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.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
The dreaded four letter P word
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Those who can, do. Those who can't, agitate.
Read Anonymous 1:21 under heading FY10....
Anonymous it is obvious that you are the one who wants to agitate that is unless you can't comprehend what has already been said over and over again. Bill does not have the authority to develop the plan. All he can do as one of five board members is require that Mike G. come up with one. If he does not have the support of the other four members, then he can do nothing.
Anonymous 4:28, I think that is precisely what Anonymous 1:21 is stating.
A plan. That's Gagne and Icaponi's job. When are they going to start doing what we hired and paid them to do! It's in the Charter and a DOR recommendation. How bout it guys???
Trimble is not a leader. Buoyed by the blind support of blog loyalists, he does nothing more than play the populist role of a demagogue. Sadly, that's it. Nothing more. Is it because that is all he's capable of doing? Or, is it a calculated behavior to support a political agenda? It really doesn't matter. It is what it is. And, it falls woefully short of the mark of what is needed from our elected leaders.
One thing is certain - he doesn't handle criticism well. When faced with comments intended to do nothing more than characterize his public behavior, he resorts to name-calling. That's not something normally done by elected officials. But it is what one would expect from a demagogue.
Trimble wants a plan, but he isn't willing to do anythting more than "agitate" for it. Look at the behavior represented by his opening remarks in another thread; he "adjusted", "added", "revised", and "rounded" a fiscal analysis prepared by Lynam. He makes it sound like he did something, but he really didn't. All he did was piggy-back on Lynam's work to make it seem like he's doing something.
Dartmouth doesn't need an plagaristic demagogue on the Select Board. We need a leader. Someone who is willing to do more than just talk about things. Someone who will do some real work. Someone who will be known for what he does, not what he says.
To 6:29 am, You sound like a bitter person from what I read here. That is very sad.
Mr. Trimble is one of five. He can't do it alone, but so far he has done an excellent job! At the end of every meeting he asks if the public wants to speak. Something that other members won't allow. He is willing to bring issues up at public meetings, not save them for afternoon workshops (when very few, if any of the public can attend). Mr. Trimble speaks his mind at SB meetings and on this blog. You may not agree. That's why we have elections.
And, I might add, Mr. Trimble did quite well on April 1st. This process is slow and one person can't do it all. Mr. Trimble was elected because he is civil, informed,and willing to discuss all the issues. Instead of smiling and accepting business as usual, Mr. Trimble wants to finds ways to fix our budget crisis. And that doesn't include quick fix overrides. He has pushed for a long term plan and has addressed some of the ways we could reduce spending. No one likes change, but that is exactly what is needed in Dartmouth. Mr. Trimble has the courage to speak out even if that might not be the popular thing to do.
Opinions are one thing, we all have one, but we can also agree to disagree. I agree with Mr. Trimble, it has gone on too long...Dartmouth has no plan. That is part of the problem, but only part of the problem. Dartmouth needs change! Let start with a plan.
To anonymous 6:29. You keep stating that Mr. Trimble has done nothing when in fact he has done more in his short time on the SB than most members have done during their entire term. Past and present SB members have not only sat idly by condoning business as usual but have actually defended it. Bill Trimble on the other hand has openly made his feelings known about the direction this town needs to go. He is not afraid to speak his mind even if our town leaders don't want to hear it. I call that a true leader. Dartmouth residents do not need more lip service which is what we have had in the past. We need someone who is willing to tell it like it is vs. someone who tells us an override will fix everything. Mr. Trimble can only bring these issues to the forefront. It is up to the rest of the SB and other town leaders to act on them.
Egads! You should have read what you posted in support of Trimble's service before sending it. "made his feelings known", "speak his mind", "tell it like it is". What you cite as Trimble's service is nothing more than talk, talk, and more talk.
But here's the best part of what you wrote: "It is up to the rest of the SB and other town leaders to act on them."
You're no ordinary loyalist. I'm guessing you're part of Trimble's Hathaway Road brain trust.
Define "ordinary loyalist."
to 7:55 pm, talk, talk, talk. yes, yes, yes. That is what we need. A CONVERSATION about where this town is going. Mr. Trimble is one member of the board and he can only speak his own mind. When votes are taken, there are five SB members. We unfortunately have some on the board that feel "business as usual" is good enough. As Dartmouth sinks deeper in fiscal crisis, they just smile and think overrides will solve all our problems. Well, the last one didn't. Mr. Trimble has posted here and spoke at meetings as well about the need to address these issues sooner than later.
To anon 9:31 - when the last override was discussed it was clearly stated over and over again, by FinCom, some on the SB and in the papers that it was not the sole answer to the town's finqancial problems. One of the famous a la carte questions was one for so-called 'sustainability'. This piece was meant to extend the viability of the other overrides for 2-3 years. It was clearly stated that without the sustainability option the other pieces were good for 1 maybe 2 years. The idea was that during the 2-3 years the town good make changes to the way it did business as the problems did not occur overnight and it would be foolish to think they could be solved overnight.
