BELCHERTOWN — A state agency that helps municipalities examine financial management is recommending the town hire an assistant town manager or director of finance to handle long-term financial planning and grant management.
Belchertown previously received a financial organizational review by the Department of Local Services Financial Management Resource Bureau in 2021, where the agency recommended changing the town administrator position to town manager, which voters at 2023 annual Town Meeting approved. Last year, the town ordered another DLS review to analyze the efficiency of municipality’s financial operations.
Jessica Ferry, project manager with DSL, said the biggest takeaways from the report is how the structure of the town’s management. With 16 department heads reporting to Town Manager Steve Williams, long-term planning is often sacrificed to keep day-to-day operations moving, the report found. Department operations easily bottleneck when one person must split his or her time with so many duties.
An assistance town manager or director of finance could oversee the financial aspects of Williams’ job, like grant management and accounting, while also keeping an eye on the future finances of the town.
“In a world where you had somebody who was dedicated to the day-to-day financial management and long-term planning, the [override] conversations may have started earlier than they did,” said Ferry, referring to a $2.9 million Proposition 2½ override narrowly approved by voters in late spring. “There may have been more structure in discussing what was going to be included, and overall having a plan of what that override was going to look like instead of being a reaction.”
The report suggests that this position would set the agenda and oversee financial meetings, suggest savings in the operating budget and generate financial forecasts, policies and capital plans. Ferry said this position usually has a background in finance or accounting, ideally in a municipal setting.
Due to Belchertown’s lack of revenue, Ferry suggests communications and grant management would also be included in this position’s job description.
“I think we take this with a grain of salt because we have other needs that are competing,” Select Board Chair Lesa Pearson said. “If we are looking at a finance director, that’s what they are good at. If you start adding communications, HR [human relations] and economic development, it seems like we’ve moving some of the stuff that’s driving Steve crazy onto a new person.”
Williams last spring during the override discussions floated the idea of hiring an assistant town manager to oversee town finances, but that idea was sidelined to only include the most pressing operating budget losses in the override request, including level-services in the school department and funding of firefighters.
The report also looked into shared services through an inter-municipal agreement, which can test run the feasibility of regional services. Pearson said that regional services would remove the local feel of the town.
“We gotta focus on where it hurts the most, and I think that’s a finance director,” Select Board member Nicole Miner said. “We just have to keep talking about what it looks like for us and where we find the money to accommodate that.”