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Health & Fitness

Brumback Cites Steady and Specific Progress - Part 2

Last week we provided our readers, the first of a 2-part series highlighting specific progress of the Town of Southington in the past 2 ½ years as noted in independent research and recent conversations with Town Manager, Garry Brumback.

Today’s post moves us from the progress, accomplishments and a few issues still ahead of us in dealing with the town’s critical infrastructure needs, i.e., roads, facilities and waste water treatment systems. You may review the Part 1 installment in Southington Heartbeat dated September 17, 2013.

 Here then are the highlights of topics not previously covered:

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 Noting excellent work in our Parks & Recreation Department, Brumback said: “Parks have had a positive impact in sustaining a pace and quality of maintenance that places our parks system in the upper ranks of the finest in the state. We’ve maintained and improved our landscape while the department took on added responsibility, such as the landscaping of the extended linear trail and other parks programs organized by the ‘Town Recreation folks including the stepped up activity at the Drive In Theatre and a dozen bus trips in 2013 plus a full schedule of park activities.”  

 Brumback continued: “The most positive achievements have been in the area of technology, communications and improved resident outreach.”

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  • “We now have Wi-Fi internet access in all town buildings.”
  • “We’ve developed a hub for all our servers, significantly improving inter and intra-departmental and external electronic communications.”
  • “With advanced online capability, the town is on its way to a Virtual Town Hall. Citizens can pay fees for permits, licenses, etc., by credit card and without leaving home if they wish.”
  • “This is presently the case in all departments except the Tax Collector.” 
  • "We now have a functioning G.I.S, a (Geographic Information System), designed to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage, and present all types of geographical data. Tasks such as land research and mapping are accessible online. This saves the town and those doing business with the town, time and expense.”
     
  • “I would be remiss in not noting that our Town Clerk, Leslie Cotton, has demonstrated exceptional vision, dedicated leadership and hard work in ‘rolling up sleeves’ to inspire her team to implement changes that have moved us to innovative levels technology which is now working for us." 
  • We have reached new levels of work efficiency and quality in customer service because of the work of the Town Clerk’s Office Team.” 
  • "These efforts were supported by our I.T. team, Jay Baker and Rich Lopotosky in their server room systems, networking of all Town computers with hardware, software, training and scheduling for optimal operational functioning.” 
  • “The technology story is incomplete without my mentioning the newly designed Town website at www.southington.org which makes accessible detailed property and tax information, contact numbers of staff and departments, agenda and minutes of meetings of all boards and commissions and links to other websites, e.g. Calendar House and STEPS. This work was also completed largely at the Town Clerk’s office."

 “Customer Service has turned the corner in a major way with system efficiencies and strong positive training. Almost all employees now realize that the only reason we’re here is to take care of the needs of the citizens.”, Brumback said.

“The town’s financial planning and management has been superb.”, Brumback said, “With the support of a Board of Finance which is different in thinking from the past, they recognize that efficient financial planning depends on flexibility, creativity and wisdom, not with a short-term focus on tightness as the priority. That approach , chokes off initiative and flexibility at virtually every turn and ultimately leads to setbacks and greater costs in the near future.”

 Commenting on creative financial planning referred to by Mr. Brumback, we found it more than interesting to note that along with the extensive accomplishments of the past two years, the increase in the total town budget in the past four years has been lower in average per year increase than the previous four-year period. Meanwhile, the current year’s Town Budget showed a modest decrease.

 About the outlook going forward, Brumback said: “The outlook for new opportunities for progress in the year ahead and beyond is great. Our focus is on such projects as finishing up the virtual town hall to enable customers to do business online and ensure the completion of our scheduled road projects on time and on budget.”.

The Town Manager noted that he and Dr. Joseph V. Erardi, Jr., our Superintendent of Schools, are proactively looking for additional areas to consolidate operations and systems for still greater efficiency.

We will soon bring you a two-part series on the Southington School System based on independent research and conversations with Superintendent Erardi and members of the Board of Education. 

Visit us again soon for other topics covered by Southington Heartbeat on Southington Patch. 

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