Consolidation plan has some doubters
Wayland officials are fine-tuning a proposal to consolidate six town offices into one public works department. The plan may go before voters at Town Meeting this fall, despite resistance from at least one town board whose role would change under the proposal.
Opponents of the consolidation say town officials have not shown how the new department would result in greater efficiencies or that it would save enough money to make it worthwhile. They worry that formation of a new Department of Public Works would create more bureaucracy and result in a governing board that lacks the necessary expertise.
The Board of Selectmen plan would combine the town's Park & Recreation, Water, and Highway departments, along with the over sight of the landfill, the wastewater agency, and the septage facility. A new five-person Board of Public Works would be elected to oversee the consolidated department. The town administrator would appoint a director of public works. The new position would report to the administrator.
The Park and Recreation Commission does not support the proposal, which would go into effect in July. No other boards have provided input, Town Administrator Fred Turkington said.
Brud Wright, the commission's vice chairman, said he thought Park & Recreation would be better served as one entity, compared with dividing responsibility for maintenance and programming. The proposal calls for the commission to retain control of programming, but it places field and park maintenance under the new DPW.
"We felt that did not ensure quality of programs would be maintained," Wright said. He said it didn't make sense to put someone in charge of soccer programs, but not cutting and striping the fields.
Dennis Berry, who chairs the DPW Assessment Committee, said combining the departments could save $55,000 to $65,000 its first year, depending on how the department is structured. He said his committee, which has been studying the consolidation for 18 months, could not determine how much it would save in subsequent years.
He said the only way more savings could be seen in the short term would be by cutting employee levels. That's not something the town has planned, although a handful of administrative positions could be eliminated under one scenario, he said.
Mark Santangelo, a member of the Board of Road Commissioners and its former chairman, said the town's DPW Assessment Committee has not shown there will be serious savings that would warrant the effort to create a DPW. "I don't think it's broken," he said. "I think it's working fine."
Berry said the consolidated department would be a "a much superior administration." Currently, most of the departments that would be merged under the plan have their own employees and management structure. Combining them would reduce the town's capital expenses, enabling them to share trucks, for example. It would also reduce the number of unions the town negotiates with. He said combining all the departments into one would make it more responsive to the public, and it would also eliminate competition for budget dollars among the departments.
But many opponents feel a larger DPW would result in a bureaucratic tangle. Former selectwoman Pat Abramson said creating a DPW would eliminate numerous town boards while giving the selectmen more authority, which she called "a drastic change" that would result in a loss of checks, balances, and transparency. "To me, it's not about saving money and enhanced services," she said. "It's a political reorganization of town government."
Turkington argued that the oversight of the department would fall to a new board, not the selectmen. "I don't think you lose any checks and balances," he said, noting that he believes the change will make town government less bureaucratic.
Blair Davies, who chairs the Wastewater Management District Commission and the Wayland-Sudbury Septage Committee, said he worries that a consolidated department would result in a department with limited technological understanding. "I am concerned people are going to make decisions without understanding the consequences of their decisions," he said.
Under the proposal, the Board of Health would turn over its responsibilities for overseeing the landfill to the new board. It is not clear how the town would address the septage committee, which is composed of four members from Wayland and four from Sudbury.
