Bangor - Brewer

CITIZEN ADVISORY COMMITTEE

REPORT OF FINDINGS
And
RECOMMENDATIONS

November 3, 2010
OVERVIEW:

Establishment –

In February of 2010, the Councils of the Cities of Bangor and Brewer,

Maine each passed an order establishing a “Citizen Advisory Committee”. The
order for both cities read:

ORDERED, THAT there is established a Special Committee to be known as the

Citizen Advisory Committee for the purpose of recommending to the City
Council of Bangor and the City Council of Brewer ways that both cities can work
together to achieve savings and efficiencies in the operation and services provided
by each through mutual cooperation:

BE IT FURTHER ORDERED, THAT said Citizen Advisory Committee shall

consist of five members appointed by the Bangor City Council and five members
appointed by the Brewer City Council. The City Managers and Finance Directors
of Brewer and Bangor shall serve as ex-officio, non-voting, members of the
Committee. The Committee shall periodically report its recommendations to the
Brewer and Bangor City Councils as those recommendations are developed. The
Citizen Advisory shall complete its work within approximately eighteen months
of its establishment but by no later than September 15, 2011.

With that order being passed the Councils of both Bangor and Brewer
appointed their five (5) representatives:

BANGOR BREWER

Robert T. Carlson Joseph Cote

Thomas Johnston Gail Kelly
William Lucy James Mullen
Evelyn Silver Beverly Uhlenhake
John Simpson – Co-Chair Lester Young – Co-Chair

The City Managers and Finance Directors of Brewer and Bangor, Stephen
Bost/Karen Fussell, and Robert Farrar/Debbie Cyr respectively served in the ex-
officio capacity without vote.

1
Process –

The Citizens Advisory Committee (referred to in this document as the

CAC) met on February 24, 2010 for its organizational meeting and elected
from its membership John Simpson and Lester Young as Co-Chairs. It
further decided to engage in a process to ask department heads of both
cities to present the CAC with:

 An overview of the scope of their responsibilities

 Budgetary Data and Information
 Staffing Data
 Areas of Current Collaboration
 Challenges
 Recommendations for Areas of Cost Savings
 Any Other Relevant Information

The CAC held seven monthly meetings for the purpose of reviewing
specific departments from both an operational and fiscal perspective. CAC
members agreed to examine those departments having major impact on city
budgets in terms of staffing and/or costs as well as those units that showed
particular promise for enhanced collaboration. CAC members, however, quickly
agreed that school budgets and operations would not be examined. The two city
school committees had not been part of the process setting up the joint CAC and
we also recognized that the State had recently required consolidation discussions.

The summary of the meetings and issues are:

March 9---The City Managers presented and described each city's

organizational chart pointing out similarities and differences including staffing
size, budgets and operational issues. The comparative geographic sizes and
populations were pointed out. Bangor encompasses 34 sq. miles with a population
of approximately 31,000 while Brewer covers15 sq. miles with a population of
about 9100.Comparative budgets are a reflection of the relative size of the two
cities with Bangor's costs being significantly impacted by its being a service
center providing federal, state and county functions along with significant
healthcare and public services for the region. As a result, Bangor’s daytime
population increases to roughly 100,000 people. CAC members decided to invite
individual department heads to monthly meetings to report in detail on their
respective operations. During the review process it was clear that there was a
substantial difference in the number of full time staff for the area of General
Assistance between the two cities. Brewer has one full time equivalent and
Bangor has almost 40. Upon initial review based only on population figures of
both cities it would seem that there ought to be more parity…however, it became
clear that Bangor is the service center and that when folk are in need of general
assistance and/or housing that they gravitate to Bangor’s resources.

2
April 6----Guest presenters were from Brewer: Frank Higgins, City
Engineer; Rodney Butler, Code Enforcement; Linda Johns, City Planning.
From Bangor: Jim Ring, City Engineer; Dan Wellington, Code
Enforcement; David Gould, City Planning.
Each municipality has adopted its own, unique land use plans and
ordinances that reflects the shared values of its residents. Thus,
enforcement, permits and board processes are different. During the
presentations areas of past and current cooperative ventures were pointed
out such as use of Bangor's code enforcement services during a Brewer
vacancy and using Bangor's licensed traffic light technician to service
Brewer's lights.

