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Date: 2/2/2022
BELCHERTOWN - During the Belchertown Select Board’s Jan. 24 meeting, the board met with the School Committee and Finance Committee to receive a financial management report about the town from Zachary Blake, a representative from the Division of Local Services.
To begin the presentation, Blake explained the role of his organization in helping municipalities across Massachusetts.
“The Division of Local Services is really intended to support local officials in communities across the commonwealth to help them achieve sound financial management. We do that through guidance, training and primarily oversight,” he said.
While Blake said the goal of the report is to provide recommendations about how the town should move forward in different areas, it is the town’s decision to implement them.
“This really serves as the start of the conversation, a lot of the recommendations contained in this review are voluntary, these are not required by the state or the Division of Local Services. These are voluntarily enacted by the town, and it should serve as the start of a conversation that is going to take weeks, months and potentially years to dive in and possibly implement some of these recommendations,” he said.
Before jumping into the recommendations, Blake explained the process that led to the findings in the report.
“Our findings and recommendations are based on onsite visits, we do that through interviews and information that we receive from local officials, we examine a wide array of documentation as part of this including annual budgets, we look at the balance sheets, we look at cash reconciliation reports, we are looking at the bylaws, we are examining all the information you submit to us, there is a whole host of information we are using to develop these financial management reviews,” he said.
One of the first recommendations Blake discussed was establishing a charter for Belchertown.
“We are recommending the town consider a town charter and as part of that review your bylaws. The idea behind the town charter which serves as a constitution for the town, is to define your structure, roles, responsibilities and to codify certain financial procedures in one centralized document in the community,” he said.
On top of implementing a town charter, Blake said he also recommended shifting from a town administrator to a town manager.
“We feel that a town manager for a community of your size who has the ability to appoint and manage department heads, to negotiate, execute on contracts and to approve invoices is the next phase we would see a community your size move into. Somebody who is akin to a CEO and the Select Board would be the chief policy making body,” he said.
With current Town Administrator Gary Brougham approaching retirement, Blake said a town manager title can be more attractive to candidates than the town administrator title.
When it came to the financial recommendations, Blake said they were separated into three separate categories.
“We look at financial planning as a three-legged stool, there are informal financial policies that every community has and we look to have those be codified in written financial policies, the other is to have a detailed transparent financial forecast going out three to five years looking at revenues and different factors including state aid and local tax revenue. This projects out the fiscal health of the community over time to help make decisions,” he said.
Blake added the final aspect of the financial recommendations involved capital planning.
“That is sort of two-fold, there is the inventory side of that where you are collecting the life cycle information of all the equipment and assets you have, you are prioritizing that information to see what your needs are in a given year. Then there is the financing side of it and looking at your debt, free cash and ability to raise and appropriate funds,” he said.
Blake said the financial recommendations came from the town’s reliance on one-time expenditures.
“We recommend those things because there is a certain amount of reliance on one-time revenues and when there is that kind of reliance, on free cash in particular, we turn that into structural budget deficits because if those funds were no longer there, the community would not be able to fund the budget as it is,” he said.
After Blake’s presentation, board Vice Chair Jim Barry said he would be in favor of putting the suggestions into a spreadsheet and defining the needs of each recommendation.
“I like the idea of making a spreadsheet and defining resources needed to do each one because if you have two or three people that end up on all of the action items, there is no way we are going to do all of them. Getting an idea of what we would like to do or what is possible is a great idea,” he said.
As the town continues to look at and implement the recommendations, Blake said the Division of Local Services would continue to provide support.
Board Chair Jen Turner suggested the board meet with the Finance Committee and School Committee to further brainstorm ideas about how best to proceed.
“In my mind I was thinking we could have some sort of fallout strategic meeting with all of the parties involved and brainstorm and kick around what we want to do and how we want to tackle that,” she said. “I am not sure in terms of timeline how long anybody needs to take that next step to put something on the calendar because I can see the rest of the year happening and not getting to much of this.”
The board ultimately agreed to continue the discussion about the next steps at its next meeting.
During the meeting, the board also approved the job description for a new human resources director and began preliminary discussions about the warrant for the Special Town Meeting scheduled for March 7.
The Belchertown Select Board next met on Jan. 31 and coverage of that meeting will appear in the Feb. 10 edition of The Reminder.