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City earns State Auditor award for efficiencies and innovations

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From left State Auditor Rob Sand presents a PIE award to Guttenberg City Manager Denise Schneider, councilmember Austin Greve and Assistant City Manager Jamie Blume. (Press photo)

By Shelia Tomkins

The City of Guttenberg has received a Public Innovations and Efficiencies (PIE) Award from State Auditor Rob Sand. 

Guttenberg was recognized as the Best Performing City in its category and was one of nearly 30 winners in three categories — cities, counties and school districts — that participated in the contest.

Two  other Clayton County entities earned awards in their categories: Clayton County was the Best Performing County and MFL MarMac Community School District was named the best in its division.

"This is the first PIE Award trifecta," said Auditor Sand. "Never before has a county, a city, and a school district in the same county won PIE Awards in the same year."

In recognition of the awards, Sand hand-delivered a pie to winners on Oct. 18.

Sand created the program three yeas ago to encourage government officials to implement cost-cutting measures and to  spark innovative ideas to save public money.

Cost-cutting measures can range from shutting off the lights to the creation of policies that reduce travel expenses. Cities and counties were awarded points, based on the number of measures implemented last year.

Guttenberg City Manager Denise Schneider noted that some of the city's cost-cutting measures included placing LED lighting in most of the buildings. "We also did paper reduction by moving to Laserfiche and tablets for council packets; computers and the copier are set to hibernate or sleep when not in use; and we schedule annual maintenance of the HVAC system," she said. 

Eighty-four counties and 310 cities and 121 school districts competed for awards in 2021.

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