Fox to resign from Finance Committee

Larry Fox has written to the Finance Committee Chair that he will be unable to continue his service on the committee due to increasing commitments required by his work. Larry has previously served as chairman of the Finance Committee He has been a consistent...

...independent voice for fiscal responsibility and we owe him our gratitude for his service. Good luck and again, thanks for the leadership you provided in this very time consuming and difficult task with the Finance Committee. Your wisdom and advice will be missed.
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Tickets complete

I normally don't include any postings if they don't pertain to Dartmouth but I suppose in a broad sense this does.
The party tickets for the Presidential race are complete with John McCain naming Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska as his running mate today. They face off against...

...Barack Obama and Joe Biden for the next couple months. I found Obama inspiring when I heard him speak 4 years ago and he hasn't given me any reason to change my mind about that yet.
McCain's pick for VP is puzzling.
What do you think about the Presidential race?
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Action items from the Select Board workshop

A few other items covered at the workshop meeting today are:

-The Budget Director will brief the Select Board at our September 8th meeting about the status of FY08 departmental turn backs, projected surplus revenue and discussion of possible appropriations of those funds at the Fall Town Meeting.

-Update of the Select Board's objectives and policies pursuant to Section 3-2(b) of the Town Charter ...

...from the 9/1/07 Objectives Plan. (This was the Plan highly touted last year and unmentioned for some time now)

-Scheduling a meeting with the Finance Committee to discuss priorities for FY10 and the revenue and expense projections for that year in public sessions, and the status of the town lawsuit with the GNBVT school district in executive session.
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Looking at Fire District overhead.

The town currently provides some services to the town's three independent fire districts at no charge. These services are collection of the fire district tax levies and dispatch of the the fire departments by the town's police dispatch operators. The Select Board had previously had discussion about charging the fire districts for these services. Today, the Budget Director presented a proposal for how to assess these charges. The Select Board will meet with the Prudential Committees of the fire districts in the near future to get their input on the proposal.
The specific proposal was to apportion a percentage of the town collector, town accountant, assessor, and other departmental budgets ...

...involved in tax collection based on the percentage of tax receipts collected compared to the total tax collected.
Using this method, Fire Districts 1, 2 and 3 would be charged 1.79%, .72% and 2.27% of the total cost respectively. This is based on the total collection of the general government and fire levies of $42,216,627 and the fire district levies of $756,694, $305,237 and $958,915 for fire district 1,2 and 3 respectively. Adding the budgets for the town departments involved in collecting the fire levy and multiplying by the percentages given above, results in a charge to the fire districts of $31,784, $12,784 and $40,307 for districts 1,2 and 3 respectively. The total assessment including all three fire districts would be $84,875.
I think that these charges are justifiable given the time and effort expended by the town departments in collecting the fire levies.
Also discussed was a proposal to charge the fire districts a portion of the dispatcher costs based on the same percentages as the tax levy calculation. Applying those percentages to the dispatcher costs yields a charge of $10,227 for Fire District 1, $4,114 for Fire District 2, and $12,969 for Fire District 3 given the total dispatch budget of $571,336. It was noted that a charge for dispatch services had been previously discussed based on the number of calls for each fire district. This method turned out to be unwieldy and was abandoned. The above method may be more acceptable to the fire districts and Select Board.
I have been thinking about the charge for dispatch service and I think perhaps we are trying to parcel this out a little too finely with regard to dispatch charges. Since the police and fire departments are usually dispatched together to the calls, I think that the additional cost in providing dispatch service is small.
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North Dartmouth Library to reopen

I was surprised to learn today at the Select Board workshop session that the Library Trustees have voted to reopen the North Dartmouth branch for 17 hours per week.
The branch will be open after Labor Day and the proposed hours are

Monday 5-8 PM
Tuesday 9AM-1PM
Wednesday 5-8PM
Thursday 9AM-1PM
and Friday 5-8PM

The cost of the reopening ...


...will be provided by reallocating personnel funding from the Southworth library (about $41K) and grant funds (about $9K). The Budget Director said he will keep track of the accounts being used to ensure they don't go into the red as the year progresses.
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Getting more for less.