Since the sustainability option was rejected it should come as no surprise that come spring, we will be in the very 'crisis' mode that was predicted. No surprises there. We will be back in crisis mode once again, but we can't say we were not forewarned.
still can't type worth a damn - the word 'good' should have been 'could'
to the anonymous spewing hatred towards Bill,
Who in your opinion is a Select Board member that is a good leader for Dartmouth? Please don't tell me that it is Joe,wait to see which way the wind blows, flip flop, Michaud. This is the guy that supported a 25% tax increase that was only going to last 2 years, all the while saying he is a fiscally conservative republican.
He is also the type of guy that will agree with people in public, then try work anonymously to discredit them.
I agree with Bond. Michaud lacks integrity. You cannot trust him.
The reason voters turned down the sustainability override is because they don't feel our town administrators have made enough changes to give them a free ride. Even after being pushed in the proper direction, all we've seen are things like that joke of a bidding process for privatizing trash.
Anonymous 12:38-from what I heard in the run up to the last vote the 'town administrators' the Fin Com and some SB members said changes could not happen overnight, i.e. in one year. The timeline of the many contracts is one example that could not be 'fixed' withiin a year. That is why we were told over and over again some type of sustainability piece was needed to carry the money for several years while changes were being implemented. Without that piece we are right back where we started last year, in a crisis to crisis mode. What will be the next 'crisis'? being able to keep the new police officers that were recently hired for more than 1 year or so?
the only point I am trying to make, although it likely will not matter, is that we as a town were warned that change takes time to implement even if everyone was on the same page about what those changes should be. It's clear we are not in the same book in some cases so the year ticks by and we're back at it. No money, more cuts.
Cut away until we see progress.
Yes, the first step is a plan. If we don't even have that, we are just going in circles. Crisis, override, crisis, override.
It's time to get a real plan and time to get serious about change. Sorry, but we may have to privatize OR are you willing to have layoffs? Concerning privatization, most of the research done says that the new company ends up hiring the employees, so they are not losing a job. Unless they don't want to work for the new company.
Most of our town departments are very protective of their domains and don't want to lose their control. We can't stay the same and expect our future will be filled with anything but overrides and quick fixes. Let's get serious folks. First we need a PLAN.
In my opinion, it was a mistake to vote 'yes' for any questions on the April 1 override. As you can see, it only drags out the inevitable. We need to privatize some of our town services so that we can afford to continue. Retirement, insurance, benefits, etc. are killing us...there is no way around it. And yes, we also need a plan to go forward. I thank Bill Trimble for his efforts to get M.Gagne and Ed Icaponi to come up with a long overdue plan for our town. The DOR recommended this a while ago. We should have had a plan long ago... Too many past SB members let it slide.
Sorry to disagree about the cut cut cut until every last question has been satisfied mentality. We won't ever get to that point, just the nature of the beast. Progress has been made in the last year just like was promised and yet it's not enough for some so instead of rewarding the progress that has been made you will see more cuts and less and less service. It's a downward spiral from what I can tell. I suppose that's fine if you want to be in a community whose only religion is the bottom line. I happen to think we are cutting our nose to spite our faces by denying any additional resources until everyone is satisfied.
Life is full of compromise, without it we go nowhere.
We gave additional resources with the past override. Exactly what progress has been made? We still have the "powers that be" saying salaries and benefits are fine, the DPW claims it'll cost us more to privatize all the while having access to the other bids before giving it's own bid and the SB didn't seem to find anything wrong with that, still waiting on a plan, contract negotiations haven't come up yet except for the police and where did that get us? They gave up uniform allowances but gained a 2% raise which Greg L. seems to feel is closer to 5% when you add in all the other expenses such as pension. I'd rather pay the uniform allowance. The library had to be embarrassed into putting out a RFP. Only glazed looks when you mention the pension issue which is killing us. The schools still unwilling to re-prioritize and cut extracurriculars in order to preserve basic education. The only progress I have seen is raising revenue by charging fees. We need better than that.
We deserve better than that. T
in fact progress has been made anon 5:55. A new budgeting process has been instituted that requires departments to work within a pre-set amount of money and work backwards from there, the routine use of stab/reserve funds for re-curring costs has been reduced tremendously(not eliminated which would be better still),salaries are not outrageous as has been demonstrated time and again and now apparently reinforced by the recently released peer community review (2nd such study that points to the same conclusion)and the schools have layed out their plan to work within the MRNSS allocation and yes it includes music, arts and athletics - all with fees attached to them to offset their cost to the tax payer (except parents of course who now get to foot more of the bill unlike previous generations). The SB is working to align all town contracts to have a common start date-the new police contract will end in June 09 so it too will align with the other bargaining units. The personell committee has recommended limiting personal contracts to 5-down from 23(?) and the SB is on record as agreeing to this. We are still awaiting the final report from that same committee and hopefully it will contain recommendations on the pension issue as this is a ticking time bomb for virtually every community in MA not just Dartmouth. But the personnel committee was given this charge and it's unreasonable to expect that the SB will just act on the pension issue without receiving feedback from the very committee they tasked with this duty. This all takes time and in my opinion a good faith effort is being made to act on most if not all the issues you say have not been addressed. The same goes for the privatization stuff. The Library Board has a duty to this town to serve in the towns best interest, they have not been embarrassed into puttin out an RFP. They simpy asked that they at least be consulted by the privatization committee before they put out their recommendation. Once they did in fact meet there was frank discussion about the pros and yes cons of privatization, particularly when there is but 1 company that provides this service in the country. If I am told a private company can save 40% of a $1,000,000 operation I am intrigued but I was not born yesterday and I want some sense of what we will lose in the bargain. The company, LSSI, has not been as forthcoming as one would hope for a company that wants our business, but I, like the trustees am willing to go the next step and agree with the issuance of an RFP to better understand what we might gain vs. what we might loose. To characterize the trustees as being embarrassed into a decision is palin wrong.
