Did you know the city has a central warehouse that costs over $850,000 a year to operate? (Yes, we do. We really shouldn’t be surprised; this is the same city that spends over $30 million on three public golf courses.) Back to the warehouse: It stocks items like toilet paper, batteries, landscaping materials and cleaning products. The $850,000 is the annual cost of the seven employees and running the warehouse, and does not include the cost of the actual inventory.
The council discussed the possibility of “exploring the idea” of contracting out the services of the warehouse last week. However, after some discussion, the council decided to defer this item until August/September to allow for additional input from the labor unions. The city is investigating if it would be cheaper to manage the warehouse via a contracted company under its public-private competition policy from 1997.
The idea is to take advantage of what other large organizations do. For example, many of them have “just in time” (JIT) delivery of their supply chain needs. In fact, many high-tech companies have vastly more complicated global supply chains then the City of San Jose. These companies have gone “virtual” with their manufacturing and warehousing via third party logistics providers who execute the JIT programs.
One of the benefits is not having carrying costs of the actual inventory. By using a JIT program we would only pay for the toilet paper once it has been delivered to City Hall, instead of when it is in the warehouse collecting dust. You should not fret about bathrooms running out of toilet paper as the chosen company will be required to have additional local inventory that is deliverable to the specific city facility within a certain amount of time.
We could redeploy the seven warehouse employees to other jobs at the corporation yard, City Hall, civilian positions in our police department, or the sewage treatment plant, for example.
Union leaders assert that the warehouse and the seven employees are strategic resources for the city in case of an emergency—two good points. However, the city is not going to actually sell the warehouse property and all city employees are asked to help out in case of an emergency, not just these seven.
The residents of San Jose want us to look at areas where the city can be more efficient and save money. Therefore, I believe we owe it to the taxpayers to explore ways we can do so. I just hope that city staff and the labor unions will have a truly open dialogue on this topic so all issues are vetted fairly before it comes back to council later in the year.
John McCain says we don’t negotiate with terrorists.
Pierluigi—Another unprecedented glimpse of the sacred inside of SJ City Govt. Terrific.
The official political response to this obvious, solvable problem—postpone a solution to a problem that should be dealt with instantly. More Chinese Fire Drill at City Hall. (Now it’s bird-watching in the urban wastelands of modern China—as the Travel issue of the New Yorker reveals. At least WE have noble falcons and endless yummy pigeons.)
At any rate, while the City Council has to take forever to find just one small way to eliminate fiscal waste, if one can be found among the mountains of waste in plain view,
you can bet SEIU has a standing committee that is constantly looking for new opportunities for every local tax-funded public agency to hire its members, but also making sure that no job in the pidliest “service” is lost. My favorite is Ken Yeager’s suggestion that hundreds of drones be added to the fire bureaucracy to inspect every single property outside the urban boundary for a dry, combustible twig.
Certainly SEIU must have a medal waiting for the politician who manages such a bold gambit successfully. George Green
I ran this column by a buddy who has decades of experience working for the government. His take was that Mr Oliverio is thinking backwards: that the real solution is not dissolution of the warehouse system but increased management and supervision of the inventory and existing staff. What he suggested was that the city add an 8th position, a “cost-reduction specialist” responsible for monitoring market fluctuations, scanning Walgreen’s ads, and making timely purchases; a 9th and 10th position, to form a two-person “roll inspection team” responsible for conducting random checks of city facilities, making ply assessments, and issuing excessive-usage notices, an 11th employee to manage the transition from a seven to ten employee operation, and finally, a 12th employee, an “Independent Ass-wipe Auditor” to monitor the performance of the staff, issue annual reports critical of the warehouse operation, and attempt to appease this city’s diverse collection of otherwise unappeasable assholes.
– Privatize
– Outsource
– Decommission
Good stuff Pier. Keep up the good work.
Privatization fever – Catch it!
Even Feinstein is onboard!
“Candidly, I don’t think the taxpayers should be subsidizing something that doesn’t need to be. There are parts of government that can be run like a business and should be run like businesses.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/08/AR2008060801765.html?hpid=topnews
Pier,
With all due respect you come up with weekly ideas on how to save money, yet I can’t think of one thing you have actually put into practice. What happened to your idea of taking a day without pay? Was that ever suggested to the city council and what was the outcome? We all know that the city employees are responsible for all the city woes, and it has nothing to do with spending almost a billion on the new city hall or selling out to developers, or lack of developing a tax base to equal the population’s demands. Most all of us can come up with ideas on cost cutting or blame the employees, but what separates a leader is putting an idea into practice, however small.
