Judy Iradi - Rec & DPW Consolidation - Another View
Full Description:
Moving the Recreation Department's maintenance staff to the DPW Department, will not result in any decrease in staff members, nor will it result in any decrease in Municipal taxes or spending.
So what we are talking about is the potential to possibly better utilization of existing staff, during times of need, in areas of greatest importance.
To accomplish this, all as needs to be done is to have the Superintendents of DPW and Recreation sit down together and identify members of their staff maintenance teams, that will be cross-trained and available to assist, one another during peak time periods - when the other Department may need extra manpower.
As an example, in the fall the DPW may need extra help to collect leaves and in the spring, Recreation may need extra help to prepare the ball fields for playing on.
The superintendents should create an annual schedule and identifying staff members that will be assigned to assist the other department during their peak time periods. The identified staff members will report to their regular department during the year, and then if needed report to the other department during the identified peak time periods.
This will ensure that Recreational facilities keep getting the excellent care and attention they are already getting, and manpower can be efficiently and effectively shared between departments on a as-needed basis.
In the future, we can do an assessment to see if there are any tasks that recreation currently handles, such as trash and leaf collection in the parks, can be more cost effective and efficiently handled if they are done by the DPW department.
At the March 4th Township Committee meeting, Mr. Francioli, speaking at the podium, questioned why actual cast savings figures were not available to discuss with the public. After much persistence on Francioli\'s part, Mayor Sheridan told him that \"his 4-minutes time to speak were up\", and Francioli had to leave the podium and sit down.
Before and at the meeting, I along with other resident asked to see actual cost-saving figures relating to the eluded to "tax savings". A cost/benefit analysis should have at a minimum been part of any analysis Mr. Schleifer and Ferramosca under took, before making any proposal - no figures were provided. Mayor Sheridan said figures would on the Hanover Township Website within in a couple of days of the meeting - as of today, no figures have been provided.
Tom, Something\'s very wrong here!
The above proposal, to be able to cross-train and plan for and share maintenance staff across Departments, during peak time periods, is the only proposal that makes any sense.
