chickaree wrote: Why have a city finance department at all then?
Because there are day to day issues to be dealt with, and short range planning to be done....but why have people on staff for those occasional issues when you can hire a consultant for those? When I had my own businesses there were many times that I would source out some parts of a contract to another business that was better able to handle it, that was more cost effective than hiring an employee for one job, then hope I could find enough work to keep them busy after that contract was completed. That's just good business.
City employees who were clueless? NPR had a story years ago about a Pennsylvania town that was going to have to declare bankruptcy so they appointed business people to see if they could turn things around. One of the things corrected, making timely deposits! The person receiving the checks that citizens were sending for permits, etc, was filing them away instead of depositing them every day.
Thomas Sowell: There are no solutions, just trade-offs.
