Municipal finance done the right way

ON THE RIGHT COURSE: Alan R. Lord, South Kingstown's municipal finance director, began working for the town in 1980, when he was hired as town accountant. A year later, he was promoted to finance director. / PBN PHOTO/RUPERT WHITELEY
ON THE RIGHT COURSE: Alan R. Lord, South Kingstown's municipal finance director, began working for the town in 1980, when he was hired as town accountant. A year later, he was promoted to finance director. / PBN PHOTO/RUPERT WHITELEY

While some Rhode Island cities and towns are teetering toward bankruptcy, South Kingstown is on sound financial footing – and has been for years. The pension system for town employees is almost fully funded, the bond rating is near the top, and happy taxpayers will see no rate increase this year.
Those are some of the reasons why Alan R. Lord, South Kingstown’s municipal-finance director, has been recognized as one of Rhode Island’s top chief financial officers. The town’s strong position is nothing new. Lord has kept the community on a firm fiscal keel for 30 years – through boom times and recessions – and has seen it expand into one of the fastest-growing suburbs in the state.
“Alan Lord has consistently distinguished himself within the municipal-finance profession on both a local and statewide basis,” said Stephen A. Alfred, South Kingstown’s town manager. “Managing the broad scope of finance-based responsibilities at the local level has not prevented him from achieving extraordinary end results,” he said. An example of this is exhibited in the fact that the town has limited the tax-levy increase over the past five years to less than 2 percent per year, an accomplishment unparalleled by other Rhode Island communities, Alfred added.
Lord is modest when asked about his success. “I work for a great leader,” he said, giving credit to Alfred. “He’s been here even longer than I have. And I have a great support group in my department employees. Everything we accomplish here is really a team effort.”
South Kingstown, which includes the villages of Kingston, West Kingston, Peace Dale and Wakefield, is home to more than 30,000 people, and annual revenue reaches almost $90 million. For much of the past two decades, the town experienced a building boom, with the result that since 1980 the population has nearly doubled. Beach-goers flock to the area in summer months, and students from the University of Rhode Island crowd the streets the rest of the year. Lord came onboard at Town Hall in the summer of 1980, when he was hired to fill the position of town accountant. The East Greenwich native had recently graduated from URI, and he’d come to appreciate the town during his student days. A year later he was promoted to finance director, and he’s held that position ever since.
When it comes to finances, he’s a great believer in Yankee frugality. “We take a conservative approach where budget management is concerned,” he said of his work. “We stay within our means.”
The town’s bond rating now stands at a very favorable Aa1, which is only one notch below the highest possible grade of Aaa. What’s more, in each of the last 21 consecutive years, the Government Finance Officers Association has cited the town for the high quality of its comprehensive annual financial report.
The work has changed some since Lord first arrived, in part because of the town’s rapid growth, but he’s always loved the challenge. “The job did become much more complex,” he said. “We went through a period of strong residential development in the ’80s and ’90s, and that had an impact on the town’s infrastructure. We put together an aggressive capital improvements plan to address the growing needs. It included public-works projects and several school additions, and a new middle school was built … We’ve built a senior center and adult day-care facility. We have a six-year plan that’s revised every year.”
That kind of attention to detail is typical of Lord.
In the area of health care, for example, South Kingstown has been able to control the cost of benefits for its 780 town and school-department employees by teaming up with other communities. Three years ago the town joined the West Bay Health Care Collaborative, an organization of 19 towns and school districts that work together to negotiate lower medical-insurance administrative costs. The town will realize a projected savings in administrative fees of more than $400,000 over the life of the contract. Pensions have become a thorny issue for many Ocean State municipalities, but not for South Kingstown. The town has avoided problems by opting to be part of a state-run employee pension system, rather than use a private plan. Those communities that use private plans are not required to make a full contribution every year, which has allowed some to fall behind.
And South Kingstown is one of only a few Rhode Island municipalities to have fully funded its annual required contribution to both the employee pension plan and the plan for other post-employment benefits.
South Kingstown scores another payoff through Lord’s annual review of the school budget. He sits down with his counterpart in the school department to see if they can reduce costs, not by cutting programs but by finding efficiencies. “For the upcoming fiscal year, we were able to reduce the school budget by $600,000,” he said.
And one way South Kingstown has kept the tax rate in check is by riding herd on delinquents. “We usually collect 99 percent of our net levy in the first year those taxes are due, and within a 30-month period, we’ve usually collected 99.9 percent,” Lord said.
Lord and his wife Cindy, a teacher’s assistant with the South Kingstown School Department, are dyed-in-the-wool New Englanders. They have raised four children. In addition to his involvement in several professional organizations, he has also coached several youth sports programs, including soccer, baseball and basketball. •

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