Would Elk Grove Taxpayers Be Better Served by Merging City, CSD?

A recent story in Bloomberg Business Week detailed efforts in a number of states to merge several smaller townships into large government units. The purpose of the mergers of the small communities, several of which have populations of less than 1,000 people, is simple economics.

While the focus of the story was on the aforementioned small municipalities, the story raises an interesting question – would the taxpayers of Elk Grove be better served if the City of Elk Grove merged with the Cosumnes Community Services District?

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In most municipalities the police, fire and recreation and recreation departments typically fall under the auspices of one government entity, usually a city government. Because the City of Elk Grove was chartered in 2000, some of these functions, fire and parks and recreation to be specific, were provided by an existing entity, the Cosmunes Community Services District.

After the resolution of turf wars between the two entities, the two agencies generally have done a good job of providing essential services. The question for the taxpayers of Elk Grove is would merging the two units make economic sense for taxpayers?

On one level, the merging of the two units could result in taxpayer saving simply by the elimination of executive salaries. Currently Elk Grove City Manager Laura Gill earns $206,197 and CCSD Chief Operating Officer Jeff Ramos earns $169,279.

If the two units were merged, one of these positions would be eliminated. Even if the new chief executive’s salary was increased, there would still be labor savings, not to mention retirement and benefits savings.

Non-public safety positions such as public affairs officers, accounting, legal, code enforcement and planning could be easily combined. This process of combining job functions would eliminate a lot of duplicate activities up and down the organizational chart, with an emphasis on elimination of the higher paid executive positions.

Obviously the process would be difficult to launch given the entrenched interest both agencies have to remain independent of one another. Nonetheless, perhaps there is some brave and visionary person in our community who is willing to challenge the status quo and improve the economic life of Elk Grove taxpayers.