Norfolk Daily News

Tuesday – February 26, 2008

Several public agencies working together to share one office facility sounds too logical to be easily achieved.

The concept of tax- or dues-funded agencies sharing space has been discussed in many venues prior to the current intense debate going on in Norfolk. But no matter how logical it sounds, it seldom happens.

It makes me wonder if that’s because the concepts of good stewardship and public funding are like oil and water. They don’t seem to mix well.

The only time I have seen the shared space concept work is with the Lifelong Learning Center, a model of shared space that creates a tremendous benefit for the taxpaying public. Yet, I recall some of the discussion and haggling among the entities prior to the groundbreaking of that very logical and very successful shared facility.

There were turf battles. The partners often seemed more concerned about protecting their own turf than they were about the logic of saving taxpayer money and providing a centralized service center.

However, it would be extremely difficult today to convince the partners, the public or even former critics that the Lifelong Learning Center wasn’t one of the best ideas to come along in a couple of decades.

So that’s why I am skeptical of numbers being thrown about by the City of Norfolk that say a shared facility for municipal and other public entity services will cost more to build and maintain than continuing the path of separation and public facility kingdom building that we have long followed.

Under our existing public facility model, we have large numbers of far-flung public buildings, each with its own necessary but usually idle meeting room, each with its own entry and hallway, each with its own set of restrooms, its own heating and air-conditioning system, its own parking lot, its own landscaping and maintenance personnel, its own reception areas, not to mention its own set of tax assessments to cover the costs of all of its administrative infrastructure.

As a taxpayer needing service or desiring to participate in the body politic, you flit about hither and yon to get things done, not because it is logical and less expensive to conduct your government business at a central location but, rather, because that is the way it has always been done.

Madison County residents, the bulk of whom live in Norfolk, drive 15 miles to conduct county business, even though a couple of digital whizzes with computer links to the courthouse could handle most pieces of taxpayer business from a small satellite office located within a new shared government services building located in downtown Norfolk.

Think of the savings in gas and time multiplied thousands of times over that this little shared idea would allow, not to mention the collective reduction in carbon footprint for the county as a whole.

When someone tells you shared government office facilities will ultimately cost the taxpayers more, it’s time to look closely at the figures and ask whose turf they are trying to protect.

Hated competitors work together under the same roof in a retail mall setting to create efficiencies for their customer base.

Competing educational institutions do the same in the education mall that is the Lifelong Learning Center.

Why can’t public entities embrace that logic, too?

Les Mann News Columnist