Tim, be very careful what you elect to privatize. The profit motive and the necessity for government to SERVE the PEOPLE is often in conflict.

Bidding out mowing outside the courthouse? No problem. Bidding out mowing at our schools? Be careful- who is doing the background checks on the people we allow to be alongside our kids? Running the Health Department, keeping our citizens health, and being ready to respond to a pandemic? Look at how BP failed to invest for the 'worst case scenario', and covered everything up. Now imagine whoever you bid *that* out to secretly using bulldozers to bury people in mass graves. Don't laugh- it could easily go that far. (Read Barry's 'The Great Influenza' to see how crazy things got 90 years ago).

Some things can be easily bid out, and when/if you gets behind the wheel, you'll probably find that most of that has already been done. You will probably find some sweetheart deals to pull apart or make more transparent (PBA, TDC, and the Chamber), and if you do that, you will be a successful and highly respected mayor.

But please remember the #1 role of government is to serve the people and make the community work better for everyone. And the profit motive isn't always the way to do that (oh, does a certain greenwaste facility contract ring a bell?). Sometimes it just takes good people.

Look at Larry Frank, who has done AMAZING things with the libraries under a dwindling budget. Larry has to be one of the top five public servants in Knox County today, if not ever. NO private for-profit company could do what he's done with the libraries.

The private sector isn't a panacea. I've worked in/with and seen enough screwed up companies to tell you, Tim (a mostly public sector guy) that the grass is hardly greener on the other side, management-wise, and the profit motive usually makes it worse.