Our town is in the midst of a continuing fiscal crisis. Our expenditures are growing faster than our revenues and will continue to do so. Looking at the private sector, productivity gains from information technology have been a driving force in cost reduction. Are there opportunities in information technology to help do so for the town? I have been looking at the website of the company, Tyler Technologies, which provides ...

... the MUNIS software for our financial reporting. They seem to provide many other modules which are integrated together to form an enterprise wide package. Right now we have different departments using different software. The school department business package can't exchange information with the MUNIS software, the assessor has a database which seems to be stand alone, there does not seem to be any town wide document management system. I am not familiar with the Tyler products but this is the type of system that could significantly reduce the time and effort needed to generate, track, store and share information across the town departments. This system is the kind of technology that I think may be used to drive down our costs. What do you think? Anyone out there familiar with Tyler and their products?
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That's news to me!

The Standard Times published an article today claiming that the Select Board received a survey from Ed Tavares, a retired school principal, on comparative salary data between Dartmouth and comparable towns. You can read it here. I have not seen this report and it has not been presented to the Select Board to my knowledge, so I won't comment on its findings. I will comment on a few...

... of the statements made in the news article. For instance, this one.

(T)he report says Dartmouth has some 17 unfilled positions.

There are no "unfilled" positions in the town as far as I am concerned. If the job was eliminated, it is gone, no position, no unfilled position.
And this one,

Mr. Tavares stressed the importance of Dartmouth salaries "staying in line" with peer communities, if the town is going to attract the best candidates. "If you are going to have people, you have to pay them a living wage,"

I think anyone making well over $100,000 is making a living wage. In fact, I would call them well paid. These are long time employees, so I don't buy the "best candidates" argument. These people have a lot of time invested towards a very lucrative retirement, they are not likely to be going anywhere.
Finally, there is this statement,

Mr. Tavares, who was commissioned to do the study by the Select Board

To my knowledge, and it may have occurred before I was on the board but I doubt it, the Select Board did not commission this report. In fact, the comparative study, upon which the report is based, has never been released or presented to the Select Board in completed form. A draft was circulated some time ago but the final version has never been presented. The Select Board have never discussed the survey at all to this date. So this article was literally news to me.
I will ask that this report be forwarded to me and that it be included on the agenda at the next Select Board meeting.
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Back to the future

In the 18th and 19th century, water power made New England an industrial powerhouse. Mill dams and ponds can still be found in nearly every town. Dartmouth is no exception. So what does that have to do with now?
I think that there is a real opportunity to ...

...put these old ponds and dams to use in a way that would benefit our town. Nearby communities, such as Fairhaven and Westport, have been debating wind power to help reduce energy costs. Fairhaven has chosen to proceed and Westport not. But there is another renewable energy source available to us, water. Micro hydro turbines could be installed at the mill dams in town and provide electricity to light our streets and perhaps even provide revenue. What do you think?
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Real solutions

Some time ago, I posted on why the only lasting solution to our problem is to reconcile the rate of growth of our expenses to the rate of growth of our revenue. That is still the case. Until our expenditures grow at a sustainable rate, we really have no possibility of returning to fiscal health. There are those who ...

... doubt we can do it at all, for instance Mr. Lynam (read here). Please read these posts to get the thrust of my argument.
Defining the terms,
We have a revenue problem???,
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner!,
and Common Sense Solutions

Update-Added link to opinion from Standard Times by Mr Lynam.
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Fiscal projection information

Mr. Lynam of the Finance Committee maintains a file of current information about town finances which he calls the MOB file. It is periodically updated when new information is received from the Budget Director. This file is in Microsoft Excel format and if you have that software, you can open it. I have uploaded the file to a server and you can download it from here. Much of the data that I cite on this blog or that others in town reference can be found in this file. It is widely distributed...

