St. Joseph City Commissioners are looking into whether some money can be saved by having internal staff take over duties that are currently handled by consultants.
At this week’s meeting of the city commission, Public Works Director Greg Grothous said the city needs to update its Five-Year Parks and Recreation Master Plan in order to qualify for grants for improvements at the new Paddler Park. He proposed hiring Edgewater Resources at a cost of about $28,000 to update the plan. That’s when Commissioner Michael Sarola had some questions, suggesting some of the tasks to be performed by the consultant could be done in-house.
“It looks like at least four of these, if not five, are things that might be able to be done by staff internally, and I’m wondering if there’s an opportunity for us to perhaps look at doing this internally and save $28,500,” Sarola said. “Is this something that we have done in the past ever and submitted this on our own or we always use an outside agency?”
Grothous said city staff would be stretched pretty thin taking on the job, but Sarola said there could be another way.
“If we expand staff, how much of this stuff can we do internally? It just seems like we hire a lot of things outside.”
Mayor Brook Thomas said it could be worthwhile to explore some new possibilities.
Commissioners held off on approving the resolution to hire Edgewater while city staff consider the question. The matter will come up again at the commission’s next meeting.
