Outsourcing and the Critical Need for Access to Capital

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6210.2012.02655.x
• Date: 01 November 2012
• Published date: 01 November 2012
• Author: Mark Funkhouser

900 Public Administration Review • November | December 2012

Mark Funkhouser

Governing Institute

Years ago, while I was the city auditor of

Kansas City, Missouri, the city began for the

f‌i rst time to contract out part of the mowing

of its parks.  is was extremely controversial, and

there was a signif‌i cant amount of disagreement over

whether the contract mowing cost less than mowing

by the city’s park maintenance workers. Our initial

audit work showed that on a cost-per-acre basis, the

contract cost was lower. After we made these calcula-

tions, I met with a group of mowing crew members

at a maintenance facility to discuss our f‌i ndings.

 ey angrily pointed out, correctly, that the crews of

the private company doing the contract mowing for

the city had far superior equipment—new, ef‌f‌i cient,

reliable, and easy to operate.  e city crews, on the

other hand, would report to work at the mainte-

nance yard in the morning and spend an hour or

more getting assigned whatever equipment could be

found that was in good enough repair to take to the

f‌i eld.  e city mowing machines—riding mowers,

hand mowers, weed trimmers, and so on—were not

as ef‌f‌i cient, broke down more frequently, and took

more ef‌f ort to operate.  e city crews were certain

that with the same sort of equipment, their mowing

Outsourcing and the Critical Need for Access to Capital

Commentary

Mark Funkhouser is director of the

Governing Institute. Previously, he was

mayor of Kansas City, Missouri, from 2007

to 2011, a position to which he was elected

after serving as that city’s city auditor for

18 years. He holds an interdisciplinary

doctorate in public administration and

sociology from the University of Missouri

at Kansas City.

E-mail: mfunkhouser@erepublic.com

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 72, Iss. 6, pp. 900–901. © 2012 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.111/j.1540-6210.2012.02655.x.