How to REALLY save money on dispatch Brookville and others…

The argument Brookville is using to justify splitting from the Regional Dispatch Center and buying dispatch services from Englewood is saving money. Early termination fees will cancel the savings making this “cost saving move” a non-starter according to the Dayton Daily News today:

Brookville is considering breaking from the RDC to join Englewood’s dispatch center at a cheaper price. Last year, Brookville paid $98,213 to the RDC, but Englewood has offered dispatch services to the city for $48,000 a year on a three-year contract.

“I’ll go back to my council and see what they say next Tuesday,” said Brookville city manager John Wright. “The whole thing (moving to Englewood) was to save money. Now, I’m not.”

via Brookville’s dispatch change would be costly move.

But if the citizens of Brookville really wanted to save money- they’d simply merge with Englewood. From the facts page of the City of Brookville site:

The Brookville Police Department serves a population of 5,289 (2000 census) and covers a land area of 3.3 square miles.

via City Of Brookville – Departments.

Englewood is exactly 2x as big by geography and 2.5 times as big by population:

The population was 13,465 at the 2010 census…  the city has a total area of 6.6 square miles

via Englewood, Ohio – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Throw in the throwback of Butler Township:

As of the 2010 census the population was 7,894.

via Butler Township, Montgomery County, Ohio – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

And we add all those up and we have a population of 26,648 – which is what the minimum population should be in order to have to support a police chief- as well as all the other offices that each of these fiefdoms carries- a city manager/township administrator, director of finance, mayor, council, trustees, economic development people, zoning etc.

We could eliminate over 100 taxpayer paid jobs that deliver service at a ridiculously high overhead rate.

Dispatch isn’t what’s costing the people of Brookville too much- it’s the entire pride issue of having a city.

For all the talk about taxes being too high and government being too big, we could start by changing the rules that govern jurisdictions in the State of Ohio to cut the costs and overhead considerably by forcing larger size standards to be required to receive any State tax dollars. We’d see instant savings and hopefully- weed out a whole bunch of micro-managers who only have jobs due to our insane system of partitioning up our state- which dates back to the Northwest Ordinance of 1785 that divided up our state into the boundaries we’ve stuck with for no good reason.

That’s how you save money.

 

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