May 4-----Department presentations were made by the following: Howard

Kroll, City Clerk, Brewer; Patti Dubois, City Clerk, Bangor; Mary Lynne
Hunter, Brewer Assessor; Ben Birch, Bangor Assessor; Jody Dearborn,
Brewer City Attorney; Norm Heitmann, Bangor City Solicitor
These reports focused on the scope of work for each department. This
information reinforced differences between the cities in terms of the scope
of municipal functions. Bangor oversees apartments, a racetrack and state
fair, an auditorium and civic center, a 27 hole golf course, an airport and
military joint agreements all of which set different levels of service and
magnify the amount of work handled by City employees.

June 1----The Police Departments of the cities were represented by Chief

Perry Antone, Brewer, and Ron Gastia, Bangor. The Brewer Police
department is staffed with 20 sworn officers. This number has been
relatively constant over the past 25 years. The Bangor Police Dept. has 83
sworn officers and 24 support people which includes 10 dispatch
positions.
It was pointed out by both chiefs that the two departments have a long
history of working together in terms of backup. Bangor also shares
specialties when needed such as bomb squad, SRT, hostage negotiation,
and accident reconstruction. Overtime expense was discussed with Bangor
spending about $800,000 and Brewer spending about $70,000 per year.
Bangor police receive 32,000 calls per year; Brewer police receive 7800
calls per year.

July 6----Dana Wardwell, Bangor Public Works Director,

summarized his department which is composed of 70 employees with an
annual budget of about $5.5 million. Dave Cote, Brewer Public Works
Director, described Brewer's operation. Brewer has 19 employees with an
annual budget of $1.8 million. Bangor maintains 160 miles of roads while
Brewer maintains 61 miles of roads.

3
 Aug.3-----The 1996 Regional Fire & Emergency Rescue Plan was
discussed among CAC members and with the Fire Department Chiefs,
Gary Parent and Jeff Cammack from Brewer and Bangor respectively.
Chief Parent reported that Brewer has 19 full time firefighters and 11 part
time people. Chief Cammack reported that Bangor has four twenty-two
person crews and five support staff for a total of 93 full-time employees.
Ambulance service has become a major part of both Cities’ operations and
has become a strong revenue source. However, Brewer has a different
funding source for some of its ambulance service that would be difficult to
align together. The Departments support each other through mutual aide
agreements that are called upon with some frequency.

Sept. 7---This meeting was devoted to a general discussion of next steps.

Members agreed that the highest potential for cost savings for both cities
could be found within the public safety and public works areas. Although
collaboration already exists, significant cost savings could come from
consolidation of one or more functions or units. CAC members believe
that the elected officials and the administrative staff must determine if
there is interest in pursuing steps beyond voluntary collaboration to
achieve these costs savings. The CAC members agreed that such
decisions need to wait for Bangor’s new City Manager and possible result
of Bangor’s recent decision to hire a consultant to examine cost efficiency
in the area of public safety. Therefore the CAC decided to wrap up its
work and submit its report prior to the New Year. A subcommittee
composed of Bill Lucy, Evelyn Silver, Bob Carlson, Jim Mullen and
Lester Young were appointed to draft the final report.

