Why Can't They Get It Right?

Hi Everyone,

Today's blog is about a large city that just can't seem to get it right. Yonkers, New York, is the fourth largest city in New York state. Yonkers fiscal situation never seems to be good and definitely is never in the black. At the start of 2012, Yonkers projected a $452 million deficit for the next three years. For the 2013-2014 budget, the deficit slimmed down to $50 million. Why? Check out the problems that the Yonkers Department of Public Works has had, I guess forever. If anyone in Yonkers politics had at least one ounce of common sense, these problems would have been solved a very long time ago.

A six page report on the DPW contained the following "questionable practices":

- Employees working a second job, while still on city time.

- Employees knocking off hours before the official end of their shifts.

- Related employees supervising each other.

- A general confusion by employees and managers about work rules, policies and even who their supervisors are.

WHAT??????

All of the above occur in a city that has, for as long as I can remember, claimed poverty and asked for state and federal help, (hand outs). But this isn't the first such report. The last report resulted in a top DPW official being suspended after he approved post-Sandy repairs done by his son's contracting company.

Any real world company would not allow such problems to first of all, happen and secondly to continually occur without taking some kind of action. Why? I truly believe it is because the money they lose is not the "company's" but rather the taxpayers money. Politicians just don't seem to care as much when it is taxpayers money. All the above problems could be fixed pretty easily by issuing updated rules and regulations or policies and procedures. All employees should be given the new or updated rules, have them read them and then have them sign for them. Then you hold all employees accountable! It will be interesting to see how long it takes the bureaucracy just to figure out what to do and then how long it takes to implement them. Of course it will be a very long drawn out procedure.

Prerequisites for being a politician should not just include having common sense, it should also include having business experience to learn how real world companies are run. Maybe another should be, no more lawyers. It seems that the majority of policitians are lawyers and we have all seen what that has done to our political system.

Til next week.

Peter