Friday, June 24, 2011

How Many Freaking Times Can They Do This?

"County staffers are developing bid proposals for outside consultants to help with restructuring departments and outsourcing some services." Can you believe this?

How many tens of thousands of dollars did the taxpayers pay for the Georgia State study? And the study before that? And the study before that?

Commissioner Boyer says "The public is not going to accept no cuts, no furloughs or no layoffs with a tax increase."

More hard times a' comin' folks.

Click here for more.

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well lets see, we have accepted furloughs, insurance increases, pension increases, pending loss of vacation and sick time accrual, pending exreme pension updates, crappy equipment, cars with over 180,000 miles and all along there has not been a tax increase so what is Ms. Elaine Boyer talking about. Its time to spread the wealth or in this case debt and stop trying to balance the budget on the emoyees backs.

Anonymous said...

I am ashamed to say I live in Dekalb County.And ashamed that
CEO Ellis can graduate from Wharton School of Business and can't develop a restructuring plan after 2 and a half years. How much more taxpayers money is going to be spent for consultants to come up
with an acceptable plan.??
This is embarassing and insane.
It was clear and acceptable that cuts would have to be made. The Police and Fire Departments were to
be excluded. SO?
If the BOC goes along with Ellis
Proposal (whatever that is)we don't
need them.

Anonymous said...

It doesn't take a rocket science brain to cut in any department - you get rid of the bloat; you get rid of the slackers; and you have a productive work force. You don't cut public safety and especially in a county as big as DeKalb. But the School Board is just as bad - yelling about money but they won't cut the bloat at the Palace; instead they make the teachers and students suffer. Impeach the Commission and impeach the School Board.

Pissed off Mother F'er said...

Oh shut up whining and be thankful you have a shity paying job. If not for this shity paying job you wouldn't have a job no then would you.
I love how the BOC have made my shity paying job possible. I love worn out cars, pension increases so damn high I cant afford to go grocery shopping but every two to three weeks now.
So shut your mouths before I come put my fist in it.
Where the hell is my Change and Hope I was promised.

Anonymous said...

Nothing for the good is going to happen in this screwed up county. The powers to be do not have the intelligence to come in from the rain, muchless organizing a work plan to improve the spending habits of this county. The powers to be is made up of 99.99% democrats and democrats do not nothing to save, just spend. Just ask the current President of these United States. He too, doesn't know much about saving anything!!!

In a sense, we are not in any better shape now then we were when Vernon Jones left office.

Is life "grand" living in this county?

Thank God, I do not have to work in this county !!

Anonymous said...

I am amused that the BOC has two weeks in order to finalize the budget yet they are just now bidding out a manpower study.

Which leads me to my second question, what happened to the "desk audit" that was ordered when the budget was initally set?

Anonymous said...

I agree with BOC. I think we should have additional studies to studty the past studies and study those studies in the future to insure that we always are in line for more studies at the tax payers expense...Hey BOC...Study the hell out of this....Isn't this what you were elected to do?...make decisions and not continually hiring outside people to conduct studies so you can make a politically correct decision or in our case, ignore the study that you paid for with taxpayer money?The only study county voters need to pay for is a study to figure out how to get rid of you morons !

Anonymous said...

The country of Greece is failing due to years of socialist governments. Dekalb is going the same route. We didn't learn anything from Viet Nam ..ie the three endless wars we are in now fighting for 10 century cavemen who hate our guts. The citizens of Dekalb should watch Greece fall and find out why it is happening and for once learn a real lesson to save their own asses from politicians.

Anonymous said...

This is just a charade to make it look like they are doing something. The GSU study is there waiting to be implemented.

I think that The County still has the 600 part-time employees (the double dippers from the early retirement buyouts)


A "Desk audit" was promised to get a count of the number of employees. Has anybody seen the result of that? Maybe the desks were stolen (or sold)and they could not be counted.

The county has barely grown in population from 2000 to 2010. Some of its functions have been absorbed by the cities that were incorporated. Yet, there probably are 2000 -- 3000 more employees now than there were in 2000 before Vernon took over and put the friends and family job bank into high gear.

