Here’s a transcript of a bit of commentary by Larry Kujovich from the dynamic duo Executive Partners and Crowe Horwath, the consultants who met with City of DeKalb officials April 13 to talk strategic financial planning.

You’ve gotta look into the future. . .Does your 5-year plan list what you need, or what is available in terms of resources. And at the end of the day, it doesn’t say what you need. If you’ve got to fund all your capital requirements, all your replacement funds, AND fully fund your pension plans, you’ve got a hole that is HUGE. You need to know what that hole is, even if you can’t solve it right now. Because you’re making short-term decisions, and maybe — we talked earlier about the half-million savings, or the million dollars, how can we use it? — you may need that to do just what you’re doing today, three years from now. And if you don’t have that visibility, you’re gonna get yourself in a box where you spend it now and you don’t have it in three years. Now again, this is my private sector experience; if we didn’t do this THERE, we’d be bankrupt.

Mr. Kujovich also recommended a culture change, in which the focus shifts from the requirements of the organization to an outcomes-based model that asks how best to deliver what the citizenry needs. In other words, he’s asking the bureaucracy to act like less of a bureaucracy.

Watch the full video here. The operations portion begins roughly an hour in, following the discussion of revenue opportunities.