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Your asset managers need to use money as efficiently as possible
This section offers a range of ideas for delivering these efficiencies by different ways of working and using
resources. It is primarily for asset managers tasked with delivering greater efficiencies but can also be of value
to anyone interested in voting for a local tax or millage to support certain assets or asset types and who wants
to make sure these funds are used efficiently. Similarly, if you have made a grant or donated to a non-profit that
manages an asset and the programs that run in/on it, you again want to know that they are using the money
efficiently.
Adopt measures to make resources go further
As Tables 3.3 and 3.4 show, asset managers can employ numerous efficiency measures. Efficiency is here defined
as getting the most output (satisfied asset users) from whatever level of inputs you have (asset manager’s budget
in a given year). Many of the examples are drawn from local government-run assets but the examples have wider
applicability in non-profit and private sector assets. Box 3.2 provides an example of one such measure that also
happens to constitute a service innovation.
Table 3.3: Efficiencies developed between several organizations
Measure
Shared services
Merger
Shared use of
assets
Example
• Since 2011, Scott County and Three Rivers Parks District, Twin Cities metro area authorities, have shared:
delivery of park maintenance and visitor services, utilizing resources from both organizations to expand
services without increasing costs; a single online portal for anyone looking to reserve a park picnic shelter.
• At the beginning of 2008 the Hennepin County Library subsumed the Minneapolis Public Library system,
thereby greatly reducing duplication.
• In Detroit, the city’s Community Access Centers, known as Neighborhood City Halls, have organized an
annual volunteer-centered anti-arson effort around Halloween and an annual volunteer-centered litter
cleanup in May. In 2012 the Center’s functions were transferred to four neighborhood recreation centers.
• In southeast Michigan, two neighboring parks systems offer people the chance to buy one permit for both
systems, which includes 13 Huron-Clinton Metro-parks and 7 Oakland County Parks.
• A new single-premises St. Paul Library and Parks recreation center, the Payne Maryland Project, will have
shared use meeting rooms, restrooms, and programming space for children and teens.
• Joint-use libraries (typically public libraries combined with school library media centers or with academic
libraries) are not uncommon in the United States. 42
• Baltimore County’s Department of Recreation and Parks and the local School Board contribute to the
acquisition and development of dual-use school recreation sites. Maintenance and repair is also shared.
Centers feature many additional amenities, which could not otherwise be funded. It has long been County
policy that children can freely go from school to recreation center – these are often co-located.
• In 2012 five Baltimore City Council recreation centers slated for closure became part of the City Public
School System, allowing them to stay open and provide after-school programs.
• In many areas of the United States reciprocal borrowing arrangements are standard within city library
systems and common between library systems across a metro area.
Avoidance of
duplication
• Regionally significant parks and trails in the Twin Cities metro area receive Metropolitan Council and
State money but, rather than come under metro management, they are managed by seven counties and
three cities that are also responsible for (smaller) parks in their jurisdictions.
• In Detroit the city council leases the Belle Isle island park to the state of Michigan. Although done mainly
to reduce city costs it also meant state machinery was taking on an asset of state importance.
42
http://www.ala.org/tools/libfactsheets/alalibraryfactsheet20.
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