The cheap joke is that it takes six city workers to dig a hole - one to break ground, two to supervise and three to lean on their shovels.
But the results so far from management consultant firm KPMG's core review of the City of Prince George doesn't deliver the same punchline. Overall, the exercise, designed to present a comprehensive map of what services the city should do and what it can do without, show a reasonably run community that provides a decent level of services.
That's unfortunate. The dream scenario is that the joke is funny and the way forward is simple - fire five workers and get the hole dug for the same price.
But that's not the case in Prince George.
And while it's impossible to know either what KPMG will recommend in terms of cost cutting (if any) when it delivers its final report in October or whether council will be able to muster the political will to carry those recommendations out, the board has been set for a zero-sum game. Either this city is set for a slew of painful, unpalatable measures or Mayor Shari Green, along with the three councillors who serve on the core review committee - Albert Koehler, Frank Everitt, and Cameron Stolz - will head to the polls in the fall of 2014 drastically weakened.
That's because the core review is also central to Green's mandate as mayor - it was the biggest plank of her campaign platform and she's pushed for around $314,000 - taxpayer's dollars that could have been saved - to be paid to KPMG for its study. In turn, she's told The Citizen she's optimistic KPMG's work will uncover $2.5 million to $3 million in savings annually.
The city expects to spend around $105.4 million in general expenditures in 2013. Green expects to cut around two to three per cent from an already tight budget.
It is likely much of the low-hanging fruit is gone - to keep taxes down in 2012, council cut approximately two million from the budget, including axing 28 positions, for a savings of $1.68 million. Nine people were laid off entirely, including a transportation engineer and a community policing co-ordinator.
The core review cuts will have to be more drastic.
Among the targets in the core review's sights is the city's troubled economic development arm, Intiatives Prince George and its $1.02 million budget, and supply services, because sustainable procurement policy is tops on the city's list of sustainable fiscal management strategies.
One of the problems is the process is a little perverse. One potential way to save money is to identify those departments that are doing well and cut them to get their level service down to merely satisfactory.
For example, the Development Engineering department - which handles things like approving where new subdivisions go, site drainage and infrastructure - received an S+ rating in KPMG`s seven service profiles, meaning it provided above-average service. Therefore, its $351,000 in salaries can be partially cut because it`s doing too good a job.
Another issue are programs that, for a relative handful of dollars, provide a great deal of social benefit but aren`t central to city services.
For example, the Active Living and Healthy Eating Iniative received another kill-clock S+ rating because it provided 5,000 Walking Trail Guides, 1,000 Park and Trail Maps, and helped organize the popular Bike to Work week, which was enjoyed by 700 participants.
Conclusion: cut. Total possible savings: $27,700.
This is the kind of things the three million in cuts will be made of.
And that's not including the big items and the big decisions, the ones that will have people marching on city hall with torches and pikes. You want savings - the city spends 35 per cent more than two comparable cities - Thunder Bay and Sault St. Marie - on snow removal, even when accounting for the differences in average snowfall. And despite letters to the editor to the contrary, the department received a sterling - and dreaded - S+ rating.
Perhaps city crews could aim to complete snow removal in six or seven days, rather than the current 4.5 max. Perhaps they could not plow sidewalks or civic facilities. Maybe arterial roads and the downtown could be moved from the current 75 millimetre standard of accumulated snow when the plows come out to that of the remaining roads standard - 100 mm of accumulated snow, compact snow to be less than 50 mm.
Green and council could have spent $600,000 on KPMG. The answers it got would have been just as ugly and come with just as little political cover.
It means there will be two autumns of the axe - one for the core review cuts in 2012 and another for the municipal election in 2014.
The questions, in both cases, will be where the axe falls - and how bloody it will be.
- Associate news editor, Rodney Venis
