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Employee Compensation Advisory Committee Meeting Minutes
Date: 3/6/14 at 4pm
Present: Muriel Lazzarini, Daniel Moriarty, Mickey Jervas, Gareth Backhaus and Maynard Forbes
Absent: Fiona DeRis, Melissa Noe, Larry Klein and Chris Tryon
- The minutes from 1/9/14 were approved.
- The salary subcommittee gave the following report/update:
- They reached out to the elected officials (Treasurer, Town Clerk and Tax Collector) asking them about their salary requests and responsibilities and none of them replied. The non-response was taken as these departments are satisfied with the way things are currently.
- The ECAC as a whole is going to make a recommendation to the Select Board that they adopt a policy that all part-time appointed positions should all be paid on an hourly basis and that they all must submit their hours worked for that week to be submitted with the warrants for Select Board review. Elected positions would remain as stipends.
- There has been no progress on the job descriptions or handbook at this point. There are some items that need to be revised:
- The Aflac sections needs to note that all paid employees are eligible for the cancer and accident policies but only those employees that work 19 or more hours each week are eligible for the disability insurance.
- Part-time employees and benefits. This needs to be corrected as some positions depending on the number of hours they work are eligible for certain benefits. The ECAC would also like someone from the Berkshire County Retirement to meet with ECAC and the Select Board to go over the retirement benefit.
- The committee decided that the following areas need to be reviewed and discussed with the entire ECAC members present:
- Jon Sylbert’s letter regarding instituting employee evaluations. The committee members present did begin the discussions. Melissa who was not present left her comments for the committee which were if performance reviews were to be instituted the only way to be fair would be to have all 7 of the full time employees reviews take place in an open meeting, not just the Chief, Director of Operations and Executive Secretary or someone should be appointed to perform them that has direct knowledge of all the positions as is done in towns with a Town Manager or Personnel Director. Mickey is in favor of having reviews and stated that they do them for the library employees and that everything is noted in their minutes. It was noted that the library minutes have not been provided to the town to put on the website as
has been requested. Dan felt that the minutes should be provided on the website to be absolutely transparent. Gareth and Maynard stated that the problem with instituting reviews right now is that only the department heads would be in a public meeting as their supervisors are the Select Board but the support staff would not be public as they report to the individual department heads. This has all been discussed several times and the option of having a personnel director or human resource person is not necessary as there wouldn’t be enough work to justify the position and since it would not be full time the person in that position would not be educated enough in each employee’s roles to perform a performance review. Maynard and Gareth both feel that since they meet with the Select Board on a regular, recurring basis that they are constantly being reviewed throughout the year as the Select Board asks questions and gives direction if need be and this
is all in the minutes. Dan did not see a benefit in instituting the performance reviews if they must be in a public venue and felt that the regular meetings with the Select Board were adequate. Maynard noted that about 3-4 years ago we did have performance reviews and there was a five page review filled out and when all was said and done the piece of paper didn’t mean anything. Maynard stated that part of his objection to instituting the reviews is that if you get a good review it doesn’t mean you are going to get a merit raise. Dan felt that every year whether raises are given or not comes down to whether or not it can fit into the budget or not. He questioned why is it that we can put money into buildings and highway repair, equipment and it is never questioned, it just passes and the rationale is that it is for the benefit of the town. Well Dan asked what about the employees. Dan felt that if you want employees that are
qualified and motivated you have to pay for that. Muriel noted that she has never had any experience with performance reviews and agrees with the arguments that the regular meetings with the Chief and Director of Operations is enough and reasonable and she suggested that this should also be done with Melissa. A point was made that the process that is occurring now is actually more transparent and beneficial as each meeting with an employee is in the public minutes and more readily available that an employee’s personnel file.
- The next meeting will be on April 3rd at 4pm.
Adjourned: 4:45pm
Submitted by:
Melissa Noe, Executive Secretary
Via audio recording
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