Dear Mr. Governor-of-a-Kenyan-County,

You don’t know me, but I am a resident of your county and I must say that I have been watching you and your colleagues trying to settle down into your roles with much aplomb: from raising an absolute ruckus about the right to fly a flag on your yet-to-be-official mode of automotive carriage to your right to find offices befitting your hallowed status.

Mine is not to belittle such major causes of angst. Au contraire, mine is simply to share some unsolicited ideas on how to perhaps beat those Central Government fellows at their budget game. You see, I am equally as disgusted as many of you demonstrated last week regarding the attempts by the Central Government to micromanage the utilization of your county budgets. I mean, why in heaven’s name would those chaps imagine that for the first three years of your administration, you guys who have had zero public finance management skills would be unable to manage billions of shillings? The gall!

Anyway, here’s a quick and dirty way to raise your own financing without having to deal with those chaps. First off, plug all the income leakage that is invariably leaching its way through your coffers. Let’s start with the easiest: Rates. I’m sure you will find on the top shelf of the metal cabinet in room 201, your county valuation roll. Take out your calculator and start calculating the absolute minimum that privately held land should be yielding in annual rates. Discount that by about 30% for the invisible sticky fingers that swipe the funds when paid across your counters and another 30% for the funds that never even get to be paid. The figure you get should be equal to what your county collected last year. Now multiply that tenfold. Sorry, am I going too fast? Yes, I said tenfold. Because if you were to actually revalue the land to today’s valuation figures you will find that your county has grossly been allowing potential income to leak, right? No, my numbers are not based on scientific fact and are actually pulled out of a hat, but I trust you see where I am coming from.

Don’t get me wrong. There will be much gnashing of teeth and right royal screaming coming from your residents, after all there have been previous attempts to increase the valuation roll but there was significant lack of political will to fight the big landowners who shouted the loudest. Others will say no new rates with no new service delivery, so this would be a good time to begin collecting garbage, filling up potholes and getting street lights working with what little money you have left in the bank. You might just convince us that your broom is a new and effective one.

The second easiest income leak to plug would be parking revenue. I mean, let’s get serious here. Parking is a finite resource. There are only a defined number of parking spaces in the urban centres within your county. Now let’s assume that there are 1000 parking spaces and the daily parking rate is Kshs 50/-. Your basic daily revenue should be Kshs 50,000/-. But this would be too simplistic a target to give to your yellow-coated attendants. You see, you can gingerly make the assumption that at least half of the parking spots are turned over 1.5 times a day. That is to say that a parking may be used by up to three cars in a day or perhaps by one car the whole day. Averaging it out to 1.5 times will be a good start. Therefore your daily revenue for should actually be Kshs 75,000/-. Align all salaries for the parking attendants to a minimum daily or weekly collection. Do not under any circumstances give the same target to the clamper zealots or else your urban centres will grind to an absolute halt from their sudden “efficiency”.

The third asset that your county has is the air above and within it. What’s that, you say? You see, the outdoor advertising companies have demonstrated that you can pull a rabbit out of a hat and create advertising space out of nothing. That many of these billboards are now an environmental hazard and are a complete eyesore is irrelevant. Have one of the chaps from audit go round your county and take stock of the number of billboards and outdoor advertising gizmos that have been built. Then undertake reconciliation with the revenue collected for the same in the previous year. I rest my case. Of course the same can be undertaken for all the signposts and motor vehicles that advertise company logos and building addresses. We know this because we are constantly harassed by overzealous “askaris” who want to see payment for “advertising” ourselves even if it’s something as basic as telling the rest of the world where we do our primary business.

I could go on and on regarding areas of income leakage but you already know this. Your staff have become completely blind to seeing connecting the dots between revenue collection = topline and continued sustainability =bottom-line. We like your staff, they are Kenyans like us and they have families to feed…. at least the ones who genuinely exist on your payroll [let’s face it the ghost worker question is the elephant of income leakage]. Just like the rest of us who run our own businesses or who are employed clearly understand, you should demonstrate that service equates to customer satisfaction, which in turn equates to a willingness to pay for that service. We all know that if we don’t justify our existence by generating value for our employers or our customers, we are out of a job. Sadly, many of your staff have difficulty making that connection. Your role is to paint a picture of financial independence and connect the dots for your team. That will take leadership skills outside of flag bearing motorcades and snazzy red-carpeted offices. Let’s see what you’ve got.

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Twitter: @carolmusyoka