L-R Marge Levesque, Jim Seveney, Keith Hamilton, Jeff Plumb, Bob Driscoll, Susan Lusi (back to camera, Richard Carpender)

The Portsmouth Consolidation committee, created by the Town Council in June, met for this first time this evening to begin looking at ways to achieve efficiencies and combine services across the town and school department. Among the next steps agreed to in the hour-long session were inviting ADP to conduct a review of the school payroll process, a look at all service contracts (trash, plowing, etc.), and talks between staff in areas of overlap such as facilities, public works, and IT.

The chair, Town Councilor Keith Hamilton, said he was happy with the session. "I just want an open dialogue," said Hamilton, adding that the goal was an end to "us against them" between the town and schools.

In addition to Hamilton, the committee includes Councilors Jeff Plumb and Jim Seveney, School Committee members Richard Carpender and Marge Levesque, Town Administrator Bob Driscoll, and Superintendent Susan Lusi. Council President Peter McIntyre sat in but did not participate.

Also attending the meeting was Town Finance Director David Faucher, who fielded questions about his capacity to take on some of the workload of departing schools finance person Christine Tague, leaving at the end of the month. Several saw Tague's departure as an opportunity to explore a restructuring of responsibilities. One example proposal was separate business managers for school and town both reporting in to Faucher.

Suggesting that the committee try to do at least a few weeks of analysis before filling the position, Hamilton said, "It's a lot more gutwrenching to come to the conclusion that we don't need that position and lay somebody off."

Supt. Lusi offered a cautious response. "It would be easy to walk away from this meeting and say the school department is defensive and doesn't want to let anyone go. I agree we should review it all," but, she cautioned, "I have not seen anything of this magnitude accomplished in 4-5 weeks."

Councilor Jim Seveney reminded the group of the importance of proceeding methodically. "I recommend we establish a structure for how we're going to choose and analyze each thing." He also voiced the importance of formal Requests for Proposal (RFPs) and a transparent procurement process.

While acknowledging the need to manage the process by the book, Plumb also reminded the group that it was important not to "come up with reasons not to do things."

Another area of interest was IT, where the town is generally felt to be lagging behind the schools, but both Seveney and Hamilton wondered about the possibility for outsourcing. "IT isn't a core competency," said Seveney. Said Hamilton,"We have an outfit up the street that does outsourcing up and down the Island."

Lusi urged the committee to prioritize. "I do want to know how people want me and the department to be spending our time. IT has come light years, and to reward the people the Berkshire Report have said are [performing well] and understaffed with an RFP to outsource them would not be my managerial choice," said Lusi. "Let's not take potshots at everything. Berkshire says our IT is good."

Moving the meeting along — and almost making good on his promise to get the group out in an hour — Hamilton wrapped up by reviewing the next steps. "Is there a bombshell in here that we're suddenly going to save $500K? No. But if we can save $1K here, $500 there, we can save the town some money." And before considering any of the larger regionalization questions proposed by the RIPEC study, said Hamilton, "We need to get our house in order first."

Next meeting, August 31.

Disclosure and commentary: As a volunteer member of the school Information Technology committee, I just don't see the opportunities for wholesale outsourcing. What I have seen is a very lean, well-focused group. It is one thing to outsource break/fix in a business where computers are tools, or service contracts for administrative systems. But in a knowledge enterprise, like education, where the IT must be strongly aligned with business goals, you need an (admittedly thin) layer of domain-specific experts and architects who know how to enact the culture of the organization with digital tools, and outside IT guys and gals just don't have those chops. You can outsource a server, but not the expertise to determine what collaboration tools to put on it to execute the strategic plan. That's a personal opinion, but it is informed by 25 years as an IT professional in both education and private sector gigs.

In the last two years, we have finally gotten our elementaries out of the 1980s, implemented a slew of new systems, and have an aggressive tech plan for moving forward. Not a strong argument for radical change.