HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Mayor Jade Piros de Carvalho wasn't pleased with the results of the Raftelis Group study presented last month.
"That study was probably a colossal waste of money," Piros de Carvalho said. "It was $80,000 and scores and scores of hours of staff time over the course of several months just to tell us that we run a pretty lean operation in comparison to other cities."
Piros de Carvalho wants to look back at previous research to figure out how to go forward.
"The city kind of has a tendency to embark on these plans that they either don't have the financial resources or the political will to implement," Piros de Carvalho said. "I'm hopeful we can look back at some of the other plans we did, our comp plan in 2017, our master parks and rec plan in 2019 and start to see what we can glean from that."
It remains to be seen what the council will do with the study, as it didn't leave much obvious low-hanging fruit for the council to look at.
The council appeared to have lots of food for thought in the areas of cost recovery on the parks side, with things like whether the zoo should remain free to everyone or not, if the golf course is charging appropriately for its services and those types of questions.
Also, the council needs to discuss whether specialized skill sets should be contracted out or whether it is more cost efficient to have city employees do that work.