Longmeadow Town Manager and School Superintendent Contracts

As I mentioned in my previous post, the current negotiated employment contracts for the Town Manager and School Superintendent were not found at Storrs Library but I was able to obtain copies via a request to Town Hall. Both contracts are public documents.

Here are links to these contracts…

Town Manager- dated March 25, 2009

• Current contract was signed on 3/25/09 is effective until 6/30/12. 
• Initial salary of $99,031/ year through 6/30/10. Merit increases and other compensation may be awarded at the discretion of the Select Board.
  (There were no merit or other compensation increases for FY11.)
• Includes 4 weeks vacation, 12 days of sick leave (which can be accumulated up to a max of 150 days). Also included are 3 personal days/year (no carryover or accumulation) and 12 paid holidays.
• There is a car allowance of $200/ month, $2500/ year tax deferred compensation, up to $2500 for professional development and payment of dues for professional memberships.

School Superintendent- dated March 30, 2010

• This new contract is for three years effective 7/01/10 with an initial starting salary of $155,000/year.
• Evaluation every year (June 30) with the potential of an annual increase based upon performance.
• 5 weeks vacation (carryover 5 days/ year), 15 sick days (carryover max of 45 days), 12 paid holidays, 2 personal days, 3 bereavement days per year.
• Monthly expenses for a cell phone/ Blackberry electronic device are paid.

Comments

According to the above contract, the School Superintendent’s salary was finalized on March 30 yet the FY2011 school department budget provided to town voters at the Annual Town Meeting showed a line item of $135,000 even though the actual contract salary at the time was $155,000. This is a 25.4% increase over the $123,000 paid to our recently retired school superintendent.

Why were town voters mislead by the School Committee as to new superintendent’s salary particularly given a budget that was achieved in part with a new teachers contract having a 0.0% COLA?

Comparison of school superintendent salaries in East Longmeadow ($130,000- FY11) and Wilbraham-Hampden Regional School District ($135,000- FY10) suggests that $135,000 was a competitive salary for our region and towns with similar characteristics.

Based upon the current salary structure for Longmeadow teachers, our new superintendent is getting paid more than twice the highest paid teacher in the school system.

Our new superintendent is also being paid at a salary that is 57% higher than our current Town Manager.

Town employee salaries are a very large part of our town budget. The current Longmeadow teacher contracts expire next summer so teacher salaries including COLAs (as well as other town employees) will be a significant factor in achieving a balanced budget for FY2012. Police and fire fighters are still in collective bargaining for a new contract.

It should be an interesting upcoming budget process.

P.S. The TM and School Superintendent's contracts should be included with the other contracts available at Storrs Library.

Select Board Seeks to Remove Safety Valve

From the looks of the Town Meeting warrant, the Select Board seeks to make some major changes to the freedoms currently afforded to the public:

Article 6: Change the date of the Annual Town Meeting to an unspecified date to be set by the Select Board.

Article 7: REMOVE the ENTIRE Referendum Procedure from the Town Charter.

The Referendum is a little-used procedure. It is a safeguard. It states, in part: "No final vote of a town meeting on any warrant article, except:(...); shall take effect until after five days from the dissolution of the town meeting. If a petition seeking a referendum vote on any article is not filed with the select board within the said five days, the votes of the town meeting shall then take effect."

What does it mean? If Town Meeting voted to institute Stupid Bylaw X, then 3% of the voters could petition to have that decision placed on an election ballot. Then, if voters who voted at an election decide to scrap Stupid Bylaw X, they can. If they want to keep it, they can.

Without that referendum procedure however, the Select Board removes a valuable and much requested check & balance. As Clerk of the Charter Commission, I kept detailed notes on our deliberations. Among them include the following.

"Charter Commissioners noted that the number [of Petitioners required to start the Referendum] needs to be high enough to prevent abuse, yet low enough as to be attainable should Town Meeting vastly underestimate the will of the non-attending public" (10-29-03)

Two members "expressed concern that the town voters might use the opportunity to reconsider Town Meeting decisions at the ballot box too frequently." (3-9-04; see also 12-17-03). Clearly that has not happened.

Others called it a "safety valve" (10-29-03, 11-5-03, 12-17-03 )

"Reasons for including the referendum in the charter: no one at the hearings indicated that they disliked this procedure; they were asking questions to clarify it because it is something new. Since Massachusetts General Law requires Special Town Meetings be held if only 200 voters petition for one, the town needs a different safety valve that allows for more people to vote, even with absentee ballots. Special Town Meetings do not allow for absentee ballots. The Referendum procedure is in place to “compete” with, or serve as an alternative to, Special Town Meetings. If the town tried to live with this provision for a few years and decided that it doesn’t work as anticipated, the town could remove this provision" (12-17-03, emphasis mine).

How common are referendum procedures elsewhere? "Marilyn Contreas (Senior Policy Analyst for the Dept. of Housing and Community Development) ...said that they are very prevalent." (11-12-03, emphasis mine)

"It is the ultimate check on a town meeting run amok" (7-23-03, emphasis mine).

SO WHY does the Select Board want to REMOVE this important right of the people?

According to the warrant, "By deleting this section, the Town gains more time for budget deliberations and to enable the annual election to be conducted before the end of the school year."

This is NOT a good reason, since nothing in the referendum procedure prohibits the election from happening before the end of the school year. Referendum elections may be held as special elections or as part of a general election. No law requires them to be held with a general election. Town leaders have connected the one time a referendum was used with a general election, but that was a choice, not a requirement. The Select Board's reasoning attacks a problem with the wrong weapon.

