1994-FINANCE COMMITTEE - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

w t Page 2 supposedly sent in budget requests with their salaries including step increases for non union employees plus two, 2% cost of living increases. Ms. Sullivan mentioned the Harbormaster's salary request. over the fiscal year 1995, he will have been given an increase in salary of 8.9%. Ms. Greelish drafted a memo which she requested be sent to each Department Head for their information on how to submit a corrected Salary/Wage budget. The memo asks that they submit a corrected Salary/Wage budget showing current salaries of non union employees with only step increases at their current work schedule. The memo then goes on to request that the department head also break down and identify the cost of a 2% increase on July 1 and a 2% increase for the last 9 weeks of FY95. The memo also contains a separate paragraph for new positions and a paragraph for increasing hours for part time positions. Ms. Greelish also stated that she would try to figure out how much of a raise each employee would have gotten over a three year period. She mentioned that in FY93 there were no increases given with the exception of Step increases. Finance Committee members agreed to send this out to each department in a final draft. Mr. Goggin suggested first that a hand delivered copy be given to Mr. Whritenour to see how he would like to handle this problem. Mr. ,Goggin expected that Mr. Whritenour would contact him on Friday. If he could not resolve the problem then the memos could then be mailed to the department heads. Ms. King wondered if it was possible to prevent employees from getting Step increases. Ms. Sullivan stated that no it was not possible. Ms. Sullivan stated that it was not fair to the Committee to have to do all the extra calculations to prepare their recommendations. Ms. Greelish also mentioned that it was not the fault of the Department heads either. They were told by the Executive Secretary how to prepare their salary requests for FY95. Hopefully the Executive Secretary will get corrected budgets. It is illegal to fund the 2% increases, because the voters still need to approve it at Town Meeting. Mr. Ferriday thought that the Finance Committee should get this type of information to the voters, so that the voters would not think that the Finance Committee was just trying to prevent giving raises. This way voters could see that some employees, in some instances, are getting an increase of over 8%. Mr. Ferriday also thought another option might be to hold an open forum meeting with the taxpayers Association, like had been done last year, so that the voters would know exactly how the Finance Committee arrived at their recommendations. The Committee agreed that this second option was a good idea. Ms. Greelish mentioned that she would try to contact Joanne Ferragamo to see if she would be willing to view the Finance Committee Chairman again this year. Mr. Goggin also mentioned that the Committee should try to get the Five Year Plan '} viewed on Cable. The problem is that Cable will not send anybody to tape the Committee. Deirdre Greelish said that the School Committee uses students, who are willing to tape the meetings. This could quite possibly be an option, with the Committee just accessing the equipment.