Pgh hires mgr 2 imprv f'ishincee

From the mouthpiece of the godless communist oppressors, the P-G:

Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl has hired a former Pittsburgh Public Schools official and charged him with improving the efficiency of city services.

Chuck Half, 60, of the South Side, will start Aug. 6 as manager of the city's Management, Accountability, Performance and Strategy program. He worked as the school district's coordinator of program management and quality from 2002 through 2006, when he was let go in a round of budget cuts. Since then, he has worked as a consultant implementing business management software...

He said he'll first look to improve the flow of information in city departments, and then work on making performance measurements transparent to the public...

As an example of projects he may work on, Mr. Half cited the city's pavement program. He said better information management could help the city take into account the traffic, wear and tear, history, and even development nearby each street when deciding which get repaved.

Now, I hope Bob's... er, Chuck's firings go really well, but "performance measurements" and "street repairs" are small potatoes when it comes to efficiency in this day and age. Here are some other suggestions for him to mull over:

* The purchasing process of the City of Pittsburgh is, for the most part, duplicative of both the School District and the County. If the three could pull their resources, we'd collectively save bunches when we go to Staples.

* Similarly, the City, County, School District, and related Authorities all have their own pension and insurance plans; bulk purchases of insurance and/or pooling of pension funds would spread the costs out over more people. That, or everyone could just agree to shoot the sick and the old on sight when they become a bother.

* Pittsburghers already drop the infinitive case in everyday speech. So, rather than saying "the car needs to be washed," we say, "the car needs washed." That's a savings of 15% (including spaces) right there. I suggest that we further drop all language and focus on developing some form of yinzer telekinesis.

* Keep the Department Director and all of the other vacant city positions empty until CMU can develop some sort of sentient RoboRueaucrat, to process picnic grove reservations and find Sarah Conner.

* There are too many council districts. We should eliminate 4.

* Better yet, 9. It'll be more efficient to let the mayor do what he wants.

* While we're at it, let's eliminate some of the more useless and redundant neighborhoods. I mean, do we really need "Chateau" or a Squirrel Hill North AND South? And why are there three Homewoods?

* And, most importantly of all, the City of Pittsburgh should just take over all the suburbs, by force if necessary, uniting Western Pennsylvania into what the Germans call a Grosse Yinzerreich.

So I hope Bob... er, Chuck has good luck with this management, accountability, performance and strategy program thing. Lord knows that the mayor doesn't have time for any of those things if Ron Burkle comes calling again.

Oh, and by the way, there's this squirrely looking guy, mumbles a lot down in the basement looking for his stapler threatening to set the City on fire; you might want to look into that.