... to others (the cast of Ben Hur in Mr. Lynam's words) and contains tabs for revenue and expenditure projections, reserve fund transfers, and many other useful things. This is NOT the official information on any of the town's financial information, only the Budget Director can issue official information, but is a very useful file. When opened, it will say that the file includes macros, you can click to disable them. The file will then ask about updates, click no.
When you close it, it will ask you if you want to save the changes, click no.
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The dreaded four letter P word

In the past months(here, here, here, and here) and at recent Select Board meetings, I have been agitating for a multi-year fiscal forecast and a plan for reconciling our expenditures and revenues. The fiscal forecast is already largely completed. Now a course of action is needed for what the town will do about the budget shortfalls shown by the forecast. I think that this plan should, and must come, from our town administrators. Some of the other members of the Select Board may also want...

...to have such a plan developed, but with varying degrees of urgency. I feel that this planning needs to be the top priority of our administrators.
Once there is a road map of where the town is going and how we are going to get there, many other things fall into place. Without that, we are going to get to next February or April and the alarm will be raised once again that we are unable to fund our on-going operations. The tools are available to predict what our situation will be in FY10 and beyond. I would like to see that prediction and a plan before the Fall Town Meeting in October. It would certainly help to inform any decisions and appropriations made at that time.
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FY10 projections and the Rule of 6 P's

Mr Lynam, the co-chair of the Finance Committee, has done an analysis of the FY10 expenditure and revenue projections. I adjusted some of the numbers he cited but the overall picture is the same. For example, I added the increase in the Dartmouth minimum net school spending (MNSS) and the Voke assessment to get the total increase for schools. I also revised his numbers for increased salaries downward slightly based on the proposed police increase of 2% rather than 3%. Mr Lynam carries his numbers down to dollars and cents and I have rounded them to the thousands here.
From the revenue projections given by our Budget Director, the increase of revenue from FY09 to FY10 is roughly $1.973 million.
Required MNSS is projected to grow by $1.579 million. Subtracting that from the new revenue leaves $394K available for increases in the General Government budget. Police and town employee salaries are projected to increase by about $300K which leaves $94K remaining ...

... to cover the normal 3-4% increase in utility and expense costs. Those costs will grow by $670K which means the town is facing a shortfall of $576K for FY10.
Here is the important point. We know today, right now, that we are going to fall short of balancing the budget by nearly $600K. What are we planning to do about that? This is the critical question to which our town and school administrators need to provide an answer.
It is not the function of the Select Board or School Committee to decide what specifically should be cut. From the Town Charter, Section 3-2,

The select board shall serve as the chief policy making agency of the town. The select board shall be responsible for the formulation and promulgation of policy directives and guidelines to be followed by all town agencies serving under it and, in conjunction with other elected town officers and multiple member bodies to develop and promulgate policy guidelines designed to bring the operation of all town agencies into harmony. Provided however, nothing in this section shall be construed to authorize any member of the select board, nor a majority of such members, to become involved in the day-to-day administration of any town agency. It is the intention of this provision that the select board shall act only through the adoption of broad policy guidelines which are to be implemented by officers and employees serving under it.

You can find the entire Town Charter here which sets out the duties of the Select Board. For instance, the Select Board may set a policy that the Police department budget will not be cut at all as they did last year, but should not be telling the Police Chief how to organize his department.
Certainly the Select Board should direct the town administrators to provide a plan to reconcile the projected shortfall for FY10 and beyond. Indeed the Town Charter requires such a plan in section 5-3,

The budget message of the executive administrator shall, include, specifically, projection of the fiscal and financial needs of the town for at least the next five fiscal years, or such longer period as may be deemed appropriate, both as to income and expenses, as well as any substantial financial expenditures contemplated by any department, committee, or board during such period, including budget programs related to infrastructure maintenance, improvement and expansion. The message shall also include a forecast of any fiscal trends which the executive administrator believes are likely to have an affect on the town’s revenues or expenses

As an engineer, I have a motto, Plan the work, work the plan which is closely tied to the rule of 6 P's, Proper Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance. Now is the time to get a plan for our future budget shortfalls. Tempus Fugit. Time flies
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Town COLA freeze

At a discussion of the Select Board and School Committee on Tuesday, the co-chair of the Finance Committee noted that the override amount from last year will only cover the differential between the rates of growth of expenditure and revenue for one year. We are now into that year, FY09. In FY10, the town will again find itself short on funds barring cutbacks which include layoff of employees. Back in February, I posted here on why this is occurring. Some steps are underway to reduce the rate of growth of expenditure, such as encouraging employees to switch to less expensive health care plans, that are now bearing fruit but other steps are needed to slow the rate of growth of expenditure. That raises the question of how to continue town services at the present level. What was proposed was ...

