Personal contracts with the town

At Monday's Select Board meeting, the chairman of the Personnel Board noted that there is no benefit to the town to having personal contracts with so many employees. I agree. The problem now is that there is no administrative framework to provide an alternative at this time. Our personnel bylaws do not have a salary scale for the employees now with contracts and the bylaws contain benefits which the Personnel Board does not favor. As I noted at the meeting, there are ..........

........6 contracts which have already lapsed including that of the Police Chief. The Chief is one of the handful of employees who are allowed by statute to have multi-year contracts. Four additional employees have contracts which expire at the end of this fiscal year, June 30. I think the Select Board has the duty to take up these contracts now that we have heard from the Personnel Board. Until we have a bylaw change to set up the proper administrative framework, the Select Board should offer single year contracts to those with lapsed contracts (except the Police Chief). The terms will have to be negotiated but I would include the Personnel Board recommendation of no Cost of Living Adjustment, merit based increase, and transitioning to Paid Time Off rather than sick leave and personal days. This last may be problematic because we have to decide how to deal with the accumulated sick time that employees are carrying forward now. Still, I feel the Select Board must deal with the matter soon in fairness to the affected employees. We have heard from the Personnel Board. It is time to act on the lapsed contracts. The Select Board also needs to get moving on a Personnel Bylaw revision to provide the needed framework to eliminate these contracts except as allowed by law.
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Select Board working session April 30th

The Select Board will have a working session tomorrow, April 29th at 4PM in Room 301 of the Town Hall. Click here to read on!

Select Board meeting tonight, April 28

There is a Select Board meeting tonight at 6:30 PM in Room 304 of the Town Hall. Link to the agenda here. The Personnel Board will be presenting an update. The DPW will present information on recycling and the Pay As You Throw program. The Privatization Task Force will .....

.....have a update on their preliminary findings. Our Grant Program Manager will present regarding the use of CPC funding for Administration of Housing Rehabilitation Program.
Other items are appointment of Mr. Whalley to the Housing Authority following the resignation of Ms Tetrault, consideration of various licenses, and approval of road blockages for utility work.
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Select Board working session

Several items of note from the Select Board working sessions from the past weeks.

The Select Board voted to transfer responsibility and funding for the traffic supervisors, whoo direct traffic at the schools, to the School Committee. This transfer will allow the town to avoid paying $20,000 in unemployment benefits to these employees during periods when the schools are not in session. The Police Department will continue to supervise and train the supervisors and will cover some of the related expenses, such as clothing allowances.

Many town employees have been selecting an HMO plan rather than the full Blue Cross/Blue Shield plan which has resulted in savings on the town's health care access health care providers in RI as well as Massachusetts. This was not possible under the old HMO and was a roadblock to some selecting the plan.spending. The town has arranged to go with HMO Blue NE which allows the employees to......
......access health care providers in RI as well as Massachusetts. This was not possible under the old HMO and was a roadblock to some selecting the plan.

Since the town has established a Solid Waste enterprise fund, the DPW was forwarded bills for trash removal to the schools and municipal buildings.

The South Dartmouth Firefighters Association is soliciting donations for a Labor Day fireworks display at Round Hill. The goal is $20,000. Send donations to:
South Dartmouth Firefighters Association
Fire District No. 1
PO Box 87056
S. Dartmouth, MA 02748
Contact John Foster or Peter Andrade @ 508-990-1786 for further information.

Ms. Doreen Tetrault has resigned from the Dartmouth Housing Authority and the Authority has asked for an interim appointment of Mr. Wayne Whalley to take her seat.

The town has been approached by developers for the moribund Lincoln Park development about building apartments on the site for UMass Dartmouth students.
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Override bonanza!

