City Tackles Costs With Aggressive Privatization Strategy

In West Bloomfield Township, it’s no longer a question of whether there are savings to be had by privatizing city services. Now the question has become: How much can be saved by pushing the private contractors to compete against one another? The township recently saw its annual janitorial bill go from $43,000 to $18,900 through a competitive bid process. That 56 percent reduction came after dropping the private contractor that had been doing the service and hiring another one. By contrast, using a public employee for the job would have cost much more. Joe Munem, West Bloomfield’s deputy clerk, said...