thank you all for joining us welcome to the July meeting of the Town Human Resources board call the meeting to order at 408 and present are Diane Doyle Mark kman John Ferrar Anthony antio ly PE thank you all Chief Fisher is unable to join us uh this afternoon but we do have a forum excuse me Quorum and I believe that uh Town administrative bles will be joining us shortly for the purposes of completing the discussion we started at the subcommittee regarding the classification of The treasur Collector position U before we get there let's go to our regularly scheduled agenda meeting is called to order uh we don't have yet uh PRI meeting minutes to approve today we'll hold on that no we have the ones from the June meeting oh from the June meeting okay I didn't get those myself sorry that's okay iil them out on the 25th I'm sure I am that's okay has everyone had an opportunity to review the minutes of the June 24th meeting yes yes is there a motion to approve so move second second second any discussion hearing none vote to accept the meeting minutes as written say I I I thank you employee issues uh Diane I'm not aware of anything anything that no and Patty didn't indicate that there was anything either okay thank you nothing there Personnel actions and job vacancies Diane you filled Us in last month on a couple of recent uh ads to staff and I think one that were still trailing behind was that in the library in yep so um I was just made aware today that it looks like they've um uh identified a candidate for the assistant Library director position great um the offer letter was just signed today so that will be going out um so that's looks like that's been filled we've also added four new call Firefighters um those have been added as well so I believe what's left to be filled is the conservation agent um I believe that we also have an assistant Town planer position open with the move with CHR moving up to um was seamless transition y so that's what we have I believe is openings I can't speak to the police department but okay I think last last month I think Chief was talking about still a need for uh emergency dispatch to F avoid there I think but in terms of the patol staff I think that was in good shape y okay um question about the um assistant planner position could you I didn't hear from this end of the table what you said um so we had um Martha Taylor who was the town planner plan planning director she retired on June 30th y Kristen grubs was in the assistant Town planner position with the understanding that she was training under Martha to move into that position so there was a posting for the job she posted for it and she was um you know given the position or or took the position of Tom planner so now we have an opening for the assistant role okay thank you and I think that's been posted that's up on our website okay thanks when we post on the website um do we do a salary range so in the job description it doesn't list the salary range but I believe that um in most cases there's a range listed yes okay yeah and we always post the processes that we post internally first and then we post externally okay um so we have the um Plus schedule the new one so when you post a position and the salary range is included is that the Min to the max you know do you post the whole range most oftentimes it is yes okay all right just curious y sometimes it might say up to or you know I I'd have to go back and look at that particular posting you can pull it up it's on the website most times it's the mid to the max um the mid I'm sorry the the minimum to the max okay um sometimes it it g if it's if it's a salary position sometimes it is opposed to the hourly rate it would give a salary range okay who posts that um most often times it comes up here and it gets posted by the Town Administrator office okay it comes up from the hiring manager yes okay yeah okay thank you I'm curious uh when you s would asked about the uh the posting of salary ranges I did see in the I think it was the Globe last week about this legislation in the state of Mass you fam that then where there is some talk out there about making it a requirement a mandatory requirement uh and I don't know if it if it uh speaks to municipalities or just Private Industry but uh there's supposedly a coming Trend and perhaps a coming requirement for all employers to post salary ranges in job descriptions that are public okay I don't know if Municipal any familiar with that um no I didn't see that but um when you look at say indeed or any of those sites you know some of them have salary ranges some do not and so it's always interesting to see and so I just beg the question yeah it's all over the place yeah and I think like most employees typically the the hope is that you can hire below the midpoint you know giving folks an opportunity to grow some but again that depends upon talking about the the uh the population of the candidate pool and sure what it looks like again based on your classification so yeah okay thank you thank you anything else in terms of personnel actions and job vacancies no uh workplace uh discrimination issues ethics issues uh again nothing has come to my attention no good thing safety issues uh I believe the current Protocols are still in place but is there anything that might be new I am that you can speak to in town hall okay status quo thank you okay um let's uh let's turn next to completing the classification discussion of The treasur Collector position and uh Dan what I'll ask is that if you can um let Tracy yeah you can let Tracy know and as soon as we're finished with that discussion we'll call you back in you have to recuse y thank you [Music] thank second Shifty thanks for joining us again appreciate your time of course we're going to wrap up the uh discussion classification Academy treasure reflector position okay and just as a reminder to folks where we were when we halted the conversation uh last week we had determined that the position is an 18 it has moved from a 17 to an 18 based upon the increased level of responsibilities and Bre of those responsibilities uh that's been well defined based on the 10 factors that we always look at and what remained is a discussion of as we always do looking at the challenges of associated with filling the job if it were to become available and historically what we've done is looked uh exclusively at what a candidate pool might present itself as what's the likelihood that we will be blessed with uh a number of great candidates based on job description again