Michael W. Machado: Time for local governments, districts to consider consolidation

We have all read and heard that every level of local government county, cities, school districts, other special districts are suffering severe budget problems as a result of recession induced revenue decreases.

[Freebie]

One possible flaw in the concept of consolidation being the panacea for budget and operational woes: Pajaro Valley Unified School District has as many students as the other nine county school districts combined, making it arguably the most consolidated. How great is the condition of its budget and operations?

[New Math Acct]

Over the last 10 years the number of private sector jobs in Santa Cruz County has decreased while governmental jobs have increased.

- that's not true for the City of Santa Cruz. 100's of jobs have been eliminated.

One measure of the cost of government is the amount of dollars spent per citizen from governmental general funds which encompasses the core costs of government police, fire, parks and recreation, planning, management, etc.. The financial reports for all local governments are available on the web. If you divide the general fund expenditures for the fiscal year ended June 2008 for each local city and the county by the population of each entity, you get the following results for our local cities and county:
Capitola $1,340 per citizen
Santa Cruz $1,293
Watsonville $754
Scotts Valley $658
--- now either add tourist to the population (they pay taxes) or factor out the amount they contribute to the General Fund that tourists contribute to the general fund before calculating a cost per person. Both Santa Cruz and Capitola will go way down.
Based on this analysis, it is no surprise that the cities of Santa Cruz and Capitola have the most severe budget problems while Scotts Valley is in the best shape.
Michael W. Machado is a Certified Public Accountant

-- your an accountant and you fix the numbers by misrepresenting the true cost per person.

[Sliva]

There is no better time to reshape the structure of government in CA than now. They will fight it tooth and nail but it must be done. GM, once the mighty car maker must reinvent itself as it simply became unprofitable. The CA government structure is unaffordable and must be rebuilt from the ground up.

[wtf]

Let's eliminate districts in favor of cities, cities in favor of counties, counties in favor of states, states in favor of the federal government, and then let's surrender it all to the UN, and we can have the one-world government the right wing falsely claims what is laughingly called the "left" in Santa Cruz wants.

[James Anderson Merritt]

Thanks to Mr. Machado for his look at the numbers. In considering the point made by "New Math Act," anove, I think every city has tourists, and big cities tend to have more tourists than smaller ones. Suppose that we adjust Santa Cruz's numbers by factoring out the impact of tourists on the general fund. Wouldn't we have to do that for San Jose city and Santa Clara county, too, and wouldn't their numbers also go down? It also seems relevant that, if such a large component of the "price per resident" is borne by tourists, we should then expect to feel a BIG pinch when bad times inspire fewer tourist trips to our area. I don't think Mr. Machado's comparisons and conclusions are off-base, even if his numbers can only be rough approximations.

I do question the call for consolidation, however, especially as it applies to schools. We have seen a lot of evidence in recent years, to support the idea that smaller schools and districts to a better job of educating kids and being responsive to parental concerns and needs. Maybe the way to "consolidate" is not to combine schools or districts to achieve illusory "economies of scale," at the expense of educational outcomes and parental influence. Instead, perhaps the consolidation we should seek is to have teachers assume overhead functions where appropriate, so that we have few or no dedicated "professional administrators," and so that as many people as possible with administrative functions stay in close touch with the situations in the classrooms and the needs of students. Any State or Federal mandate that requires the employment of a full-time administrator who has NO educational function should be immediately suspect as contributing to the problem, rather than the solution, and therefore resisted or rejected by those who really care about students and their success.

We have gone through a couple of waves of massive school-district consolidation. In each, we were promised that "economies of scale" and "more equitable distribution of resources" would bring quality education to all. Intentional or not, that proved to be a lie. Parents lost influence, students got the shaft, safety and health services were cut, neighborhood schools were closed. All the while, rivers of money flowed to centralized decision-making bureaucracies at the District and State levels. How many times must consolidation yield the same fruit for us to recognize the poison nature of the tree?

[James Anderson Merritt]

In the posting above, I hit "ENTER" too quickly. The last paragraph should begin: "In the last several decades, we have gone through at least a couple of waves of massive school-district consolidation in California."

[New Math Acct]

James Anderson Merritt wrote:

Thanks to Mr. Machado for his look at the numbers. In considering the point made by "New Math Act," anove, I think every city has tourists, and big cities tend to have more tourists than smaller ones. Suppose that we adjust Santa Cruz's numbers by factoring out the impact of tourists on the general fund. Wouldn't we have to do that for San Jose city and Santa Clara county, too, and wouldn't their numbers also go down? It also seems relevant that, if such a large component of the "price per resident" is borne by tourists, we should then expect to feel a BIG pinch when bad times inspire fewer tourist trips to our area. I don't think Mr. Machado's comparisons and conclusions are off-base, even if his numbers can only be rough approximations.

I think it is safe to assume that a larger percentage of Santa Cruz's General Fund is derived from tourists than is San Jose's General Fund. It is definitely safe to say so about Scotts Valley.

True that we should expect to feel a big pinch on tough economic times; we are feeling a big pinch, as opposed to Scotts Valley.

[SF has one planning dept]

Santa Cruz County has five.
Right one, Machado.
Not bad for an old guy.