Cook County and City of Chicago Announce $11 Million in Identified Savings for 2011
Cook County and City of Chicago Announce $11 Million in Identified Savings for 2011
Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and Mayor Rahm Emanuel today highlighted the successful first three months of city-county collaboration, and announced that the task force has identified $11 million in savings.
“This committee is focused on finding areas of collaboration,” said President Preckwinkle. “This means not only looking for additional savings for taxpayers, but also finding other areas for cooperation to improve services for residents.”
To that end, the committee has added a twentieth area of collaboration to the 19 areas that were originally agreed upon: Anti-Violence Strategies and Community Stabilization.
The savings that have been identified are for 2012, and will include a $4 million savings in custodial costs, $1 million in facilities maintenance, $1.1 million in IT support services, and $2.9 million in procurement.
“Collaboration between government agencies is essential in these economic times,” said Mayor Emanuel. “We are pleased to be able to find efficiencies and save taxpayer dollars.”
The City and County have also focused heavily on increased collaboration in the area of homeland security.
Undertaking a goal-oriented, strategic approach, the City and the County are enhancing the safety and security of our Urban Area by developing a shared vision of preparedness. Through coordination with respect to goals and objectives, joint training and exercises and the leveraging of efficiencies with respect to developing joint-procurement policies, Cook County and the City of Chicago have undertaken unprecedented levels of cooperation and coordination with respect to developing a homeland security strategy.
This new approach to enhancing the ability of our first responders within the City of Chicago and throughout Cook County to prepare for, prevent against, respond to and recover from any incident - whether man made or natural - was recently recognized by the federal government in their grant of over $54 million to continue our domestic preparedness efforts.
The city-county collaboration expects to bring savings of $66 million - $140 million by 2014. The first quarter report is available online at cityofchicago.org and at cookcountyil.gov.