Those who have been reading here know that I have maintained that override passage or not, some changes have to be made in our town. See my posts here or here, for example. Now that a few of the override questions passed, some town departments are ready to spend the whole amount next year. This is a horrible idea in my opinion and I will not support it as a Select Board member. I would like to see the town cut the rate of growth of expenditure by 1% this year and next. That would address our so-called structural deficit. Note that I am talking about the rate of growth being cut, not the absolute number of the appropriations. Even a 1% cut in the rate of growth of spending represents a 4% increase in spending. As is often the case when government spending is the topic, "cuts" are actually reductions in the increases.
Having been ready to lay off virtually the entire workforce in the Highway Department, the DPW now can't find a single person who is not indispensable. The school department is talking up the idea of getting Town Meeting to float a bond to pay for their textbooks. (Who pays the principal and interest on the note? The taxpayers!)The Library Board of Trustees has gone one better and has decided to spend the override funds that they feel are their due before a budget is approved or ......
...... the funds appropriated! The Library Trustees have taken it upon themselves to contract with the Library Director for a 3% pay increase for the year as well as a Cost of Living adjustment. I am sure we will hear about that 3% increase from every other employee whose contract is up and the bargaining units as well. Not a great way to start when you are looking for concessions from employees. The Library Trustees are also counting chickens before they have hatched. Their letter to the Select Board indicates that they are going to fill 3 "vacancies" before July 1, 2008. They just can't wait to get the budget approved or the money appropriated.
My view is that there are no vacancies in any town department. Every new employee is just that, new. New salary, new benefit cost, new pension liabilities. Apparently some town departments have no thought of how they will fund these increases next year. Another override? I won't be voting to put it on the ballot!
The taxpayers have done their part and voted to pay more taxes than the automatic 2-1/2% that they are faced with every year. It is time for the town departments to pony up something as well. Everyone is going to have to share in the sacrifices, employees and taxpayers, schools and town. If we have one department or the other going off on their own and making plans to spend at the expense of other departments, we will have a mess. That's not fair and I will use my vote on the Select Board to oppose such plans. We need to cut the rate of growth of expenditures to a sustainable level. That means departments are going to get less than their budget requests. That's what I am looking to accomplish on the Select Board. What do you think? Respond in comments below.
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Select Board working session today, April 25

There is a working session of the Select Board today at 3PM in Room 301 of the Town Hall. The COA and library departments will be there to talk about the FY09 budget. I may not be able to attend since I am not sure I can get off work.

I have been quite busy this week and have not had time to post much. I will get back to posting more this week. Update on last week's working session will be posted tomorrow.
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Select Board working session-Friday

There is a Select Board working session on Friday at 3PM in Room 301 of the Town Hall.
The agenda is a meeting with the Board of Public Works and then the Police Chief on the FY09 budget and future plans. There will also be an executive session of the Board to discuss ongoing litigation. Click here to read on!

Budget Priority worksheet

A word about what this spreadsheet shows. This second sheet has rankings of 11, 21-24, 31-34, 41-44. We will seek to reduce spending with all those rankings with 4 in the ones place first, regardless of the number in the tens place. For example a 34 for the DPW Engineering will be looked at first, just like the 44 assigned to the Town Agent. Since both end with a 4 they are the first areas where we will seek to reduce. For information about the numbers in the tens place, see this post.

The remainder of the list is below


I apologize for the poor quality but I have yet to figure out how to import portions of spreadsheets to the postings.
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Select Board prioritzation list

I'm having trouble formatting the spreadsheet. It's late and I have to be up early so here is what you get for tonight. I'll figure it out and clean it up tomorrow

Mandated Expenses :Amount: Priority :
Accountant Overhead ($101,799.00) 2
Ambulance ($293,000.00) 2
Annual Audit ($31,000.00) 1
Banking Services ($20,000.00) 2
Bristol Aggie ($12,000.00) 1
Census Expense ($3,372.00) 1
Colectors Overhead ($81,563.20) 2
Collectors bond ($2,875.00) 1
Collectors Lease ($14,394.00) 2
Communications ($110,000.00) 2
Computer Maintenance Contracts ($130,000.00) 2
Computer Services Overhead ($141,058.40) 2
DPW Admin ($260,478.00) 4
DPW Engineering ($241,740.00) 4
DPW-Construction Division ($362,516.00) 4
Election Expense ($38,100.00) 1
GNBVTHS ($2,068,055.00) 1
Group Health Ins ($5,122,965.00) 1
Interest & Debt ($5,744,829.00) 1
Liability Insurance ($781,880.00) 1
Library Override ( Operating ) > $89,874.00 3
Pensions & Retirement ($3,380,224.00) 1
Police Department - Expenses ($663,235.00) 2
Police Department - Salary ($4,514,459.00) 2
Police off. Medical ($750,000.00) 1
Police Override ( 7 Officers ) $520,160.00 3
Refuse District ($144,761.00) 2
Reserve Fund ($600,000.00) 4
School Appropriation ($33,011,574.00) 1
Snow & Ice ($45,000.00) 2
Street Lights ($135,000.00) 3
Tax Title ($30,000.00) 1
Traffic Lights ($24,000.00) 2
Treasurer bond ($875.00) 1
Treasurer Overhead ($232,178.00) 2
Unemployment/Medicare ($688,225.00) 1
Utilities Reserve ($150,000.00) 1
Veterans ($237,133.00) 1
Workers Comp ($521,620.00) 1
Total Mandates > ($60,044,874.60)
UPDATE The last number in each line is the mandate class that I talked about in this post This number (1-4) does not reflect importance but rather why these funds are mandated Click here to read on!

