Llodra: Two Key Reports Outline Potential For Efficiencies

By John Voket

First Selectman Pat Llodra received two important and long-awaited reports this week. The first was the final report from the school district’s ad-hoc Facilities Review Committee, which was presented to selectmen by ad-hoc committee and Board of Education member Richard Gaines April 2.

The second was the final draft of a report from Blum Shapiro, a regional consulting firm, that sought to identify possible areas where the municipal government and school district could merge functions to create greater efficiencies.

In an interview April 4, Mrs Llodra told The Bee that the Blum Shapiro report was borne from a memo to her and Superintendent Janet Robinson from Legislative Council Chairman Jeff Capeci, charging the officials on behalf of the council with looking at how integrating or consolidating certain services could benefit the town through lower costs and greater effectiveness.

Mrs Llodra said the process of refining this report into something the town could implement has been lengthy. And she said the final version bears little resemblance to the first draft, which came to her with what she described as “much stronger and faster recommendations for change.”

“The original report focused much more on the financial [consolidation] piece, and strongly called for a fast change in the [school and town] merger of financial management,” Mrs Llodra said. “It was pretty upsetting to those who thought the systems currently in place were working well, and there was no benefit to change.”

Mrs Llodra said that while there were no “all bets are off” ultimatums after presenting the first draft of the consultant’s report, she and Finance Director Robert Tait, who was reviewing the report along with school district Business Manager Ron Bienkowski, sensed a conflict growing from “anxiety” about the initial recommendations.

So over a period of months and many meetings, Mrs Llodra said the officials crafted ideas, identified hierarchies, and set priorities as to “not bite off more than we could chew.”

Merging HR Software

The first changes Mrs Llodra believes can be implemented is the town’s acquisition of the same software platform used by the school district’s human resources department.

“The district has human resources software that is integrated with personnel and payroll records. We’d like to have that as part of the town-side IT backbone,” Mrs Llodra said. “If we are able to load that system we could start imputing data and link the systems to start informing our financial practices.”

Mrs Llodra said she believed it was important from both a functional as well as a diplomatic point of view for the town to take the first steps to “show we are willing, and can change what we do.”

She said while the latest draft of the consultant report contains a lot of compromise, “it’s something the four of us can embrace.”

“It’s a bit of the tail wagging the dog, but without compromise there is no dog,” Mrs Llodra said. She said the district is under no mandate, and is not required to accommodate any of the suggested efficiencies outlined by the Blum Shapiro consultants.

She also said that while each side has strong feelings about sticking with its operational management software, the first selectman would like to see an honest examination of whether there is another, different type of system that both the town and school district might consider sharing.

“We’re willing to take a look at any options,” she said. “Let’s maybe put something new on the table. And if we can agree on it, that would be a significant achievement.”

In terms of the district’s ad-hoc facilities review report, Mrs Llodra said that she expected her board might have more questions after Selectmen James Gaston and Will Rodgers had some time to review the details.

Threshold Trigger

The first selectman said one thing that stuck out for her was the threshold that was set to trigger the school district to begin a process of closing an elementary school. She said the report delineated a total K through fourth grade population of 1,500 or below.

“I think we can look a little more closely at that number,” Mrs Llodra said. “We know this threshold was derived from the required number of classrooms for this number of students, but it doesn’t take into account where the population of K though fourth graders are in town.”

In regard to identifying the Reed Intermediate School as the facility most likely to be targeted to close, Mrs Llodra said that in that eventuality, it is important to determine whether or not the town will be responsible to the state for possibly reimbursing some of the cost of the state construction grant.

In most cases, the district must commit to keeping facilities open for full or at least partial school use for a defined period of time as a condition of receiving state school construction funds.

“I raised that question during discussions about the middle school roof, but I don’t know if anyone considered that in this report, and how we might mitigate any financial impact of a decision to repurpose the Reed School,” Mrs Llodra said.

The first selectman said if the town was committed to repurposing that facility for nonschool use, she hoped to examine how it might serve as a community center, a new police headquarters, a Senior Center, or some combination of the three.

The Board of Selectmen is expected to seat a townwide Facilities Review Committee by summertime, which will incorporate the district’s data while looking at the rest of the town’s public facilities that could be targeted for closure or repurposing to effect cost savings.