Management of Genesse County Parks and Recreation Puts Democratic Management of National Government to Shame- Less Waste, More Efficient, and Better

Recessions do have a silver lining- they force businesses and families to reassess their priorities and battle to become more efficient. In times of plenty and prosperity, people begin to spend money and time and effort on luxuries and those things that they may not care too much about. Businesses waste time and materials and resources but do not notice the waste due to the profits coming in. But once profits shrink, once bad investments need to be paid for, once incomes drop, people and businesses are forced to become lean, mean, fighting machines again, and the world is a better place for it. Less materials are wasted, less manpower is idled, less products are produced for limited demand, and less skills are underutilized. Time and money, once in shorter supply, are more valued, and once more valued, are spent more on important things and less on unimportant things. No one likes a recession, and in a perfect world, we would all always live in a time of plenty when time, money, resources, effort, materials, and skills could be wasted and idled away, but in the real world, every now and then we do need to refocus and retool.

Recessions should also focus government to refocus and retool, and become leaner and more efficient at delivering the services that it provides in our society. Questions should be asked and answered as to what government is doing, what it is doing well, and what it should not be doing, and what it is not doing well. Recessions give our government a chance to refocus on what is really important and get back to doing the basics better.

For example, in Genesse County, the Parks and Recreation department there faces declining revenues, and instead of begging for more money, which isn't coming, and instead of cancelling services, which isn't what our nation needs right now, they have instead innovated, adapted, and become more efficient. They started a program called $10 Ideas. Each member of the staff was challenged to think up a single way that the department could save $10. After just 10 months, the group tallied up savings of $167,000 in fuel, office supplies, electricity, postage, uniforms and telephone charges. Genesse County Parks and Recreation is a model of what government should be doing in this recession- getting more efficient and doing more with less.

In one short year, this department has come up with more great ideas on how to do more with less than a Democratic Congress did in the four years it ran Congress. It implement practical suggestions, like putting cell phones on 'vacation mode' when seasonal staff weren't using them, turning off computers at night, having employees wear their own clothes instead of providing work clothes for them, using cheaper alternative materials to complete jobs, adding one more day to the routine lawn mowing schedule to save fuel and labor costs, discovering new ways to utilize office supplies, printers printed in black ink instead of color, and staff were encouraged to think of new ways to generate revenue from existing operations.

This is what it really means to stimulate the economy- efficiencies are gained, money and labor is saved, materials are not wasted, and all of it is done with less money. That $167,000 that the Parks and Recreation figured out how to save let it continue to do what it does while still keeping staff gainfully employed.

When challenged, Democrats in Congress have taken the easy way out over the last two years, and instead of conserving energy, money, and time, they have wastefully spent money that didn't even belong to them, borrowing money from my grandchildren to continue inefficient and wasteful practice and routines that damage our environment and our economy. Democrats during the recession have not figured out innovative ways to do more with less, and instead appear to be be doing less with more. That sort of behavior should not be rewarded, and it is my hope that this election, you will take steps to throw Democrats out of office, and then encourage the Republicans that take power to look at places like the Genesse County Parks and Recreation Department on how to do it- how to continue to provide great services and keep everyone employed while dealing with declining budgets. They have shown us the way- now all we have to do is put new management in charge of the bloated and inefficient government that the Democrats have set up, and hope that it isn't too late to save our nation.