It's already recording, guys. Just so you know. Um, we had just gotten I had gotten a message about our thing on Facebook asking for questions why the fire department wasn't included. So, I just thanked her for that. And Adam said he's going to be there.
Okay. All right. Are we on now? We got six minutes. Yeah, we still have time. Did Brady's class name spelled the same? Like I thought and one c U R Y. Yeah.
All right. This is embargoed. This is what they sent. Okay. How's Sarah doing? I haven't seen her in a while. Okay. Well, she um getting a divorce with her husband.
I heard that. But I mean, just I don't mind. I just don't want you to say anything that you don't want. Never mind. I'll ask you later. Poor Sarah. And congratulations. There you go. Causing trouble.
Trouble. There's always a reason. Did you see Sarah? Charlotte, did my cover didn't come out nice. Did a good job. Oh, very nicely, Mary. It's in black and white. I knew you would appreciate that.
Oh, well done, Charlotte. We'll flip to my water department section. I'm so organized. Every once in a while that happens. Just takes me a while. Look at that. Bam. Right there.
It's like the equivalent of janitor's keys. Mhm. I don't think I have the job to switch in here, but I have it online. Did do you guys have a copy? Do you you have it? I have it in my email. I'll just pull it up. Actually, it should just be in my You should be able to go into the one
drive, right? Because this was shared with me. I'm talking loud. Don't worry, I'm working through it. Three more minutes. Josh is getting to be close to politician. Did you know that Mike Tyson used to
train in Holio? Pardon? I didn't know that Mike Tyson used to train um in Helya boxing. Wow. Hello. Hi. I didn't realize they were known for boxing.
See Miss um apartment super. What's your man name? Manini. Spell it. M A N G I N I. Is that for me? Yeah.
Lemon Fizz. Where's Manini? Look in the back. Oh, nice. Mini caramel. You can have it. It's not caramel. It's a brochy candy. I'm not signed in to frame it. All right, here we go. Draft that from
7:30. Yeah. No. Yeah. Yeah. All right, meeting open and we are being recorded. All right. So, um, we just wanted to meet to wrap up the posting so we can get it posted. And we just had a
couple questions for you, um, that we wanted to confirm. So, you you had said you you might want to change the wording for list up to 21 hours. Well, well, I mean, to be fair, we probably should have had a copy of the one we edited, you know. So, is that not the one you edited? Well, th
this is what we came up with after our last meeting, but there was a there was a version before it that had different things on it and we changed it to make this. Do you want me to get Do you have I could probably find it on my computer. Yeah. Okay.
So, one of our big questions was the up to 21 hours. It was my idea in the meeting to say a minimum of 21 hours. Okay. Um but it was not on favor. So, okay. So, we ended up with up to
up to tomorrow. But, but it can't it it's I I feel like the reason I said that is because you know there's going to be times when you're called in and you know that that you're going to be over that and Sure. Well, we were our thought was that it was going to be a 40hour full-time
hosted position. Okay. So, that's why we were questioning the 21. Have you you think you need a full-time water superintendent? Well, just based on I mean it depends what we get because like Gordon didn't need 40
hours. Um and we were thinking that with the salary range that we could afford in our budget, we wouldn't get anyone to work 40 hours. It's just, you know, I mean, if you could afford in full-time, would that be ideal for you?
I think so. Okay. So, that's what we have to talk to. Um, we'll talk to Christina. What would be a full-time uh rate like what would we be looking at? I think we had seen um I think that Jackie had done some
research and she was looking if I feel like her number was like between like 80 and 100 and something for full time. Yeah. Well, I mean that's what a a town like Westfield gets, but but this being a smaller system, maybe not that much. Okay. pretty high.
Yeah. Okay. So, and right now, do you know off the top of your head how much you have budgeted for watering superintendent? Let me look. I think I have a copy of budget back there. No, let's see. Brad Brad's our guy when it comes to that.
All right. Let me see. Finances. Um, it looks like water superintendent, you have $42,25 budget is right now. Um, and that's not going to take away any of the other
jobs. It's you still need the primary operator and the water operator. Yeah, correct. So because I I was just want to make sure we're not like pulling money from So the primary water operator you have at 41,400 and then the water water operator is at
18,250 and then there's a line that says salary, wages, water, labor. There's a it's front and back. There's a couple of different versions I think. So this isn't the one we were thinking of just looking at. You have a salary wages water labor that
went from 29,000 to 58,000. Do you have the old one? So that was a huge increase. I'm not sure. Christina, do you remember why we went from 29,000 to 58 in the labor position? Yep. Because it was partially being funded by the grant.
