Cutting Budgets in Government
Mike Walker, Col. USMC (retired) and Superintendent of Business Services for a California school district.
All,
Sequestration has come to pass and now the real work begins. In California, the school district where I worked saw its funding cut by over 25% in a few short years, a decrease that surpassed the cuts made during the Great Depression.
We had to constantly keep before us the truth that our core responsibility was to teach kids the 3 R’s (for simplicity’s sake) and we did it.
How: Looking at every possible aspect of how we educated kids to see where we could cut spending.
First and foremost, you have to be able to distinguish what services you must provide versus what services you want to provide. In other words, you have to have crystal clear picture of why your organizations exists – what is your fundamental purpose and accomplish that mission and that mission only.
Once you have done that then you protect the core and start cutting the rest. In the case of a school district, all the initial cuts needed to be as far away from the classroom as possible.
That also meant looking at the little things as well as the big things.
For big-ticket examples, put off capital improvements. Reduce travel to a minimum and eliminate almost all conferences. When staff leave, (except essential employees, your equivalent of classroom teachers) do not fill their positions.
Before we had to go the route of furloughs, we carefully asked for input/ideas/thoughts for saving money from the employees that were going to suffer from the furloughs. We were amazed at how many great ideas they came up with which proves once again that managers do not have all the answers. We still eventually had to go the furlough route, but the actual number of days turned out to be less than half of the initial plan.
Please note the use of the phrase “carefully asked.” If not then all the ideas will devolve into cutting the other guys budget i.e. the high school staff says cut the elementary schools and vice versa. They need to offer up ideas on how to cut their part of the pie.
For small examples, you can save a lot of money by reducing the number of printers, microwaves, copiers, office refrigerators, coffee pots, etc. You can extend the service life of computers, turn off the lights and regulate thermostat settings.
One last point, you may have noticed during the above discussion there was an emphasis on student education and not about school employees. That is because schools exist for the kids, not the adults.
The U.S. Government exists for the benefit of the citizens not the employees. Never forget that.
Mike