bre of responsibilities technical skills educational requirement subject matter expertise experience in a similar environment we try to factor all of those things in and determine whether a position should be in this case an 181 an 182 or an 183 it's the same exercise we go through every time we classify a new role or reclassify in this case an existing role as a reminder this position historically at least since 2012 last time I think it was rated was a 17.2 so even back then 12 years ago before some of these additional responsibilities were included in the job description it had always been two meaning we felt it sort of sat in the middle of difficulties associated with with identifying candidates uh it was a likelihood that there wouldn't be you know tremendous numbers of candidates but then again you hopefully didn't have to go to the ends of the Europe to find it um so it's always been a two M and now it's been bump to an 18 the question is should it remain a two should it go back to a one which is the easiest type of position to fill or could it theoretically go to a three because of the challenges associated with filling the job when we finished the conversation the other day I when we stopped the conversation the other day it felt to me like we were heading towards a two but there was still more discussion to be had there was a little bit of confusion about what the top grade was weer it's a it's a three out one um that was my fault sorry and so so uh this is where we sit we just need to determine whether it's a one two or three uh Tracy I'll turn to you to offer some initial thoughts here or continueing thoughts yeah I I I think the two is appropriate based on looking at some of the other 17.2 is understanding what happens out in the marketplace when when I look for a three the the most difficult positions the the the jobs that we're not going to find someone are people who are trained in Municipal fund accounting basically unless you've worked in a town or a not for-profit you're not going to find that person an assessor no one goes to college to become an assessor it's it's not coursework that you would take outside of a municipal training program things like that with the treasury collection um both parts of that job Treasurer is very similar to what you would find in Municipal I mean in financial treasury Services reconciliations banking those types of things and collection is very similar to what you know a receivable um clerk would would do so those pieces may be I wouldn't say easy but easier to find but then when you go into the HR section now you're drifting off into another realm which you might not find a person that has treasury collection in each our experience all into wrapped into one um a lot of these M Municipal jobs as you all know we've combined so many of them together just um we have people wearing multiple hats so I would say based on the combination of those two things that you'd be comfortable keeping HED to I would doesn't necessarily move to free I I'd be comfortable let's open up thank you but whatever you yeah let's open up the conversation so um I have a question and sorry apologies if you've if we've already discussed this uh Trace we have the assistant Finance director do we have a finance director so it's um grade 18.3 an accountant SL assistant Finance director yep is there a finance director okay so that is not up in that's just part of your title you know it's not added yeah to the as SL Finance director you see with these six to seven business cards at this s of private interpr yeah yeah and I'm a point two okay yeah you are point two chief of police is a point two by um so is is it okay for me to continue on this path of just looking at different positions sure that's exactly what we do yeah okay um so I see the going back to that one the accountant SL assistant Finance director is A3 so that would be the hardest to fill out of the scale 1 two three I would think that Finance you know there's a lot of Finance people out there y right and so why would that be considered a point3 so there are many Finance people out there there are very few of them that understand Municipal fund accounting okay so that's very different from Financial Accounting it's a whole different realm um I can tell you in in undergraduate we had about a f minute um class in that you know a little a little discussion so if you're not coming from a municipal background or working for a nonprofit because they also use a fun accounting model then you're you're going to come in here a lot of people have tried um to equate their financial accounting background with fund accounting and it's just it's just a very different world they have a lot of trouble so finding and naturally when you're hiring that position you want someone experienced to come in because there's a lot on the line there so both like you said both that that position the town accountant role assistant Finance director and the assesses those are the two that it's really really hard to find people with the qualifications that they need to be successful the finance the the assistant so it's Town accountant assistant Finance director okay that's difficult one in assessor assessor and that's the other one I believe that's aor of Public Health as well thosee yep oh director of Public Health is a difficult position that one it's A3 19.3 I probably would classify that as a point2 to be honest but I'm not sure okay when that was probably been many many years since that was done as well don't know what the circumstances were of it okay um when I was um on the board for higher ed for a decade um the fund fund accounting you know was very interesting we had a really great um CFO I guess was his title and he had been there for a long time and would just Marty what do you think he'd be like okay you know I can do this and this and he just knew his stuff and that what a um what a good thing for a board member to be able to rely on that expertise y you know and know that we weren't going astray or we weren't mixing things up so it's it's a whole it's a budgetary based accounting system so it's it's much different than your regular debits and credits I I can speak to that as well again it's it's not specific to Municipal fund accounting but you know I ran a head hunting Enterprise for many many years uh and it included accounting and finance folks and I can tell you that that uh you know we would shudder when clients called us looking for candidates yeah yeah good good siiz jobs uh that they were willing