Rumor:
Recently a rumor quickly engulfed city hall in that someone was looking to outsource the Pickerington Police Department to the Fairfield County Sheriff. While the source of the rumor remains in question the reality is there is no support from council, or staff, to outsource this to some outside entity. Paying for a new police station and outsourcing our department doesn’t even come close to making sense to me. I’ve said for years the one thing standing between us and Columbus is our officers. We’re definitely not in a financial situation where we’re going to be expanding our Police department but we’re not even close to reaching the point where we need to be thinking about such drastic measures as outsourcing them. If we ever get to the situation where we do have to outsource our Police Department then I believe Pickerington will have already become an undesirable place to live.
Fact:
There is mixed support from council as to whether to outsource our Income Tax department to R.I.T.A. RITA is a regional entity that was formed to manage income taxes from municipalities. The supposed savings from RITA are in the range of ~$50K a year. While that sounds good on paper the reality is there have been communities that have left RITA and the two major underlying themes as to why they left were;
1. It cost more than what they were led to believe and
2. Customer Service. Marysville was a community that had their own income tax department. They went to RITA and in the following election RITA actually became an election topic because of what the residents felt was unacceptable customer service. Marysville dumped RITA and brought their services back in house.
I have had many, many experiences with outsourcing of services and have yet to see the promises (savings and others) and powerpoint presentations come remotely close to what is actually delivered. I do not believe the “efficiencies” and such that are being touted by RITA will ever come to fruition and am therefore strongly opposed to this proposal.
- Brian