.. a one year hiatus from Cost of Living Adjustments (COLAs) for town and school employees. The savings from such a pay freeze are significant. The school department alone would realize nearly a $1 million dollar reduction in their costs. Similarly, the town would see somewhere around a $700K reduction. The net effect on the budget of not having these increased salaries is virtually the same amount provided to the budget bottom line by creating the Solid Waste Enterprise ($1.8 million) or the Prop 2-1/2 override amount last year($1.5 million). Just as the Solid Waste Enterprise and the override amount are continuing contributions to the budget shortfalls, a pay freeze has a similar effect. If the town reduces the increase of salaries in FY10 by $1.7 million, that amount is not rolled up into the following year or the years after. The amount will even compound similar to the override amount since the savings the following year will be some percentage greater since a COLA will not be applied.
I believe deep cuts of services and layoff of employees will be needed without further action to reduce the rate of growth of expenditure. Some of the necessary actions will require time to implement but we don't have the luxury of reserves. The timing of the layoffs will come before the reductions take effect. One way to avoid those cuts and layoffs is to freeze town salaries for one year.
When I ran for the Select Board, I said that the solution to Dartmouth's fiscal woes would require sacrifice from everyone involved, taxpayers, employees, general government and schools. The taxpayers have voted to increase their contribution via the override in April, property owners are paying fees for trash removal, parents and students are paying fees for school busing and programs, might FY10 be the time for town and school employees to shoulder some of the burden? Leave your thoughts in comments. Click here to read on!

Joint Select Board - School Committee meeting

Tuesday night, the Select Board and School Committee met jointlyat the high school library. The meeting was not videotaped. Finance Committee members also attended. The first item on the agenda was updates on the shuttered school buildings, Cushman and Gidley. The school business manager said the schools would like to offer them for lease. The lease would be 1 year with another year option. This arrangement would require approval by the Town Meeting. The plan is to offer an article at the Fall Town Meeting in October. The Town Budget Director then gave an update on the sale of the former Smith Mills school building. A Request for Proposal was issued and no bids where received. He pointed out that the statutory procurement process hamstrings the process.
Student transportation was the next agenda item. The school business manager reported ...

... that Amaral Transportation had submitted a multi year bid with the cost for the second year the same as the first. He said that Amaral had done a good job last year. Mr Cordeiro said that the school will offer one day-one way pass for students who do not ride the bus every day but need to from time to time.
The third agenda item was the FY10 budget plans/process. The chairmen of the School Committee and Select Board maintained that the two boards have had a good relationship in the recent past and will continue to work together. The vice chair of the Finance Committee spoke about the need for restraint, a "reset button" in his words, when negotiating future town union contracts. He pointed out that future budget projections show continuing and growing shortfalls of revenue compared to our expenditures. He suggested that the town unions "skip" one year of salary increase. I think that this is an interesting suggestion and I will post about it in the next few days. I spoke and laid out my reasoning about the need for a fiscal multi-year fiscal plan so that the town boards have a longer view of where we need to go in order to restore fiscal balance to the town. I have posted many times on the subject this blog, such as here, here and here. Basically I wan our town and school administrators to prepare and present a 3 to 5 year plan that reconciles expenditures and revenue.
Finally, the boards agreed to meet at least quarterly and definitely when the Budget Director has the numbers for free cash in the fall.
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How much is enough?

I have been thinking lately about the town's Stabilization and Reserve Funds. One of the recommendations in the DOR report was for the Select Board and Finance Committee to have a policy on what our reserves should be and how we will maintain that.
From the DOR report,

Recommendation 3: Develop New Reserve Policy
We recommend that Dartmouth modify its free cash guidelines and adopt a formal reserve policy that defines adequate reserve levels based on the community’s needs...

