City eyes study on efficiency

By Rachana Dixit

Published: July 7, 2008

Charlottesville might be jumping on the study bandwagon to take a closer look at its efficiency and quality of service for residents.

City staff will be pitching the study, which would conduct a review of all the city’s departments, to the City Council tonight.

Assistant City Manager Maurice Jones said the city began doing research for a study about two months ago after some councilors expressed an interest last fall. The city is recommending doing either a broad review of all departments at once, or it could stagger the review over the course of several years.

Jones said that measuring the merit of city services, not only how the money goes in, is of equal importance.

“It’s not just an efficiency study,” he said. “They should be tied together.”

It is unclear at this point whether the city would contract the study to an outside group.

“There are all kinds of routes the council could take here,” Jones said.

City Councilor Julian Taliaferro said he was interested in really determining the value of service people receive from the city.

“We talk about how much money it takes to deliver a service, which is the input,” Taliaferro said, “but I don’t think we do a very good job of [measuring] the output.”

“I think they’re interested in seeing if people are getting a good value for their dollar,” he said.

Jones said the city has budgeted $50,000 for the project, but there could be wiggle room at council’s discretion. Several cities have conducted similar studies — Jones noted that Memphis, Tenn., spent $700,000 on a broad efficiency study. Both Honolulu and Manchester, Conn., completed staggered studies and spent $300,000 and $100,000, respectively.

Locally, city and Albemarle County schools have carried out studies to examine their resources, and the county’s Board of Supervisors approved an $89,000 study during its meeting last week. Board chairman Kenneth C. Boyd said the Richmond-based Commonwealth Educational Policy Institute, the same group that did the study for the county school system, will conduct the county’s study. Albemarle’s study will begin in the upcoming weeks and is expected to be completed by Dec. 1.

“In tight budget times, we felt it was probably necessary to do it,” Boyd said.

Though budget concerns weren’t what got the ball rolling for the city, Taliaferro said, “This might be a good time, as it turns out.”