Regionalization

Regionalization.  Here, on the Outer Cape it is referred to as “Inter-municipal Cooperation.”  Truro has participated in an Inter-municipal Cooperation Committee for a couple of years now.  The Committee consists of Eastham, Wellfleet, Truro, and Provincetown.  One Selectman and the Town Administrator for each town meet monthly to discuss ways the four towns can merge services and save some money.  Realize, please, that each town is wary of losing “territory.”  For instance, early in this process, some over-eager officials were eager to combine Police Departments.  Legitimate concerns involved response time and from where, which town, would the Police Chief come from?  Each town had a union. An obstacle not to be ignored.

When the Committee finally settled down to “low-hanging fruit,” services that can easily be merged easily between towns we got some things accomplished.  

Before I list our most recent accomplishments, let me tell you what the Town of Truro already shares with individual Cape Towns or the Cape as a whole:

  1. Two Technical High Schools, which cover the Cape
  2. Town of Barnstable provides weights and measures
  3. Procurement, county-wide of port-a-potties, gas, and diesel
  4. Veteran's services
  5. County-wide EMS system
  6. County Fire Academy
  7. Work crews from the County jail on a regional basis
  8. Cape Cod Regional Transit Authority
  9. Mosquito control
  10. Rabies Baiting
  11. Regional retirement for municipal employees
  12. Truro shares animal control with Wellfleet
  13. Inspectional services shared by all four of the Outer Cape towns:  plumbing, wiring

Since Truro joined with Wellfleet, Eastham, and Provincetown we have combined our resources to provide:

  1. Training:  2011 Sexual Harassment Avoidance training at the Truro Community Center for Eastham, Wellfleet, Provincetown, and Truro.  We need to do this once a year.
  2. Joint purchasing of fuel oil, diesel, port-a-potties with Outer Cape Towns of Eastham, Wellfleet, and Truro
  3. Animal Control:  continue to share employee with Wellfleet.  Wellfleet pays benefits, Truro provides vehicle, gas is split between the two communities
  4. Building Department Inspectors:  continue to share Electrical Inspector, Wiring, Plumbing and Gas Inspector with outer Cape Towns
  5. Continue to share Medical Health Insurance services, Retirement Services, Veterans Services with Cape Cod towns.
  6. Truro, Provincetown, Eastham, and Wellfleet considering joint Human Resource advice and guidance from Koppelman and Page
  7. Barnstable County currently studying Regional Dispatch for Public Safety Services and for Assessing Services.
  8. Completed regional (Brewster, Orleans, Eastham, Wellfleet and Truro) Comcast negotiations
  9. Same communities as above have opened a new studio to produce programs for Channel Seventeen at Nauset High School
  10. Continue to participate in new 10 – 20-year contract for removal of Solid Waste with all Cape Cod Towns and Towns from the South Shore. 

It was often thought that Cape Cod towns were too parochial to cooperate with each other.  But this report shows that we have been cooperating with each other, and we have been doing it for a long time!!

Hope those readers who are concerned about their taxes (and who isn't) can see that by working together the towns on Cape Cod can get more and spend less.

Now, dear reader, I must leave you to go back to work.  Thanks for reading.

Pam Nolan
Town Administrator
townadm@truro-ma.gov
(508) 349-7004, ext 10