Author Archives: dunster

Eight Hours Until Polls Open

I’m not on the ballot this year – town meeting is a three year term, and I won last year.

I’m sitting here reading the Arlington list, reading all the thoughts and opinions about candidates, reading the pleas, the endorsements, and the criticisms, and I’m excited.  This is the way elections should be.  There is no party.  There is no blind faith.  These are voters making decisions based on fact and personal references.

I’ll agree with some things that are decided tomorrow, and I’ll disagree with others.  But the process is good.  It’s democracy.  I’m excited.

Vote Carreiro!  But if you don’t, that’s OK too.  The choices, the making of choices, is what matters.

Finance Committee Completes Report

(Black text is mostly objective, red text is mostly subjective in nature.)

Tonight was the last meeting of FinCom before Town Meeting. (FinCom meets for 30 minutes before every town meeting session).

First up was Superintendant Nate Levenson and CFO Susan Mazzarella to review the proposed School budget. Levenson walked through the budget rationale for most of an hour. It was followed by an hour of questions and discussion. Special education costs and cost controls came up repeatedly. There are items that have hidden the cost somewhat over the years, including retirements. There was discussion of strategies to keep students in-district, and strategies to keep students from needing special education. If you’re interested in the budget process, I highly recommend that you follow the link and read the budget. It’s a good document with a lot of information. You can see how the goals drive the budget decisions, and the limitations that constrain it all.

Town Manager Brian Sullivan then presented three collective bargaining articles, one for the special town meeting and two for the regular town meeting. Police and fire are still unresolved. The agreements are done with COLA raises offset by increased copay for medication and doctor visits, and increased premium contribution of 25% of the cost for new employees.

FinCom received additional information and voted to approve the DPW position change that had been removed on Monday.

The collective bargaining articles were approved 16-1. I voted in favor of them. I think that the several-year trend of these deals is headed in the right direction. The trend is not sufficient to avert a severe budget crunch at the end of the 5-year plan; I think that is why the vote was not unanimous. On the other hand, we have to pay competitive wages if we’re going to get good employees. If we negotiate too hard, we’ll end up with a different set of problems related to low-quality work. The other way to control labor costs is simply to have fewer employees. We’re going to have to employ fewer people and try to do more with less. It’s easier and more efficient to pay a few skilled people more money than it is to pay a lot of less skilled people less money. And, in some cases, we’ll simply do less.

Last item was to vote on the school budget. Several members wanted to wait for the budget to be approved by the School Committee before voting it, particularly as the board composition is about to change. Other members noted that FinCom only can recommend a bottom line, and that bottom line was very unlikely to change. By 14-2-1 the proposed budget was recommended. Debate got a bit testy on this one. I think it was late and people were restless. Also there was some frustration that the school budget is so late. There hasn’t been enough time to question and scrutinize and flush out issues. I voted for it on the basis of the proposal. If the newly elected school committee does something crazy, we can change our recommendation.

Pearls Before Breakfast

My friend Jeff pointed me to this article in the Washington Post. I think it’s a great read, but it’s long, and the videos are worth watching – it will take you 10 or 15 minutes to get through.

As a stunt, they put a world-class violinist in a Washington DC subway station to see if anyone noticed. The reporters interviewed dozens of people for a “commuting story,” and the whole thing was filmed. The question is whether or not he distinguishes himself. The classical music critics say that he is great. Is that validated by the subway crowd? Does his greatness come through? Can he create a crowd, just by being there and being very good?

The short answer is essentially no: pretty much nobody notices or cares. But there are exceptions, and they are interesting. Kids are fascinated. A couple people know they are getting something special, even if they don’t know what it is. Looking at the video I strongly suspect I’d be one of the people blowing past without a thought. I’m certain I wouldn’t be paying $100 to see him in person, either. But still, if you told me I who I was walking past, I would stop and listen. I’d be affected by the “name” more than the music.

There is some interesting commentary in the article about how great art is defined. The whole experiment made me think about New Orleans Jazz Fest. I go to the fest headliners because they’re headliners, and sometimes they’re great and sometimes they’re iffy. I also wander around and stop for a song or two from a few dozen artists. Sometimes those snippets reel me in. I have entire sections of my music library that I found stumbling around the New Orleans Fairgrounds. Of course, it’s still a question of context – it’s a jazzfest afterall, not the subway, and I’m ready to listen. But still, the headline didn’t matter. The music did.

