Finance Committee met at 7:30 before Town Meeting. Several items were discussed – upcoming reserve fund transfers, Town Meeting schedules, etc.
The only topic that was formally discussed was Article 18. After some discussion, the committee unanimously endorsed the Selectmen’s proposed vote.
Article 18 comes to a vote tomorrow (Monday) at Town Meeting. I’m going to be voting yes, I encourage my fellow meeting members to vote yes, and I hope voters encourage their representatives to vote yes.
You can read the text of the vote in the Selectmen’s supplemental report. It moves the town function of “data processing” out from under the Comptroller and to under the Town Manager. It renames the group to be “Information Technology.” Most importantly, it permits the town and schools to merge common IT functions. (It also permits the schools to independently maintain academic computing, i.e. the software that is part of the classroom.)
This change will make a big difference in the long run.
When the town created the Data Processing department, almost all of the computing was done in the town’s accounting function. It made sense to put the department with the accounting. Today, the computer is ubiquitous within the town. It’s in every office and on almost every desk. The job function, the computer work, has outgrown the accounting group.
The United States has enjoyed huge increases in productivity over the last several years. A given worker has been been able to get more done. Most of that is because they have been able to take advantage of information technology.
Proposition 2.5 limits the town’s financial resources. When costs go up faster than revenues, the two obvious choices are to cut costs or to increase revenues (raise taxes). There is a third option that is less obvious: become more productive. If the town can increase productivity fast enough, it can deliver the same services it has in the past without raising taxes. Of course, it isn’t east. It requires work and careful planning.
Creating the IT group gives the IT function a level of visibility that it hasn’t had in the town thus far. It opens up the possibility of finding and exploiting the opportunities to increase productivity. And, of course, merging the school IT creates opportunities to buy and maintain IT services with greater cost efficiencies.
Please vote yes on Article 18.
School Superintendent Nate Levenson has a number of critics in town. Some of the criticism is well-founded, but I think that a lot of it is undeserved. If you are one of his critics (or one of his fans), I invite you to review the budgets and budget presentations that he has created.
I think that Levenson really shines when he’s working on a budget. Last year at Finance Committee I was first dumbfounded and then delighted by the clarity and level of detail and reasoning in his budget. He was as-good this year. He takes policy and priority and he turns it into numbers. This is not a trivial act. It’s easy to get caught up in a budget and spend months trying to fit this year’s puzzle pieces into last year’s puzzle. He has the ability to re-think a budget without being hidebound by the past.
I’m not an educator. I do know a fair amount about decision making, and more than a fair amount about budget decision making. In that context, I believe that Nate Levenson has been an excellent superintendent. Kay Donovan would bring in budgets that I found opaque and mostly relied on her saying “I think that this is best.” Levenson brings in budgets and said “this is what the School Committee said it wanted as goals, here are the three best ways I could come up with to get there, and this is the one that I chose, and here is why it is both good and bad.”
I respect people who I don’t agree with but are “wrong for the right reasons.” I haven’t agreed with everything that Levenson has done, but I have been impressed with the way he reached his decisions. I also have appreciated the way he’s dealt with some of the challenges he’s faced, whether they were external or of his own making.
I think that he’s taken a beating the last couple of months, and much of it was undeserved. I think that there has been a “piling on” by people who are invested in the status quo. These vocal groups who don’t approve of his changes have smelled blood and acted to diminish him or bring him down.
Watch the replay of tonight’s town meeting. Watch him explain the budget. Watch him constructively respond to harsh criticism. He’s building a budget for our schools and our children, and I think he’s doing it well.
FinComm met at 7:30 and heard an update to the Veteran’s Rink budget. It wasn’t a big change, just a forgotten line item that we talked about but hadn’t included in the sheet. I voted against the budget as I had last month. The budget ignores the capital needs of the rink. The rink needs a plan to cover the capital issues. The first time we voted, it passed only 7-5. This time I was the only person to vote against it. It’s funny the way votes work sometimes.
(Black text is mostly objective, red text is mostly subjective in nature.) Finance Committee met, as is customary, at 7:30 before Town Meeting.
John Bilafer spoke to FinCom about it’s recommendation of no action on Article 26. I missed the very beginning so I’m not sure if he proposed a wording change or just a different interpretation, but the upshot was that the town could optionally choose to pay off OPEB while delaying funding the retirement obligation. That change removed at least one objection of FinCom.
However, question and discussion showed that the committee still didn’t think the legislation was necessary. If the town received negative reports from a bond agency because it wasn’t paying off OPEB fast enough, the retirement board could choose to delay the retirement payment schedule on its own, and the resulting money could be appropriated by Town Meeting towards OPEB. The proposed special legislation is not necessary.
The committee did not change its original “no action” recommendation.
Annie LaCourt kindly provided a copy of her State of the Town address. You can read it here.
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.
(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.
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.
(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.