The Charter Commission set the date of Town Meeting for "the last Tuesday in April"....Perhaps the Select Board would like to have Elections come AFTER Town Meeting, so they cannot be held accountable by the voters for their actions/inactions at Town Meeting?

Who knows....what does matter however, is that the Select Board would like to take away a hard-won right of the people to protest stupid decisions that do not represent the voters.

In addition to Articles 6 and 7, Article 8 also aims to gut the Charter's protections for access to information. By cutting in half the time requirements for descriptions of items on the warrant, the Select Board shortens the public's time to review the items they will vote on.

What to do? Well, voting NO on these articles SAVES our freedoms.






Respectfully submitted,
Rebecca M. Townsend

Q & A with Kathy Grady

What's the story with the Town Manager's contract?

The Town Manager’s contract has been approved by the Select Board. It is a 3-year contract with a 0% raise until June 30, 2010. Yes, 0%. (And the Town Manager gets no steps so that is a real 0.) As many employees and employers are deciding this year, job security is more important than a raise. Any future raises are at the discretion of the Select Board. Contract approval followed the Chair’s reading of a summary of the individual members' evaluations of the Town Manager’s performance. There was unanimity that the Town Manager does an excellent job in the day-to-day operations of the town. Some members had concerns about communication. The most important impact of this contract agreement may be with the department heads and bargaining units in town. It sets a sound example of how to deal with a very uncertain fiscal future.

Will there be a big budget fight on the floor of Town Meeting?

So far, it does not look like it. The Select Board has agreed to give an additional $117,000 in free cash to balance the School Department’s 2010 budget provided the School Department returns unexpended funds from the current budget. In addition, the Select Board, at the request of the School Committee, took $150,000 set aside in the Capital Budget for painting Center School and transferred it to the schools to prevent some of the layoffs. Both boards have approved this budget. The Finance Committee will make its recommendation on the floor of town meeting. Hopefully, peace will prevail.

How much are my water and sewer bills going up and why?

Water and sewer bills are going up because of capital needs. The basic operating costs will not be higher than the current year. But we have a system that is very, very, VERY old in many parts, with some pipes 90 years old. A study last year by Tighe and Bond showed that it would cost many millions of dollars to do what needs to be done. We can’t do it all anytime soon, but we must start.

The Select Board had before it a proposal that called for a substantial investment in capital improvements ($5,000,000 the first year). Of course, these needs would be bonded over 20 years so the real cost per year is hundreds of thousands of dollars, not millions. Still, given the financial problems of the town and the residents, the Select Board postponed most of these projects. There was strong agreement that we should invest in radio-read meters. Once these meters are installed, they can be read in one long day by having a staff person drive slowly down each street while the meter sends the usage information to the laptop in the car. Then, when rates do go up, everyone’s go up on the same day. Quarterly billing is a possibility. Leak detection will improve. Most important, we will all be more confident that our billing is correct. In addition, a couple of small capital projects were also approved. The others will have to be phased in, probably one at a time. UNLESS, we get stimulus money.

Another budget item was additional money for a reserve fund for water and sewer. In the proposal, it was set at a percentage of operating costs. The need for an emergency reserve is clear, especially with so many unmet capital needs. We have all seen the emergency water main breaks and sewer backups around town. The Select Board decided to ask for $5 each for water and sewer to build up a reserve fund. This amount will be added to the current $10 administrative cost which appears on each bill.

So, with these decisions made, we knew the amount of money that must be raised through the rates. How the rates are structured raises many questions. Should the rate for water increase with usage (a conservation rate)? Should there be a flat rate for having water and sewer service at all? Flat rates that have been proposed are $186 or $360 each year per household. The conservation rate would disproportionately affect high users; the flat rate would disproportionately affect low users. The Select Board decided to stay with a single rate, as we now have, and raise it by the amount needed to meet the budget. The result is that the charge per 100 cubic feet of water will increase from $1.76 to $2.11, and the charge for sewer will remain at $2.50 with a cap of 220 units.

Should there be a separate elected water and sewer commission as is proposed on the Town Meeting warrant?

Over the past three years the Select Board has had advice from three groups of experts: a paid consultant group, a citizen group of mainly financial people, and a group made up of our DPW experts, the Chief Financial Officer and the Town Manager. We learned different things from each report, and each was valuable. However, only the Select Board takes into account all the factors affecting citizens, including the burden of property taxes and user fees (all of which are set by the Select Board). I think it is not a good idea to set up a separate board which would look narrowly at the water and sewer system or narrowly at specific financing approaches.

What about that pergola?

In the summer of 2007 the town was offered two big gifts: an irrigation system for playing fields at Turner Park and a pergola memorial on a traffic island near the cemetery. At that point the Select Board realized that even though we have gotten many gifts and donations over the years, there was no clear policy with guidelines for accepting them. We then adopted a gift and donation policy in August [available on the Select Board web page at www.longmeadow.org ]. The biggest issue with both of these new gifts was maintenance. Would these gifts cost the town in money or labor? Materials and methods were negotiated with the givers to protect the town from such costs, and agreements were signed.

For myself, I thought the idea of having a bench and a resting place was a good one, and I would like to see more benches around town for walkers and runners. As for dedicating it to a specific individual, this is an established practice in Longmeadow. Both playgrounds were gifts and bear the names of an individual and a company. The Bliss pool was renamed for an individual as was the flag stand at the high school, rooms in the library, and countless streets.

As always, I welcome your questions and will answer them to the best of my ability. Opinions and mistakes are wholly mine.

Kathy Grady