Knowing the Code
Amesbury News. Friday, August 26, 2005

In Amesbury, the Town Charter outlines the general organization of Town government. The Charter divides the government into two branches, executive and legislative, and provides some specific requirements for Town officials as well as some specific citizens’ rights

.The Charter requires the Mayor, as Chief Executive, to implement and enforce all the laws of the Town. The Mayor appoints all department heads, and members of many boards and commissions. The Mayor is ultimately responsible for the day-to-day administration of almost all Town business.

Before the 1996 Charter change, the executive powers were split between a five-member Board of Selectmen and a professional Town Manager. This overlap in responsibilities created confusion about who was accountable for what, and it allowed many things to fall through the cracks.

The Charter Commission expected the new Charter to correct that problem of “fuzzy” job responsibilities – not just at the top, but throughout the executive branch. The Charter required the new Mayor to submit an “executive reorganization plan” within 18 months of taking office, and also to create a personnel management system that would regularly assess Town employees’ performance.

Neither of these things has been done, in the nine years since the new Charter was adopted. The Town continues to operate with almost exactly the same organizational structure for departments, boards and committees; with unwritten or outdated employee job descriptions; and with no way of clearly measuring each employee’s performance. Personnel issues are still handled according to a Personnel Bylaw that was adopted by Town Meeting, back in the era of typewriters and carbon paper, and long before the Americans with Disabilities Act.

One thing that has changed, in the past nine years, is size of the annual budget. The annual budget has almost doubled in that time, with the Town planning to spend about $48.5 million this fiscal year.

Municipal government is not a business, and it cannot be managed exactly like a business. But sometimes it can be helpful to look at government operations from the business perspective, and this is one of those times. How could a $48.5 million corporation operate without a clear, written management structure? Would any corporation go nine years without reevaluating how it does business, and what improvements could be made? What company would spend tens of millions of dollars on its employees, without having some method of formally evaluating their job performance?

Even the Town of Barre – which has a population of only 5,113 and a budget of less than $9 million – has a personnel administration system with formal job descriptions, pay grades according to job classifications, measurable performance standards, regular employee evaluations, and promotions and layoffs according to merit.

Why doesn’t Amesbury?

It would not be hard to adopt an administrative code; Amesbury would not have to recreate the wheel. Dozens of Massachusetts municipalities have their administrative codes easily available on-line, to use as examples.

And there is already a draft administrative code, written for Amesbury, which was never formally considered or adopted. The draft code describes the duties and functions of all Town departments and agencies. It details the methods for administering those agencies, including personnel procedures to encourage the effective delivery of services. If adopted, it would replace all the unwritten “understandings” at Town Hall, about who is responsible for what and how things are usually supposed to work.

How can we expect our Town employees to do their jobs, if they do not have up-to-date, realistic job descriptions? Without regular reviews, how can they improve their work – or find out that they are already doing a great job? Without performance standards, how can an employee’s hard work be predictably rewarded with either a pay increase or a promotion?

Without an organizational structure, defining each department’s role and responsibilities, how can the Town begin to implement all the different pieces of the Master Plan? How can ordinary citizens figure out who to call at Town Hall about their particular problem? How can the Mayor and Council set priorities, at budget time, without any way to measure the performance of each department? How can any of us know what our tax dollars are buying?

This is another area that cries out for transparency in government. The public deserves to know what department is responsible for which services, what each department’s performance goals are, and what each department’s service record is. The public should know what the Town’s personnel policies are, and what the pay scales are. The public should be able to look at a job-classification schedule and be reassured that the Town does not discriminate in its employment. And all this information should be easily accessible, on the Town’s website. It should not be something that only the long-term “insiders” at Town Hall can figure out.

The plain facts are these: Amesbury has about 900 employees and a budget of $48.5 million. We adopted a new Charter nine years ago, because even then, the old way of doing things wasn’t working. It is time to stop running Town Hall “the way it has always been”. It is time to adopt a formal administrative code, to bring professionalism and accountability not just to the top executive, but to the entire executive branch of Amesbury’s government.