Letter of the week, 5/10/10: How Wallingford can save money

[Bustopher Jones]

Originally Posted by Wally_World_Speaks

Does anyone know if merging this type of duplication of services might be possible? Has it beeen brought up previously?

Anything is possible. The question becomes whether the governmental desire and commitment to change and rationalize redundancy exists, with respect to actually implementing such a change; it also means one governmental entity must surrender a part of its empire. The same question could be asked of other common services (accounting/finance, human resources, purchasing, etc.). Regionalization takes your question one step further, into the realm of whether redundant services can be consolidated across multple communities, with one community supporting others (for a fee, of course); this would be similar to the practices in private industry of establishing consortiums or "campus management" for specific purposes, or of outsourcing services that are not related to an enterprise's core competency to an independent agency.

[wawogi]

As long as school boards/systems are considered, by state law, a separate entity from town government, I'm not sure that that kind of crossover is possible. The BOE is not accountable to the town for how it spends its money, and I'm not sure the town could "charge back" the costs for grounds maintenance. Would that save money, anyway? If Public Works were to have to take care of all the school properties, as well, they'd need more staff.

[Bustopher Jones]

While the administration of educational matters is limited to Boards of Education, administrative services and support activities need not be segregated, and can be provided by the parent community government or a third party; for instance, I believe that in Wallingford some insurance matters are consolidated under the Town administration. Also, with respect to the point about increased staffing, the principle of "economies of scale" would indicate that, while one entity would need to increase its resources to support consolidated demand, the total resources required for the consolidated activity would be less that the sum of the two independent activities; as an example, the consolidation would yield an elimination (or at least reduction) in the total administrative overhead that was previously required to support the two separate entities.

[wawogi]

I am aware that some insurance issues are, in whole or in part, consolidated under the Town umbrella (and I'm not sure of the reasons why), the BoE's books are separate. For instance, I know that the Town carries the cost of health insurance for the "non-certified" BoE employees, but not for teachers. Their health costs are in the BoE budget. If the same thing were to hold true for, say, human resources issues, I think the BoE would still have to maintain a human resources department just for teachers.

I still believe the separateness of BoE and Town resources probably has something to do with education having whole sections of state statutes just apply to them. The town has no authority or oversight whatsoever over the BoE's use of the money it gets through the budget process. Does that mean that every function related to the school system has to be separate, or does it, as you said earlier, have to do with "empires"? I don't know.

[Bustopher Jones]

You are correct, wawogi, with respect to the point that the Town cannot dictate to the BoE how to spend the monies allocated to it. The Town can, however, provide services that would be administered by the Town in lieu of a budget allocation, and reduce the BoE's budget proportionately. For instance, if security services are required at a school, the Town may allocate police resources in lieu of providing the BoE with adequate funding to secure its own private security forces. The most obvious example of direct Town involvement lies in school building and renovation projects; the Town pays contractors directly throught a Town-empowered building committee, rather than allocating the monies (and the authority) to the BoE. So the Town could offer the BoE such services as accounting, buildings and grounds maintenance, human resources, information technology (In Wallingford? Yeah, right...What WAS I thinking?), purchasing, transportation, etc., and could force the issue by reducing the BoE's next budget allocation by the corresponding amounts expended for these services in the BoE's current budget year. Of course, the BoE could refuse those services from the Town and continue to empower its own empire; but that would be unwise if the overall funding was to be reduced to offset the cost of the services that the Town would provide...

And if one was to really think creatively, another option might be the establishment of consortiums encompassing multiple BoE's who could, in turn, contract consolidated services (with third parties or with each other), and/or neogtiate purchases, that would be shared exclusively amongst the member BoE's, effectively untilizing a combination of leverage through combined volumes, and economies of scale, to reduce and minimize costs; this might be an alternative if the BoE's did not want the Towns involved directly in their operations. (Uh, oh!!! There's that nasty concept of regionalization again...)