to pay a significant fees for but the candidate profile needed to include specific fund the account right and you you'd have to swallow hard to take those assignments because they were truly few and far between okay as opposed to a traditional CFO or a corporate controller or uh or treasurer for that matter in a private Enterprise much easier to fill roles the position may be bigger and broader but in terms of background as as Tracy said there were 50 traditional CFOs for every someone who was a director for every individual who was a director of fun company yeah yeah there hard to find so which is why you got to hang on over right I would think that the 183 is is the like you said earlier the unique aspect of Municipal financing city state requirements to understand Latin expression over the door is that my office is all about not a funding issue but a spending problem and when you think about it there's no there's no element uh at the office to bump funding whatever this stable community offers especially when you've got a unique Community with no industrial base right it's the number of residences and you've got to think that some reasonable percentage subsidizes the rest of the community right just because of the value of homes and all that that implies um what is the pool of others the assistants working in other communi is looking to step up and there's no opportunity in their household so they come to you that that would be what we would expect to hire that's a people who are one of and and not and not in a pajora manner it's it's it's a frizzing others but healthy I mean every time's got to know that their assistance are looking to grade up unless there's a a chance in the recent future of their boss is being retired and they're going to go look every town has its time in the barrel sure in these kind we had ours it run on the bank here over the past year or so and good the hope is that in turn we you know Peter will BR from Paul in this direction right right yeah in a large community it's reasonable to assume that they could get a pay bump with less work it can happen and and you know when you work in a smaller community and if you have a relatively new staff there's not going to be any room for movement for a long time and a lot of hats right so if I can't back to the matter of hand here I think what's clear by looking at this most recent grid from from 24 is that the town historically has been and I think rightfully so very judicious in the use of the three yeah you know um makes sense there might be some question about the director of Public Health but putting that aside over the entire Enterprise there are only three positions if I'm reading it correctly rated it a three and Tracy's already spoken to why that is at least two of those three cases so the another reason why I feel like like this is a a tough drop to feel but I'm not sure it rises to the level of three so Trac your recommendation is a two I yeah I can see a two any further discussion questions none see none uh let's vote on it Lyn um 18.2 thank you Tony 222 for me as well 2 it is thank you very much uh let me call D do you have minutes for us sure talk about that a little bit if you're okay with that sure [Music] sorry hi there I just thought that while Tracy was here perhaps we can for the discussion that we've been on hold with for a couple months here relative to our last remaining agenda item which is uh discussing the compensation survey that was uh one for us a number of months ago and then we've had some delays since that time with budgets and fiscal year ends and all the things so Tracy want to share some some of your current thoughts about that sure so um one of the things I know we've we brought a number of classifications before the board this past year probably more than we've have all the years I've been here because we've had a lot of movement like Market mentioned um so rather than do doing it piece by piece by piece and understanding that while we were out in the market we were having a very difficult time and being competitive um I thought it might be a good opportunity for us to consider doing a comprehensive salary um survey study uh classification which I I don't know that we've ever done that here it's pretty standard most communities do it at one point or another um to look at our all of our positions some of them will be harder than others to gather the comparative data because we do have those jobs that we're multiple hats but for the most part we we should be able to get some information that will at least um be another tool for you as you're evaluating the different positions as time goes on you'll have that data um in front of you so we did get one quote but it has been put on hold um so we've got to we've got to seek two additional quotes and then we obviously choose the the best pricing um and move forward with the analysis okay great do you have any current thinking as to how you'd like to structure the process and what role if any you'd like us to play in that so um it's up to you you're welcome to evaluate the proposals as they come in if you're interested in reviewing those um um if there's a particular way that you would like to see it structured um the the data that that comes back if you want to see it in a certain format or you know there's certain information that's important to you um one thing that might be helpful I was just kind of thinking as we were initially looking at this you know sometimes it's great to see the numbers of the wages but if you don't know what the benefits are on this side you not necessarily doing the right comparison because some communities like in West Newbury they paid 50% of the health insurance and I think Salsbury maybe pays 90% or you know there's all different um things that go into the whole compensation package but just things like that if you if you think of anything that might be um important as we move forward in the future thoughts should we stop with the proposals that may give us a road map as to how sure how how much data they gather whether this is something that at the municipal level they used to I don't know I I thought we had already um had this conversation and um seeing it on the agenda I thought oh good maybe we've gotten some proposals but it sounds like we one okay and that was the original one that we had a couple of months ago has it gone out an RFP mm no okay no no not yet um what do you what is needed for it to go out for a bid um just putting together all of the the details for the RFP