Monterey Select Board
Minutes of the meeting of 2/11/13
Meeting Opened at: 9am
Select Board Members Present: Scott Jenssen, Chairperson, Muriel Lazzarini and Wayne Burkhart
Also in attendance for parts of the meeting: Susan Gallant for the Monterey News, Stanley Ross, Dan Moriarty, Mickey Jervas and Chief Backhaus
Miscellaneous Select Board Items Reviewed:
1. Numbers were received from the SBRSD for FY14 for Monterey: Capital $45,628 and Operating and Transportation $1,231,663
2. The minutes from 1.28 & 2.4.13 were approved as written/amended.
3. The Chairperson signed the registration form for Plumbing and Gas Inspectors for the Commonwealth of Mass for our alternate inspector Donald Hopkins as requested by the Building Commissioner.
4. FY14 budget requests:
a. The Board of Assessors is recommending a $5,000 increase (14 -15%) to the Principal Assessor’s salary (previously the Assistant Assessor) which recognizes the continuing education and experience Don has. This position does not offer any benefits.
b. Assistant Town Clerk & Town Clerk positions for FY14: The Board agreed to level fund these positions.
c. Assistant Treasurer: The current Treasurer is tentatively scheduled to come in and speak with the Board on Monday, February 25th to discuss her budget requests.
d. The preliminary figures as it stands today for the FY14 budget would raise the tax rate approximately $0.50 - $0.60 per $1,000 without transferring any money from free cash to lower the tax rate (which is what the Finance Committee is recommending).
e. With regards to the salary increases recommended below (#5e) from the ECAC Wayne and Scott mentioned that the increases to the Sergeant and the Police Chief could be done over 2 years and not all in one year.
f. Special article requests: Items that could be pushed off another year or eliminated completely were discussed. Finishing the basement and Phase II of the HVAC system for the meeting room and basement offices will be put off another year. The WMH request of $30,000 elicited a discussion and it was determined that the Select Board is not united on this request, it will have to be defended by members of the WMH Committee at Town Meeting.
g. The Board and Finance Committee reviewed recently acquired data of surrounding towns with regards to the Fire Departments and if the firemen are paid for calls and or training. We are still waiting on a few towns to provide their information. The Board and Finance Committee would like to speak with the Fire Chief regarding his request for compensation to be raised. Level funding the compensation was discussed. The Board would like to speak with Chief Tryon more about compensation and training in comparison to surrounding towns when he comes in on the 25th.
5. Employee Compensation Advisory Committee (ECAC) recommendations (to be discussed and voted on by the Select Board at a later date):
a. Institute a two tiered system for health insurance town/employee splits. Current employees would remain at 90/10 and new hires would be offered 85/15.
b. Explore the option of adding a couples tier to the current health insurance plans. Currently we only offer a single plan and a family plan. Offering a couples plan would raise the family plan some but would allow married couple without children a lower premium for their policy. Our insurance representative will be asked to come in to go over all the options, costs, and the pros and cons of making such changes.
c. Memorandum’s of Understanding (MoU): The employees are interested in this option but we are out of funds to pay for legal counsel and are too close to the annual town meeting to adequately research and institute this for FY14. The Committee also doesn’t want to research this any further without knowing that the Select Board would support instituting MoU’s. Counsel that the committee has been using has estimated that assisting us with offering MoU’s would take about 3 – 5 hours of legal assistance. One employee has requested a contract as is allowed under MGL and this will be discussed further at a later date.
d. Town meeting warrant: the Committee recommends gradually condensing the budget portion of the warrant (all information would still be available to the public the budget portion of the warrant would just be condensed).
e. After reviewing surrounding town’s salaries the Committee is recommending the following salary increases: 2% increases to all of the Highway Department employees and the Inter-Departmental Secretary as their salaries are in line with the 8 surrounding towns we’ve regularly surveyed (out of 8 towns these positions are somewhere in the middle of the salaries being paid). Raise the Sergeant to $50,960 and make it a salaried position rather than hourly, the current salary was below the starting salary of Officers in surrounding towns and starting Sergeants in those same towns. Raise the Police Chief to $70,500 as the current salary was the lowest of all the surrounding towns surveyed (raising it will put him at a ranking of 3rd in salary comparison).
Supporting arguments were given for all of these increases.
f. Employee Manual: Draft copies were provided to Scott and Wayne as well as a job description for the Assistant Assessor and Principal Assessor and copies of MGL Chapter 151A Section 2 for the Board to review. The Board will be charged with approving the handbook and making any necessary amendments if necessary as well as reviewing the job descriptions and MGL to determine if this position qualifies based on the job duties to be paid as a private contractor or if the position legally should be paid as an employee with the proper taxes being deducted. Stan suggested that the Board should think about adding an “exit interview” section to the manual. It was also suggested to create a hiring policy/process separate from the manual.
g. Future tasks of the Committee will include establishing a system for employee reviews, compensation based on merit (if possible) and creating a timeline to address all of this so that it is not done last minute or all at once without any conversation between the employees, Finance Committee and Select Board. Salary caps were mentioned and it will be discussed further whether the Committee will be addressing this or not.
6. Mail was reviewed which included:
a. Resignation from Laurily Epstein from the Agricultural Commission.
7. Warrants were signed.
8. Inter-Departmental Secretary’s weekly report reviewed.
A motion was made and unanimously approved to adjourn the meeting at: 11:50am
Submitted by:
Melissa Noe, Inter-Departmental Secretary
Approved by:
Monterey Select Board
Select Board Members
Minutes Book
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