HOW TO SAVE OVER $100 MILLION DOLLARS PER YEAR

Change is in the air. Change can be good and change can be bad. I have been advocating change (reform) in local government for years and now that we have a local and national financial crisis, we are going to have to learn to live on less tax money. Therefore we need more efficiency in the delivery of governmental services.

Local politicians have been talking about consolidating our City and County governments for years but nothing has been done. Therefore I started investigating this subject and as a start I have come up with some interesting statistics by comparing on one hand the combined Memphis and Shelby County government employment figures with the already combined figures of Nashville which is called Metro Davidson government. You may remember the ex Mayor of Nashville, (Bill Purcell), who at a Rotary Club meeting stated that he hoped Memphis would never consolidate because he did not want Memphis to be more competitive with Metro Davidson for new residents and new businesses.

The following are some interesting figures.

Population of Memphis and Shelby County                    911438

Population of Metro Davidson                            578698

Total Employees of Memphis and Shelby County             33570    

Total Employees of Metro Davidson                         16000

Employees per 1000 people for Memphis and Shelby County             36.83

Employees per 1000 people for Metro Davidson             27.6

School population of Memphis Schools                        113000

School population of Shelby County Schools                       45000

School population of Metro Davidson                         74733

School employees for City of Memphis                         17000

School employees for Shelby County                         4243

School employees for Metro Davidson                         8361

School employees per 1000 students for City of Memphis             150

School employees per 1000 students for Shelby County             94

School Employees per 1000 students for Metro Davidson             112

It is obvious where one big problem is and it is in the Memphis School System. This over $1 billion dollar taxzilla is nothing but a job factory where education results are secondary to providing employment. If we reduced the school employment to the same ratio employee ratio per student as the Shelby county school system, we could operate with 6328 less school employees. At an average of $45,000 each, this would save $284 million dollars per year. David Pickler (see attached report) reports a difference in cost per student for the Shelby County School system of $1344 less than the City School system. Calculated by this, we could save $151 million by running the City System as efficiently as the County system. He also points out that we definitely do not want to consolidate the well run County School system with the bloated and inefficient City School system. It is obvious that millions could be saved by reforming and cutting the Memphis School System. Reform needs to come to this school system and we need it now. I will report further this week and next on other possible local savings reforms.     

Click here to see what David Pickler has to say about the consequences of consolidating the Shelby County School system with the City of Memphis School System