The Fortunate Few

A lot has been written about the pending committee of experts review of the town's bureaucracy. As I wrote in a previous blog, there appear to be one or two fortunate departments and areas of our town government that are outside the per-view of the committee. As I understand it department heads participation in the process is more or less restricted to their own departments, without consideration being given to  intradepartmental operations.  My experience as a consultant taught me that no department is an island unto itself. I hope the committee members will feel empowered to explore outside Mr. Brenner's box and deeper than department managers.

The Town Manager's Office: How can there be a comprehensive evaluation of town operations while omitting the town manager and staff from the equation? The town manager is the fulcrum of all that goes on in our town bureaucracy given our town manager form of government. The town manager's office consumes over three hundred and thirty thousand dollars in salaries and benefits. This office manages all the town's expenditures, programs, contracts, hiring/firing, employee and union relations and contracted services. The town manager's office is the center of everything. How can any evaluation of operations ignore this?

The Finance Department: Here again Mr. Brenner appears to have subsumed a major aspect of our town's operations as his private sphere of concern, I am sure that Tom Kelly is breathing easier these days not having to face the gauntlet of scrutiny by strangers with extraordinary curriculum vitae.

However, I am concerned that there may be a perception of a lack of consistency attached to the final report, and possible recommendations by the committee, just because the above departments have been omitted from the study.

Why are the town manager's office and the finance department being excluded from the evaluation? Surely it is not for  lack of highly qualified volunteers, many of whom have resumes far exceeding what is required to perform a competent analysis of these departments.

Contracted Services: This is my pet peeve. I do not believe that the town always receives adequate returns for the million and a half to two and a half million dollars that the town manager spends annually on outside consultants. A few of these consultants have been retained by the town for over a decade, without having to enter into a competitive proposal process with other companies offering essentially the same services, at who knows what cost savings to the town, because the town manager never asks.

I had hoped that Mr Brenner's committee would be allowed to examine the town's process for hiring and retaining various third party companies.

I assume that the effort being asked of the volunteers is rooted in improving operations and streamlining costs.

Shouldn't we be looking at all cost centers?