Regionalization Could Boost Services

By Aaron Pikcilingis and Paul Rickter

Providing high-quality town services amid budgetary constraints requires us to use every strategy at our disposal. The Structural Change Impact Group (SCIG) was charged with evaluating potential strategies that could reduce costs, improve efficiency, or improve the quality of service for our town. Of the strategies we evaluated, regionalizing town services is one of the most promising. Belmont already participates in several regional arrangements, but the SCIG identified new opportunities for consideration.  

Benefits of Regionalized Town Services

Reduced costs 

Regionalized municipalities can benefit from group purchasing because individually, smaller municipalities don’t buy enough material to negotiate lower prices. Belmont participates in multiple regional purchasing consortiums, including consortiums for fuel for town vehicles coordinated by the town of Brookline and road salt coordinated by the city of Newton. We also participate in a program of household hazardous waste collection that is coordinated by the town of Lexington and purchase heavy equipment such as fire department vehicles through a program run by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council.  

Service gaps addressed 

Smaller communities like Belmont are often faced with a dilemma when it comes to staffing for specific services. Our level of need doesn’t justify a full-time hire, but it’s difficult to attract and retain talent for part-time positions, and outsourcing some functions can result in inconsistent service. It is sometimes possible to solve this dilemma by sharing a staff position with another municipality. For example, Belmont currently shares a nursing position with Lexington. In the recent past, Belmont shared two gas and electrical inspectors with Watertown. This agreement allowed Watertown to add capacity to their busy inspection services and allowed Belmont to meet our demand for those services without hiring full-time staff ourselves. Due to Watertown’s ongoing building boom, they opted not to renew this agreement, and it dissolved in April 2022.

Improved services 

The LABBB Collaborative regionalized special education program has resulted in improved services. Working together across communities, each school district in the five-member LABBB Collaborative can provide specialized services for specific groups of students, something that simply wouldn’t be possible within a smaller district like Belmont. This specialization allows member districts to provide focused resources for groups such as students with autism spectrum disorders in one location to better meet those students’ needs. Belmont participates in other regional efforts that result in improved service including the Minuteman Library Network, NEMLEC, mutual aid for public safety, MAPC, and more.

Regionalization opportunities

The SCIG gathered and evaluated many suggestions to regionalize specific functions, but also undertook a broader review of regionalization as a potential mechanism to reduce costs and improve quality for any function of the town. At a high level, the town needs to:

Identify which functions we want to regionalize. Evaluating services and functions for regionalization is partly about assessing whether collaboration would result in cost savings or quality improvement while aligning with long-term town goals. We need to take steps to align our internal efforts so that we are ready to form long-term regional agreements with our neighbors when opportunities arise. 

To be ready to regionalize, we should start by updating our Comprehensive Master Plan to ensure the updated Plan reflects the needs and goals of our residents. This approach will also help address a common challenge to regionalization: resisting change.

We also should continually evaluate whether the things we do are appropriate for potential regionalization. A key recommendation from the SCIG is to design and implement a process for this type of assessment at decision points such as contract renewals and staffing changes for any town function.

Identify partner communities. Once we have a sense of the functions we want to regionalize and are ready to act, we still need to find partners whose needs and goals align with ours. This alignment includes not only the sharing of a given service, but also the scale, timing in hires and contract dates, and other considerations. 

It’s difficult to know what resources other communities have, what resources they need, and their willingness to act. We might want to join regular meetings among town administrators and managers of neighboring communities and include a standing agenda item to discuss regionalization. This type of proactive approach should greatly improve our ability to pursue regionalization agreements, and would allow us to learn about new areas to regionalize.

Opportunities to Regionalize

We should seek new partners whose inspectional service needs are similar to ours to regionalize gas and electrical inspections. Our agreement with Watertown was successful for years before Watertown’s needs changed, so it stands to reason that finding a new partner for a similar agreement would likely work as well. 

Regionalized purchasing has consistently helped reduce costs. For other items we purchase as an individual town, we should assess whether we could save money by purchasing them as part of a purchasing group, and if we can either join or form one. 

There are sound arguments both for and against regional 911 dispatches. Regionalizing the service warrants further exploration because there are many established and new regional dispatch hubs throughout Massachusetts. We have learned that our advanced life support services may be in demand from surrounding communities that have been disappointed in their current contracted service providers. We should continue conversations with those communities and explore a regionalization agreement.

Belmont and Watertown held discussions about regionalizing our solid waste contracts in the early 2010s. A key reason we didn’t enter a regional agreement was Belmont’s insistence on a four-day weekly pickup schedule, which avoids the need for occasional Saturday pickups but carries additional costs Watertown was not willing to bear. 

As our current contract nears its end, we should seriously consider moving to five-day pickup and restart discussions with Watertown about entering into a new solid waste and recycling contract. The SCIG referred this information to Belmont’s Solid Waste and Recycling Committee, a temporary committee charged with assisting the town in procuring a new collection contract and considering possible enhancements in recycling efforts. 

We can find ways to improve efficiency by collaborating with other communities. We are already doing that in several areas, but the challenge of regionalization is that it’s not always easy to identify areas where we can collaborate and we need partner communities who are willing to work with us. We and our partner communities must be willing to consider changing the ways we deliver services. The potential advantages of regionalization, in lower costs and more efficient, potentially higher-quality service, make this an approach that town leaders and residents should be open to embracing.

Aaron Pikcilingis and Paul Rickter served on the Structural Change Impact Group (SCIG) and are both Town Meeting members. Paul Rickter is a member of the Warrant Committee and Aaron Pickilingis is a member of the Vision 21 Implementation Committee.