By DAVID SEGAL Published: June 23, 2012
SANDY SPRINGS, Ga.
IF your image of a city hall involves a venerable building, some Roman
pillars and lots of public employees, the version offered by this
Atlanta suburb of 94,000 residents is a bit of a shocker.
The entire operation is housed in a generic, one-story industrial park,
along with a restaurant and a gym. And though the place has a large
staff, none are on the public payroll. O.K., seven are, including the
city manager. But unless you chance into one of them, the people you
meet here work for private companies through a variety of contracts.
Applying for a business license? Speak to a woman with Severn Trent, a
multinational company based in Coventry, England. Want to build a new
deck on your house? Chat with an employee of Collaborative Consulting,
based in Burlington, Mass. Need a word with people who oversee trash
collection? That would be the URS Corporation, based in San Francisco.
Even the city’s court, which is in session on this May afternoon, next
to the revenue division, is handled by a private company, the Jacobs
Engineering Group of Pasadena, Calif. The company’s staff is in charge
of all administrative work, though the judge, Lawrence Young, is
essentially a legal temp, paid a flat rate of $100 an hour.
“I think of it as being a baby judge,” says Mr. Young, who spends most
of his time drafting trusts as a lawyer in a private practice, “because
we don’t have to deal with the terrible things that you find in Superior
Court.”
With public employee unions under attack in states like Wisconsin, and with cities across the country looking to trim budgets, behold a town built almost entirely on a series of public-private partnerships — a system that leaders around here refer to, simply, as “the model.”
Posted by Steve Sinai
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