Opening Day at Fenway

Opening Day at Fenway today. It was a great game – not in the baseball purist sense, but great for the home team. Lots of runs made it almost academic early. Beckett pitched pretty well, too, thought it was overshadowed by the offense. … See my Tabblo

Carreiro for Moderator

There have been many times in the past where I looked at a ballot for some race or other and found no one that I could vote for, and I end up just leaving it blank. I’m delighted that this year’s race for moderator has two good, qualified candidates on the ballot. We can’t go wrong. We don’t have a to pick a “lesser of two evils.” We can choose the “better of two goods.”

I’m casting my vote for Rich Carreiro. I believe he can do all of the tasks related to running a good meeting. He’s organized, he’s a quick thinker, and he communicates well. He’s attentive to detail.

The element that distinguishes him is his history of of working on structural improvements in the way Town Meeting is run, particularly in the area of ethics. He’s proposed or supported several changes that make the meeting a more open place, notably 2002’s change requiring speakers to disclose when they have a financial interest in an article. He has demonstrated himself as a leader in better governance.

I think he’ll run a fair and efficient meeting. I’ll be voting for him on Saturday.

Why HP Bought Tabblo

The New York Times ran an article today about how HP’s printing group is working on making it easier to print from the web.

I’ve had many friends ask me about the details of HP buying Tabblo.  I’ve given a number of different cagey, redacted responses because I didn’t know how much was public and how much was confidential.  I’ll say it now: most of what I know is in that NYT article.  If you want to know why Tabblo got bought, just read it online.

It’s been interesting to see the reaction to the article.  We’ve had several emails come into the customer service queue that say “I saw in the Times that you make it easy to print pages on the web.  Can you help me do that?”  The answer we give is “Not today.  But just wait.”

Finance Committee Nearing FY08 Wrapup

(Black text is mostly objective, red text is mostly subjective in nature.)

Attendance was a bit low tonight, and we started a few minutes late waiting for a quorum. When we started, it was with Personnel Director Caryn Malloy who went over the pay and classification changes in Article 41. Some of the changes are in title only. Some of the changes were anticipated previously and the cost increases were included in the existing budget. Some of them will result in lower salaries in the future, but not until the current job holder retires. Some changes come about when the current job holder asks for a reclassification. One of them is a pay grade determined by town meeting, but paid by CDBGrant funds. There was a last-minute change to a position in the Selectmen’s office creating an Office Manager position.

The ones that generate a stir are the unanticipated ones – the budget has one number, but the reclassification generates a new, higher number. There were a number of questions about a particular position in the DPW department that appeared to be jumping up 2 grades, and the funding explanation referred to a vacant position that wasn’t at all clear. There is pressure to get the budget done so it can go to print. The original motion was to approve the position and revisit if investigation reveals an issue. I made an amendment to change the default choice: strike the position from the motion, and let the investigation bring it back. By a vote of 11-1 the DPW position change was removed. The amended recommendation was approved unanimously.

I think Malloy does a good job in general. If you look at the 15ish changes in the plan, almost all of them are good calls. There are another dozen changes that she’s rejected that we don’t even see. From what I know, those are also good calls. This particular DPW recommendation ran into trouble because it’s different. This isn’t just a classification change. This is a change in the department structure. Also, this is a department going through a leadership change. It’s not clear that we should be bumping someone up two pay grades into a position that reports to the director without the new director’s consideration and without articulating how we’re funding it and why. Last, but certainly not least, Town Meeting asks questions. If we can’t understand the change, we can’t explain it at Town Meeting. I’m not going to vote for an appropriation that I can’t explain in some reasonable way.

The Recreation budget was approved as written. I’m persuaded by Director Connelly. I think he can turn the deficit around.

The Veteran’s Rink budget was next. I reiterated my dissatisfaction with the current situation. Another year has passed since I first asked the question, and there is still no plan for the rink’s capital needs. The director agrees that the rink’s revenues cannot support the costs. The budget was approved by a vote of 7-4 with 1 abstention. 7 votes may be the fewest votes I’ve seen in my (limited) FinCom experience. The issue will really come to a head when the capital request comes to a vote. It may come even sooner if someone asks to see a copy of the contract and neither the town nor the state can provide one.

The postage budget was corrected, increasing it by $15k. The Redevelopment Board budget was corrected, increasing it by $9.5k.

The committee voted unanimously to endorse Article 18. This article moves the IT department from the comptroller to the town manager. I’m excited by yet another step in the right direction. I’ve been working on this for years, and this article is a big step forward. At this point, the question is how many selectmen will vote for it, and how many members of Town Meeting.

There was a discussion of maintenance of town buildings. How can we prevent the decay we’ve seen in other town structures? What can we do to encourage/enforce cost effective maitenance procedures?

