With a $25 million budget deficit, the Santa Clara County Board
of Supervisors are searching high and low for extra money. They
sent a message Tuesday to the county’s 34 departments and more than
15,000 employees: hold the phone, they’re going to audit how much
is spent on county-paid cell phone plans.
With a $25 million budget deficit, the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors are searching high and low for extra money. They sent a message Tuesday to the county’s 34 departments and more than 15,000 employees: hold the phone, they’re going to audit how much is spent on county-paid cell phone plans.
The board of supervisors unanimously passed the referral to analyze possible cost-savings, with South County’s Supervisor Mike Wasserman providing the second to Supervisor Ken Yeager’s motion.
“As we look everywhere for extra dollars, I thought this might be a place we could go to,” Yeager said Tuesday. Yeager authored the agenda item.
“I don’t think any employee is misusing the system … but people have signed up for a plan and years have gone by and they just haven’t changed it or people have retired and they haven’t disconnected the service. I think this type of review would give a better sense of what’s going on and how we might save,” Yeager said.
The referral asks the Management Audit Division, on a countywide basis, to conduct an analysis of employees’ usage of county cell phones, as well as the calling plans and data plans.
A survey was conducted of county departments about a year ago – according to the report – and found 34 departments report cell phone information and four departments do not. The approximate annual cost of providing cell phones to about one in every four full-time positions is $1,518,513. A total of 3,459 cell phones were reported as county cell phones.
The cell phone usage of 144 employees and 113 cell phones were recently audited in the Health and Hospital Administrative and Support System and identified about $40,000 of annual savings by selecting calling and data plans more appropriate for the nature of the actual usage.
