Grand Traverse County commissioners Wednesday voted to outsource county lawn mowing services and eliminate a full-time employee position from the county's facilities management department.

Pending a positive reference check, commissioners agreed to accept a bid from KLM Landscapes to take over county lawn mowing services for $19,422 annually. Other submitted bids included $51,900 from Landscape Management and $80,994 from TSR Lawn and Landscape. Director of Facilities Management Danny Brown expressed concern about KLM's bid, saying “it would cost that much in fuel” alone to maintain county grounds and that he didn't “know how they could do it.” Grounds Coordinator Paul Johnson pointed out that KLM's bid covered fewer services than those provided by county employees: KLM would only mow the Civic Center once a week instead of twice, for example, and the sheriff's storage building six times a year instead of 24.

“If it's a matter of reducing services, we can reduce services in-house,” Johnson argued. Brown also noted that county grounds workers perform “multiple other duties” in the care and maintenance of county buildings and parks.

But commissioners, who have expressed their determination to cut costs as a way of addressing a projected $700,000 budget deficit in 2015, wanted to experiment with the outsourcing and monitor how it worked.

“This is reversible,” said Commissioner Dan Lathrop. “There's no good reason not to take chances. If we can't make these kinds of decisions...we're not going to save our citizens a dime.” Commissioner Christine Maxbauer agreed: “This is a service we can provide by contracting. The public's not going to care who's mowing their grass. They just want the grass cut.”

Commissioners deferred making a decision about outsourcing county snow removal – and possibly eliminating additional facilities management workers – until Brown could provide them a more detailed analysis of the hours and costs involved.