By MATT PIKE

A new department recently approved by the St. Joseph City Council will help make city services more efficient, while also saving the city some money.

The new General Services Department centralizes and brings key city functions, such as public works and the street department, under one roof.

Councilmember at large Jeff Schomburg says one way this helps the city is that by getting these functions under one roof, it helps increase buying power, for things such as each programs fleet of vehicles

“Thus that saves the city a lot of money, so they can go these people and say hey I’m buying this amount of product, how much discount can you give me for parts and stuff like that,” Schomburg says on the KFEQmunnity show. “That’s one of the features of it, so there’s so many things that when they do the procurements, where they basically need a product and buy something, this is all going to put it underneath one house.”

Schomburg says the new department can help each department around the city streamline their work more efficiently, using public works as an example

“So (Public Works Director) Abe {Forney) will have certain project and certain things he’ll have, and then he’ll feed it over to the General Serv ice Department, they’ll kind of orchestrate that and then feed it back to him,” Schomburg explains. “So, everybody will be working in tandem.”

“And then that person in General Services may go back to Abe and say you’ve got to have this, this, and this done by this certain time, this is your deadline, this is when we need to get all this money in and everything is done, so basically it’s helping each department work more efficiently.”

You can follow Matt on X @KfeqMatt and St. Joseph Post @StJosephPost.