Mark Kapel on Fiscal Responsibility

My name is Mark Kapel and I am running for City Commission
in the City of Bloomfield Hills.  I Believe City Commission can go a long way towards enhancing fiscal responsibility in the City. The two incumbent City Commissioners say they reduced the city’s expenditures by a million dollars but they don’t say how exactly. One Commissioner cites a $20,000 savings by hiring two part time public safety dispatchers instead of one full time.  That is the
only hard number mentioned and one wonders how much of that was put back into other expenditures. For example:

• A  City of Bloomfield Hills Resident Satisfaction Survey with a cost of $9500. The BaldwinLibrary does its own in house surveys distributed to an audience five times the size for a fraction of the cost. Some City officials say the survey the City contracted for is so economical at $9500 that the city possibly could make it annual event. By the same token with fiscal responsibility we could have quarterly  surveys for half the cost of what we contracted for. We would need to do it in house and we would need a resource the City is totally lacking in (because it has never asked) which is
  volunteers.

• When the City started work on a Woodland Protection Ordinance it hired yet another consulting firm even though one of the ones they currently use now use provides the same services. A fellow candidates running for city commission is a Landscape Architect and he says say the Landscape consultants the city hired expressly for the Tree Ordinance is of
  the garden variety.

• The City is spending $7,000 for an upgrade the web site. In the long run it will be cheaper than the one they are now using but it still costs money. In terms of electronic communications and the social media the current city commission thinking starts are stops with a web site. With a median age in the mid-sixties commissioners have no concept of blogs, Facebook,
  Twitter, or You Tube. They have no idea how those platforms could be used communicates  with the residents at no out of pocket expense. One Commissioner takes pride in the fact that City Commission Meetings are now available on cable and the city’s web site. That started in 2010. Now it’s 2012. Instead posting an hour and half or two and half hour meeting (with no fast forward  and no rapid reverse) we can chop up the topics discussed in  five or ten minute clips for posting on the City’s own channel on You Tube(when it gets one) which will cost us nothing.

• The City Commission serves bottled water. You know those little plastic bottles that go in landfills?  They costs money and their use isn’t helping the environment. Maybe it is only $12 or $20 a month but it is not zero. Why not? What’s wrong with tap water?

What is necessary to look at everything and consider other less expensive possibilities?  A good place to start is the City’s monthly expenditures published monthly in the Agenda Packet for City Commission which is appears on the City’s web site before each meeting. Last year one
commissioner discovered a $17 charge for a late payment on a City credit card bill. Good for Him. We need more Eagle Eyes. Maybe we could make a game of it with Commissioners vying with each other to find cost savings for say Tiger Tickets or something.