Our municipality, just like other cities, counties and states across our nation, is dealing with some serious budget shortfalls. I have been told that our situation isn't as bad as the estimated shortfall in other communities, but that isn't making it any easier to "find" the 50 million dollars that it is currently anticipated we will need to balance our budget at the end of our fiscal year.
We have been through the drill twice already. You know the one where every department must cut their budgets by some arbitrary percentage and freeze all hiring. All of our projects have come to a halt, our budget has been slashed to the point where all we can do is meet our basic contractual obligations, and we are expecting to hear of another round of cuts after the start of the calendar year.
While our current budget shortfall has left us with our heads barely above water, I really believe that our city is missing an opportunity (I hesitate to say yet that the opportunity has already passed us). I believe that during times such as these investment should be made in technology to increase and improve the services we provide and to do so for less than it currently costs. An initiative such as this will take analysis of current processes and improvement of or elimination of many of these processes. (Yes, I know what you are saying, we should have been evaluating and improving our processes all along, but truthfully how many of your organizations follow this business best practice? As long as times are good there is no motivation or the leadership to do so ).
How are you handling your budget crisis? How has it affected your operations, projects, and plans? What lessons learned can be shared to maybe ease some pain?
As in the spaghetti westerns - where is our man with no name who will come riding into our town to save us from our budget woes - for a fistful of dollars.
We have been through the drill twice already. You know the one where every department must cut their budgets by some arbitrary percentage and freeze all hiring. All of our projects have come to a halt, our budget has been slashed to the point where all we can do is meet our basic contractual obligations, and we are expecting to hear of another round of cuts after the start of the calendar year.
While our current budget shortfall has left us with our heads barely above water, I really believe that our city is missing an opportunity (I hesitate to say yet that the opportunity has already passed us). I believe that during times such as these investment should be made in technology to increase and improve the services we provide and to do so for less than it currently costs. An initiative such as this will take analysis of current processes and improvement of or elimination of many of these processes. (Yes, I know what you are saying, we should have been evaluating and improving our processes all along, but truthfully how many of your organizations follow this business best practice? As long as times are good there is no motivation or the leadership to do so ).
How are you handling your budget crisis? How has it affected your operations, projects, and plans? What lessons learned can be shared to maybe ease some pain?
As in the spaghetti westerns - where is our man with no name who will come riding into our town to save us from our budget woes - for a fistful of dollars.
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