The Viberazor – brushing off city marketing deficits

+++Nederlandse samenvatting onderaan+++

So you were responsible for city marketing but you were surprised by the market, the local legislation or your bookkeeper? No problem! Meet The Viberazor, the latest invention of the Dutch local government of Brainport capital Eindhoven.

To start with
First you need to create a shortage on your bank account balance. This is necessary for the main ingredient to start working with The Viberazor Toolbox. Do not report any shortages until there is no way out. A good example is not to inform your stakeholders when it comes to overspending or minimized revenues. This works best if a) you did have an agreement to do so and b) if the money that you are spending is that of local taxpayers.

Step two: play cool
The second phase is to wait until your debts hit the fan, for instance when the local Eindhoven ‘gemeenteraad’ is going to decide about the financial future of your very own foundation or firm. Try not to shiver when reporting your financial position. Just wait.

Step three: wait
There are three options that normally occur in the Eindhoven town hall. The first one is that some sort of a responsible ‘wethouder’ (a hot-a-me-toot) cleans the mess before the blink of your or anyone’s eye. This how for instance the financial funding of the International School Eindhoven (ICE) was secured as it received 6 million euros after miscalculating. You can read more about that public tax money fountain in this Dutch written article. Another Eindhoven classic is the development of swimming pool The Tongelreep which was first closed due to a 500.000 euros shortage on the maintenance budget. What followed was a total rebuild that started off with an 18 million euros estimate and turned into a probable ‘investment’ of about 70 million taxpayers’ euros.

The second option is that one of the representatives at the city council spots the financial result of your mismanagement. Still there is nothing lost. The current strategy of the Brainport headquarters (basically, that is what the Eindhoven local government is) is best represented as ‘buy time, be wise and brush off’. The latter is meant for the one or two members of the local parliament that did mention the lack of transparency.

The third option is a combination of both options mentioned above. It means that even the press found out that you messed up your financial situation and never reported any shortcomings over the years although you signed a contract telling you would. Now you are about to find out why Eindhoven, the capital of the smart region Brainport, should be called a Capital with a capital ‘C’.

The Viberazor Toolbox
Such an example is what is unfolding right now with the Foundation for the Implementation of Municipal Assignments (FIMA). Thanks to mismanagement, miscommunication and misinformation, the Eindhoven local government came up with a brilliant solution: the Viberazor method. You find the most important tools in the Brainport Viberazor Toolbox. It consists of four components for hoot-a-me-toots in the narrow:

1. if you are the responsible ‘wethouder’ (hoot-a-me-toot), step one is to act as if everything was and still is under control;
2. band-aid the losses made by granting a loan without informing your own government in time/at all;
3. just budget the deficit of the lost taxpayers’ money with new taxpayers’ money.

The fourth part of the kit is a real pièce de résistance. It is the must-have to survive a city council meeting regarding the brush-off of financial shortcomings using taxpayers’ money:

‘Steel smool’ by StrAIght Face Jeni ©

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Nederlands

Hoe vaak een tekort zich ook herhaalt, het wordt op Eindhovense burgers weer verhaald.

Echt Eindhovens wordt het als je het tijdverloop naast de ontwikkelingen plaatst. De gemeenteraad moet voor 31 december a.s. beslissen of het contract wordt verlengd met het langdurig financieel ongezonde SUOG. Diezelfde raad wordt aanvang december op het allerlaatste moment geïnformeerd: direct voorafgaand aan de besluitvormdende vergadering. Een enkele volksvertegenwoordiger verslikt zich in de koffie.

Het heeft er alle schijn van dat er wederom sprake is van een geregiseerd verloop. In plaats van ingrijpen kiest men voor volharding. Bij geen enkel commercieel bedrijf zou dit beleid kansrijk zijn. Wat maakt het verschil? Uw geld.

Naschrift:
Thanks to Neil, an international working for one of our Brainport high tech companies, my attention went to this video. It shows the old school way of handeling mismanagement more explicit than shown at the Eindhoven Stadhuisplein: