PRESENT: PersonNameJennie Greene, PersonNameSusan Heilbron, PersonNameRichard Williams, PersonNameMax McCreery, Polly McDowell (Staff Liaison)
ALSO PRESENT: JBPersonNameRiggs Parker, PersonNameTim Carroll, Virginia Jones
Meeting was convened at 0800 and the minutes of 19 July, 2007 were MSV.
Jennie reported that the draft job description of the Shellfish Constable’s position was presented to the BOS at their meeting on the 24th of July for review and concurrence. The BOS needed additional time to review. Discussion took place concerning the circumstances surrounding paying the Shellfish Constable approximately $1900 in excess of the budgeted weekly 20 hours during FY 2007.
Richard recommended (and the Board concurred) that an official letter be sent from the BOS to Stanley Larsen, Shellfish Constable, stating exactly when the revised job description and hours took/takes effect. The revised job description is to be included. This should be done as soon as possible, and the PB urges the BOS to attend to this matter at the next possible meeting, perhaps following the joint meeting of BOS and residents on the 31st. A formal request was made to Tim to schedule this matter on the agenda for that meeting, or at the next BOS meeting.
Jennie stated that someone needs to oversee the shellfish constable’s hours and monitor/review his activities. Richard stated that placeCityWarren should supervise the shellfish constable and sign the time card. Currently Tim is doing this.
Discussion ensued about who signs other time cards for positions such as the Library Director, Police Chief, Harbormaster, and other people who are themselves supervisors.
Tim and the Board engaged in lively discussion about how the hourly positions are calculated for the purposes of compensation and benefits. For some the hours are, essentially, averaged annually. It was agreed that an employee has to work regularly 20 hours a week to be eligible for benefits.
BY LAW REVSIONS:
Richard had drafted a set of proposed revisions to sections 1 through 4 which were sent to the board members last night (some members had not received them). He prefaced his presentation by stating that he began his review with some underlying assumptions: The by law establishes the legal authority to formulate and implement policies and on several topics needs to include only enough language to identify the policy to be implemented. This is the case, for example, for the policies dealing with recruiting and hiring, record keeping and overtime and comp time, to name a few. In these cases, there needs to be administrative guidelines to actually implement the policies ---separate from the by law and not subject to Town approval---and we already have done that in several cases for the current bylaw.
In other cases, such as the policy on married couples, etc.the policy is clear and needs no further language in a separate guideline to put it into practice.
The Board started through the draft point by point and some revisions were made.
Max also provided a draft of a proposal for a portion of a new first section, which he will send to all the members. In a quick, preliminary review by the Board the draft was given a favorable vote and will be reviewed in depth at the next meeting.
Riggs proposed a reclassification of departments in which all of Town Hall would be a department (headed up by the Exec. Sec.), the Library would be a department, the Police Department would be a department, etc. The Board discussed this and agreed to schedule additional discussion at a later date.
The meeting was adjourned at 1000.
Respectfully submitted, Virginia C. Jones
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