It was noted that the manager is withdrawing Article 28 which FinCom had voted against.

Finally it was Article 51, the George St. sidewalk. The current plan is to build this sidewalk by Dallin using donated land and the DPW’s existing sidewalk fund. I moved to approve the plan with $0 appropriation and with the caveat that the land be donated (not eminent domain taking). The motion passed 10-2. I’m kicking myself a bit on this one. I didn’t mean to make a controversial proposal. I confess that I was itchy to get the meeting over with, and I think I rushed it a bit. In retrospect, I would have made a motion that said the DPW can set the schedule. Since there is no appropriation, there is no real need for FinCom to take a position. We could have just nodded and said “yes, let it happen in due course.” As it is, we more said “yes, make it happen.” I regret that I stepped on a few toes that I didn’t need to.

Finance Committee on School Building, Rink, and Rec

(Black text is mostly objective, red text is mostly subjective in nature.)

Al Tosti had met with Town Counsel John Maher to review the warrant. There are a couple articles that the Selectmen endorsed that the Finance Committee voted down. The Selectmen appear to think that it is a good idea to pay down the OPEB liability aggressively (Article 26), and they think it’s a good idea to create a special fund (Article 28) to separate funds for town building rental. It will lead to a lively debate, I think. We didn’t get the whole way through the review before we moved on.

School Superintendent Nate Levenson and School Committee Member Jeff Theilman were present to talk about the school facilities working group report. He explained how “the rules changed” when the state changed from 2/3 reimbursement with relatively few constraints to 1/2 reimbursement with high constraints. The result is the Stratton school is unlikely to qualify for rebuilding for at least 10 years, and maybe 20. The state has determined that the Thompson is in significantly worse shape, and it will qualify for funding sooner. The amount and year, however, is still unclear.

The group is going to recommend that Stratton receive $150,000 of capital improvements per year for the next 10 years. That will keep the building up while recognizing that it won’t be rebuilt anytime soon. The Thompson will receive a similar amount for 5 years while the rebuilding timeframe is firmed up. There might be a minority report of the group that suggests that Thompson be rebuilt as soon as possible (12 to 18 months). This would be funded by bond anticipation notes that pay off interest, and hope/expect the state to pay soon enough that the tax rate is not impacted. My jaw dropped on this one; it sounds nuts. The funding mechanism proposal hasn’t yet been put to paper. Perhaps it will make more sense when there are more details.

The capital committee voted yesterday to fund Thompson at $120,000 to redo the bathrooms there. This was less than the working group had proposed, but appears to fund the requested items. The finance committee voted in principle to support the increased ’08 capital spending and the overall plan of keeping Stratton for 10-20 years and seeking a faster rebuilding of Thompson. The committee voted specifically to approve the $120k in borrowing for Thompson’s bathrooms.

There were some questions and comments about improving the relationship with Minuteman. There were questions about capacity and utilization of the current schools.

Next up was Joe Connelly. He started by reviewing the Veteran’s Rink budget. He explained the short-term financial plan is improving because the state-permitted rental rate is going up. It is clear, however, that the increases in rates will not be enough to cover the costs of the capital needs of the rink. The capital expenditures are required by a lease that, in a weird twist, no one has a copy of. I appreciate the clear statements about the rink finances, but I’m still very unhappy with the long-term financial picture. We should not have signed the lease without a plan. It’s been more than a year and all we have from the Town Manager are half-baked statements that the state or private donations are needed. That isn’t a plan. That is wishful thinking.

The recreation budget has a couple of flaws. First and most, it is running at a deficit. The projection is that the deficit will be smaller this year than last. The next problem is that the budget is “made” by people signing up in the spring (FY07) and paying money for summer programs (FY08) that is used to cover the previous summer programs (FY07). It was suggested that there be two sets of books – one that is for the fiscal year, and another for the program year. That might lead to better budgeting. Neither Rec nor Rink were voted tonight.

It was announced that committee member Ryan Ferrara was the proud father of 9-pound boy – mom and child doing well.

Dan O’Neill delivered several handouts including the pay and reclassification proposals. This was $40,000, much higher than the projected $5,000. This will likely be discussed on Monday.

There was a very brief discussion about the possibility of Town Meeting running 7:30-10:30 or on Saturday. It wasn’t clear to me where the impetus or intent of the change was.

Monday we will try to wrap up the remaining budgets and hearings, with the school budget on Wednesday. I’m a bit pessimistic. I think we have three meetings worth of work left, not two. But maybe it will go fast, we’ll see.