At Monday's Select Board meeting, the chairman of the Personnel Board noted that there is no benefit to the town to having personal contracts with so many employees. I agree. The problem now is that there is no administrative framework to provide an alternative at this time. Our personnel bylaws do not have a salary scale for the employees now with contracts and the bylaws contain benefits which the Personnel Board does not favor. As I noted at the meeting, there are ..........
........6 contracts which have already lapsed including that of the Police Chief. The Chief is one of the handful of employees who are allowed by statute to have multi-year contracts. Four additional employees have contracts which expire at the end of this fiscal year, June 30. I think the Select Board has the duty to take up these contracts now that we have heard from the Personnel Board. Until we have a bylaw change to set up the proper administrative framework, the Select Board should offer single year contracts to those with lapsed contracts (except the Police Chief). The terms will have to be negotiated but I would include the Personnel Board recommendation of no Cost of Living Adjustment, merit based increase, and transitioning to Paid Time Off rather than sick leave and personal days. This last may be problematic because we have to decide how to deal with the accumulated sick time that employees are carrying forward now. Still, I feel the Select Board must deal with the matter soon in fairness to the affected employees. We have heard from the Personnel Board. It is time to act on the lapsed contracts. The Select Board also needs to get moving on a Personnel Bylaw revision to provide the needed framework to eliminate these contracts except as allowed by law.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Personal contracts with the town
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
7 comments:
In addition to eliminating contracts, we need to get employees on a 401(k) system rather than the "pension bonanza" that is currently in place. I keep hearing that the pension plan isn't that great, doesn't cost the town much money, is funded by employees, blah, blah. So, if all of that is true, they should have no problem converting over to a 401(k), right?
Could frankg or another committee member post the report re: privitization? I don't get DCTV on my satellite (RI stations only). Thanks.
Mom of 3 - is it possible you could watch from your computer? DCTV has a watch live icon. I cannot access it as I have a mac. You could check the schedule for a rebroadcast and try to watch it then? Sorry I can't confirm for you.
momof3nPT - The report I gave was predominately verbal, with the outline I used for the "talking points" being 10 pages long. Clearly much too long to post, but let me give you some highlights. If there are any questions I would be glad to try and expound.
general - Everyone we interviewed felt that everything was as good as it could be. I declared that a bigger picture view was necessary, perhaps involving consolidation and streamlining, with direction and buy-in from our leaders.
"jobs" in general - The jobs in town have evolved into a complex marriage of many tasks, many non-related. The example I used was this, "To initiate an RFP for a Custodian/service who also builds interior walls, fixes things with his own tools, orders paper products, does mail distribution, clears sidewalks, plows snow, and does cemetery work, would be pretty much impossible." Tasks have been combined reactively to get the job done, but has created roadblocks. While that was a good way to keep things rolling in the past, it is not the best way to do things now. Things should be combined where they are related and make sense. Tasks deemed suitable for outsourcing would have to be broken out, and "jobs" reconstructed.
Trash/recycling - I pointed out that a company who did not meet the deadline for the RFP that had been issued would have saved the town just under $300K for 5 years, using the calculation method that the DPW had used in their presentation to show that they were cheaper than the submitted bids. Upon seeing my number the DPW quickly recalculated their number to show they were still cheaper. I questioned what they were doing and was told that they use the yearly escalation cost of the lowest bidder in their own calculations to keep things "apples to apples". I pointed out that was inappropriate and apples to apples would be their REAL costs compare to the bidders' REAL costs. The DPW/BPW should NOT be opening the bids before they put their numbers together for comparison. Their method insures they will never lose.
One of my colleagues questioned that the DPW uses a $1.6M cost when calculating dispersal cost to PAYT customers, but submits a "bid" of $905K when a comparison is called for with other "bidders".
Library service - It is possible that privatizing could save the town somewhere between $250K and almost $400K per year, depending on whether you use this year's budget or the FY09 projection. They guarantee more hours open as well as technological improvements. This does not solve the certification and borrowing/lending of books because the law states that you always have to spend more money each year, however I presented some alternatives for expanding the catalog either through local collaboration or taking advantage of an organization we already belong to that provides a link to a world-wide lending system. This deserves further discussion because of the significant dollars that could be saved.
A question... isnt a personal contract like a collective bargaining agreement with one person as opposed to a group?.Isnt it easier to negotiate with one person as opposed to a group that provides a valueble service. The FinComm (certain segments)would press the unions to the edge or beyond of a labor action. Bargaining with a collective bargaining group is slow and the gains are balanced with "give-backs". Forcing the unions to accept a rollback of benefits or pay must be balanced with some plus for the members. This is the Bargaining units job. What happens if the personal contracts are cancelled and the personel effected were to join the union? the negotiations would be even more difficult. yes the benefits need to be changed yes to 401k's yes to changing the annual payments for breathing another year and so on but the attitude of being able to cram this down the unions throat could be disasterous.
The union needs to accept changes, or lose due to the elimination of positions. Which is better? Taking a freeze or a small cut -OR- losing your job completely? There are no other solutions at this point because there is no more money coming their way.
Personal contracts are given for non-union workers in the town. At the presentation to the SB at the last meeting, it was stated that the town does not have to give any contracts except for a few (4, I think). The presentation stated that personal contracts are of no benefit to the town. Union contracts are another story....don't forget that union workers want the business (town) to do well because, if not, they are out of a job! The town should not be run for profit, so this is why it has always been that town workers never got big salaries, they did get job security. Time to decide which one they want.
Post a Comment