I'm probably speaking out of turn here. Perhaps Bend's government has gotten so big and complicated that they simply must hire consultants. But to me, every time they hire a consultant, it's a failure of leadership. Every time they hire a P.R. firm, it's a failure of leadership.

You want to know how to budget? Set your staff to draft three budget scenarios: a best case scenario, a middle case scenario, and a worst case scenario. Set your budget for the worst case scenario, with options to spend more money in the middle case scenario, and with the money from the best case scenario to be saved for the next budget.

There. Job done. Can I have 35 thousand dollars now?

Consultants seem more to do with ass-covering. See...we hired a consultant and this was his advice and it turned out wrong, but we were prudent.

Whatever.

I know this. I don't go out and hire an outside 'expert' every time I have a problem. Can't afford it. And I would trust my own knowledge and instinct over any outsider I can hire.

And I think once you've hired a consultant you've written a blank check. Any consultant will automatically assume that any idiot who has enough money to hire him has enough money to spend on further studies, and will write his recommendations to achieve that result.

Set a city employee to the job? He'll get it done as fast and efficiently as possible, because he gets his salary either way. If he does it wrong? Well, that's were leadership and accountability take place.

To me, hiring outside consultants for problems like Mirror Pond, BAT, budgets, and Juniper Ridge means you don't trust your own staff to do the job. Fundamentally, it's punting the ball, passing the buck.