THE PLAN: Officials from Chesapeake, Norfolk and Virginia Beach and executives from Amerigroup, Dollar Tree, Huntington Ingalls Industries, Norfolk Southern and Smithfield Foods have begun discussing ways the three cities could team up to reduce expenses.
THE IDEAS: While the group has not made any recommendations, officials said “everything is on the table.” Some of the services they could consider combining include 911 service and trash pickup. Cities could also merge some business operations or buy products, such as fuel, together.
Click here to take POLL: Should Chesapeake, Norfolk and Virginia Beach explore combining some operations and programs to cut costs?
By Josh Brown for The Virginian-Pilot, December 12, 2011
Faced with budgets strained by flagging tax revenue, cities in Hampton Roads could soon combine some government operations and programs to cut costs.
A coalition of the region’s three largest cities and five of the largest locally-based corporations have launched a pilot program to examine ways that the municipalities can share services.
Officials from Chesapeake, Norfolk and Virginia Beach already have begun meeting with executives at Amerigroup, Dollar Tree, Huntington Ingalls Industries, Norfolk Southern and Smithfield Foods.
The Hampton Roads Partnership, a regional organization of business, political and academic leaders, is spearheading the project, which runs through March. Its $150,000 cost is being split among the cities and the businesses.
“Everything is on the table,” said Dana Dickens, president and CEO of the partnership. “They’re interested in looking at anything that would generate efficiencies, whether it’s sharing a service or purchasing widgets or trucks or fuel or IT services or picking up garbage.”
Preliminary discussions about cities working together began in February, as officials searched for ways to trim tight budgets.
“Things that might have been difficult a few years ago – to think across city lines – now have become more of just a way to do business,” said Marcus Jones, Norfolk’s city manager. “Can you be more efficient with the way you deliver services? More is being asked of us to collaborate.”
Jones said Norfolk officials already had been looking at ways to Read the rest of this entry »
The chief executive officers of the region’s Fortune 500 companies and the mayors of the three largest South Hampton Roads cities are teaming up to explore how the region could benefit from potentially sharing public services. The Hampton Roads Partnership is organizing the pilot Hampton Roads Shared Services Project (SSP) with Management Partners, a Cincinnati, Ohio-based management-consulting firm that specializes in helping local government leaders.
On Monday, December 12, 