...Reserves in a municipal context typically include free cash and stabilization fund balances. A formal reserve policy should reflect a consensus among select board and finance committee members that defines target reserve levels in the context of a broader financial plan.

Putting aside for a moment the "broader financial plan", I have heard it posited that 10% of the budget is needed in reserves. I felt that was high. I thought more like 4-6% would be a good number to shoot for. Using just the $2.2 million in Stab fund, we have 3.2% of the total $68 million budget. I thought that we should try to keep 4% in the Stab fund, which means we need to fund it with an additional $500K this year.
Others have pointed out to me that the first order of business is to define what sort of eventualities we are putting this money aside to cover. Hurricane damage, blizzards, collapse of town buildings, power disruption, public water supply contamination, and other scenarios have been mentioned. In that context, a Stab Fund of $3-4 million dollars is woefully inadequate. I am not sure now what the Stab fund amount should be and that is part of what we need to decide.
Another aspect of having a larger Stab Fund balance is that the deposited money would generate revenue in dividends and interest which could then be applied to town expenses. My thought right now is that Stab Fund interest revenue could be used for capital outlays if they are in excess of what is needed to keep up the Stab Fund balance percentage.
Returning now to the "broader financial plan" that I skipped over above, it is imperative that we formulate a multi year fiscal forecast and a plan for expenditure allocation so that we can make the kinds of judgments required to form a sensible reserve policy. That forecast and plan is needed sooner than later and our administrators need to produce it for comment and review at the earliest opportunity.
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Select Board meetings this week

I see that the meeting schedule didn't make the town website again. (Sigh) The Select Board will meet tonight with an executive session starting at 5:30 followed by our normal publicly televised meeting at 6:30PM at the Town Hall. Items beyond the various permits, licenses and street blockages are the reappointment of Mr Savastano as Town Counsel. He will give a presentation and I expect he will be reappointed.
The Select Board, School Committee and Finance Committee will meet jointly ...

...at the Media Center in the high school on Bakerville Road at 6PM on Tuesday. The topics for discussion are uses for the shuttered school buildings, school funding, union contracts and privatization of services.
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Cornell Farm preservation seeks funding

I received an email from a reader about efforts to preserve the Cornell Farm on Smith Neck. I thought I would pass it on to you. This is a beautiful property and a treausre that is well worth saving.

The DNRT's publication "MILESTONES" is out and the front page describes the Cornell Farm deal. According to the publication " the Cornell farm features 15 acres of agricultural fields and over 110 acres of woodlands, forested wetlands and salt marsh." "The Trustees of Reservations recently entered into an agreement that allows them until September 2008 to commit to a purchase of the property for $2million in Jan 2009." ... more below

..."DNRT and The Trustees are seeking funding for the $2,120,000 project from a variety of public sources. The partnership has applied for a $689,000 grant provided through the federal North American Wetlands Conservation Act and will seek $750,000 from the Dartmouth Community Preservation Fund. The goal is to raise gifts and pledges for the remaining $681,000 from foundations and individual donors by this fall."
"The Trustees plan to have a network of nature trails open to the public as well as a sustainable farming operation that supports agriculture in Dartmouth and provides opportunities to educate youth about farming."

If you are interested in pledging funds for this or other conservation work, you can find the Dartmouth Nartural Resources Trust (DNRT) at this website or by mail at Dartmouth Natural Resources Trust,PO Box P17, 404 Elm Street,Dartmouth, MA 02748

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Bristol Aggie funding slashed.

The county has voted to reduce their contribution to Bristol Agricultural High by $1.78 million citing budgetary restraints. This amount represents a 44% reduction in the contribution by the county. I received a letter from the school stating that they are allowed to make up the difference by increasing the tuition to both in and out of district students. This may mean in increase in Dartmouth's contribution to the school.
Part of the funding provided by the town shows ...

