November 28, 2012
Editorial
To tell the truth.
Editorial
To tell the truth.
An outrageous attempt by certain elected officials in Saugatuck and Douglas to mislead citizens is now out in the open.
Over the course of months of debate on the possibility of combining the two city governments into a single, more efficient municipality, some government officials in both cities have asserted that consolidation would be more expensive, not less. They routinely dismissed studies conducted by accounting firm, Plante Moran, which established annual cost-savings at a minimum of $500,000 every year. We heard the bureaucrats say things like the cities had “analyzed all the financial ramifications” of consolidation without uncovering significant savings.
Now, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the Consolidated Government Committee, the City of Saugatuck has responded in writing that such an analysis of consolidation cost-savings by the city “does not exist.”
After receiving a similar FOIA request from the CGC, the Douglas city manager asked for a ten-day extension citing the need to review “voluminous public records.” Apparently that exhaustive search was fruitless, as the official Douglas response was: “there is no document responsive to this request.”
The citizens of Douglas and Saugatuck can decide for themselves whether their government officials have been transparent, honorable, and true to their sworn duty to serve the public interest when it comes to consolidation.
Regardless, we now know for sure that the only consolidation cost-savings studies published to date—the two Plante Moran studies available on this—project a minimum savings of a half-million dollars every year from combining our two cities into one.
Over the course of months of debate on the possibility of combining the two city governments into a single, more efficient municipality, some government officials in both cities have asserted that consolidation would be more expensive, not less. They routinely dismissed studies conducted by accounting firm, Plante Moran, which established annual cost-savings at a minimum of $500,000 every year. We heard the bureaucrats say things like the cities had “analyzed all the financial ramifications” of consolidation without uncovering significant savings.
Now, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the Consolidated Government Committee, the City of Saugatuck has responded in writing that such an analysis of consolidation cost-savings by the city “does not exist.”
After receiving a similar FOIA request from the CGC, the Douglas city manager asked for a ten-day extension citing the need to review “voluminous public records.” Apparently that exhaustive search was fruitless, as the official Douglas response was: “there is no document responsive to this request.”
The citizens of Douglas and Saugatuck can decide for themselves whether their government officials have been transparent, honorable, and true to their sworn duty to serve the public interest when it comes to consolidation.
Regardless, we now know for sure that the only consolidation cost-savings studies published to date—the two Plante Moran studies available on this—project a minimum savings of a half-million dollars every year from combining our two cities into one.
