City, county have their redundancies

Margie Shepherd Albemarle County
Published: November 5, 2008

The federal government, Wall Street, Main Street, the state government and now our local government — everybody’s short of money.
It seems like this would be a good time to reach across our own aisle, and merge some Charlottesville and Albemarle programs, which would save us all a significant amount of precious resources. It may take a couple of years, maybe more. But it doesn’t look like our economy is bouncing back any time soon, and, in any case, cooperating to solve our own situation would be a great economic model for our community.

What areas? Any areas that make sense, any areas where there is overlap, any areas where we could save significant money and serve the community better by sharing the work of overhead, where combining departments ex-pands the possibilities, and reduces waste.
Maybe parks and recreation, with their publications and offerings. After all, people don’t pay attention to the division between city and county when they go for an outing or a class. Maybe the police departments. Maybe Social Services — it would help all the kids who have to move in with relatives in the county and then back to relatives in the city; they wouldn’t need to keep switching caseworkers. Schools? They shouldn’t be off the table. We could expand our offerings by sharing programs, or sharing spaces, or sharing specialty teachers.

It would take a lot of work, and a lot of time, to figure out how to merge programs that have been separate forever. Jobs might be lost, but, as this is a slow process, attrition should take care of this. It certainly would be a better solution than cutting out essential positions, programs, and people.

We can do it. We should at least give it a try.