Our Opinion

There’s a delicate balance between protecting jobs and operating as efficiently as possible.
In some cases, downsizing isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It forces businesses and organizations to evaluate core operations, assess efficiency and most importantly, innovate.
Few commercial enterprises operate today at the same budget or work force they did five years ago. Government is no different--nor should it be.
From a birds-eye view, downsizing makes sense. Salaries account for a primary share of any business budget and represent a lucrative and effective reduction in expenses. The remaining staff learns to adjust, adapt and in some cases, emerge more efficently than before. If service is maintained or even improved, all the better.
Of course, from a ground-level view, though, downsizing is painful. Each job lost contributes to the worsening economic picture as unemployed citizens no longer contribute to the economy. Service and productivity can be compromised and customers affected. Morale suffers.
In the last few weeks, we’ve learned that our county and school administration will need to shed jobs to balance their budgets.
As an employer that’s had to reduce its workforce in recent months, we’re sympathetic to our friends and neighbors who work in our schools and local government, and face the prospect of unemployment. Times are tough for us all--especially those who’ve been through levels of layoffs and cutbacks.
If done effectively, organizations that downsize find themselves better prepared, more versatile and with greater flexibility to adjust to the changing market.
But the flip side is that improved efficiency comes at the expense of contibuting to our economic turmoil. So is it better to protect jobs or cut costs?
That’s the $64,000 question. Or perhaps the $32,000 question in today’s economy.
In some circumstances, the shared pain of equally applied furloughs or salary reductions protects the collective whole. Better that everyone suffers some than some suffer for everyone. In other cases, it may be best for a few people to take the fall for the good of the outfit.
Still, there is no easy answer.
We know our local school and county officials ache over the thought of cutting jobs. Even as large as our local governmental operations have grown, we still remain a small, close-knit community and eliminating jobs is uncomfortably personal.
The time for business as usual has passed. As we face unprecedented challenges, its critical we think unprecedented thoughts. We cannot continue to operate as we have. It may have worked before, but it cannot and will not now. And we must not allow ourselves to be blinded by past successes. Everything is changing and so we must with it.
Cutting jobs doesn’t have to be a bad thing--if it fosters the innovation and creativity to help us meet the changing demands of the current economy.
But if all we’ve done is save money, we’ve done a disservice to those whose jobs we’ve cut and hardly improved our situation.