Medfield 02052 - Osler Petersen

See DCAM’s Map of Medfield State Hospital Building being Saved/Demolished – http://ping.fm/Sn7yp

See report on the Gov2.0 Unconference at the Kennedy School last Saturday – http://wp.me/pwOp1-2e

Attended the Gov2.0 Unconference last Saturday at the Kennedy School of  Government, for a stimulating time with many state, and municipal officials, plus lots of IT professionals.  Medfield’s David Stephenson was one of the presenters on democratizing data (main message, add metadata tags to the data as you put it on-line, so that it means something and can easily be changed if need be).

Lots of great ideas, such as SeeClicFix.com to report town problems in Medfield.  I have already set up a page for Medfield, that I set to share, so I hope others can use it as well.  Take a photo of a pothole or other problem the town should fix, and email it in – SeeClicFix will get reported to Medfield, and track the fix, and report back to you when it has been repaired for you to verify that it really has been fixed. Boston is doing same service with iPhone app, which I asked state officials to share with us, and Boston reported great savings to city on both the need to survey to find the potholes and the after repair need to verify that work was done.

Mass DOT talked about how they made their GPS data on the location of each bus and train publicly available, and within hours iPhone apps were written to tell users how far away the next bus really was.

Makes me think the Town of Medfield’s existing and proposed  budget data should be placed on-line, so that as we develop the budget that we will vote on at the annual town meeting, the citizens can see the process unfold, track changes, and make their suggestions as the decisions are made.

See Gov2.0 Unconference at http://twitter.com/gov20NE.

MA DEP granted DCAM’s 2 week ext. request to 3/26/10 for comments on DCAM’s ENF re Medfield State Hospital clean up – town hoped for 30 days

Report on what I learned to assist Medfield at the Massachusetts Municipal Association’s annual meeting in January http://wp.me/pwOp1-28

Annually I attend the Massachusetts Municipal Association’s annual meeting in January to get new ideas on how to make Medfield a better place.  These were my notes from that meeting this year.

Massachusetts Municipal Association 1/23/10 – 1/24/10

I always find my attendance at the Massachusetts Municipal Association’s annual meeting to be one of the most useful and productive things for me, as I learn about both what is going on at the state level and also how other towns are operating and what those towns are finding effective and productive.  Medfield faces most of the same issues and dilemmas as all the other 351 cities and towns in Massachusetts, so it is exceedingly helpful to find out what all the other selectmen in the state are doing to resolve their towns’ problems and which solutions have worked best.  I was sorry that I was the only member of our Medfield Board of Selectmen able to attend this year.

The following is my report to the Town of Medfield on the major points that I picked up at this year’s meeting:

1.    State Finances

a.    DOR Commissioner and Governor’s budget director reported:
i.    FY10 budget was balanced only after many interim year reductions, plus the use of $1.9 billion of federal stimulus monies and $1.7 billion of the state’s $2.3 billion rainy day fund
ii.    FY11 budget will have available at best only half that amount of federal stimulus money and there is now less than $600 million remaining in the state rainy day fund.  For the past several months, state revenues have exceeded expectations, however, there is still a $3 billion gap in the state budget for FY11 that needs to be filled.
iii.    The governor announced on Thursday his intention in his FY11 budget to hold state support for education and local aid harmless, by level funding them at last year’s levels.
iv.    The governor will announce this coming Wednesday his complete budget, and tell us how he plans to solve that $3 billion gap in te FY11 budget.

b.    House Ways and Means Committee Chair, Charles Murray, seemed to minimize the governor’s involvement in the budget process, when he stated that the budget would be done by the House Ways and Means Committee with the approval of the speaker, the Senate produces its own version of the budget, that there would be a reconciliation between the Senate and House versions, and that the governor would then be to veto whatever sections he chose.  In commenting on the governor’s intention to level fund state funding for education and local aid, Rep. Murray derisively stated “good luck.”  Murray indicated that with a $3 billion dollar gap in the FY11 budget, it is unlikely that the state will be able to fully fund education and local aid at last year’s levels.

2.    Succession planning

a.    Mentor and train successors

b.    Plan for backup and depth at each employee position

c.    Create a personal improvement program for each employee, as is ordinarily done in the private sector.

d.    Share employees with adjoining towns.

3.    Regionalization of municipal services

a.    Lieut. Gov., Tim Murray, encouraged Selectmen to engage in greater regionalization by sharing similar services with surrounding towns. He pointed out that Maryland has a similar population to Massachusetts and yet Maryland has only about 25 emergency call centers for police and fire compared to about 250 in Massachusetts. He also suggested that Massachusetts does not need a board of health in each town.

b.    Jeff Nutting, Franklin’s town administrator, recommended that towns share pieces of DPW equipment with one another, especially given the high price of that equipment.

4.    Attitudes towards government – www.demos.org

a.    Demos studies people’s attitudes towards government
i.    Demos asked individuals “what do you think of the government?”  People responded by shaking their heads and rolling their eyes.  People tend to think of government as a collection of bickering individuals and as an entity that just takes their money endlessly
ii.    However, when those same people are asked “what do you think of the public services?” or  “what do you think of the public systems?” people are uniformly positive. People actually really like and rely on the government services that they use, such as the schools, the library, the parks, and the transfer station, and will acknowledge that fact when asked specifically about each.
iii.    Demos found that people did not want to pay taxes and often looked at the town government as a vending machine, wanting only to pay for those services they actually used. Demos, however, suggests that towns both emphasize that towns are a shared enterprise (similar to living in a condominium) and make the process transparent.  They gave the example of one town which succeeded by allowing resident participation in meetings via telephone hook ups and allowed residents to express opinions via survey responses.  In that same vane, a Bedford selectman recounted how often and how proudly Bedford residents have voted to spend their Community Preservation Act funds for new projects in town.

