Absent the resources to fund a full-time economic development coordinator or director-type position, town officials are studying an alternative way to ensure that work is getting done as they seek to improve Belmont’s commercial tax base.
Town Administrator Patrice Garvin explained that in the fiscal year 2026 budget, she plans to fill an open staff position in the Planning Department and increase the responsibilities, title, and pay for the role.
“The town has really been underfunded many years in a row,” Garvin said. “We’ve not been able to grow in departments. If anything, we’re rejiggering them to do more with less. … Given that I know there’s been a push for some more economic development in town, I kind of looked at that position and decided to upgrade it, throw some money at it, and see what we could get.”
According to Garvin, this is not the first time the town has looked at “creative ways” to look at and maintain headcount. Most recently, the Recreation Department, Council on Aging and Veterans’ Services were merged under one department, the Human Services Department. Prior to that, the Department of Public Works was restructured, moving engineering into Public Works, and an Office of Planning and Building was created. The Treasurer’s office was also reworked, and the Information Technology department is going through a restructuring with the onboarding of Chief Innovation Officer Chris McClure.
In many of these cases, open positions were left unfilled and eliminated to allow the town the ability to offer competitive, market-rate salaries to its employees.
“There’s not one department, except [the Fire Department], that I haven’t restructured or reorganized … We’ve really tried to … eliminate redundancies,” Garvin said, adding that even the Police Department, with the move out of Civil Service, has, in a way, been reorganized.
Director and Town Planner Chris Ryan said this individual would take on the site plan review work and serve as the liaison to the Planning Board, as well as shoulder some of the committee-level work he typically engages in, allowing Ryan more bandwidth to put to use his background in economic development. Garvin said this comes as planning officials review and rewrite zoning and continue progress on the town’s comprehensive plan update.
“That’s just too much for one position,” she said. “Chris really needs somebody who can do almost his level of work. Zoning is not easy. It’s complex, it’s tedious. There are a lot of moving pieces. There are a lot of committees to interact with.”
According to his LinkedIn profile, Ryan served for nearly four years as the director of Community and Economic Development in Harvard, Mass., before joining Belmont. In Hudson, he was a member of the Economic Development Commission. Overall, Ryan has more than 30 years of experience in planning and economic development.
“The hope is it will open up some of the opportunity for me to do some of the high-level economic development stuff,” Ryan said.
Garvin said while a full-time economic development director could be beneficial, it’s not a position she envisions the town will need to create a full-time position for.
“The challenge is finding someone with the skillset of a planner,” she said.
Select Board Chair Elizabeth Dionne, on the other hand, referred to the upgraded planner position as a “bridge solution,” citing a future goal to have a dedicated economic development coordinator when the time is right. Towns, including Lexington, Concord, and Arlington are among the nearby towns to already have similar economic development positions.
“The challenge we’re running into … is that we made a promise with the override that it would last at least three years,” said Dionne. “The only way we can do that is both the town and schools have to keep within certain spending limits.”
In short, adding positions was out of the question— not just in the Planning Department, but town-wide.
Dionne added that even without budget constraints, hiring for a new, full-time coordinator or director now would be “premature.”
“While we’re simplifying the zoning bylaw, there are a lot of things we need to do to be more business-friendly,” Dionne said. “Having an economic development coordinator might be premature. We can’t recruit businesses to Belmont until we’re more business-friendly. … We don’t quite have the work available to make that work make sense.”