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So they have two or three guys now trying to repair 20 trucks. They reduced 40 percent in their employees. There were 20 trash trucks lined up in what they call a red tag line, which means you got to do’em now otherwise they can’t go out. “I went up to where they’re doing it,” Filner said.
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He told the San Diego Press Club that managed competition is “somewhat of a fraud in terms of cost savings” and then cited fleet services as an example. That hasn’t stopped Filner from repeating his story about managed competition and fleet services as recently as Jan. Two members of Filner’s staff - City Council liaison Francisco Estrada and Financial Management Director Mark Leonard - also told the City Council that the changes in fleet services hadn’t been implemented pending the audit during a Jan. 16 letter to conduct a performance audit of the awarded fleet services contract before it’s implemented because it “has the potential to result in inadequate resources being dedicated to maintaining the city’s fleet, possibly threatening public safety and the supposed savings from managed competition.” He then asked City Auditor Eduardo Luna in a Jan. 3, immediately halted all progress on managed competition saying he wanted to review the program’s results before deciding whether to proceed. Former Mayor Jerry Sanders updated the City Council in mid-November on the status of various competitions, noting the changes for fleet services hadn’t been made yet “pending procurements for outsourced services that were part of employee proposal.”įilner, who took office Dec. The others, including fleet services, await action from Filner.Ĭity workers won the fleet services bidding process over two private competitors in October 2011 by proposing to eliminate 80 of 249 positions and slashing vehicle maintenance costs by $4.2 million annually from a $51 million operating budget. To date, five competitions saw city workers triumph over private bidders for a combined projected annual savings of $12.2 million, but only two - publishing services and street sweeping - have been implemented. Managed competition, which allows private contractors to bid against city employees to provide certain services, has been a hotly contested issue since city voters approved the process in 2006. The city has yet to implement the proposed changes, according to internal memos and public testimony from two members of the mayor’s staff.įilner didn’t respond to requests for comment on Wednesday and Thursday. The basic premise of his story - that cuts made through managed competition have decimated fleet services - is untrue. He’s touted it as an example of how “we have cut the level of service so drastically as to cause us problems.”
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Each time he said the division had its workforce slashed through managed competition and that long lines of broken-down vehicles have resulted, forcing employees to arrive to work early to do the repairs on their own time. 27 visit he made to see the mechanics in fleet services.
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On at least three occasions, Filner has described a Nov. To illustrate the pitfalls of managed competition, San Diego Mayor Bob Filner has repeatedly cited the devastating effects the competitive bidding process has had on fleet services, the city division in charge of maintaining 4,000 vehicles including fire engines, garbage trucks and patrol cars.