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On Monday, September 16, the Sudbury Finance Committee discussed the financial aspects of a number of initiatives around Sudbury. Those include the schools HVAC project and recent conversations among the Sudbury Public Schools School Committee about possibly voting to terminate the memorandum of agreement (MOA) that established a Combined Facilities Department shared between the Town of Sudbury and Sudbury Public Schools (SPS).
With regard to the schools HVAC project, Co-Chair Mike Joachim expressed a desire to learn more about why the project didn’t get started sooner to avoid possible cost increases, and a desire to further understand where the additional funds came from to keep the project moving forward. Joachim echoed the desire of the Sudbury Select Board to get a full accounting of the sources of funds.
Regarding the combined facilities MOA, Committee members Ryan Lynch and Hank Sorett expressed some concern about the rationale SPS administrators put forward to justify termination of the MOA and hiring their own full-time facilities director. Lynch stated:
“My own opinion, for what it’s worth, I guess I’m struggling to understand whether this is a mismanagement problem because they have half an FTE from [the Facilities Director], half an FTE from her assistant and then [two thirds] of an FTE for the electrician. And so I look at that as saying, strictly by the numbers you actually have contractually more than one resource dedicated to serving the needs of SPS. And so to me it doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense that bringing in one dedicated facilities director necessarily meets even the needs of SPS if you don’t have an assistant and you don’t have an electrician that you currently have in the current contract. So to me that’s still certainly an open question from my perspective.”
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Members discussed that the facilities department staff may have been focused on finishing the construction of the Fairbank Community Center, but that bandwidth could free up as construction comes to a close and be directed at upcoming school building projects, including new roofs.
Member Eric Poch called for understanding the root cause of this discussion and appeared to allude to SPS claims that they aren’t getting what they are paying for in the MOA. The SPS Business and Finance Director, Don Sawyer, has previously claimed that SPS doesn’t utilize the Town electrician and instead outsources electrical work to a contractor while paying for two-thirds of the Town electrician’s salary. Regarding the overall performance of the MOA he claimed: “So we’re left with someone who works 20 hours a week for $170K.”
On Monday, Poch stated:
“I think I’d want to understand root cause here, of the discussion. So the position is a 50/50 position between SPS and Town. So what was the allocation of level of effort across the two cost centers, and if it wasn’t 50/50 it would seem that the allocation was over-allocated to Fairbank, the fire station, something else, then A) why did that happen, B) when does SPS get their fair share; because we’ve seen the 5-year capital plan and those things have been in there all along, so we need to ensure that all the assets for the town are being adequately addressed.”
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An analysis of hours allocated to the Town and SPS may be quite complicated. As SPS School Committee member Mary Stephens pointed out when the SPS School Committee discussed the topic, the new SPS central offices are inside the new community center. It’s unclear how one would retroactively and accurately parse the hours the facilities department spent on the community center according to the three primary user groups in the building (Park and Recreation, Senior Center, and SPS), then add the SPS community center hours together with any and all hours spent on all the other SPS facilities.
While the hours allocation from the department is not currently known, one thing is clear: the expenses of the Town of Sudbury and Sudbury Public Schools are deeply intertwined beyond just the Town funding the SPS budget.
The Town cost center is paying 100 percent of the debt for the new community center, including the new SPS offices. Historically, the Town covered many of the operating expenses for the SPS space. According to a 2020 question-and-answer document from Superintendent Brad Crozier, the Town of Sudbury covered most of the maintenance of the SPS wing and all utilities through the Facilities Department budget, all of the insurance for the building, as well as all exterior maintenance and snow removal by the Department of Public Works. The schools covered janitorial services in their own budget.
More recently the Select Board allocated $100,000 in American Rescue Plan Act funds to get an urgent HVAC project fully funded, and the Town of Sudbury pays annually for the benefits of SPS employees. According to the Fiscal Year 2025 budget:
“The sum of $16,487,414 is budgeted for employee benefits for both the Town and the Sudbury Public Schools. Town Departments account for $7,144,239 and SPS accounts for $9,343,175. This includes not only health insurance, but also pension costs, unemployment and other contributions. This number is increasing $756,597 or 4.81% from the FY24 appropriated amount. The Town has strived to keep employee benefit costs stable by joining the Group Insurance Commission and increasing contribution rates.”
FY25 Budget — Page 33
Member Hank Sorett voiced a desire for the parties to explore the idea of an independent project manager that could be engaged by SPS or the Town on an as-needed basis during periods of peak demand, rather than adding more staff positions complete with the expense of benefits:
“But if Andy thinks [the facilities director] is the right person, then how do we take the resources we’ve got and make them fit? And if we have any particular demands for short-term increase, let’s figure out the best way to accomplish that short-term increase without increasing the Town’s bureaucratic overhead.”
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Ultimately, the members seemed to agree that discussion about organizational structure and staffing are not within their purview, though there appeared to be an implied consensus that a combined approach to the facilities department was inherently more efficient. The committee resolved to keep an eye on the situation, leave it to the appropriate parties to develop supporting data or any proposals for changes, and then weigh in on any financial ramifications at that point.
