Sam Staley on Fort Wayne's elites consolidation agenda

Sam Staley gives me a little bit more insight into this consolidation thing. According to several studies that Staley reviewed, consolidation may not be what officials are screaming for folks to believe. For example, when it comes to combining fire departments, efficiency could happen. But, when it comes to a more labor-intensive, day to day operation for say a police department, that may not be such a great ideal.

In other words, "[c}onsolidation does not ensure service-delivery improvements. Services must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis," says Sam Staley. And this big old grand plan to merge everything into one big happy family, Staley says, "[i]ronically, full-scale consolidation may kill the goose that laid the golden egg."

Hmmm, slow but steady, and even go back and take another look at Unigov, would appear to be the advice from Mr. Staley. If efficiency and effectiveness, and not money hunger greed, were true objectives for ramming consolidation down Fort Wayne's citizens throats. But it's not. It's all about the benjamins. The county keeps crying, it only wants to start the committee to study the issue. Not. But thanks to Sam the Man, for enlightening some folks with their heads in the sand, who just want to believe some elected officials are looking out for the taxpayers best interest.

Hat tip to Fort Wayne Observed for the article in Evansville Courier & Press

Update 8-03-2006 Fort Wayne Observed has a copy of the amendment city council resolution for city and county consolidation. I attended and spoke at the meeting. I see that that the resolution exclude members who are not voting Democrats or Republicans in the amended form, and included an approval vote on the Members. Once, again the elite are trying to control dissenting voices. Also, the number of members were increased from 11 to 15 members.