Select Board working meeting notes

The Select Board had a working session this afternoon. The first item discussed was not on the agenda but Mr. Jim Collins was nominated by Mr. Carney to be the interim Veteran's Agent when our current agent, Shawn Goldstein, takes a new job with the VA. Mr. Collins had previously been the Veteran's Agent and will fill in until a new agent is hired. Mr. Collins has declined taking the position full time. The Select Board approved his appointment unanimously. He will be paid at the current agent's hourly rate for the time being. I spoke with Mr Silvia, who is on the Veteran's Advisory Board, this evening. He said they will take up the matter of a replacement at their next meeting.
Then on to the agenda which was the Fiscal Year 09 (FY09) budget. The Select Board (SB) members at the Finance Committee meeting last Thursday wanted to meet and prioritize the budget before discussing it with the Finance Committee. Here is the method we used to do so. There are 3 sheets to the worksheet we used. The first is for mandated costs and makes up over 80% of the budget. We, the SB, agreed to this nomenclature for the mandate classes. If you would like a copy of the spreadsheet, send me an email to pokanoketlax@hotmail.com and I will email it back to you. I haven't figured out how to post it here yet. If you know how I can do it, tell me on comments or at the email above.

At the FinCom, we agreed to a classification method as follows for these mandates.
Mandate Classes
1- Required by law
2-Required by operational needs of town
3-Override earmark
4-Required by policy decision of SB
As an example, the Bristol Aggie spending is required, so it gets a 1, Accountant overhead is required to operate town departments, so it is assigned a 2, the library override amount is earmarked and gets a 3, and police salaries are mandated by Select Board decision, assign that a 4.

We first reviewed these mandate classes and agreed after a few changes on all.

The second sheet shows the budget broken down by department roughly equivalent to Schedule A that is presented to Town Meeting. The first digit corresponds to the mandate class from the first page. If the category had components of two or more mandate class, the mandate class assigned is the lowest. For example, the town accountant has statutory mandates(1), override mandates (3), and Select Board discretionary spending (4), so it is assigned the lowest mandate class of the three (4) as a first digit.
The second digit is the ranking that you would assign as a priority to that item within it’s mandate class. (1 being the highest and 4 being the lowest) As an example, if the spending is included in an override earmark and you feel it has high priority, it would be assigned a 3 as a first digit (override earmark mandate class) and a 1 for a second digit. The ranking is entered as 31.

The third sheet is miscellaneous items and follows the same methodology as the second page

We were going through that exercise when it became clear that we would have to talk about why we were doing the classification. The override question which passed was presented to the voters as level service funding the town for a single year. Another question would have provided added funds for future years beyond FY09. That question failed. Some felt the voters expected no cuts and others felt that the town would not approve another override for FY10 unless the SB took action to reduce spending this year. After discussion, it was agreed that opportunities to cut spending would be taken despite any representation before the vote. The SB proceeded to set priorities for each item. I will post those here soon.
We also decided that the target for reduction in the budget was 1% of spending or about $680,000. As is often the case when talking about reductions in spending by government(town, state or federal), we are not talking about actual reductions in the dollars spent but reduction in the increases proposed. The "reduction" target is 1% of the 5% increase, actually a 4% increase in dollars spent. This represents about half of the disparity between the rate of growth of expenditures (5%) and the rate of growth of revenue(3%). I think it is a good start.
Some of the departments which may see reductions in their requests are governed by separate boards and committees. We agreed to ask them to meet with the SB in the next couple weeks to discuss how to go about these reductions. Among those who will be asked to meet are the Library Trustees, the DPW board, the Police Chief, and the Council on Ageing. Click here to read on!