2006-10-03
JOINT CONSOLIDATION COMMITTEE
OF THE
CITY COUNCIL AND THE SCHOOL COMMITTEE
Meeting Minutes
October 3,2006, 8:30 a.m.
Beverly City Hall
PRESENT: Timothy Flaherty, Miranda Gooding, Paul Manzo, Maria Decker.
Kathleen Griffin was also present. Michael Collins, Director of Public Services, joined
the Committee for discussion at 8:30 a.m.
Mr. Flaherty explained that the Committee is exploring the possibility of consolidating
school and city maintenance functions, and asked Mr. Collins to share his thoughts on
this issue. The following is a summary of the maj or points made by Mr. Collins during
the course of his discussion with the committee members:
1. Mr. Collins stated that he believed the consolidation of school maintenance functions
within the Department of Public Services would be desirable for the following
reasons: a) it would eliminate the current duplication of effort, funds and tools
between the city and school maintenance departments; b) Public Services is a
"deeper" organization with greater manpower and more expertise to direct to any
given task or problem; and c) it would result in a better quality and consistency of
school building maintenance.
2. Mr. Collins would like to see a formal study of necessary school maintenance (both
regular maintenance and long-term maintenance issues) performed in order to help
guide any consolidation effort.
3. Public Services is currently comprised of the following divisions/departments:
highway; building and maintenance; water department; forestry and grounds; motor
vehicle division.
4. If consolidation were to take place, Mr. Collins envisions that the existing school
employees would probably become a separate division within Public Services to
ensure direct interface with the school.
5. Cost-savings in the short-term would probably not materialize (i.e. there would not be
any reduction in personnel). However, over the long-term, there would be savings
and efficiencies associated with better maintenance of buildings and less need for
repair/replacement costs.
6. There is currently a budgetary tension between public services and the school
department with regard to sharing man-power. While some collaboration is possible,
Mr. Collins is reluctant to allocate manpower to school needs without commensurate
budgeting. There was discussion about the practice of billing the school department
for services provided by public services.
7. Of the various options for consolidating (e.g. consolidating only grounds functions
and/or moving the city-wide grounds functions under the school facilities department)
were discussed. Mr. Collins was of the firm opinion that a partial consolidation
would be unworkable and would not be worth it.
At approximately 10:00 a.m., Mr. Collins left and Russell Fisk, Director ofInformation
Systems, joined the committee for a discussion about the possibility of consolidating
school and city technology responsibilities. The following is a summary of the ensuing
discussion:
1. Mr. Fisk was generally positive about consolidating the departments, though he
was clear that consolidation would probably require additional personnel (one
person to perform the administrative/triage functions of taking calls and at least
one additional tech person to work on computers).
2. In his view, the school tech department will undoubtedly require at least 3
additional personnel to handle tech systems if there is no consolidation.
3. If functions were to be consolidated, then he would expect that the school
programmatic position (currently filled by Judy Miller) would continue to report
to the school administration, as opposed to the Technology Systems department.
4. In general, there would be a need to carefully analyze budget and supervisory
issues if the functions were to be consolidated, but he thought that those issues
could be worked through relatively easily and that, overall, consolidation would
be the best approach.
5. Phone service was discussed briefly and he estimated that the city/school could
potentially save as much 1/3 of current phone costs if there were to be a
consolidation of the city and school phone systems/billing.