Local officials should seek out training opportunities

Every town in Massachusetts will be holding annual town elections over the next few weeks, and voters will have an opportunity to select from a variety of candidates for local office.

Some candidates will run on specific issues, others because they think their education and experience qualify them to hold an important local position, and still others will run because they think the incumbents are doing a lousy job.

Most candidates run for the “right” reasons – they want to do a good job for their communities and are willing to dedicate their time to make their towns better places to live.

However, regardless of their reasons for running for public office, every candidate should commit to take advantage of the training opportunities available for virtually all elected and appointed local officers in the commonwealth.

The most sought after town office is usually for Board of Selectmen or Select Board, the new politically correct term for a town’s chief elected officials that some communities have adopted.

Regardless of what a town calls these elected officials, it’s no easy job, and personal popularity, good intentions, some defining issues and a general knowledge of local government may be enough to get them elected, but is seldom enough to ensure these part time officers will actually do a good job once in office.

There are several annual training opportunities for selectmen, and candidates should make known their willingness to take advantage of this training.

The Massachusetts Department of Revenue hosts several annual educational sessions. These include day-long conferences on what’s new in municipal law, a new officials guide to town finances and a regular fall symposium on the benefits of regionalization.

The Massachusetts Municipal Association, the statewide association representing all the state’s cities and towns, hosts regional breakfast meetings, a large annual conference in Boston and other sessions throughout the state designed to bring town officials up to speed on the latest news in municipal governance.

County selectmen’s association could be a useful resource

One county-wide association that is well-positioned to assist selectmen is the Berkshire County Selectmen’s Association.

But this group seldom offers any kind of regular training and misses opportunities to be a truly useful resource for its members. It holds a couple of dinner meetings each year at which prominent speakers address the selectmen and a handful of other local officials who usually attend, and it also annually provides college scholarship money to two deserving county high school seniors.

But its efforts in training and advocacy are meager compared to county-wide efforts supporting, for instance, town planners or boards of health.  Even the informal group of town managers and administrators, with no bylaws or operating expenses, does more to help educate its members than the more formal county-wide selectmen’s association.

Training sessions for selectmen may not be as convenient as for other groups of elected or appointed local officials, but they are just as important and every selectman can benefit by seeking out these continuing educational opportunities.

It’s certainly true that most local officials work full-time at their non-municipal jobs and some will claim that they can’t lose a day’s pay to learn more about the offices they hold.

But that’s the price local officials must pay if they’re going to do the best job they can for their communities. There is simply no excuse not to take the time necessary to learn what’s possible to accomplish in town office, what’s not possible and what other communities are doing better.

Posted by Bruce Garlow on May 2, 2013. Filed under Berkshire Beacon Hill Spotlight,Columns,Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry