This probably takes the prize as the most boring title of any of my
blog posts. I'll be brief and, I hope, concise.
I've been able to attend the regular meetings of a lot of different
committees in the last few months (in addition to the ones I am
assigned to). On a number of occasions, there has been discussion of
applying processes and procedures in a consistent manner; usually the
conversation came up because, somewhere, they were not. There are
rules and structures that govern most of what we do, from providing
services to holding meetings to personnel issues to use of County
funds to grant applications, and a hundred other processes that cost
us money, time and effort when they're not done right.
I'm a former administrator, so I understand that we're all human, and
that dotting all the i's and crossing all the t's can be a frantic
and crazy-making burden, and that, frankly, sometimes an organization
works better when you've found a way around some of the less useful
rules and processes.
However, an organization – and especially a municipality – works
much better, with much less waste, (and fewer lawsuits) when there is
someone responsible for seeing that all (or at least most) of the
details are done right all the way through the organization. In
Otsego County, it seems that this is not, often, the case.
Department heads need to be experts at everything, not just their
department's functioning, and that's not fair, because that's not
what they were hired for.
This is all in support of the concept of a County Manager, who would
be responsible for all these systems which are not central to the
mission of each department, but must be done right. For these
reasons alone, a County Manager's work could very well pay for the
position. And the County would be more effective in doing the work
it's responsible for.
More on this as time goes on.
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