... up as charges against our state aid on the so called cherry sheet. The Town Meeting also appropriates $12,000 for the school each year in Schedule A. I believe it is this Schedule A charge that would be increased. Whether added to charges against state aid or assessed against the General Fund, this represents an added cost to our taxpayers.
The total amount that the school needs to raise from in district students is $980,000 according to the information provided to the County Advisory Board. The amount of the increase to Dartmouth will be determined by the number of students we have attending. I have not been able to find that information as yet.
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West Nile found

Mosquitos captured at Route 6 and Brownell tested positive for West Nile virus. Residents should avoid being out at the peak times for mosquitos, dawn and dusk, apply a repellent if they must be out, fix holes in window screens, and drain areas of standing water to avoid providing a place for mosquito breeding. The Board of Health has issued a ...

... press release with more details. You can read it here.
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Judge Jacobs resigns, Mr Roth appointed to Finance

Update I had Mr Roth's first name as Philip, it is Patrick and I have corrected it below. My apologies for the mistake.

Curt Brown has news on his blog that Mr Jacobs has stepped down and Mr Patrick Roth has been reappointed to the Finance Committee.

Thanks to both for their service. I am sad to see Judge Jacobs leave. I thought his contributions where especially insightful on the committee.
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Select Board Executive Session on Wednesday

THe Select Board will meet on Wednesday at 4PM. Since the topic is ongoing discussion of contracts, the Board will go into executive session for these discussions. The Personnel Board will also meet with the Board at 5PM. I don't know if that will also be in executive session or open to the public.

I've nothing else about this now.
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Enterprise funds

I was asked how enterprise funds work in comments to another post. I thought I would bring my answer up to this level.
Enterprise funds are allowed by Mass General Law Chapter 44, section 53F1/2. A utility, health care, recreation or transportation facility in the town is set up with a separate account into which all revenues generated by that entity are paid.
An example is the the town's Water Enterprise fund. All receipts from water bills are ...

... placed in an account separate from the town's General Fund and these Water Enterprise funds are used to run the Water department.
One advantage of this arrangement is that those citizens who use and benefit from the operation of the enterprise bear the cost of providing the service. In the example of the Water Enterprise fund, those who use town water pay for the Water department and those who are on wells do not.
One provision of note is that the enterprise fund cannot be used to generate revenue for the General Fund. Any excess earnings must be placed in a separate account for future use by the enterprise fund and for the purposes that the fund was created, or used to reduce fees. Shortfalls must be made up from the tax levy.
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Budgets, plans and overrides

We had a bit of discussion on Monday at the Select Board Meeting about overrides and department budgets. I expressed my desire that the town and school departments prepare a financial forecast and plan that sets out what our likely revenue and expenses will be and how we plan to reconcile revenue and expenses. Until such a plan exists, I will not vote for any override request. We have data which tells us the rate at which our expenses and revenue have grown historically. Therefore we can make a few assumptions and ...

...predict what our fiscal situation will be over the next few years. Once we have those numbers, our administrators must formulate a plan on how the town and schools are going to provide services within the revenue available. Our forecast is likely to show that we are going to have shortfalls in our revenue. From that point, we must set priorities and decide what will be cut and what will be kept. If they feel an override will be necessary to sustain operations, we should know about that now. What amount of override will be needed and when. Rather than going from one crisis to the other, we need to get a forward looking plan together and manage rather than react. I have posted previously about overrides and plans here and here. So what do you think, have you had enough of the continuing crisis mode? Leave your thoughts in comments below.
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Miscellaneous notes

The Commonwealth has a new process for applying for so called "pothole" funding. Our state representatives were able to get wording into the bill that allows Dartmouth to get money because we host UMass Dartmouth in the town. We will not qualify as in past years for money due to the increase in Voke assessment as that increase has leveled off.
A police cruiser was damaged in an accident and is beyond repair. There is a car available for only $14,000 that was left over from the Commonwealth's purchases of FY08. The town will ask the Finance Committee for a transfer of funds from the FY09 Reserve Fund to buy the car.
Wednesday, August 6 is the deadline for getting any questions on the November ballot.


Like sands though the hourglass, thus are the days of our lives. Therefore, be excellent to each other.
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