The County BOC also was supposed to do a five-year budget projection. Has anybody seen that one? It probably is being held secret because it probably would show the county having to increase taxes every year to stay afloat or going into bankruptcy in year three or four. A true Ship of Fools

Anonymous said...

Like anything else, you seek enough opinions and eventually you will find one that you like. You hire enough consultants and eventually you will get one that will advise you the way you want to be advised. Doesn't matter whether it works or not but that it sounds good and (at least in the boards mind) makes you look good.

Anonymous said...

Hey WIZ,
SAW YOU ON THE NEWS FRIDAY AFTERNOON ON CH.2....PLEASE GO TO THE DENTIST.

Anonymous said...

Blogmaster

Can you please post the next date and time for the BOC meeting along with a motivational message to go to the meeting since they have to approve this budget within the next 2 weeks....Maybe some of us will show up

-Anon 1118

Anonymous said...

Y'all know my views on the subject, and dislike repetition, but the point many of us are trying to make is that the "quick and dirty" (and cheap) GSU study was about 80 percent correct and provided a solid foundation for restructuring county operations, the study obviously needed some more work, what do you expect for 50 grand?
The study was ignored for a variety of reasons, primarily ideological and egotistical.
The ideology of expanding government to fulfill every whim of the citizen with the three big bond issues in the last decade and the ego of the commissioners unwilling to admit that the GSU study performed by undergraduate students and professors for a measly 50 grand had picked up on some easy targets for reductions such as a vastly bloated management staff, political staff, and to a lessor extent, the employee base.
Instead the BOC elected upon two counterproductive strategies. The employee retirement incentive and the illegal but innovative "unpaid holidays" AKA the employee paycut. When that failed they rolled out the employee furloughs and generic budget reductions.
Even with the admittedly low salaries of the employee base and declining health benefits, the highest paid metro political staff is proposing to kill the last remaining financial incentive for the employee base to stick with the county. The pre-2005 pension plan.
Mrs. Boyer and the rest of the commissioners should know better, if there are any doubts as to mood of the county employees they only need look back one year ago when double the commissioners estimated amount of employees fled the county when given the chance for early retirement.
A good government can just about run itself with little input from the politicians, to watch our politicians royally frack up DeKalb government with the best of intentions is painful.

Anonymous said...

William “Wiz” Miller
Director of the DeKalb County Public Safety Office.

William “Wiz” Miller continues to be listed as a Cabinet Member of
CEO Burrell Ellis. I thought the BOC cut the position of Director of the DeKalb County Public Safety Office. CEO Ellis moved Wiz to be over 911.

What is going on?

Anonymous said...

This is not about the study and its results.... they know what has to be cut as they have many past studies that have all said the same thing: cut the bloat of useless employees.

What the study is about is giving away a big load of public money to somebodies friend who owns a consulting business in exchange for nothing. This is what 90% of all 'consultants' do for the county, they just take money on the friends and family program.

Right Mr. CEO? So how is the girlfriend in watershed doing on her consulting project? She submit any reports yet? Yeah, didn't think so.... Consultants are all a bunch of crooks, or should I say rooks in this case?

JW

Anonymous said...

I agree with JW on 95 percent of the issues, but would also like to point out the JW is not Jeff Wiggs, the DeKalb FOP union rep. Jeff Wiggs also agrees with much of what JW writes but will never post on this blog due to his official position on the FOP and some ethical issues such as conflict of interest. To anyone who believes JW is Jeff Wiggs I can only say I have talked with Jeff Wiggs personally and he is not JW.
Best of luck, mates!
KenC

Anonymous said...

Sorry to have possibly put Jeff Wiggs in any uncomfortable situations by posting with just my initials (which are obviously his as well).

I will change it up from now on to prevent this. Once again I apologize to Mr. Wiggs if he caught any flack due to my postings.

John W.

Anonymous said...

Short answer is "As many times as they like".

Anonymous said...

Well said John, with all the crap that has gone down over the last two years, it is no wonder that there is some confusion over the identities of the anonymous bloggers on this site.
Jeff Wiggs is doing his best for the employees he represents. But he isn't getting much support, I just wanted to set the issue straight.
John, your comments are greatly appreciated, keep yours coming and I will try to make my comments shorter!
Best of luck, guys!
KenC