Town Manager, Garry Brumback - Comments on Town Organization and Emergency Response Upgrades

As published in the Southington Citizen August 3, 2012

Conversations with Garry Brumback, Town Manager - Part 3 

By E. Richard Fortunato

Town Manager, Garry Brumback reviewing drawings
in the new Engineering Department at the new
Municipal Complex on North Main Street, Southington

Prior installments in this series have covered the topics of the progress and a forward-look at the town’s communications and technology and its infrastructure, including roads, sewer system and facilities.

Fortunato:  I would like to talk about commissions such as the Senior Citizens Commission, the Police and Fire Commissions and the Library Board.  How do you view this area of our town’s organization, who operate with the authority and supervision of a controlling board?  And, with the Town Council’s action on July 9^th to re-organize the senior citizen commission so that it is now an advisory board along with the change in having the executive director of Calendar House, Bob Verderame, now reporting directly to you, what is your feeling about the effectiveness of the unchanged system in the cases of the remaining groups? 

  

Brumback:  It depends on what your goals are.  Effectiveness is in the eyes of the beholder.  But I can tell you that it’s a very inefficient way to run a town government.  If your goal is efficiency, we are not organized as efficiently as we should be. If you r goal is the distribution of authority and the dilution of power in any one person or entity then we then we are a very effective government in that we’ve distributed a lot of authority over a lot of elected and appointed bodies that meet those goals and you have met your goals with an elected Board of Finance, Planning & Zoning Commission, Board of Education and Town Council, none of whom are beholden to the other. This causes conflict that cascades throughout an organization.  When you add on to that an appointed Police Commission, Fire Commission, Library and senior Services Commission you have multiplied the distribution of authority and sometimes an organization structured like that can become confused.  My personal view is one of a purist. The town manager is a professional appointed by the town council to operate the government. He or she is trained in that profession and has a working knowledge of all of the departments and how best they inter-operate and should therefore be given the authority and responsibility for a government that runs as efficiently as possible in order to meet the goals and objectives of the elected officials.   That’s the structure with which I am most familiar.  But, as I said, the first thing you’ve got to do is define the goals and the structure is secondary.     

Fortunato:  (Assistant Town Manager), Mark Sciota has been working to develop an upgraded Emergency Response System that is at least compliant with new state standards.  In May, he met with the Southington Interfaith Clergy Association and made an informative presentation of what this is all about, specifically encouraging the faith community leaders to provide, in strictest confidence, the names and locations of particular individuals in their congregations who might otherwise be left out In a natural or accidental catastrophe.  Your thoughts on this new system?

Brumback:  What Mark (Sciota) and all of us are doing is to try to make sure that all who need our assistance are aware of it.  Last year we had a huge hurricane and an unseasonal (Halloween) snowstorm, both resulting in power outages, not to mention floods, high winds, record snowfalls and no snow at all in some recent years.  We’ve found in 2011 was that we had about a 75% solution for the number of people who have medical care or special needs facilities in the event of a disaster. In the two instances last year homes did get their power back within anywhere from two days to a week or so at most.  We got lucky, in contrast to a disaster like Katrina and others in the past decade. Potentially, we could be looking at longer periods without power so we really need to be ready beyond the first response for a catastrophe of that magnitude to meet the needs of people for medical and special assistance, what they need and where to place those needs and vital things such as food and water supply, shelter, etc.  There are all kinds of disasters.  There’s nothing you can do to stop a tornado, for example; it comes; it goes and it leaves devastation behind it.  But what you can assume will happen is loss of power and I’m glad to see that Connecticut is doing a better job in preparing for power outages.

Last point, it’s the recovery that is sow
 important. And that’s what this emergency response system is designed to accomplish. Disasters are going to happen! But it is in the planning, preparation and readiness for these events that we can deal most effectively in protecting property, moderating some of the worst of the damage that can occur. Most important is the recovery of the community.  

In our next installment, we will take a look at the newly refurbished Municipal Complex formerly known as the North Center School.