According to this StarTribune article, Lakeville is hiring a consultant to help them craft a vision for the city. While it’s not surprising for the public sector to leverage the services of the private sector, the price tag for this one seems a bit steep.
From the article:
Lakeville will pay a consultant nearly $59,000 to help city leaders decide what direction residents want them to take.
The council recently approved spending on a “vision plan,” about two-thirds through a federal grant.
[...]
Mayor-elect Matt Little said he voted for the measure but is skeptical of spending so much on a consultant.
The vision plan will come from a survey and approximately 12 focus groups and public sessions over the course of eight months. While the City of Lakeville hasn’t done anything of the sort in nearly 15 years, it appears the City Council feels this is the right time to do it. Mayor-elect Matt Little wants to ensure the process provides the council with some clear direction.
One has to wonder whether the Council is going to hold out paying $60,000 for a survey and a handful of public input sessions, something the City Staff should be able to do themselves. With the mayor-elect already questioning the cost and agreeing to move forward anyway, is he pandering to both sides or is he taking a wait-and-see approach to force the consultants to provide clarity before the city makes its final decision?
Being that public sector work is so heavily focused on taking input from the people already, do you think it makes sense for local cities to hire private sector consultants to do this sort of work for them? Is visioning something you think cities should be spending money on right now? Do you think mayor-elect Matt Little is fence riding and pandering to both sides and should be a bit more decisive? Whatever you have to say about this one go ahead and comment on as I’d love to hear what you have to say.
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December 10th, 2012 at 7:24 am
I thought thats what elections for for, to allow the public to provide input on government.
December 10th, 2012 at 9:26 am
I don’t think 59K is a big number for a consultant. While your post minimizes the amount of work involved, you need to remember that there is analysis and conclusions that are derived by that work and, provided they hire a competent consultant, the price is as much about what they know as it is the amount of work required.
That said, I am with Sank. You vote for city leaders because you expect them to have said “vision” of where a city is going. More so, you elect the leader of the city leaders to offer a vision and provide direction as to how to see it through.
If mayor-elect Little has such low confidence in his own vision and also is already cow-towing to other counsel member by voting for their project while being wishy-washy as to why, I think there are serious leadership issues with the new mayor.
I think Lakeville should keep that 59K in the bank and demand that it’s city leaders come up with a reasonable vision for the city in their own brains and use that money to see through to set up the future for the city.
December 10th, 2012 at 10:15 am
I can see vision consulting working with organizatons that are essentially fixed. Large and Small Businesses, churches, public service organizations all can start with one driving force and need to refresh the vision behind that force from time to time. But government essentially already has that vision refresh built in. As Sank already stated, that’s what elections are for. Politicians shouldn’t have to hold their finger up every time they make a decision to see which way the wind is blowing. We elect them because we like their direction, so they should follow that lead.
Does the city already have resources internally that could handle this? I sure hope not. The city should have people on staff that do stuff, but not that kind of stuff.
Is the fee reasonable? Sounds like it. I assume they need to provide refreshments and have some consumables in these meetings. Then they spend a few days compiling information and putting it into a report.
December 10th, 2012 at 1:38 pm
Who goes to these focus group “sessions” anyway? Elderly retirees with time on their hands? What time of the day are such sessions held normally? I don’t about you, but I have better things to do than to sign up to be in a focus group (or are they selected instead?) or attend a public hearing on “visioning”.
Let’s face it – Lakeville is a yuppie bedroom community with not much going for it then apparently a little federal grant money that they must spend on this type of thing. If there wasn’t a federal feeding trough of funds (gee maybe we could climb off of the “cliff” by not doing crap like this!) then this would never be on the table.
When it is all said and done, the report will be released, the city will cut a check to the consultant, and you’ll never hear about it again.