Bowing to critics who say that government should be run like a business, Mayor Les S. Moore has announced several initiatives to follow certain business practices.
Following the lead of orange juice companies who reduced the size of their cartons from 64 ounces to 59 ounces, he has ordered all snow plow drivers to clear only 59/64th the width of city streets.
Noticing that facial tissue now comes in 132-count boxes instead of 200-count boxes, he has ordered the police department reduce its staff from 200 sworn officers to 132.
When Mayor Moore goes grocery shopping, he'll be looking for more examples to apply to city government.
When the city produced its new quarterly to keep citizens informed of the activities of the city government, he followed the lead of the newspapers and had no one proofread the articles. He was embarrassed to see that a library manager wrote that the library had materials for geneology.
To centralize citizen/customer communication with the city, he has ordered that the phone numbers and email addresses of department heads no longer be published. Instead, a single 800 number and a single email address, customersupport@city.gov, will be provided. These both will be handled by a limited staff in India.
Taking a cue from the telecommunications industry, he will offer more and more services electronically with greater and greater speeds. Each increase will be advertised as with no new taxes in the first six months.
He did balk at following one business example as he thought it would reduce his chances of re-election. He didn't think he would be very popular if he increased his salary as he cut the number of employees.
