Managing Expenditures

By David L. "Dave" Garcia

Hardware vs People

I cannot count the number of times that companies would find racks of unusable aluminum and steel frames, or cases of unusable computer components only to end up as scrap for the dealers who would come in and offer five to seven cents a pound for the materials. Literaly tens of millions of dollars would simply be written off as "Scrap".

In my efforts to do something about this, I took all the training I could find so that I could do my part to minimize the damage and loss due to poor planning. I was very successful at this and regularly saved companies tens of millions of dollars. Some of this money would be used to get the people I managed into training classes and raises and added benefits. But, I found getting "Abstract" items such as personnel improvements to be a very formidable task.

Now, I see precisely thesame kind of mentality in our government. I also believe that abuse and waste in spending is much more prevalent in local governments as it is in larger organizations. In our own local government, excessive waste has taken place in local governmental construction while the needs of the people are being neglected.

A small percentage of the monies thrown at these large projects would be enough to offset the cost of the meals for our Senior Citizens. An even smaller percentage would have allowed the city employees to earn a living wage. The list goes on and on. I intend to get into the government and try my best to amend these programs so that we as a city can do more for our citizenry with the financial resources already available.