Municipal consolidation

Agency consolidation and cooperation and joint service delivery across municipalities is something I have written about over the years. It moves up the agenda when there are financial problems. For example, in the Detroit, New Jersey and Greater Boston areas, this has been going on for awhile. Now that financial problems are more evident in the Washington region, it is coming up here.

The interesting thing in yesterday's article in the Post ("Slashing budgets no easy trick: Turf issues can impede ending agencies' overlapping functions") about the Parks Department and the Recreation Department in Montgomery County being separate entities, albeit under the same rubric, is that this results in part from "historical" reasons. The tension in parks planning between parks as "passive" pristine spaces vs. locations for "active" recreation--the idea of nature trails and open spaces vs. tennis courts and athletic fields--has been present in the profession for 100 years.

Another problem though with consolidation that the Post didn't figure out is evident in the point about how Montgomery County has four or five different data centers and IT systems for different major agencies.

But I am learning that working for government, consolidation only works when the surviving entity recognizes and supports "differences" in user needs and capabilities, e.g., GIS users have much higher computing demands and needs than do typical users of word processors, PageMaker or InDesign, and the Internet. But if the IT management system works to dumb down all user configurations to some average mean, the ability to accomplish work gets compromised.

Consolidation can work like an "all in one" printer/fax machine. You get all the capabilities, but they are crippled. A standalone copier works better than the all in one. A standalone computer printer works better than the all in one. A standalone fax machine works better than the all in one. But if your needs are limited than the all in one is fine. If you have certain power user needs, and the common system doesn't provide differential levels of support for those needs, consolidation can be a hindrance.

Too often, the quality of the end result is dumbed down, rather than set to new and higher levels of achievement.

(In Baltimore County, the Dept. of Recreation and Parks doesn't provide programming. It's actually provided by independent parks/recreation councils created and funded by citizens. 40 different councils provide services at more than 100 facilities. From my perspective, wanting to promote bicycle and pedestrian programs through this delivery "system", each council is separate and all are focused for the most part on typical team athletics (football, baseball, soccer, basketball, tennis) and not a whole lot on wellness type programming. Of course, the plan I am working on will lay out a strategy for introducing bicycle and walking oriented programming in this situation, how to pilot it, and how to work to replicate the programming across a decentralized recreation programming "structure." Figuring out how to work within such an interesting "unique" structure is one of the things I really like doing.)