[MassHistPres] Staffing questions

[slater at alum.rpi.edu]

Hi, I'm wondering if other cities and towns could give me an idea of
roughly how much municipal staff is devoted to your historical
commission or historic matters? 

The city of Springfield currently has zero staff members devoted to the
historical commission, we only get occasional support in photocopying
property-owner petitions. We have six districts with about 1,500
properties in total, as well as a significant number of National
Register properties. I'm suspecting that zero resources is less than
what we need to operate, and I'm curious as to how other cities and
towns do things.

Also, do other cities and towns do performance-based budgeting which
provide metrics on how to track "usage and performance" of the historic
commission staff? Springfield's sole metric is "number of certificates
issued (we did 140 in FY2006, 95 in FY2007), but the staff doesn't issue
the certificates so it's really a bogus metric.

Thanks,

Ralph Slate
Springfield Historical Commission