understanding what exactly you want for information we'll put it together just so the request is consistent among all the vendors okay y all right so does preliminary work have to done to reach out to two more vendors before we create the wish list for the r no no create the wish list anything you want so I'll make sure that all of the vendors get the same request so they're all working okay so no more preliminary work has to be done with two more vendors before we come up with it okay no I just wanted to have a ballpark um that was just someone that I had worked with in the past so I said you know what is it running now it's been a long time right um just to get an idea of what kind of money we'd be working at okay so they didn't they didn't offer an agenda they just gave you they they did B Bare Bones okay kind of just the analysis from the other communities like positions that was it okay and is that a model for the other two that you're going to go out to unless you have additional information that you'd like possibility to review what you already have in hand oh of course yeah of course yep get a s of Y of these light communities that they're they're offering you that's generally what they do and we found um like communities aren't always communities with similar populations people generally say oh same population that puts us out in western Mass and they're not really comparable so we try to keep it within the the Essex County the marac valley um similar size communities similar The Familiar name right right things that you would recognize okay yeah to John's point if if we can take a a peek at what you have to date that might help us create a blueprint for what else you might ask for in an official RFP yeah um should we add that to next month's agenda yes please positively yeah and let's the only thing that I'd ask is as you deliberate not to discuss the proposed amount yeah yeah of course so would we see that information before the meeting or is that oh yeah I can email it to you okay that way we can kind of prep for the conversation y okay and that does not need to go into an executive session does it what is it legal real estate and something else Personnel 10 10 considerations yeah so negotiations things like that yeah so talking about um compensation surveys would not fall into any of those categories okay you're not talking any speciic indidual individual it's not in roles there'll be none of that so all right then I think what we'll do is uh I I would think that the request would be fairly um not like a deep dive because I would think it would entail what are other communities paying for like positions what are the benefits and in your experience do they look at our rating documents and how we like how we look at our so you can have them do anything you can have them established when when I worked with them we needed to establish rate we didn't have the classification um format that you have established here so we started from nothing we had nothing um they'll do whatever you want them to but you don't I I mean I think care classification is yeah pretty sophisticated um work expands to time allowed so right right we can we can uh you know we can create as narrow or as broad a range of of considerations as we want if it's as simple as with an asteris that not every Town's treasure collector has exactly the same responsibilities but sure within reason right we can look at the pay scale we can look at the benefits package uh would there be any other significant factors that you want to look at besides those two things y just get a sense of yeah now because just putting it out there with Benefits you're going to get every benefit that a town would have you know so some might be have more benefits some might not have as many benefits but they should do that in um in the information that they would be giving us you know town a only has uh Medical Dental Vision to B has you know the whole gamut right okay right so when we started this discussion which was a number of months ago as I recall you were right in the middle of a rather robust turnover of staff and it was we were it was it was front of mind right fair to say that things have calmed down but still this would be a good exercise for the for the town yeah you're you're still going to have in the coming years you're still going to have some turnover of of positions okay yeah all right so would we agree then we we'll have this as as a major agenda item for our next meeting question before we move forward um what what's the outcome of this you know um so the budget's already in place for fy2 yes budget's in place um like I said a tool it's a tool for primarily you guys as your ranking and also for me as I'm hiring to see okay I at least I'd have something if I have to go to town meeting or to the select board and say okay you know you have a salary here for $110,000 all the other communities are paying over 50,000 we need to raise this line item this person's been in this job for 37 years and the Market's changed you know and a lot of times until someone leaves that position um it's not an issue it's not an issue um but like we seen in the past year um there was some discrepancies in where we had to hire people we had to um there were some concerns with some of the classification levels where you might go outside of a level which didn't really happen before and that kind of tells me that it might be time to look at the bigger picture um okay and just see where we are so we stay competitive AB you know you want the best and the brightest for sure y absolutely thoughts are there other are there Town Enterprise meetings where town administrators gather do you have a society we do we have a mass Municipal Managers Association how far field does it reach to me you go to the brook shoes or is it just Essex County kind of Massachusetts right and how how do you segregate those that are familiar in in makeup and finance and and frankly population and location well like I said Essex County yeah is kind of where we're looking at because most of the people that live in this area work in this area um that that would be one of the significant factors and certainly population enters it but it's not the end all be all we want like sized communities that could be from you know where on the high end of the 6,000 so maybe an 8,000 8,000 population marac might be comparable um even though it's a little bit bigger it still has a lot of the same functions and a lot of the same um you know that the Departments are are set up