Anyway, I stand by what I said earlier we are cutting our nose to spite our face and we will not like the results.
There are at least 3 companies that do library management, LSSI just happens to be the largest. Our committee chose to discuss things with them because there happened to be an article in the Globe about them and Medford Oregon, and we needed to learn how the process works to decide if the CONSIDERATION of outsourcing the library was worth the library experts pursuing. The advertised savings were large so we made the recommendation that they follow-up to get the rest of the facts, through the RFP process. An RFP, if issued, could end up with 3 bidders for the service.
Up to now, LSSI has not been interested in doing business in our state, despite the fact that the 2 owners live in Boston. Our state has a lot of things that make it much easier for them to spend their time and efforts elsewhere. They report that despite what has been written in the papers, no MA community has expressed more than casual interest in their services. Dartmouth, through our committee, is the first to want to have more in-depth discussion of the possibilities, so they decided to work with only our town to see if there was a "fit".
LSSI has also said that they would be glad to come in and give a community presentation, once they were sure that we were seriously considering doing something with our library service. The proof of that would be an RFP to gather facts as well as costs. They simply don't want to get stuck in the middle of outsourcing arguments as has happened elsewhere. Those arguments are rarely about libraries but rather about outsourcing in general. They have been extremely forthcoming about anything that doesn't give away their trade secrets.
Perspective on the cost of running a library is very relative. There are many communities near our size that spend much less on a library service. Some examples are: Saugus - $466K, North Andover - $702K, West Springfield - $754K, Dracut - $501K, Randolph - $549K, Gloucester - $757K, Chelsea - $277K, Holyoke - $397K, and Westfield - $713K. So the thought of running our library for around $600K is not a ridiculous estimate, and as our committee recommended, one worth exploring further. That is ALL we recommended.
Anonymous 7:43 The inverted budget process you speak of has not been implemented. If it had, we would have a plan. That is what I talk about when I say the next step to having a real plan is to assign departments percentages of projected revenue and have them balance their future budgets based on that. Let's get that done for one year. Then we can vet the process and continue with a 3-year plan.
To Wally - at a recent public meeting, Ed Iacaponi stated the reverse budget process had been implemented and no one spoke to state otherwise including several select board members and fin com members. Perhaps Mr Trimble can clarify the question for me.
The reverse budget process is not currently active as a planning tool. If you look at the MOB file attached to this post, you will find that the Finance Committee has dropped the tab in the spreadsheet for lack of information and the section on the summary page for that information says "intentionally left blank". The forward budgeting process was touted as a planning tool and I want to point out, once more, that our administrators are not taking steps to plan for the future. The apparent abandonment of this tool is a symptom of that.
"I want to point out, once more, that our administrators are not taking steps to plan for the future." as a member of the select board why arent you doing anything about that? Dont tell us the problem tell them. Your in charge of them. Tell them you want a plan now or stop complaining we dont have one. All the letters from townspeople wont do a thing. I thought the SC was screwed up, at least they appear to work together maybe we do need a mayor
I have and do tell them that I want a plan.
I was the anon that asked about the reverse budgeting process, as I thought Iacoponi had said on several occassions - fairly recently too - that they were using this tool.
If it has in fact been abandoned why is that and who tells them to un-abandon it? I mean come on - this stuff can't just come and go without repurcussions. What's the point of trying to improve things if they are allowed to fall back into 'the old way of doing things' without so much as a peep. Too damn discouraging from the admin offices to the select board.
You tell them-- what do they tell you?
Don't forget that Mr. Trimble is only one of five. He has spoken out in public meetings about the need for a plan. It doesn't appear that the majority of SB members think a plan is necessary and therefore have not directed M.Gagne and E. Icaponi and given them a timetable for a plan for Dartmouth. The last meeting I watched, Joe Michaud gave M. Gagne a pass on that, while Bob Carney said Mike was 'too busy'. Please. That's his job. It's been years and we still have no plan. A plan is LONG overdue in Dartmouth. It is time to write and call all SB members so that they know what the residents want. I am tired of hearing excuses.
maybe the members need to put aside any agendas they have and work together. The school committee looks like they finally are.
But are they ready to work with the SB? Seems like they still are pointing fingers at each other about who hasn't got back to whom from what I heard.
the've met and have more meetings planned including a tentative meeting in November. what youve heard apparently is "old" news.
I know they've met. My question was, will they work together? The finger-pointing is subtle, but it is still there. Maybe I should better describe it as an attitude between some members of the boards.
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