1974-Annual Report - Laserfiche WebLink

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The Town Manager Touches on A concept of public service; a new personnel program; effect of inflation; an almost -level tax rate; mandated state requirements; the need for comprehensive long term planning. Walter C. O'Connell Town Manager MY CONCEPT OF PUBLIC SERVICE is that it is an individual service rendered by individual employees to individual citizens. It is a service dependent upon the right thing being done at the right time by the right person in the right way. This philosophy is behind our effort to improve the effectiveness of our town gov- ernment operations. It is dependent upon having well- trained, highly motivated employees who are fairly and adequately paid. We are now underway with a project being conducted by Arthur D. Little Company to re- PERSONNEL view and update the plans with which the value of each employee's PROGRAM position and the appropriate compensation range are established. This updating will insure equitable pay for each employee based upon his measured performance, while also providing the taxpayer with fair value in services rendered. Improving the effectiveness of each employee continues as one of our high priority goals. We are proceeding on a program for installing a complete modern personnel system in general government and we are moving rapidly toward staffing an authorized additional position in personnel administration which will strengthen the administrative organization considerably. We are fortunate to have the ser- vices of Mr. W. Neil Chapman a Lexington resident, a recently retired industrial executive with extensive management experience in the personnel field to guide and assist us in development and installation of our personnel systems improvements. 1974 operations have been dominated by the effort of town management to con- tinue to provide quality services with the available funds while confronted with galloping inflation which is having a devastating effect. The impact is a series of multiple blows which are, in total, escalating costs at a rate which causes alarm. Materials and services costs are spiraling rapidly. For example, the cost of street lighting has skyrocketed from $100,000 per year in 1971 to $165,000 cur- rently, and we estimate over $200,000 per year in 1975. Getting competitive bids on certain materials is frequently impossible. GALLOPING The unavailability of certain materials is forcing the use of more expensive substitutes. During the recent budget year, it INFLATION was necessary to draw on the reserve fund for $95,629.22 to meet unanticipated increases in costs, primarily for fuels and util- ities. Our pledge to the citizens is that we will continue the all out effort to maintain an adequate level of services with the optimum use of the available re- sources. Despite those pressures increasing local government costs, we take pride along with many others in the fact that Lexington's tax rate will have risen only 11% over the past five years. Local governments continue to experience the need for increasing organization to provide new services mandated by acts of the legislature or by the transfer of functions previously performed at the state level and at state expense, down to 9