Right there at the top of the front page, the Standard-Examiner breathlessly provides the lowdown on a new Emerald City cost savings measure this morning, under the headline banner, "Money saving ideas?" (Regular Weber County Forum readers, of course already knew about this.) Ace reporter Schwebke's lead paragraphs provide the gist:
OGDEN — Innovative city employees could earn significant cash rewards for cost-saving ideas under a new municipal program rolling out in the next two weeks.For our own part, we think this is a danged good idea; and we're delighted to see the Godfrey administration seeking ways to save money, rather than merely to spend it. That's a man bites dog story in itself, we think. Hopefully more than a few of the drones "in the trenches" will reap lucrative financial rewards as a result of this new program. In the wake of municipal departmental budget cuts in recent days, heavens knows many of our hard-working city employees could use an additional financial shot in the arm.
The purpose of the program is to provide incentives to workers whose suggestions result in improved, more efficient city operations, said Mark Johnson, Ogden’s management services director.
“Who better to come up with ideas than those people in the trenches?” he said. “They see things that management never sees.”
The maximum monetary award to an employee is 20 percent of the first year’s realized cost savings and 10 percent of the second year’s savings.
The program won’t be funded through new tax payer dollars — rather, Johnson said, awards paid to employees will come from increased revenue or savings to the city. The initiative is patterned after similar employee cost-saving efforts in Oregon, Virginia and Washington.
In that connection (and due the fact that's an exceedingly s-l-o-o-o-w news day) we came up with a great idea. How 'bout we, the gentle readers of Weber County Forum, lend our Ogden City employee "trench dwellers" a helping hand? We spend much of our time here on WCF identifying and exposing Godfrey administration cost inefficiencies. This seems an ideal opportunity to put our readers' good ideas to work. WCF readers are all good-hearted and civic minded folks, to the last man-jack. How about the idea of assembling all the clever cost saving ideas that we can come up with and laying them out in one place... namely our lower comments section? Come one come all, submit your budget buttressing ideas.
Here's the operating groundrule: Any reader ideas gleaned by city employees smart enough to read this blog, which are submitted and approved by the administration, will become said employees' sole property. Shaking down city employees for intellectual property royalties would be inelegant at the least, it seems to us.
Please don't hesitate to participate in today's exercise in helpful web-based civic interactivity.
Who will be the first to comment?
