Town officials look to combine posts
Published on September 20th, 2006
STONEHAM, MA - The Stoneham Board of Selectman and School Committee held a joint committee meeting to discuss, among other things, the merging of the school's business manager and town accountant positions - a pair of positions that paid out roughly $150,000 in salaries last year.
According to School Committee Chairman Kristin Russo, three local communities have attempted to combine the two sizable salaries into one full-time fiduciary position for municipalities, with two of the towns continuing with the plan while one of the municipalities has returned to the standard Business Manager/Town Accountant set-up between the school and town side.
"We're talking to all three towns, fact-finding and while we're doing all of that also sending that out the tasks to the schools and the municipality to jot down, analyze and think about areas where we could show some consolidation," said Russo, of a plan that has been discussed in a sub-committee that includes Selectman John Depinto and R. Paul Rotondi.
The discussion of consolidating the two positions has become an even more attractive option after Stoneham School Department Business Manager Greg Zammuto joined departed Assistant Superintendent Joe Casey in Melrose - a unique position that could potentially allow town officials to combine the two positions prior to filling Zammuto's job vacancy at the end of September.
"If we had that central person, in my opinion, you'd have a more coordinated approach on both ends and you'd probably get a lot of efficiencies in a lot of the processes that we do," said Rotondi. "We need to look at what are the tasks that are performed by each side, what are some of the tasks that we can shift, and how are we going to staff it. There's going to have to be a workload distribution to make it happen, but I think this is something that could start us on the road to efficiency."
"We need to look at quite a bit more data before we can start to make any kind of educated decisions," added Rotondi.
DePinto suggested that a good starting point for any fund-saving consolidation would be in the payroll services used by both the towns' employees and the schools' employees - a streamlined system that DePinto estimated could serve both entities for the rough price of $30,000.
"One key component of this is efficiency...we might not have the cost benefit immediately, but we'll be able to recognize the long term efficiency of savings going forward," said Russo. "Currently we are in the process of looking for a business manager, and we've posted this job to see if there are any willing and qualified applicants out there. If not, then we're prepared to go ahead with an interim manager because we'll need someone to look over things as soon as Greg walks out that door...to make sure everything is balanced."
According to Town Administrator Ron Florino, part of the structural changes in making the consolidation of the two positions possible might require a change to the Town of Stoneham's special act - a change that can only be approved by a majority show of citizen hands at a Stoneham Town Meeting.
Russo didn't see any consolidation of the business manager/town accountant position happening by the end of the 2007 school year in May, and looked at any structural needing some time for law changes and work distribution.
"For me, I'm not going to assume the outcome of the process and I'm not convinced that the end game will be that the positions will be consolidated," said School Committee member Miriam Regan-Fiore. "I think it's important to look at, but there are a lot of factors involved.
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