RICHMOND, Ind. — The city of Richmond and Wayne County government already cooperate in many ways but in recent weeks, both sides of East Main Street in Richmond have discussed how to increase partnerships to create efficiencies and save the taxpayers money.
Richmond Mayor Sally Hutton and the Wayne County Commissioners and Council met with several members of the public Wednesday evening in the Richmond Municipal Building to discuss the possibilities.
“If the county or one of the smaller municipalities in the county needs to borrow a piece of equipment because they have a breakdown, we have loaned them one of ours and it’s worked the other way,” Hutton said. “We have several interlocal agreements and we work well together. This is just to see if there is more we can do.”
She said at the city level, some departments have suffered a loss of manpower but response times of police and fire have remained the same, but in the case of the street department, it may take a few days longer to fix the pothole.
“People want us to cut spending but they want their services,” she said. “It’s been hard to figure out what to do.”
Commissioner Denny Burns cited the 911 dispatch center as one large areas of cooperation between the governments. The cost of operating the center is split evenly between the city and county, with the county operating the center in a county building. The cost is $330,000 a year each for salaries.
Hutton reminded everyone that residents of the city of Richmond also pay county taxes and get county services.
“The more we talk about these things, the more we may be surprised at what you may find,” Ken Paust said. “Muncie, Ind. hired a company to look at Delaware County. They are proposing what I call ‘uni-gov’ right now. We’ve had our people look at those numbers. They’re doing away with the mayor, commissioners, city council, county council and they will have one elected official that will serve the entire county and towns and cities with a 14-member council.
“We haven’t seen the initial draft but a quick look at it, we’re finding it difficult to see where they are saving money.”
“They aren’t saving money because they don’t have any,” Hutton said. “They’re worse than Richmond or Wayne County and they haven’t done anything about it.”
Because not all members of the councils and commissioners could attend, the public in attendance also participated in the discussions. After talking, they reported their ideas.
Some of the ideas where services could be shared that were suggested included inspections, information technology departments, insurance programs, building maintenance and security, shared purchasing, city parks department operating the fairgrounds, law enforcement training, payroll and vehicle maintenance.
Other ideas that would be new to the county suggested were uni-gov, having Reid Hospital do health maintenance for employees, go paperless, do something with vacant government-owned properties and sharing of school superintendents by county schools.
County Councilman Ben Hersberger of Mount Auburn said he thought the discussions were good but opposed hiring any outside company to study the issue as was done in Muncie/Delaware County.
“If you want to build a successful railroad, go to the man who has one,” he said. “If we want to combine our police, go to Marion County and see what they’re doing out there but don’t pay Umbaugh & Associates to find out. Some of these suggestions are good idea but we don’t need to spend money to have someone tell us how to do it.”
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