Town Counsel Mark Lanza said this week that the money approved by Town Meeting in 2012 for updating the town’s Master Plan, can be used only for that purpose. To “reprogram” $20,000 of the allotted sum to help pay the first year salary of a professional town planner would require another Town Meeting vote, he said.
Lanza emailed his opinion on Tuesday to Selectmen Chairwoman Lucy Wallace. The ruling is a temporary setback to those who want to add a planner to the town’s professional staff this coming year. But decisions made by two other boards in the past 10 days make it almost certain the proposal will come before Town Meeting, where voters will get to hear the arguments for and against, and decide the outcome.
In his email, Lanza noted that the article that allocated $100,000 to the Planning Board stated specifically that it was “to fund Phase II and completion of an update to the Town’s Master Plan….” Because the 2012 [Town Meeting] vote was the subject of a separate article and not part of the [Planning Board’s] budget in the Omnibus Budget Article, he said, “a town meeting vote (majority) will be necessary to ‘reprogram’ $20,000 of the Master Plan funds to be used for the Town Planner’s position salary.”
Town Administrator Tim Bragan and others had estimated that a full-time planner with the skills and experience needed to support the town’s land-use boards would cost the town roughly $80,000 per year, a permanent increase to the town’s omnibus budget.
As reported by the Press, the Planning Board voted last month to contribute $20,000 of its master plan money toward that total. But that’s the transfer of funds that Lanza now says must be approved by Town Meeting.
FinCom votes to fund position
Meantime, on Saturday, the Finance Committee voted to appropriate $40,000 to the position for the coming year. Adding this amount to the proposed Planning Board contribution totals $60,000, which is $15,000 short of the estimated cost.
But FinCom member George McKenna said that given the anticipated $20,000 contribution from the Planning Board, an additional contribution of $40,000 by the town would be enough to hire a senior level part time planner for the first year, as some advocates have begun to propose. At an appearance before FinCom in January, for example, Vice Chair Rich Marcello had said that a planner could be hired for 30 hours a week at a cost of $45,000 plus $15,000 for benefits, for a total of $60,000.
Committee member Bob Thurston agreed and moved that FinCom support the Planning Board’s request for a planner and appropriate $40,000 of the town’s anticipated surplus to such a scheme. In response to a question by member Rudi Minar, Thurston added that it was his belief that if the $20,000 provided by the Planning Board represented one-third of the consultant’s salary, then one third of that person’s first-year time would “have to be dedicated to working on the Master Plan.”
Thurston also agreed that next year, the town would need to fund the full $60,000 needed for a part-time planner. “It will be a recurring use of funds,” he said, a new line item in the annual budget. “We will need to support an additional $20,000 next year.”
Minar said he felt the Planning Board was “punting” on its responsibilities, but Thurston responded that the board was the only one without professional staff support. “We [the FinCom] have two people helping us, [Town Administrator Tim Bragan and Finance Director Lorraine Leonard],” he said. “And [the position] has been in the Master Plan for years.”
When the vote was called, Thurston’s motion passed 4-2-1.
Job to support land use boards
Two days later, on Monday evening, the Planning Board completed another piece of the puzzle, approving a formal job description for the planner position—part-time or full-time—by a vote of 3-0. Member Joe Hutchinson was absent.
As revised by the three members who were present, the job description makes the planner “responsible for coordinating all planning activities in the town and serves as staff support to the Land-Use Boards.” The Town’s three land-use boards are the Planning Board, the Conservation Commission, and the Zoning Board of Appeals, currently supported by land use administrator and conservation agent Liz Allard, who also serves as recording secretary at all Planning Board meeting.
The job description calls on the planner to:
- review all town development plans for compliance
- ensure that town plans are developed as approved
- direct all long-range planning and the updating of the town’s Master Plan
- provide technical advice to citizens
- support the Planning Board
- seek and secure grants to support planning related activities
The job description also for the first time lays out a reporting structure for the new position, saying that the planner will work “under the policy direction” of the Planning Board but with “the administrative day-to-day aspects of the position being supervised by the Town Administrator.”
In addition, according to the job description, the planner would supervise “other part-time/full-time employees serving the land-use boards.”
Prior to the vote to approve the job description, board member Tim Schmoyer worried that there was overlap between planner responsibilities and the current land-use position held by Allard. The town may “question” why we are “paying two people with a lot of overlap.”
“I see [Allard] as continuing what she has been doing, which is the nitty-gritty, day-in and day-out of our business,” responded chairman Peter Brooks.
“I’m a biologist, not a planner,” said Allard.