Hey Fellow Bloggers—PO HAS worked on all the outrages he’s found. The Rose Garden didn’t turn out the way it should, i.e. the elimination of the SEIU “gardeners”, but at least the Rose Garden is looked after, by volunteer taxpayer-gardeners, and we just saw last week that PO’s golf net got done and the golf courses NOT sold—only because PO is just one member of the Council, but one who made a point that even the Murky mentioned in the piece on the nets-sell the goddamn money-losing courses. (There goes the deficit!) Problem is, lots of SEIU members on the golf course payroll. McCain is right about eliminating ALL the terrorists, the ones who have taken over SJ government, but are never up for election. George Green
The mere fact that the City Council decided to defer the decision until consulting with the labor unions demonstrates just how backwards our government has become.
I used to think that Government was meant to serve the people and not the other way around.
By all means though, the supply warehouse would undoubtedly be run more efficiently were it run by the private sector.
As far as the public emergency aspect goes, I would expect the City of San Jose to be about as useful to our citizens as the City of New Orleans was to their’s.
Since this city and mayor operate on the stupid cost recovery model, why don’t you charge for use of the restrooms and toilet paper. A quarter for entry, 10 cents for toilet paper or towels.
That is what you are doing to small businesses. maybe your city staff (yer the people you answer too) would could see how small businesses feel be nickled and dimed to death.
And the fines you could get. put a monitor in the restrooms. 2500 fine for missing the toilet, 500 for taking too long, 25 for not washing your hands.
Run with this one!!!
If you can outsource bathroom tissue, then kudos to you PO. I’m sure that the unions will go to the matresses to protect these jobs. Keep fighting and exposing tho…..love the satire FFF.
PO,
While cutting the toilet paper costs is commendable, a much more pressing issue is the rise in violent crime in San Jose. bucking the national decrease in violent crime. Please let us know what you are doing to deal with this.
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_9537844?source=most_viewed
Pierluigi,
It`s time to return to basics!Get out of the distribution business, it`s the 21st Century.San Jose is out of touch.
Spending $850,000. on operating costs to save a dollar a case on toilet paper and paper towels is hardly saving money.With the new fuel cost this year and the projected fuel costs for next year,they could easily increase the $850,000. to the $1 million dollar mark.
If there is a need for these employees elseware in government then turn over the distribution over to the experts in distribution and close this operation ASAP.
Many chain accounts that used to be in the distridution business over to the experts in logisitics.San Jose has two firms,“Clean Source or Area Distributing.Freemont has another even larger,Sysco Corporation with over 100 trucks serving the bay area.
Go to bid with these companies and they can deliver directly to City owned properties and save a lot more than $850,000.Normal bids in this area go out over a 1 year commitment.
Logistics companies have multiple customers in a given neighborhood and their fuel and other costs per delivery would make it difficult for the City of San Jose to have lower cost of distribution.
the city of San Jose “should get out of this business ASAP.
San Jose Unified converted to an outsource method for nearly all supplies over ten years ago. They were able to arrange for both typical and obscure school supplies as well as develop a customized low cost catalogue from which each site ordered. Generally, supplies arrived the next day, an improvement of 5 to 7 days over the days of the district’s warehouse. Also, the school district sold the warehouse land on Stockton Avenue and consolidated the few remaining tasks on the back property of Willow Glen High. There was much hew and cry when the idea was proposed, but I believed it worked out well. Perhaps, local data from local government using local vendors might serve to convince city officials of the possibility of success. By the way, school employees are also obligated to provide emergency services just as are city employees. Somehow the school district was not concerned that the warehouse staff would be reassigned to other work within the district. This emergency response issue was not one of the issues ever raised by the school district critics. This suggests the emergency argument is fatuous.
Very pertinent, Stats-
You would like to think that city officials would objectively take this local example as evidence that outsourcing the supply warehouse could better serve the public.
Unfortunately, their first priority is what will better serve THEM.
You have a fiduciary duty to see to it that city government is run both efficiently and as economically as possible. If it makes cents, do it!
Since when do employees dictate to their managers how to manage?