Special Budget Meeting Retrospective

It would be great to have a dedicated space for Middlesex town business discussions, but given participation outside of Town Meeting Day, I don't know of any place that will reach as many folks as a Front Porch Forum post. If we want to get these town business discussions off FPF, we'll need to invest not only in creating an alternative, but in ensuring turnout and participation at those forums.

The Meeting

Last night, April 23rd, there was a "special" budget committee meeting held at Rumney by request of the Select Board.

There were just under 18 folks present when we started, and one or two more joined during the meeting. This is more than a regular budget committee meeting, but comparable to a select board meeting. There was nowhere near the ~200 people that were in the room during the early article discussions on Town Meeting day. I bring this up because a democratic process should give the entire town an equal — if not equitable — ability to participate.

A Moving Target

During the meeting I listened as five or so petitioners explained that, actually, they no longer wanted to make the budget change they originally petitioned for (reduce the budget by eliminating the Town Administrator role while returning the Assistant Town Clerk to full-time). They now want to keep the Town Administrator role and increase the Assistant Town Clerk to full-time. I heard no new information at the meeting that I had not previously heard concerning why a full-time assistant town clerk is needed, now that we have returned to a full-time Town Clerk and full-time Town Treasurer.

I also listened as at least as many attendees spoke about how they wanted to reduce the budget. But at the direction of the moderation, we discussed these reductions far less to the point of only having any kind of back and forth around either the Town Administrator or the Treasurer and Clerk staffing. Towards the tail end of the meeting I expressed this, but it seemed like both from the response I received and from communications prior to the meeting, that highlighting this expanded budget with more assistant town clerk hours was the way the meeting was planned. I think this kind of closed door conversation and pre-selected outcomes is a terrible way to engage with the town given the concerns that were raised here and during the meeting around transparency. I absolutely do not believe that there were any issues or ulterior motives in the normal budget process -- but current behavior and communications I've received lead me to believe there is now.

I don't find it reasonable to prioritize the concerns of petitioners who have changed their minds at least three times - 1. when they did not speak up about an issue during the budgeting process or on town meeting day, 2. After town meeting day when they originally petitioned, 3. Now, after they've had more time to learn about the issue. Participation is great and we should have more of it, but I generally think we should base a 12 month budget on an opinion that lasts more than a month and a half.

What Wasn't Discussed

I do think we should have discussed the concerns of the petitioners around the road commissioner, trucking costs, tire costs and so on. Just as with the staffing of the town office, these are issues we discussed during the normal budgeting process:

• The Road Commissioner was a position the town used to have, our current Road Foreman is 1) excellent, 2) horribly overworked, 3) at great pains to take a day off without a suitable stand in, 4) unsupported in the type of public works grants that for instance fund the majority of our paved road costs

• The town hires out delivery because it would be more expensive for the town to pay hours to an employee and maintenance, fuel, etc. on equipment to ferry sand and gravel from Barre to Middlesex

• The town budgets repair and replacement costs, generally, fully in the year they occur -- there's a greater need for tire replacement on equipment this year.

The last point ties into another concern raised by an attendee (who was also a member of the FIT committee): a belief that the town is not properly funding its capital improvement funds. This was also not discussed after being raised.

Budget Number Games

I've since had indications from the Budget Committee Chair that we will look at cutting areas that were already cut during the normal budget process (contractor hours, grant matching funds and so on) in order to add the full-time assistant town clerk for the alternate budget to be proposed in the event we reach special article 2 on May 9th. As far as I understand from others I've talked to, the intent of making these cuts in the alternate is to keep the total budget number the same. I don't know of a single petitioner or resident outside of the town government asking for this restriction (of keeping the budget number the same). This is nothing but budget number games and again for me raises actual concerns about transparency. For background, what the town budgets and what the town actually spends on a line item do not have to be the same, and often aren't -- if insurance rates are raised or the cost of gravel goes up, or other unavoidable costs occur the town pays for those, and our taxes will need to be raised to cover the cost in the future.

Our current town office operates with a large amount of overtime hours. Cutting contractors, grant matching, or legal fees just hides what our reasonable expected costs are. I can't support a process that does this.

Town Office Staffing

Now, to turn to the main issue that was discussed at the special meeting: Are the Town Clerk and Town Treasurer office appropriately staffed? I'll start with my belief heading into the meeting: No! We widely discussed this during budgeting process - as a start, the Select Board repeatedly requested that the Town Clerk/Treasurer and Assistant Town Clerk prepare a list of job duties and documenting where their time was spent, as a first step in figuring out a plan to better staff the office. This never happened. Both the clerk/treasurer and assistant were overworked, and it was a hard ask for them to do something else on top of their duties -- but I also know they are hardworking and were able to find time to do a large number of other non-core tasks.

Go back through the town reports for the past 10 years and one can read about a pattern of picking a cheap or jury-rigged solution, and then 1-2 reports later you can read about how that improvised solution failed (often with the portion of the budget included in a line item for the goal retained!).

The town needs to get out of the business of half measures, and invest in actually fixing problems. Throwing 24 more hours a week at the problem from an assistant is not going to fix the issues we have with our Town Office. We need real leadership and organization — and a consultation from someone experienced in municipal administration would be the right way to begin solving this problem.

These are my thoughts and concerns the morning after the special meeting, and why I cannot support the current alternative budget process of massaging numbers to keep a number the same while adding "bad" hours into the budget and hiding actual cost increases.

I strongly encourage voters to show up on May 9th and vote No on Special Article 1.

How Do We Fix Things in the Office

This is a discussion I think the town can benefit from having and acting on, just not while our budget is being held hostage and when town officials have long ago planned vacations.

My proposal: approach this as if the town were setting up a net new office -- that's effectively what we're doing. Our current Treasurer is an excellent bookkeeper and served incredibly admirably in an impossible position of both Treasurer and Clerk -- but she began relatively recently, entered into a position with none of the process documentation a modern office has and has barely had a moment to think, let alone get things organized.

In the same way there is a hiring committee being proposed by the Select Board for the Town Administrator position, a similar Town Office function committee should be formed. Besides our full-time Treasurer, there's less than a year of experience in our assistant town clerk, and less than six weeks in our Clerk. There's no continuity here, let alone institutional knowledge. Beyond state statute, there's no organized documentation on expectations or how various town functions work (per our current Treasurer).

This volunteer committee can do the hard and necessary work to understand the various workloads and draft a plan for what's actually needed. Without this, we have no idea what staffing we need or if a proposed staff allocation can meet those needs. The existing assistant town clerk was supposed to devote ~1/3 of their time to Select Board assistance. Bookkeeping had been done by the assistant, but this is now our full time Treasurer and, as far as I understand from the conversations, will remain a treasurer function. There's no mention in a Town Report of what a full-time Middlesex Assistant Town Clerk is supposed to be doing beyond grant management and bookkeeping -- both of which have moved elsewhere.

Again, I agree the Town Office is not organized, is almost certainly understaffed and should work better. But everything I have seen, especially over the past six weeks, suggests the people in place in the office are not the right people to shoulder this responsibility nor do they have the best expertise.

This committee can form a proposal, and if warranted, a special meeting could be called to fund whatever recommendations they and the Select Board aligned on. This is the normal process to deal with a budget increase. We should not unnecessarily choose to follow an abnormal process without good reason. The most likely outcome of an abnormal, rushed process is a bad use of town taxpayer money that doesn't achieve the intended goals.

Thank you for your time in reading this, and if you also want to write more than the FPF message limit, I'm happy to field requests to add content as a page on this site, in lieu of the town having a better alternative.