established similarly when you get into a city then the operation functions a little bit differently Newber Port probably wouldn't be a good comparable even though it's next door to us but it's a lot bigger and um you have more segregation between all the various duties and functions I think it's more about the makeup of the Enterprise versus the population pretty much pretty much you say the responsibilities you're trying to focus on where's that other Newberry that's doing so well with their people exactly in in essence exactly who are we going to pull from an how is it going to be attractive enough for someone to jump from another Community like John said the you know if the treasur collector's position was ever open who's the assistant treasur collector that's going to find this appealing and and one of the other jobs that are open right now we've you know struggled with cons finding a conservation agent the agent that had been here for many many years over what 25 years or something um when we went out posting at that rate Cricket crickets nobody was interested and then when we started making phone calls to see and looking through the um Massachusetts Municipal association's um job postings for that particular job and understanding what they were paying we were way off so The Benchmark survey should be able to segregate them by population by region I mean you could pull the data from many different ways right well that's how this conversation started a number of months ago and unfortunately the state no longer provides nobody provides the information I don't know if they're too busy if they just not bothering they still working with the software went down nine months ago by the way no any updates supposedly it's fixed but yeah all right so it sounds like we're in agreement unless I hear otherwise that we'll add uh the compensation survey to the agenda for next month as well in advance of that Tracy will get us whatever she has already from the one vendor yes um to look at that and see if there's anything to be added to it immediately after that we'll we'll be the add something new or use that as a template to go to two more vendors what's the typical turnaround time for the RFP tring for the RFP probably two to three months depending if it depending on what the the value is so our bids are dictated by the value of the contract um if we can if we don't have to do sealed bids it's much quicker we can turn it around in a few weeks okay if we have to go to sealed bids so if we can get this nailed in the August meeting the RP vog shortly after that and maybe have an answer by a September meeting or SE probably October yep okay you give us plenty of Runway before next year's budget needs to be in place it does great so let's uh we'll add that to the agenda with the understanding that it'll probably uh be a robust conversation so plan on maybe uh bit of a piz chances I we will break our record of 8 minutes I think okay um next meeting Monday August 26 is that a date to work for folks yes won be okay how about everybody else we'll check with the chief but August 26 does that work for folks yes if if for some reason I have an issue we'll just reschedule and let you know that U okay August 26th at 4 p.m. so next meeting and TR you'll get that uh information to us thank you yes any further discussion was just one quick question you think the lack of information is people are just bringing the shade down for privacy issues to avoid having their their employees hun I honestly don't know I I can say it has each year that we've been engaged with them and providing our information the it's been getting smaller and smaller the data that we have to uh evaluate so well you think about our nearest Neighbors in Essex County the Manchester Ipswich Essex rowy all the small villages here the Danvers do we know what they're information factors are I don't know I'd have to pull it up again but I know a lot of them the the last few times we've tried to start there um the data just wasn't available the the municipality is just not providing it anymore do we hand it out do we make it we do we we've provided it but but if you make those phone calls that's what people do in fact close ranks interesting you know because they realize that uh that you you're fishing in their Pond anything from the state house that you know they have uh local community um Community studies for example that they provide uh uh uh you know somebody wants to oh start a business in Lexington what do I do in Lexington you know kinds of things uh you know I'm sure it comes within some some of those uh uh committing parameters you know where people from certain areas certain towns say well you know I I want to start I want to begin a a uh a bookstore what do I do where do I go who do I see kind of a thing you know maybe something exists on the state level you know Community something over we can check I mean we can certainly I I think that mass Municipal Human Resources is that is the state the closest kind yeah but they they're behind locked doors though that's I mean how do Enterprises that that have multiple locations choose where to build the next where does Dunkin Donuts get their information as to which corner they're going to sit down a new building U Ian it's a the information's got to be there for large multiple location companies I don't mean big stores I mean modest small stores I imagine most of that would rest within Community Development yeah um at the state I mean one or two the stores on Pleasant Street have four stores between Portsmouth and here I mean so they're all over the place how do they make those choices they must have some arithmetic that it's based on population and guidance and guidance and and familiarity with the administration they go to friendly places not people that they well we know that historically May has been the place I mean that this that's been repository for all of this data it just seems like over the years they become less and less inclined to fill the pipeline with with all the data that used to be readily available so now you got to go out and use a private Enterprise or you know make calls yourself but there just so many calls you can make so all right so we'll add this to the conversation next month and plan on probably spending an hour minimum at the meeting I think given the way these conversations are going but again thank you all uh if there's no further discussion is there a motion to I'll make the motion second any further discussion all in favor I we adjourned