Ways To Save Town Money

The following also appeared as a letter in the Friday, January 22, 2010 edition of the Falmouth Enterprise.

The January 15, 2010 edition of the Falmouth Enterprise defends the 2011 budget, asserting that, "The easier solutions have been exhausted and now the only way to balance the budget is to make hard choices." I disagree. There are no hard choices in this budget.

The consolidation of the collector and treasurer is, in fact, a very easy decision. The treasurer is retiring, so no one needs to be laid off. The two roles were once one position, separated many years ago. The logic behind this plan appears to be, "It was done before, so it can be done again, and we save an easy $130,000."

The paper goes on to suggest that I, "would better serve the town by considering how best to measure the town manager’s performance."

I already have.

There is no unified purchasing system in town. Orders for things as basic as cleaning supplies are done on a department by department level, with some departments using entirely different products than others. Even within departments, purchasing is often fragmented. The high school uses different toilet paper dispensers - and therefore, toilet paper - than the other schools. Common sense tells us that if we have to buy two different kinds of toilet paper, then we are losing out on a larger, bulk purchase that could save us money.

Moreover, without a purchasing system, there is no way to track what we have purchased. There are no inventory controls to protect the town against loss, or prevent duplicate purchases. A perfect example of the latter is town hall, where almost every department has its own refridgerator.

Indeed, with all the talk of regionalization, one has to wonder...Why has Falmouth not taken the lead and reached out to our neighbors to develop an upper Cape purchasing block?

Combining the collector and treasurer is not, as the paper suggests, a "hard choice," but rather is an easy step to take; "low hanging fruit" is a term often used. Anyone can reach for the low fruit, but most of it - like a purchasing system - is out of reach, higher up in the tree. Getting there requires focus, forethought, preparation, planning - it requires leadership.

Rather than emphasize the low hanging fruit, a good manager will have ladders ready so his team can also pick from those higher branches. Perhaps it is just me, but I haven't seen any ladders.