By: Diane Benjamin
The Bloomington City Council voted last night to spend $894,537.07 over 5 years for timekeeping and scheduling software.
Claims were made about reducing a massive amount of paperwork.
Nobody bothered to ask how many employees will no longer be needed with this massive reduction of time and paperwork.
Nicole showed a pic of stacks of boxes of paperwork that will be eliminated, so how many employees will be replaced by this expensive technology? Crickets!
It got better. Alderman Kevin Lower questioned Nicole Albertson about the capabilities of the software. The discussion got to how many City Employees exist – Lower mentioned 700. Albertson corrected him. She said 1122 W’2 forms were issued.
1122!
Of course that includes seasonal and part-time employees. Being overly generous, I will assume 400 of them. That’s still 722 employees.
Bills and payroll approved last night show 465 Bi-weekly employees. Weekly employees payroll list 334 and 338. From the hours listed for season employees, at most 80 worked full-time. Those numbers easily show the total employees working permanently is now over 700. I wonder how many more times Tari will claim the City has 100 fewer workers than they used to.
For fiscal year 2015 (4/30/15), the City reported to the State of Illinois 625 employees: http://tinyurl.com/j3yptbf
Since the City has failed to issue and report the financial statements for 4/30/16, we don’t know how many employees the City will report.
Remember how automating garbage pickup was going to cut the number of workers needed? Those folks just got reassigned. Will the same thing happen with the new software? Don’t forget additional employees come with gold-plated healthcare and pensions expenses – of course at your expense.
See Albertson’s comments here – just hit play:
I can’t imagine a private employer spending that kind of money for this type of software. I wonder if the city would be interested in some land in New Mexico…. I have some and its a real bargain!
The “streamlined” garbage was a SNOW JOB! We set it out ONCE a month and the guy spills it all over the neighborhood, and we now have to PAY for this mess-OUT with ALL the incumbents mayor, manager and associates. ENOUGH! And now $800K for another snow job??
Wow! This council has no clue at all. Just remarkable as to how stupid some folks can be. If you like your schedule, you can keep your schedule.
If it was PeopleSoft I could see it costing that much. In the IT industry lingo they have another name for it following the S. The problem is is once you fall into the trap of using software you are hooked into paying for upgrades and changes in most cases. No software that I am aware of fits perfectly into the employers business rules. So that either means they have to pay for the changes needed or hire the IT staff or hire new IT staff for it. The $894 M I am sure isn’t the total cost unless if they included IT staff. It sounds like it was just for the software. Then the real kicker is once you commit to going with XYZ software try moving to something else later on which may cost even more. Hehehe sometimes continuing to use the old method aka paper costs less. Honestly that is a lot of money per person in my opinion. Sounds like no cost benefit analysis was done to me. Sort of like saying sure I can bake you a loaf of bread. Go buy me an industrial sized Hobart mixer and I can do that faster than by hand. Get the idea? It cost more for the mixer than what it is worth. Like most IT projects they go over budget, no joke!
The city rarely if ever does a long term economic impact analysis. That is why expenses continue to explode. If you read the Council packets, Hales includes “economic impact” but there is nothing to back up the statements.
For that kind of money you could employ a team of temps full time and be money ahead.
No joke! I agree 100%.
At least the money would be going back into our local economy – Instead it is going to someone in Silicone Valley who has some sort of lavish California lifestyle.