Towns hear about regional successes and failures

Kim LeDoux's New Bedford Standard Times article on the meeting can be found here Steve Poftak, research director for Pioneer Institute, spoke about efforts around the Commonwealth and what he saw as areas of momentum and areas of friction.
The Pioneer Institute has released a study on regional services that can be found at this link.
For momentum building, Mr. Poftak noted that starting small can lead to successes in shared services that can be built upon. Areas of opportunity can also lead to shared services where retirements or budget cuts have left positions vacant. He emphasized that regional services can lead to more and better services, ...

... rather than only reduced costs.
Areas of friction, that Mr. Poftak sees are lack of support from employees and management for changing service delivery and provincialism.
The New Bedford representative at the meeting noted that there did not seem to be many examples of a city and smaller towns sharing services. The panel and attendees agreed. I think that one way that towns and cities could share personnel is for city employees who are facing mandatory furloughs could provide service to surrounding towns. For example, a health inspector in New Bedford could do inspections in Dartmouth or Acushnet on days that that employee would have been forced to take off.
As i wrote here, Southeastern Regional Planning and Economic Development District(SRPEDD) presented the result of a survey that they had conducted among the region's municipalities on which services they would like to investigate shared services. The list included E911 dispatch, Conservation/Health inspection, financial services, and others. Subcommittees of the group will form to further investigate options.