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Municipal Services Benefits of merging school and town functions touted
Merging town and school operations in areas such as facilities management, human resources and information technology can save towns money, according to speakers at the Oct. 22 meeting of the Massachusetts Municipal Management Association in Hopkinton.
Danvers has decades of experience managing town and school facilities through a single department, which has led to, among other benefits, a comprehensive town-wide preventive maintenance program, according to Town Manager Wayne Marquis.
With the facilities staff in charge of maintenance, he said, “Educators are able to focus on the students.”
In Lexington, a consolidated Public Facilities Department, created in 2007, has enabled the town to incorporate maintenance needs into the design of new buildings, according to Town Manager Carl Valente.
“We have found no end of examples in the past when we have made short-sighted decisions on our buildings,” Valente said.
One problem involved accounting for unanticipated costs related to special education. In the past, when such costs arose, the school department might have diverted money that had been intended for maintenance, according to Valente. To address this problem, the town created a stabilization fund, now totaling more than $600,000, that is used only for unanticipated special education costs.
Through savings on its energy supply budget, Valente said, Lexington also has been able to pursue a “very aggressive capital program” to pay for more efficient heating and ventilation systems.
Brookline Deputy Town Administrator Sean Cronin and Chief Information Officer Kevin Stokes described the process, begun about a decade ago, to consolidate town and school information technology functions.
“We basically took IT from a back-office, low-profile department, and brought it to a senior level,” said Cronin, who described the savings realized through a more coordinated procurement process as “incalculable.”
Savings also have come through personnel reductions, according to Stokes, who oversees the consolidated department.
“We’re down about $100,000 from where we were three years ago,” Stokes said.
Further savings, he added, have been realized by reducing IT-related energy costs.
Human resources is another area in which some municipalities have consolidated services. Andover Human Resources Director Candace Hall said such an arrangement does not guarantee lower operating costs, but it does lessen legal liability, as a result of more comprehensive monitoring and training.
Another panelist, Mark Milne, described the difficult task he faced when he came on board in the late 1990s as Barnstable’s finance director.
Town officials, he said, had lost faith in the school district’s ability to provide accurate financial information and were pursuing what he described as a “hostile takeover” of the schools’ finance-related functions. Eventually, he said, school and town leaders agreed on a more amicable approach to consolidating finance operations. A plan to merge human resource functions was developed as well.
The support from elected officials and administrators on both sides was crucial, according to Milne.
“One critically placed person could have derailed this whole process,” he said.
Municipal Services Benefits of merging school and town functions touted
Benefits of merging school and town functions touted
Merging town and school operations in areas such as facilities management, human resources and information technology can save towns money, according to speakers at the Oct. 22 meeting of the Massachusetts Municipal Management Association in Hopkinton.
Danvers has decades of experience managing town and school facilities through a single department, which has led to, among other benefits, a comprehensive town-wide preventive maintenance program, according to Town Manager Wayne Marquis.
With the facilities staff in charge of maintenance, he said, “Educators are able to focus on the students.”
In Lexington, a consolidated Public Facilities Department, created in 2007, has enabled the town to incorporate maintenance needs into the design of new buildings, according to Town Manager Carl Valente.
“We have found no end of examples in the past when we have made short-sighted decisions on our buildings,” Valente said.
One problem involved accounting for unanticipated costs related to special education. In the past, when such costs arose, the school department might have diverted money that had been intended for maintenance, according to Valente. To address this problem, the town created a stabilization fund, now totaling more than $600,000, that is used only for unanticipated special education costs.
Through savings on its energy supply budget, Valente said, Lexington also has been able to pursue a “very aggressive capital program” to pay for more efficient heating and ventilation systems.
Brookline Deputy Town Administrator Sean Cronin and Chief Information Officer Kevin Stokes described the process, begun about a decade ago, to consolidate town and school information technology functions.
“We basically took IT from a back-office, low-profile department, and brought it to a senior level,” said Cronin, who described the savings realized through a more coordinated procurement process as “incalculable.”
Savings also have come through personnel reductions, according to Stokes, who oversees the consolidated department.
“We’re down about $100,000 from where we were three years ago,” Stokes said.
Further savings, he added, have been realized by reducing IT-related energy costs.
Human resources is another area in which some municipalities have consolidated services. Andover Human Resources Director Candace Hall said such an arrangement does not guarantee lower operating costs, but it does lessen legal liability, as a result of more comprehensive monitoring and training.
Another panelist, Mark Milne, described the difficult task he faced when he came on board in the late 1990s as Barnstable’s finance director.
Town officials, he said, had lost faith in the school district’s ability to provide accurate financial information and were pursuing what he described as a “hostile takeover” of the schools’ finance-related functions. Eventually, he said, school and town leaders agreed on a more amicable approach to consolidating finance operations. A plan to merge human resource functions was developed as well.
The support from elected officials and administrators on both sides was crucial, according to Milne.
“One critically placed person could have derailed this whole process,” he said.
Written by MMA Associate Editor Mitch Evich
