Monday, July 29, 2019

burned out houses left for five years no action from the BOH
DPW not doing their job per the VSO these are just some of the things not getting done Don't look for any more because you will find so many things not getting done you will wonder why you pay taxes But yet we have our accountant going to Hubbardston 10 hours a week and getting paid 7,500 more and the her assistant now at full time and paid benefits and the BOS let us staying the agreement with Hubbardston. OH yes lets give the MGMT fellow a 37.9% pay increase for his lack of experience all this and we are cutting the police and fire. Great job BOS and TA

The above is a comment posted to this blog. The part that caught my eye was the 37.9% pay increase for the management (MGMT) fellow. I quickly broke out the budget documentation books for fiscal year 2019 and fiscal year 2020. I looked under the board of selectmen section / personnel, as that is where the salaries for the selectmen office are listed.

What I found - personnel total for fiscal year 2019: $168,750.00
What I found - personnel total for fiscal year 2020 - $170,000.00

At the time this information was presented, selectmen had not added their "salary" yet:
$500.00 per selectmen = $2,500.00, so the $2,500.00 must be added to the $170,000.00, which in no way shows a 37.9% increase in funding.

What might explain the above statement is while the "pile of money" did not increase, the amount going to the management fellow may have increased.
Perhaps the question should be, what would the advisory committee think is the appropriate amount of money to pay for someone to apply for, work / learn the job of Town Administrator and to stick around for a while. This is not a question of hiring experienced T/A, this concerns the current situation, how much is right? 

Recall there was a "big to do" from one member of advisory committee concerning a 75% increase in EMD budget; from $1,000.00 per year to $1,750.00 and then it was learned that EMD has brought in about $60,000.00 in grants over the course of the last 10 years or so.

Again, I see no 37.9% in appropriation, only, perhaps, in distribution of a town meeting appropriated amount and I think there is a difference.

5 comments:

  1. from the towns web page Budgetbookfy20 page 44 mgmt fellow hourly rates 24.29 going to 33.50 that is a 9.21 increase or 38% you got the book so you can see it too

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    1. The job of Accountant was always a part time job, even before computers and adding machines. This job was supposed to return to part time. Perhaps with certified help, the job could return to part time and save us from the added cost of two people collecting benefits, vacation time, and all the goodies that come with full time status.

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  2. Hubbardston requires 1 person for 10 hours.

    Phillipston requires 1 person for 1 day week



    Why does Templeton require so much additional time?

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  3. So, I went to Town website, found FY2020 and paper copy is page 44 but electronic copy selectmen personnel is page 45. I then went and found FY2019 and what I found is what it shows; it is a wash, there was really no increase in appropriation from FY2019 to FY2020 (minus selectmen pay of $2,500.00) In FY 2019, the T/A is shown making $65,250.00 and management fellow is shown making $48,185.00. Now in FY2020, T/A is shown making a total of $51,648.00 while management fellow is shown making $62,156.00. Sure, money got moved around, but the appropriation stayed almost the same, so if one was to level fund, using FY2019 dollar figures, not much would change. Now if someone from the advisory committee suggested reducing this item by the !3,602.00 that got moved around, plus eliminate the $13,500.00 for a clerk/intern, you might make a valid point, otherwise, someone is just making noise, in my opinion.

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  4. I'm only going by memory, but I thought the Town approved $110,000 for the Town Administrators position. So how do we just "end up" over as Jeff just showed by over $3,500 bucks? Is this rounding for the 52.4 weeks? I doubt it!
    So how does this upwards float take place without any voted pay increases to the TA position?

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