Carl Strock THE VIEW FROM HERE How to save money, improve life Carl Strock can be reached at 395-3085 or by e-mail at carlstrock@dailygazette.com.
Local governments around here are always scrambling for ways to save money, so here’s an idea to help them, which is not necessarily original with me: Install GPS devices in their vehicles as a way of making sure those vehicles are used for legitimate public purposes and not for personal errands. I see by a report from The Associated Press that local governments elsewhere in the country have achieved some savings this way. The town of Islip on Long Island reportedly saved 14,000 gallons of gas in a three-month period. Denver vehicles were driven 5,000 miles less than during a comparison period the year before. Some employees were fired for taking advantage of their public wheels to conduct personal business. At a cost of a few hundred dollars per vehicle, this would seem to be worth it. And there could be other benefits besides immediate cost savings. In Schenectady we might find out what police cars are doing out on the streets. We might find out, for example, if they respond to calls as promptly as they claim and as promptly as records show or if they occasionally blow off a call and only pretend to a dispatcher that they are on their way to the scene of a complaint and then a little later pretend further that the situation had resolved itself by the time they arrived, by calling in a “GOA,” for Gone On Arrival. The question arises because of the persistence of citizen complaints about slow or even no response, something that is impossible to check if dispatch records are misleading, and because of the ease with which a police detective, as we learned, was able to claim full pay while working only two hours a day. That fraud was caught only incidentally when the state police tailed him to catch him buying drugs. Do patrol cops ever goof off on the job, and possibly sit home and watch television while keeping their radios turned on in case of an emergency? Satellite tracking devices would be a good way to find out and discourage it. INFLATABLE FEES And while I’m being civic-minded, thinking of ways to fortify the treasuries of local governments, here’s another idea: Charge a permit fee for Christmas decorations. I don’t have a full schedule worked out, but my preliminary idea is that every house would be allowed as a matter of right one non-illuminated decoration, like a wreath, for example, and after that they would need a special-use permit. A tree strung with lights might cost $10. If the lights blink on and off, the cost would go up to $20. A plastic Santa Claus with a light inside would be, oh, let’s say, $100, and the same for twinkling reindeer. But a huge inflatable Santa Claus of the kind that is becoming popular, kept up with an electric pump, would cost $10,000, plus a surcharge if it’s in my neighborhood. If the inflatable Santa Claus is doing something cute, like riding an inflatable motorcycle, that would cost $20,000, and the same for Grinches and Snoopys, again with a surcharge if they’re in my neighborhood. For an inflatable snowman or anything else that includes artificial snow, like one of those big snowglobes you see around, the fee would be $50,000. For having more than one of these items on a lawn, there would be another surcharge of let’s say $100,000. The advantage of such a program would be the same as the advantage of taxes on cigarettes — discouraging the practice while at the same time raising much-needed revenue.
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