are studying the potential and consequences for public services if the village ceased its governmental functions. Among the questions CRC is trying to answer: What happens to the village’s debt accrued from work on sewer infrastructure?
It is the availability of such technical assistance that is the real barrier to greater local cooperation, Lynch argues.
“Even though we have publicly funded institutions that are eager to work together, when it comes to technical expertise to research the best opportunities for savings, the financial resources to do the research is hard to come by,” he said. “Everyone is scratching along to pay the bills (for regular services). … If the state were in a position to identify the experts and make them available to us, it would be a gigantic step in the right direction.”
Technical and financial help isn’t just a need for Michigan’s smaller communities. In Ingham County, the cities of Lansing (No. 5 in population) and East Lansing (No. 33) are among a group of six local governments considering collaboration on fire services.
Next week, says East Lansing City Manager Ted Staton, the group plans to formally apply for financial help from the Shared Services Initiative to start the research.
Even as discussions proliferate and budgetary and political pressures mount, local agencies confront one more disquieting prospect:
There’s no guarantee that collaboration leads to huge savings for the taxpayer in the short term.
“We don’t have good data,” said Elisabeth Gerber of the University of Michigan’s Ford School, “and a lot of what we do have is anecdotal.”
The Senate Fiscal Agency reviewed local government questions in 2010. It found that while Michigan has more than 2,000 local or special district entities, the state actually has the smallest number of any state in the Great Lakes region. As for savings from mergers and collaboration:
“(T)he evidence seems to point to the fact that a policy of local government consolidation may not be effective in reducing or slowing the growth rate of governmental costs. However, local governments are not monolithic; in fact, they provide a wide variety of services that vary across the types of governmental units. Each of these services presents a different profile and some services may present input opportunities for consolidation and cost reduction.”
Gerber pointed out that many of Michigan’s local governments are small and “don’t do very much,” which makes the hunt for cost savings that much more difficult.
A 2010 study by the Michigan Townships Association found that local government spending in Michigan was below the national median for such work. “Local government expenditures for general administration have consistently been approximately 30 percent below the national average,” the study reported.
Gerber thinks the real advantage of collaboration may be in situations where new services are created: “Politically, it’s hard for officials to engage in this type of work. Residents want services. But if two units are looking for new services, there are good opportunities to collaborate. It’s an entirely different political and budget calculus.”
Lynch says that there’s no motivation right now for a community to set a minimum threshold to pursue any kind of collaborative project:
“In this day, even (saving) a few thousand dollars is significant.”
