Recently in Contract Cities Category

 Source: Ralph Ellis, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, January 8, 2009

When Milton became a city three years ago, its founders embraced privatization, paying a company to collect garbage, draw up zoning maps and handle the day-to-day duties of a municipal government. But the relationship soured when the city needed to cut the budget. Last week, Milton ended its contract with CH2M Hill, a Colorado-based firm, and went to a mostly traditional form of government. ..... City Manager Chris Lagerbloom said the change should translate into at least $1 million in yearly savings -- a significant sum for a city with a $22.9 million budget.

Source: By Ralph Ellis, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (GA), Thursday, May 07, 2009

One of Fulton County's breakaway cities trying privatized government services has decided the experiment cost too much.  The Chattahoochee Hills City Council voted Tuesday night to cancel its contract with CH2M Hill, the Colorado-based company that provides most services, except for public safety, to the South Fulton municipality.  CH2M Hill has similar contracts with the larger North Fulton towns of Sandy Springs, Johns Creek and Milton. Leaders of those towns said they have no plans to cancel their contracts.

....... However, the towns are seeking more financial transparency from CH2M Hill and want contract changes to help cut costs.

Source:By Doug Nurse, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (GA), Monday, March 16, 2009

For 18 months, Milton has left vacant its treasurer position, possibly violating the city charter and leaving a void in the fiscal checks and balances.  Absent a chief financial officer, the city's books are being kept by an employee of CH2M Hill-OMI, a private firm hired to provide most day-to-day services and support services with oversight by the city manager.  Everything suggests the city's finances are the on up and up, but all acknowledge it's not an ideal situation.

.... Milton, like Sandy Springs and Johns Creek, hired CH2M Hill to provide almost all municipal services. Only a few top administrative positions and public safety employees work for the city.

Source: Telegraph Herald (IA), Sunday, November 30, 2008

For city governments across the nation, the holiday season is a time when the not-so-merry task of finalizing budgets for the upcoming year are hammered out, spliced together and prepared for public display.

..... One way municipalities seek cost-effectiveness and efficiency is by outscourcing services. Privatization ranges from the limited to all-encompassing, like Sandy Springs, Ga.,which outsources the entire operations of the city to a private company. Two of Dubuque's most prominent examples are Five Flags Center and Grand River Center. Both high-profile enterprises are managed for the city by private companies, but there are dozens of other lesser-known contracts -- from collecting delinquent utility bills to concessions at Flora and Sutton pools to library book repair.

Related article from the Associated Press: Other cities have mixed results in privatization

Source: By BRAD KANE, Naples News (OH), 8:25 p.m., Sunday, August 31, 2008

The corporation that Bonita Springs has contracted with to provide its community development services has been sued in an Ohio court for an alleged sweetheart deal it had with a city on Lake Erie. The city of East Cleveland has filed a $14 million lawsuit in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court against the local and global offices of CH2M Hill as well as the city's former mayor and a local businessman over a contract to provide utility services. Bonita Springs, which contracts out most of its governmental services, in a controversial move switched its community development contract from Lee County to CH2M Hill on June 30.

..... In the East Cleveland lawsuit, the city is suing because the mayor urged its City Council to sign a contract that eventually paid CH2M Hill $3.9 million to provide Water Department services that the city provided for $1.4 million.

Source: By Robert Barkin, American City & County, Aug 1, 2008 12:00 PM

With the clock ticking last fall, Centennial, Colo., officials had a tough decision to make. For the first time since it incorporated in 2001, the Denver-area city soon would be responsible for its own public works services, which previously were provided by Arapahoe County. City leaders had to make a choice: go it alone or hire out the operation to a contractor.

So, Public Works Director Dave Zelenok opened his spreadsheet and calculated the options. He could either build his department from scratch, buy all the equipment and hire a staff, or he could outsource the whole operation to a third-party provider. After running the numbers, he and other city leaders decided to outsource. "I was pleasantly surprised," he says. "The outsource option was competitive against the public sector model in a large city."

On July 1, 2008, Englewood, Colo.-based CH2M HILL OMI began conducting all public works functions for the city of 110,000 residents, from water and wastewater system optimization and operation to community development and public works administration.

Source: IMPA Public Management (subscription req.) FL, June 2008

In an October 2007 PM article describing Weston as a local government that contracts out all of its services for residents--Weston directly employed only three administrators and used approximately 400 contract service work-ers--we indicated some circumstances that account for this highly atypical phenomenon.

...... That has now changed. In its 2007 session, Florida reformed its local property tax legislation. The reform requires local governments to reduce their ad valorem millage rates for fiscal year 2008 so as to derive no more ad valorem revenues than garnered in the prior year, regardless of growth in property values. In Florida, this "rolled back" rate put an end to local governments' revenue stream from Florida's growth in property values.

......... Weston continues to maintain its contract principles with respect to virtually all of its services and service employees. But when a few key senior personnel could be brought aboard at significant cost savings in a situation forced upon Weston by mandates included in state law, one might claim that the principle--which is certainly not absolute--was justifiably bent.

Source: By Jeremy Redmon, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (GA), 05/27/08

A year and a half after they split from Fulton County hoping to deliver better services to taxpayers, the cities of Milton and Johns Creek have not yet tracked how well they're reaching that goal. As Sandy Springs did before them, Milton and Johns Creek took a new approach and hired a private company to manage nearly all their government services, except their police and fire departments.

Milton and Johns Creek officials, as well as many city residents and businessmen interviewed, say they generally are happy with the performance of Englewood, Colo.-based CH2M Hill Inc.

But city leaders say they have been too busy with other priorities to set benchmarks by which they can precisely measure the company's performance, a responsibility called for in their multimillion-dollar contracts.

Source: by Jason Wright, Aspen Newspapers (GA), March 17, 2008

It is no secret Milton's City Hall can be a tumultuous place. Council meetings have a tendency to drag on for hours discussing minor points and council members snub one another publicly -- and those are just the good days. In the roughly 15 months since the city got off the ground, it has seen an unlikely and extraordinary confluence of events for a relatively quiet town of only 20,000.

........ ..... Milton is mostly staffed by private company CH2M HILL OMI. At least two CH2M HILL department heads have been replaced, with rumors that another may be on his way out if a willing replacement can be found to work in Milton.

Source: by Jonas Prager and John Flint, ICMA Public Management, October 2007 (subscription req.)

City and county managers often manage contracts, but managers rarely devote most of their waking hours (and occasionally sleepless nights) to contract management. But the job of the city manager of Weston, Florida, a city with only three municipal employees and about 400 contract employees, is to be the contract manager of Weston for service delivery and finance.

In Weston in 2007 the three employees who are on the city payroll are the city manager, the assistant city manager/chief financial officer (ACM/CFO), and the city clerk. The 400 others are employed by contractors who perform the services that are typical of a community of more than 60,000 residents. This article describes the nature of contracting in Weston, the functions of the manager, and some of the challenges and solutions that have characterized local government management in Weston.