In the last three years, we’ve made great progress for Arlington’s fiscal future. In the next 18 months we will be building the next long-term financial plan for Arlington. I want to lead the process and ensure that we protect the programs that are important to us, and avoid destructive, short-term thinking. That’s what the Annie LaCourt’s candidacy for Selectman is about – a postive, long-term view of the tough problems we face.

What are our priorities?

We need to step back and examine the services provided by the various departments. What is most critical to the quality of life of the Arlington residents?

These are some of the core services that I would seek to protect:

• Fire protection and emergency services including safety and prevention programs and inspectional services
• Police protection including appropriate patrol shift staffing, crime prevention programs and disaster preparedness
• Road maintenance including paving, sidewalk maintenance, snow and ice removal and street cleaning
• Small class sizes in the public schools
• Certified public school libraries
• Appropriate nursing coverage in the elementary schools
• Middle and High school academic and extracurricular programming that supports the development of well rounded young adults prepared to pursue higher education, military service or a profession after graduation.
• Council on Aging services provided to older residents to support independent living including social work and nursing services
• Youth services intended to reduce suicide and delinquency among troubled youngsters
• State-certified public libraries
• Maintenance of our natural resources and town properties.

It is essential that the Selectmen take a new look at all town functions, listen to citizens, plan service levels and then set spending targets for the next few years.

Why not limit spending across the board?

Limiting budget increases uniformly among town departments may seem like the fairest and easiest solution to our current budget shortfall. But it’s an easy way to avoid talking about priorities and to hide potentially harsh choices. In short, it’s simply not good planning.

No town department should have the option of an arbitrary budget increase if we can provide the services needed for less. Nor should services be cut unfairly because of an arbitrary formula.

We need to commit to the voters that the services they need will be available based on things that can be measured. For example, we need to commit to supporting response times for fire and medical emergency calls that meet the national standards now and in the future. Meeting that commitment means both providing the required funding and having high expectations of our firefighters and their managers.

When the town makes a commitment to a core of critical services and prioritizes those services, it is a compact with voters that the town will use their money wisely and respect those budget priorities in the future.

Our obligation to our employees

The growing cost of providing health insurance for town employees is a very tough issue. We cannot curtail growth in employee benefits unilaterally. The projected growth in the cost of providing health insurance to town employees in each of the next two years is 8% and 11%, respectively. We have worked with the town unions and reduced the town’s obligation for health insurance from 90% of premiums to 85%, and we continue to seek changes.

For a variety of reasons, we show the cost of employee health insurance and pensions as separate line items in the budget, rather than associated with the services that are offered. This makes it easy to forget that these items are part of the cost of providing those services. Each of the employees receiving benefits represents a resource used to provide those services – a patrolman, a plow driver, a teacher. I propose a working group to team up with union representatives and grapple with these issues now, when we are not under the pressure of negotiations. We can and should seek to get the best price on insurance and reduce costs in any way we can. But placing strict limits on the rate at which benefits can rise could force us to make staff reductions, and therefore service reductions, whose impact we have not fully considered and prioritized.

Reliance on fluctuating state aid

It is important for local officials to build coalitions to advocate for a fairer level of state aid for towns such as Arlington. But it is irresponsible to set up a budget that is dependent upon a certain, fixed level of state aid. Such a policy ignores decades of history in which state aid levels have fluctuated dramatically. We need to develop a policy to set aside funds to smooth out future fluctuations in state aid. As state aid rises again with an improving economy, we need to add a certain percentage of it to our reserves in an organized way so that we can avoid overdependence on income that is unreliable and take responsibility for our own future.

Increasing revenues

By law, the town cannot deficit spend. When the current five-year plan is carried to completion in 2010, Arlington will be in better financial shape than was predicted in 2005. But in 2011, we’ll face some hard choices. We need to plan very carefully, based on priorities. We need to commit that we will preserve public safety, that we will have quality schools, that our libraries will be state certified and that our streets will be safely maintained. We need to give everyone a clear picture of the core services that must be protected.

Collaborating with the School Committee

The schools are the largest departmental line item in our budget. It is up to the School Committee to set its priorities and goals and then make its vision clear to the Board of Selectmen, the Finance Committee, and the citizens. The School Committee has been working hard on budgeting with these principles in mind. Historically, the working relationship between the School Committee and the Board of Selectmen has been strained and hampered by the notion of competition between “town side” and “school side.” I will continue to work to get beyond taking sides to create an atmosphere that is safe and conducive to real discussion, rather than competition. This requires year-long discussion and a willingness of the two boards to meet together more frequently so that each understands better what the other is doing.

Communication will help us develop priorities and set spending targets

Communication and collaboration are the key to developing the right priorities and getting buy-in for them. We need to continually communicate with the taxpayers about how their money is being spent. I wrote a column for the Advocate showing how the average tax bill was allocated. I would suggest that we include similar information with each tax bill each year and post the information on the town website.

We need to increase the involvement of Town Meeting members in the budget process. As a member of the Board of Selectmen I support efforts to make the results of key steps in the development of the budget available online. This will enhance the ability of Town Meeting members and others to have information about the budget as it develops.

The budget book each year includes a statement from each department about their accomplishments in the current year and their goals for the coming year. As a member of the Board of Selectmen I urge my colleagues to join me and direct the town manager to expand on this practice. I ask that he work with his department heads to set key measures by which we can evaluate each department’s effectiveness in accomplishing its goals, and then report on them to the Town Meeting each spring in either a written report or as a presentation to the meeting.

Finally, the Board of Selectmen needs to look for public forums in which to present its vision for the town and listen to the concerns of citizens in a way that allows more dialogue than citizens open forum at board meetings. Only by proactively seeking the input of citizens and their elected Town Meeting representatives can we build consensus around a shared vision for the future.

In conclusion

A shared vision for the town is what we need at this point in our history. We need to define what it means to provide quality municipal services, make a long term plan to provide them and communicate that plan to the voters. As a business owner and a manager, I have worked collaboratively on strategic planning many times. As a manager, I’ve had to make the case for increases in areas of my budget when company income was falling. I have been in the position of needing to tell managers that we could not afford to do all that they wished. I have developed the leadership skills required to grapple with these complex problems. I don’t expect to solve them by offering simple formulas. I expect to solve them by working with people, considering new approaches, doing the hard work of setting priorities and thinking long term.