Rethinking Local Services

Local Leaders will be gathering at Isanti City Hall April 28th to discuss more efficient ways to deliver services to our community. I would be interested in hearing from you on what ideas you may have. Currently there are several agreements in place between the City of Cambridge and Isanti County for shared equipment. Cambridge and Isanti also have an agreement in place and are working on another for building inspection services.

A few ideas so far:

Compiling a list of all equipment held by each level of government in the County - Cambridge and the County already have worked on sharing equipment resources - no need to buy equipment that might be used only a few times a year when one of our neighbor's has it and could rent it.

Compiling a list of key employees and their expertise and capacity - Isanti and Cambridge have an agreement that when our Building Official is on vacation or unavailable Isanti will for a fee be able to rely on Cambridge's building department. This helps save Isanti money, allows us to provide continuous service and helps Cambridge maintain their staffing level.

Contemplating a County wide fire department - Our Fire Department is already a District where Isanti and 6 other townships share the responsibility and resources. This model could be expanded to a County wide system saving cost.

Instead of every City and township having trucks and plows perhaps there is a way to merge road maintenance to save labor and equipment cost.

On the private side perhaps a county wide Chamber of Commerce to match our County EDA efforts.

Just a few examples that others have shared or developed in Isanti or other regions of our state. the great thing about this process is that everyone involved has good ideas and wants whats best for the community. We may have different opinions as to how to get there and no matter how heated things get everyone is trying to do what is best. This is a great process and I enjoy every minute of it.

Please email me at george@georgewimmer.com with your suggestions.