Committee to make final recommendations to council Monday
(by Alexa Libert, staff writer - April 08, 2010)
The ad-hoc committee convened for the last time April 5 to review its final recommendations to council, which will be presented April 12.
The committee, which has been reviewing the possibility of shared resources between the city of Reynoldsburg and the school district, has held weekly meetings since mid-February.
Since then, the committee has identified several areas where sharing resources could potentially create savings, thus making the taxpayers' dollars stretch a bit further.
One of the recommendations to council will include the formation of an intergovernmental committee that would be responsible for exploring those possibilities in more detail, creating an action plan and setting forth progress check points.
Each of the eight recommended seats on the intergovernmental committee include a school board representative, the school superintendant, the treasurer, the business manager, a council representative, the mayor, the auditor and the safety-service director.
The idea, explained ad-hoc committee chairwoman Leslie Kelly, is that "you have the decision makers there."
They will have access to more resources, more readily than other residents may have, and they have the authorization to make decisions, she said.
Councilman Barth Cotner, also a member of the ad-hoc committee, explained that they also tried to mirror the positions.
Doing so, means that the person who holds the equivalent position on the other side, city or school, is there to discuss those issues, Cotner explained.
The ad-hoc committee has managed through its own dialogue, to save money on paper purchasing.
Although both the city and schools were getting paper through the same distributor, the city was paying $29.78 per case and the schools were paying $27.99 per case.
A conversation and some research led to both entities receiving the same lower price and that is without engaging in centralized purchasing, Kelly said.
"That simple savings came from a conversation that went on to simple research and then follow up here on our end," she said. "So if that kind of savings can result from a conversation, a more focused endeavor could potentially lead to some pretty grand savings."
The ad-hoc committee is expected to identify a number of areas that the intergovernmental committee should explore in more detail, including potential savings in operations and programming, when it makes its recommendations to council.
