Chesterfield County is the third largest employer in the state?

Here is a Coalminer Boast that begs a question.

From the Building and Grounds – Division of General Services Case Study from June 2008.

"Chesterfield County government operations consist of 49 departments and over 4,000 employees. Chesterfield County is one of the 100 largest school districts in the nation. The county school system includes 59 schools and approximately 8,000 employees. Chesterfield county Government’s total employment makes it the third largest employer in Virginia behind only the State Government and the Federal Government."

Wow! Just wow! So where are the private small businesses in Chesterfield?  Ummm... The Taxpayer imagines that all those would-be small business folks work for the government.

So get this... the top three employers in Chesterfield County as of the 2nd Quarter of 2009 according to the Virginia Employment Commission

1. Chesterfield County School Board
2. County of Chesterfield
3. U.S. Department of Defense

If you added up all the private sector jobs at Dupont, UPS, and Walmart in Chesterfield County, there would still be more working for the new Big 3. (Remember the old days when the big 3 meant car companies)

So let's take Dupont. DuPont job cuts include 450-500 at Spruance plant from May 2009. That's 450 out of 3,122 employees or by The Taxpayer's calculator 14%. What would that translate to for reductions at the local government if it followed “the largest decline in industrial demand in decades."

Some other heavies on the state government scene:

• At #10, Virginia State University beats Bon Secours
• At #14, Virginia State Police bests Capital One Bank
• At # 21,22, and 23 John Tyler, VDOT, and the Dept of Juvenile Justice tops Target, AdvantiStaff, and Lowes.

How does Chesterfield County government sustain itself under its own bloated weight with its largest employers struggling and therefore the families struggling to make the next meal?

Here's a concept to throw darts at The Taxpayer.  If our best and brightest are government employees, how about offering a course or two to these employees on how to operate a small business?  At the very least, they will begin to appreciate what a small business is all about and appreciate their existence.  As a goal, what would happen if 20% of the government workforce converted over to the private sector with their own small, start up businesses?  What would Chesterfield look like in 10 years?

Back to the case study...

The Chesterfield County Division of Building and Grounds is one of eight divisions within the Department of General Services and performs maintenance for approximately 70 buildings and the associated grounds within the county complex and several outlining buildings including libraries and police precincts located in various regions of the County’s 444 square miles of land.

So no schools are maintained by this division. Begs the question, why are the schools maintained separately from the county?  Wouldn't there be more efficient use of tax dollars for maintenance and upkeep with greater economies of scale?