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Group Takes Up 'Capital
By Administrator   
Tuesday, February 10, 2004 05:00 PM
Do we wait until town vehicles break and buildings need repair to fund them or do we put money aside in the inevitability they will need attention in the future? That was the question before members of the Finance Committee, Fiscal Advisory Committee and Board of Selectmen who gathered Tuesday to brainstorm on better ways to conduct capital planning for the years ahead. Do we wait until town vehicles break and buildings need repair to fund them or do we put money aside in the inevitability they will need attention in the future?
That was the question before members of the Finance Committee, Fiscal Advisory Committee and Board of Selectmen who gathered Tuesday to brainstorm on better ways to conduct capital planning for the years ahead.
“This discussion started when we looked at this year’s budgetÖand we realized we are in the third year of making major cuts to capital expenditures,” said finance committee member Les Ball.  “We realize we are not funding capital expenditures the way we ought to and we also realized we don’t have an appropriate plan in place to do that, so we decided we really ought to start and think about it so we can have an appropriate plan in place.”
Ball began the roundtable discussion by identifying what his committee has identified as issues the town currently has regarding capital expenses, including not having a plan, creating an “indeterminable backlog of capital needs,” and not having a good structure to analyze capital needs based on the town’s organizational structure.
While a majority of the fifteen representatives at the meeting were in favor of creating a plan, the means to get there varied.
Finance committee member Judi Barrett recommended the town get outside help in the form of a consultant.
“There’s the question here of whether we can do this ourselves,” she said.  “I don’t see this happening with the current staff capacity and skills.  I see us digging a deeper and deeper hole and don’t think a committee of volunteers should have to build that from the ground up.”
Fiscal advisory committee chairman William O’Toole said he was unsure whether now was the best time to begin such an endeavor and recommended the town wait until the fiscal environment is a little better to develop policy for capital budgets.
Pat Dowd of the finance committee felt that now was a good time, because it will take a while for either volunteers or a consultant to investigate and come up with a plan and didn’t want to see the town in the same boat two years from now if nothing is done.
James Merlin of the fiscal advisory committee inquired if citizens would see this person or committee interfering with the town manager’s responsibilities.
Selectman Betsy Sullivan said that the information and data gathering from town departments on capital needs and projections would need another position because the staff capacity the town has now is not sufficient to carry these tasks out.
She added that the town tried to do a little bit of this information gathering by having budget presentations by department heads that included their five-year capital plans and that some did better than others, but any planning needs interplay from the stakeholders to clearly identify what is needed in their departments.
Many in the room pointed out that the information is not currently available by all town departments, with some doing better than others to identify what the future will require in terms of building maintenance, equipment and other needs.
Ball said that a process could be developed for every department to give the information every year and that a standardized “menu” of information might be needed for all these groups.
There was some concern among those in the room whether hiring a consultant would interfere with a March Town Meeting article for a Town Government Study Committee being proposed by the finance committee. 
Ball indicated that he did not want to wait two years before the committee could come back to the town with its results of what was working and what is not with town government before addressing capital planning.  Barrett said she envisions the committee and the consultant working independently of one another and that while they can communicate with each other, they are not dependant on one another.
The meeting wrapped up with members of all the committees deciding to choose representatives from their ranks to sit on a task force to scope the problem of capital planning further and identify the next steps needed which may become clearer after March’s Town Meeting, depending on the town government study article’s fate.
In this year’s capital budget, Town Manager Rocco Longo has included funding for items such as information technology ($10,000), a harbormaster patrol truck ($25,000), seawall repairs ($10,000) and two plows ($10,000).
 

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