Considerations:

1. Timing – Inasmuch as the City of Bangor is going through a

transition as it seeks to engage a new City Manager and without
the input of that person with respect to potential recommendations
it seems prudent to acknowledge that perhaps the appointment of a
Citizen Advisory Committee while well intentioned may have been
a bit premature.
2. Direction – During the work of the CAC there were numerous side
bar discussions regarding the intended specific direction that was
sought by the governing bodies of both cities. It was clear that
other than the charge in the order creating the CAC that there was
disparity around that issue. During several meetings there were
councilors present and they indicated that there was not unanimity
with respect to direction. This is not intended as a
criticism…however, it might be helpful to highlight this
question…so that as both Councils proceed it might be more

4
 helpful to clearly outline a specific scope of work for future
deliberations.
3. Collaboration – It was clear that within the constraints of legal
limitations both cities were indeed collaborating at the operational
level up to and including the sharing of professional journals to
reduce or eliminate the need for purchasing duplicative materials.
These formal and informal arrangements allow our two Cities to
staff at lower levels and share capacity to meet intermittent high
demands for services and to secure expertise. These collaborative
efforts include traffic signal repair, accident reconstruction, and
mutual aid for police and/or fire. Additionally, code enforcement,
assessing and engineering all share resources and expertise.
4. Regional Services – One of the areas that was looked at and
discussed tangentially was the issue of potential consolidation of
governments and/or services among a larger group of
municipalities. We would like to point out however, that our
charge did not specifically direct that we address the issue of
consolidation. Further, it would make sense to have that
discussion in a broader forum and to open up the possibility of not
limiting it to two cities but that perhaps a broader net could be cast
and that any potential efforts might include more than the two
cities of Bangor and Brewer.
5. Bangor and Brewer are substantially different cities in character.
Bangor is a service center for central Maine and its demands would
overwhelm the resources of a municipality like Brewer that is
essentially a residential and retail community. The number of
transactions and calls in Bangor would result in a net diversion
from Brewer, causing a lower level of service in Brewer than is
currently provided. It would not be a combination of equals and
thus would engender disputes as to levels of support and levels of
services. To its credit, Bangor assumes the costs for regional
services like the airport and auditorium.

CONCLUSIONS:

We, the Citizens Advisory Committee, wish to commend the Councils of both
Bangor and Brewer for their initiative in creating this effort. Each of us has had an
experience that was both enlightening and educational. During our deliberations we were
continually cognizant of the complexity of the task before us. We also felt as a group that
there was some question as to the specific charge given to us and a lack of specific
direction that we should take. While there may be areas of individual savings in
operations, our charge was neither to examine our two cities separately nor to recommend
changes in service levels.

That being said it is important to note that we sought the advice and counsel of a
consultant ( Municipal Resources, Inc., Meredith, N.H.) to provide us at no cost an
overview of the issues and a tentative road map for further discussion.

5
 In reviewing the report of the consultant and following a thorough discussion it
was the consensus of the CAC to finalize our recommendations and bring our work to a
close.

We feel strongly that the professional staff of both cities are exceptionally well
qualified for their respective work and have been very creative in finding ways of
working together on a day to day basis. They share knowledge and resources on an
ongoing basis.

Recommendations:

1. Allow the newly appointed Bangor City Manager and give that
person an opportunity to become acclimated to the new work
environment and familiar with city operations, leadership, staff
and goals and objectives.
2. The governing bodies develop a clear sense of direction with
respect to their specific goals. For example, it is clear to the CAC
that if the mandate is to significantly reduce overall costs then
there is a concomitant need to evaluate the consolidation of
services. We realize that consolidation may result in a very
different way of delivering services than at present and could
mean a very different city structure and levels of services for both
cities. There is a clear understanding by the CAC that such a plan
would require much study, planning and an implementation plan
over a substantial period of time. Such an effort would require
the potential assistance of persons outside the expertise of the
CAC.
3. Evaluate the broader issue of regionalizing some services beyond
the two cities.
4. Continue the public discussion with the taxpayers of both cities.
We are living in an environment which begs the question of
“How much government can we afford?” and the taxpayers are
really the ones who will drive the economic bus. There is in
Maine a strong tradition of “local control” and yet at the same
time a frustration of the taxpayer facing rising costs of
government, increasing property taxes, cost shifting and unfunded
mandates from federal and state governments. Through these
public discussions there may well emerge a clear direction to
pursue one avenue over another.

Attachments and Notes:

1. Report of Municipal Resources, Inc.

2. Compilation of Reports and Data Available in Respective City Manager’s
Offices

6
7