VALPARAISO | Being a lean, green, efficiently serving machine is the city's goal, and Mayor Jon Costas said he expects to bring in a nonprofit group to help achieve that goal.

The Fort Wayne-based High Performance Government Network works with governmental bodies to find more efficient ways of doing the public's business. Costas said he has been talking to the organization for about a year and hopes to have it do a study of Valparaiso's operations and make recommendations that could be implemented in the fall.

"I feel it's time to focus on efficiency in every level of government," he said. "While we've implemented a lot of efficiencies, we think we can benefit from it."

HPGN was put together by former Fort Wayne Mayor Graham Richard to help other governments find ways to be more efficient and cut costs. It uses a system developed by Motorola and now in widespread use by industries that sets out a defined sequence of steps to achieve certain financial goals, including reducing costs.

Costas said he'd like the group to talk to his department heads about how the city does everything from pick up trash to whether it has the right number of police officers or if there might be a better way to market its recycled materials.

Working on the HPGN contract will be one of the first tasks for newly appointed City Administrator Bill Oeding, Costas said. The organization develops an ongoing relationship with its clients, but, initially, the city would enter into a one-year contract. After a year, the city would analyze the results and determine whether to continue it.

The city sets aside about $50,000 a year from its share of the county economic development income tax to fund these types of things, but Costas said he expects the cost to be $25,000 to $30,000 for the first year.