5.    Review of the town administrator

a.    Only employee reviewed by the Board of Selectmen

b.    Annual review resommended

c.    Recommend a five point span of choices on which to rate administrator

d.    Question of what parts to make public.

e.    Options
i.    Direct review by selectmen
ii.    360 reviews, where many constituencies are asked to participate.
(1)    Done on-line with each question having a five point range, plus an  opportunity for comments

6.    Medfield State Hospital

a.    Danvers State Hospital
i.    Danvers town administrator for past 31 years consulted re Danvers State Hospital project
ii.    Done by Avalon Bay – town was very happy with them and with results
iii.    Over 500 units of rental and age restricted condominiums
iv.    They only have 50 school children in whole project

b.    Rutland State Hospital
i.    Selectman consulted
ii.    Created a business center and park
iii.    They have been very pleased with results of their state hospital project
iv.    Still not completed

7.    Massachusetts DEP – on Pay as You Throw and Single Stream Recycling

a.    Based on experience of other towns, DEP says to expect to see a 30-50% decline in trash volumes if Pay As You Throw is adopted

b.    Expect single stream recycling to reduce trash volumes by 10%

Selectmen to set goals and tasks for itself and town administrator for 2010 on 2/16/10 – see mine at http://wp.me/pwOp1-24 Submit your own.

PETE PETERSON’S IDEAS FOR TOWN OF MEDFIELD ISSUES
THAT THE BOARD OF SELECTMEN SHOULD CONSIDER IN 2010

The Board of Selectmen is currently deciding the list of goals and tasks on which the Selectmen and the town administrator should focus in 2010.  If you have ideas or preferences, please submit them for consideration.  The following are mine:

1.    Planning Issues
a.    Medfield State Hospital – implement reuse plan
b.    Downtown – plan what can be done
c.    Open space lands – implement plan to control land uses by means of purchase, addition of restrictions, and sale of part of the lands
d.    Community Preservation Act – revisit
e.    Sidewalk expansion plan needed
f.    Bay Colony Rail Trail – study needed

2.    Personnel administration
a.    Recognition for employees
i.    “Core values” (see Brookhaven at Lexington’s)
ii.    “Employee of the quarter”
(1)    nominated by fellow employees
b.    Succession planning for employees (see materials from Massachusetts Municipal Association annual meeting) – start a discussion with employees about who wants to and who needs to move up to leadership positions
c.    Appreciation of employees
i.    Annual event
ii.    Regular special events for those with long service
d.    Implement annual written five year goals submitted by department heads

3.    Health Department – ask for citizen committees to study need for
a.    Lyme disease control – determine whether something needs to be done
b.    Fluoridating the water – determine whether it is desirable

4.    Systemize and professionalize operation of the Board of Selectmen
a.    Create an annual Board of Selectmen schedule/calendar
i.    Print out a list of the annual duties and when they will occur, using the town meeting budget schedule as a starting point
ii.    Add all annual items, such as
(1)    review of the town administrator
(2)    setting of goals by the Board of Selectmen for the town administrator
(3)    review of auditors’ reports
(4)    tax classification hearing with assessors
b.    Agendas on website by Friday afternoon
c.    Materials scanned to website by Friday afternoon
d.    Minutes on website by Friday afternoon

5.    Solid Waste Committee – ask them to study
a.    Single stream recycling results
b.    Pay As You Throw
c.    Swap area expansion into a year round volunteer run enterprise

6.    Communication with residents
a.    Implement use of internet surveys to learn what the residents want from their town government (e.g – Survey Monkey)
b.    Town email distribution list to send out town information – create an opt in system from town website

7.    Cemetery – Cemetery rates must be self-sustaining

8.    Organize a spring clean up of the town by the residents

I attended the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Municipal Association on 1/22 and 1/23/10, and I have uploaded my notes of what I found pertinent and useful for Medfield at that conference –   http://medfield02052.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/20100124-massachusetts-municipal-association-annual-meeting-notes.pdf

Mass Municipal Assoc’s excellent annual meeting last week & attached my notes FYI http://ping.fm/vYxSp

Chas. Murray, Chair of House Ways and Means, told Mass Municipal Assoc today that $3 b. budget gap means “good luck” level funding state aid

Gov. Patrick email today announce his budget awards Medfield same educ & general state aid as last year & those 2 are 97.5% of FY10’s $7.4m

Medfield won today’s SJC decision in suit versus Mass DEP over draconian water withdrawal limits DEP sought to impose – http://ping.fm/XAHnY

DCAM scheduled meeting at 7:00PM on 2/03/2010 at Town House on the now combined PIP about the Medfield State Hospital environmental clean up

Medfield selectmen meet 7PM Tues to resolve environmental issues to include in Memo of Understanding with state re Medfield State Hosp reuse

Medfield has begun annual budget cycle for FY11 budget for annual town meeting (last Monday in April) – more at http://wp.me/pwOp1-1L

The Town of Medfield has begun it yearly preparation of the budget for the town, which will be presented to the annual town meeting on the last Monday in April.  Mike Sullivan puts all the current assumptions and figures into a spreadsheet (copy attached), which is then updated as the process proceeds.  Attached is Mike’s first iteration of his spreadsheet for the FY11 budget.  This year the guiding premise is that no department’s budget should be higher than last year.

20091209-Tax Levy FY11 estimate

DCAM’s PIP meeting tonight on its Medfield State Hospital environmental cleanup process has been canceled, with no new date set as yet.

Dover selectmen recently agreed to join Medfield & Needham BOS in asking state for a feasibility review of proposed Bay Colony Rail Trail

Mike Sullivan to ask Warrant Committee for a reserve fund transfer tomorrow to pay an environmental consultant to review DCAM’s MSH clean up