As Goldy reported last week, Mayor McGinn is considering consolidating five city departments as a cost-cutting measure to make the budget pencil. A feasibility study has just begun, and is scheduled to take five weeks, with the department heads coming together to take a look at what it would mean for them all to be joined into one big Department of Neighborhoods/Economic Development/Housing/Arts and Cultural Affairs/Sustainability and Environment. (What might it be called?) Vincent Kitch, the brand-new director of Arts and Cultural Affairs, is not commenting on the process at this point.

But Randy Engstrom, chair of Seattle Arts Commission, has a couple of questions off the bat.

One, would combining departments actually save money? Or would it be a boondoggle, akin to the creation of the mega-department Homeland Security at the federal level, which was intended to create efficiencies but instead caused problems and cost bucks?

Two, is there even time to properly answer the previous question? The feasibility study has been given only five weeks to be completed.

Meanwhile, all the department heads are fairly new to their jobs. These are folks who are still trying to understand the old normal, let alone carefully construct a new normal.

"I understand why this is happening, and I'm not trying to be difficult," Engstrom said. "That said, merging five departments is a huge undertaking and taking five weeks to do a feasibility study for it makes me uneasy. We have to be careful about using the budget argument for consolidation. And there are complications."

For instance, the Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs is funded by the admissions tax and the 1 percent for art program. Those revenue streams, by law, cannot be used to fund, say, street repair.

"I'm sure there are overlaps between the departments," Engstrom says, "but why not find the efficiencies rather than merge the whole departments?...I would just feel better if there was more process around this. I'd participate. This is a big thing to be debating, and I want to make sure that people are aware it could potentially have big ramifications."

How much money is combining departments estimated to save? City budget director Beth Goldberg was not immediately available to answer this question; an update will be coming later today. (Update: Goldberg said the numbers are not yet known, and that all options are still on the table, including combining five departments, combining three departments, combining two departments, and combining no departments. There will be reductions either way, she said.)

Aaron Pickus, a spokesman for Mayor McGinn, said nothing is decided yet, but "the cost-saving is only one part. All these departments are very community-facing." The recommendations from the study will be made in June and the mayor will spend the summer considering them in the budget process, making his final proposed budget at the end of September.