There are no references to Westland in this article, so I assume you’re getting that information from somewhere else. Where?

JJ, I decided to research this a little. Let’s look at City Hall:
First floor:
Police – their own Union.
IT services – non union employees.
2nd floor:
City Clerk – ok, I’ll admit of the 6+ people that work on this floor probably 5 are AFSCME workers – skilled clerical staff, but AFSCME.
3rd Floor:
Attorneys – non union (of course)
Mayor’s and Administrators offices – again might be 1 or 2 skilled AFSCME clerical, rest are non union.
4th Floor:
Public Services – water, sanitary, waste and storm enterprise employees (mostly professional, engineering types).
5th Floor:
Assessing/payroll/finance – again, maybe a couple AFSCME skilled clerical.
6th Floor:
Police – like floor 1
Planning – 5 college degree planners

So, City Hall appears to have few of the lazy AFSCME people you are talking about. If you are going to insult people, at least get their backgrounds correct.

Personally, I would say you are misdirecting your anger, as I have found the workers to be as helpful as they possibly can. I cannot speak to the managers or political types, though, as I have not any interaction with them.

Fire dept should be a private company so if you’re late with paying your bill they wouldn’t have to put out your house fire. That would save them money and they would pass the savings to you.

Also, by your example, why not then privatize Police and Fire.
We can bring Blackwater here, or whatever they call themselves now, to do the work cheaper…

For starters – stop talking about cutting police and fire. We need those. Cut the fat elsewhere. Have you ever gone into City Hall? Have you noticed that 30-50% of the staff is surly, slow, lazy and rude? That they don’t seem to do much (if any) work? They all need to be fired immediately. There would be no impact on city services.

Now if we want to make bigger changes, we should do what other cities have done: Make each service (other than police and fire) bid against private sector contractors. This includes legal, clerks, plan review, engineering, street maintenance, street lighting, plowing, garbage, water and sewer plants, and water and sewer piping. Then we can compare bids (not forgetting that there IS a city cost to adminster private contractor work) and throw out any substandard bids by checking references. Then when the bids come in to be WAY less than the city can provide the service for, we give the Union a firm, fast deadline for a proposal to match the costs. When they fail (and they almost always will) we fire the city staff and hire the contractor. Maybe we’ll have to wait for union contracts to expire to do this, but it can be done. The few good city workers will be snapped up by the contractors, and the rest…well…they can work at McDonalds.

Now AFSCME will balk at this, so we’ll need to contract with turnaround specialist lawyers to fight them. We’ll also need to show we’re serious by having a private contractor lined up to replace EVERY service provided by the union, so they know that if they go on strike they will be easily replaced. If there are one or two services that are well-provided right now then I have no grudge against those people and am happy to let them stay working for the city.

This is my money and your money being spent on these people, and we have a right to demand that it is spent well.

Now if we really want to look at major reorganizations, I think we should look at merging all the cities, townships, and villages into a single Washtenaw City-County entity. I also propose merging the school districts into this entity. I believe that a single entity serving the 300,000 county residents could obtain major efficiencies of scale and save us all money.

Finally, I’m also not opposed to creating special assessment districts for plowing, lighting, leaf pickup, and road maintenance in residential neighborhoods. Apartment dwellers and private road residents currently subsidize these services for neighborhoods, while also individually paying for these services at their own properties. I think that creating these districts would lead to more fair service distribution in the city. (I do think that major roads and downtown maintenance should be paid for by all residents though – not just those living along those roads.)