From: George King
Sent: Sunday, November 29, 2020 7:45 PM
To: George King
Subject: Constituent Update

Greetings!

I hope you had a great Thanksgiving weekend given all the circumstances.  It has been too long between newsletters.  I have no good excuse for my tardiness, as there has been plenty going on.  Well, maybe that is the best excuse I have! As always if you choose to not receive my newsletters please let me know.  If you know someone who would like to, then also please let me know.

COVID

How can one write about happenings, without writing about Covid.  It is a sad reality that it is dominating our lives for now.

I have seen a lot of discussion about the city’s response to Covid.  At the outset, I must say I believe the Mayor and the Health Director and others have dedicated a lot of their time and effort into this matter over the last eight months.

There is no question that Framingham specific actions are not going to have a huge impact on a worldwide pandemic.  But we have been one of the harder hit communities in Massachusetts so what we do locally and how we do it is not unimportant. 

What can we do?  I think there are areas we can improve our approach further.  Among them:

Communication.  The communication from the City has been very structured.  Usually in the form of a press release.  The Mayor has held several Zoom-based “community hours”, but they are very orchestrated.  If you join, the controls are set so you cannot see who else is there or what the questions are. It is all host controlled. More authentic, fact-based communications would be helpful.  Anecdotes of how it is spreading in Framingham, what the common denominators are (and aren’t) offers both caution and reassurance.  The basic numbers, stated in a press release, are starting to border on terrifying.  I prefer they be educating. 

Testing. We are lucky to have the State providing us with free testing sites.  The major site, currently at TJX, is difficult to access due to the sheer demand.  We need to make the use of the site more convenient and more efficient.   We must consider online sign-ups for appointment times that would limit traffic at specific times and also maybe limit the wait for people.  Perhaps consider giving certain people preference at certain times is another possibility.  This is a logistics problem that needs a little thought, but it is not a complex scientific equation.   The city has been too hands off on this critical service, leaving people very frustrated, when solutions are pretty accessible.

Enforcement.  The Framingham Health Department has made many Covid based regulations, but their enforcement, though improving, has been less than desired.  It is not only the Health Department that bears the burden, the Police and others do too.  However, I do question the wisdom of having health inspectors continuing to work at home, as opposed to being in the field, during the pandemic.  Also, it can be hard to reach this vital office by phone. The problem with minimal enforcement is that the very vast majority of us are rule followers.  The very few that are not, have little accountability. and put us who conform at risk.

The Mayor has said many times there is “no playbook for a pandemic.”  She is of course correct.  I think the best approach is to use the same solid managerial and leadership techniques that organizations use during any crisis.  If we do that I am confident we can make some impacts that are positive as we endure another challenging period with this virus.

Budget

We put the final touches on the FY 21 Budget this fall.  This budget is larger than I would prefer once again.  My main concern is that we continue to ignore efficiency measures.  One promise of being a city was that an elected chief executive would have a great deal of opportunity to create the kind of efficiencies that have been hard to achieve in the past.  

As someone who spent over two decades building public sector budgets as an administrator, I know there are always places you can find efficiencies.  Framingham has gone years without having to even look for savings because of the strong revenue we have seen for the better part of a decade.  This makes the budget ripe for close scrutiny.  But we do not do it.

Where can efficiencies be found? Almost everywhere.  For example, multiple departments have “social media or public information” positions.  Why not have one centrally staffed department, with a couple of employees.   Many departments have their own budget analysts, again why not one department?  Why continue to have two HR departments and two facility departments?  Why do we have four motor vehicle repair departments?  There may be reasons for some of these things, but the point is, the time has come to review and streamline the services.

I am proud to identify one thing the city council deserves credit for since we became a city, which is controlling the tax rate a bit.   I know it may not seem under control.  But the facts are compelling. We have passed three budgets as a city.  The first budget the Mayor proposed a 2.2% increase in the Existing Tax Levy.  When the city council finished voting that budget, the base tax levy saw a .3% decrease.  The second budget had the mayor requesting a 2.5% increase, with the final council vote being about a .6% increase.   This was frustrating because it easily could have been zero.   The mayor proposed the third budget as a 0% increase (due to the pandemic.)  We have just finished it,  but I believe it ends up  being about a 2% existing tax levy decrease.  This means that over the three years, the Mayor proposed to have the existing tax levy go up 4.7%, and through city council intervention it went down about 1.7%.   This is a 6.4% delta.   

If the Mayor’s proposals had been approved each year, the average single-family tax bill would be about $215 more than it is right now.  I know it is somewhat theoretical, still does not feel great or affordable for many, but it would have been worse if the Mayor’s budgets were approved as proposed.  When we were a Town, the budget was almost always approved very close to what was proposed.   As a city councilor I have been frustrated in many areas as to our impact, but in this one area it is clear, a smaller more focused legislative branch has made a difference. 

These reductions happened without any significant cuts in city services.  Imagine what we can do with a little ingenuity as to how we deliver services.   I believe we have to continue to push that approach because a couple years of the Covid lag in our budget could be quite difficult.

Police Chief 

The Mayor appointed Deputy Chief Lester Baker as the new Chief and the City Council approved.  Lester was hired as a patrolman when I was Town Manager almost 20 years ago.  He came to us at that time highly recommended from his previous department and has lived up to the expectations and more.  I do not know him well, but from everything I have seen he is an independent thinking, intelligent police professional.   I believe good things will happen with the Framingham Police under Lester Baker.

City Council Matters

I will admit that my first year as Chairman of the City Council has been a frustrating one.   We have been forced into virtual meetings since the start of the pandemic.  Given we were newly elected last winter, it is hard to become a cohesive body when we have only been together in person five or six times.   As our Covid numbers climb again, the prospects of meeting in person is months away it would seem.

We are also now less than one year away from our second Mayoral election.  I like Mayor Spicer personally and I think we have a pretty good relationship given the fact our views and philosophies as to operating a government are quite different.  However, I think the Mayor has not taken advantage of the opportunities given her as the first popularly elected Mayor who took office with a significant electoral mandate.   She has brought recognition to our community through many of her activities and public events, but she has failed to pay nearly enough attention to the administration of our government.  What I thought would be a wave of change has only been a caretaker administration, with no major changes in the approach or the output.  I often have the impression that she and the Chief Operating Officer are overwhelmed by the daily responsibility of running the government, leaving no room for innovation or ingenuity.

I always ask for feedback in this newsletter, but I am particularly interested in feedback in this area.   Where have we been successful and where do we need change?  Do you think new leadership is a prerequisite to moving beyond the morass our municipal organization has found itself in?

I will write sooner than later next time.  Please feel free to email or call me at any time, for any issues that are of concern.

George