Select Board and Personnel Board meet

This afternoon the Select Board and Personnel Board met jointly to discuss possible changes to the personnel bylaws. Some on both boards felt it was advantageous to get a sense of where the Select Board wanted to go with these changes. The Personnel Board could then fill in the details of the policy. The discussion was fruitful, in my opinion, and I think real progress was made. Generally, the majority of the Select Board felt that we should transition to benefits that more closely parallel those in private companies where we are able to do so. Some benefits such as vacation time, pensions, holidays, and others are mandated to some degree by state law. A brief summary of ...

... of the items discussed include vacation, sick time, longevity bonus, Sick leave incentive and tuition reimbursement.
As the town transitions to at will employment of managerial personnel, changes will have to be made to the personnel bylaws in order to bring about change in personnel practices. That will be the focus of the Personnel Board's efforts over the next few months. The hope is to have a personnel bylaw revision ready for the Fall Town Meeting. I will get to the specifics which were discussed now but I want to add a couple of cautions; these are not adopted policy but points for research and further discussion as we go forward and secondly, the changes discussed would not affect employees covered by collective bargaining. The employees affected are a small number, some of whom currently have personal contracts with the town. The feeling is that we have to make the changes to the bylaw and the employment terms of the non-represented employees before the town can ask for any change from the collective bargaining units. I agree that with that assessment.
State law requires that municipal employees receive up to 4 weeks vacation. Our current bylaw allows for up to 6 weeks. The consensus was to change to a maximum of 4 weeks off.
Employees currently earn up to 15 days of sick leave every year. The consensus was to reduce sick days to 6 per year and perhaps transition to Paid Time Off (PTO) rather than sick days. The details of that transition would have to be worked out.
The longevity bonus was debated and some members felt that some sort of bonus was warranted, similar to what private companies called a Christmas bonus. I do not support keeping longevity bonuses. The consensus was to look into some sort of optional bonus based on the fiscal situation of the town.
Sick leave incentive bonuses are paid to employees who do not use their sick leave. The consensus was that, since we also pay them for accumulated sick days upon leaving the town's employment, this amounts to double payment. A majority supported a different approach such as granting an additional paid day off to employees who do not take sick time.
Tuition reimbursement changes would pay more to employees earning an A in an approved course (100%, rather than the current 80%, 90% for a B instead of 60%) but less for a C (0% instead of 40%).
The discussion on how to transition to these benefits included starting new hires at the lesser benefits, and reducing benefits of current employees over a period of years, perhaps 10, while providing some sort of compensatory salary increase or bonus during that period. It was pointed out that even with these compensatory payments, the town could realize savings as employees spend more days of the year on the job which would boost productivity without added people.
Once more I want to emphasize the caveats that all of these changes will require a vote of the Town Meeting on personnel bylaw revisions and they affect only those employees not under a collective bargaining contract.
My hope would be that, after the changes are made to the personnel bylaw and implemented for non union employees, the union employees would entertain some or all the changes in order to avoid reduction in the workforce. That discussion will have to be reserved for the future, if and when it comes to that.