Mayor Kip Holden’s administration scored a victory early last month when voters approved a proposed reorganization of the Department of Public Works, but Business Report Editor Stephanie Riegel says that was the easy part.
“Now comes the hard part: Breaking up the unwieldiness of city-parish bureaucracies at no additional cost to the 2015 city-parish budget and creating in its place six separate departments, each with its own department head, budget and organizational structure,” Riegel writes in her latest column.
The reorganization plan was not undertaken without considerable forethought and study, Riegel acknowledges.
“Still, putting it into action won’t be simple or seamless—which is not to suggest it won’t be a good thing in the long run, only that there are bound to be some bumps along the way,” she writes.
Christel Slaughter of SSA Consultants, which has worked with Mayor Kip Holden’s administration on the plan, says: “There are a lot of things that have to get done and rather quickly. They’re not all hard, necessarily, but there are a lot of details to tend to and they have to be done expeditiously and with a lot of good communication.”
Riegel notes the reorganization plan, which required an amendment to the city-parish Plan of Government, becomes official on Thursday, Jan. 15.
“At that point, the department head positions will have to be created, which requires approval from the Metro Council and the Personnel Board. Salaries will have to be set for those positions. However, since no additional funds for the reorganization have been allocated from the city-parish budget, money for the salaries will have to come from unfilled positions within the existing DPW budget,” she writes. “Then comes the challenge of finding qualified candidates to fill those positions, which will be trickier than it may seem for a couple of reasons.”
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