Shaffer pulls together 'blue ribbon' budget panel

By Nick Grabbe
Staff Writer

Published on December 21, 2007

When all the Christmas wrapping and the New Year's confetti have been thrown away, Amherst will face another extended period of wrangling over spending and taxes.

It's like a long-running movie that opens every January with the town manager's budget proposal and continues into June at Town Meeting. Last year, a proposal to end the fretting by adopting a three-year financial plan that included both tax increases and spending restraint failed to get a majority of votes from the public.

And so the process will start again. Town Manager Larry Shaffer will float some ideas for saving money, Superintendent of Schools Jere Hochman will worry about class sizes, and everyone will wonder whether to go back to the voters for a tax override again.

<h4>Sizing up the situation</h4>

On Tuesday, Shaffer, Hochman and other town officials got together to size up the problems. This year, they want to expand the discussion beyond the usual insiders, and get advice from both independent financial experts and regular citizens.

Gerry Weiss, Select Board chairman, said Shaffer should not come up with a "wish list" budget and should outline his spending priorities. The board has asked that human services and community services (such as swimming pools and the senior center) be protected from cuts.

Hochman said he hopes to pin down the assumptions about spending and revenues by mid-January, then come up with an "optimum budget." Amherst schools have been in "cut-cut-cut mode" the last few years, he said, with some regional classes topping 25 students and aides largely eliminated from the elementary libraries.

Many opponents of the three-year plan last spring cited the number of school administrators and duplication of services between Town Hall and the schools. To get independent guidance on these issues, Shaffer has appointed a "blue-ribbon committee" of local financial experts.

The committee will "lend credibility" to whatever proposals officials make, said Weiss. The members will "provide a fresh set of eyes," said Shaffer. Hochman spoke of "a good, arm's-length review."

Two members of the "blue-ribbon committee" have met twice and asked Shaffer for a list of all administrative employees and other data, said member Bruce McInnis, of Lincoln Avenue. He moved to Amherst in 2000 after holding top-tier financial positions at Coninental Airlines and Norwegian Cruise Lines.

Another member of the committee is Iqbal Agha, a professor at the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts. He teaches operations management, mathematical modeling of business processes, and supply chain management.

The third member of the committee is Peter Shea, treasurer of Amherst College.

"It's not a policy board," said Shaffer. "It will look at efficiencies from a business perspective." He said citizens with proposals for the committee to consider should send them to shafferl@amherstma.gov.

McInnis said the committee will look for economies of scale in such areas as payroll, insurance and computers. It will also look at school administrators and possible regionalization of some functions, he said. "Benchmarking" will allow the committee to compare Amherst to other similar towns, he said.

"Larry Shaffer has been very open to finding any way of managing the town and the schools more efficiently," McInnis said.

But for some, the formation of the committee is already a cause for concern.

Select Board member Hwei-Ling Greeney said she wonders if the members have any municipal experience. She questioned the appointment process and said there should have been more Select Board discussion "to ensure there is a great amount of public participation."

In addition to the "blue-ribbon committee," town officials want to measure the pulse of the community to learn what services are most valued and by how much residents are willing to see their taxes increase.

"We need to be sure we're listening to all the community," Hochman said. "We need to make sure we know what the community would support."

The process should involve the sharing of information as well as the seeking of opinions, Weiss said. One question should be: "How much would you be willing to have your taxes go up to keep services in place?" he said.

It should be a multi-year efforts, said Andy Steinberg of the Finance Committee. "The process tends to look at budgets year by year, and we don't think where we want the town to be in three to five years," he said.

Clare Bertrand, of Bay Road, said the community is going to be "all over the map" when officials seek its pulse.

"It's elected officials who have to stand up and put out budgets they think are right and the community will respond to them," she said.