Yes, that's far as I know. So that money is separate than the shared operator in Chester. Yes. Okay. How why did we go up? Because you guys hired him full time and he was not full-time before the grant.
Is that correct? Right. So the water lab So wages, water, labor. Is that just paying one person or is that paying more than one person? So there's Bernie and and primary operator. He's new operator.
But what about Norine? Is that the same line? is the secondary operator. I've got primary or water operator, water operator, and water labor. Okay. So, he would be primary, she would be water operator, and then Steve's role would have been labor.
Yeah. But he could be considered an operator now, too. Okay. Because of his licensing, probably before. I'm just questioning if any of the money in the water labor position could be used to supplement the superintendent position and offer a
40hour a week using some of that those funds or if we need to go to special town meeting to look at moving more money over. It's hard to say because again we don't know what we're getting. If if someone's
willing to take on that work as a superintendent do more of the you know labor work as well then yeah sure is that in the job description that some of the labor stuff it is okay and that's allowed I just because I
don't know how you're allowed to run a water plant. Absolutely if somebody's motivated enough. Okay. Okay. See what I what I think we should do. I I missed this meeting. I was away, but um I think you should have this water superintendent be the primary
operator. He he would he can be both. You know, he's just it's his license for the for the uh treatment plant, right? And that that keeps him more responsible, too. It's his license on the line there when you're doing the job. And then you and then you have your
two other operators, you know, not to say you're going to cut their their rates down at all, but then you just have a labor because when Bernie retires, he's he's not going to be around Yeah, that's you know, too much longer. Then you're going to have to go through that whole transition period anyway.
And then you you have to have it you have to have a minimum of two. Okay. And I've heard it said, I don't know if it's true or not, but he's refusing to do distribution work. Oh, that Bernie is. Yeah. Okay. And if that's true, again, I don't know
if it is, but if it is, then he shouldn't be paid for it. For sure. Is that part of water operator position? Yeah. No. So, who's doing it if he's not? Stephen. I have heard that he's
reluctant to show people everything. That's what I've heard. I don't again, I'm not there. I don't know. Bernie, Bernie's gift. Um, okay. So, you're saying that you would wrap the
water superintendent and the primary operator job in you could wrap that into one and then therefore support a 40hour a week full-time position. Absolutely. Yeah. Um, do we need to change this job description to include anything else if
that's the case? No, I think it's I I I looked it over just before I came here and I think it's pretty, you know, it covers everything. Okay. And what do you guys think? So, we're looking at combining that would be a total if we're looking at the budget for
next year of 83,000 and a half $83,500. And how did you get that? Did you take that take money from something else? That was me combining the primary water operator and the water supine kind of position fee, right? Because you have 42 for one and 41 for
for the other. But even if we're not calling Bernie the primary operator, we still got to pay him something. So then you would have Yeah. You would only have the second the water operator that is 18,000 and then the labor which is at 58.
Yeah. And that that worries me because if we do anything with this pay, he's gonna walk. So, but what is he what did you say he's at right now? 40 41 41. And if Steve's no longer under the laborer position, right? So, then you would move the laborer position to the
operator for Bernie where he would still be in that pay range because you have 58 for labor. If if if for example Steve were to apply for the job as superintendent, would you hire another
laborer to replace Steve or would you? Not if it was full time. Yeah. Not if it was full time. Okay. So then there would be funding there. Yeah. I'm not saying that by any means that we're going to hire Steve without going through the full process, but I think that there's some room for flexibility.
Um, depends. If we get somebody more qualified than Steve, Stephen, then we then we wouldn't gain any then you wouldn't leave Steve where he was. Yeah, we would we wouldn't gain any money that way. You know, I thought Steve had all his endorsements. It was just the hours that
he put had to put in to meet the qualification. What does he have? He's a T2 in training. Yeah, I think he did too. I think he's only a couple weeks away from all of his hours. M you you never know who you're going to get, you know, when you put it out.
You have somebody that's been around for a while. Yeah. And Steve knows the whole process. He knows he knows plan for it, too. Don't get me wrong, Stephen's qualified to get it. No matter who you get, they're gonna have to they're gonna have to work
around that getting to know Blford, too. So, so do you guys agree you want to change it to um 40 hours a week instead of up to 21? Yeah. Okay. And then for salary, you don't have to have a special meeting
on that first for funding. We can um what we can do is put for the So then when we talk salary, you're choking over there. For salary, we can look at I think we could say starting at 80
five because we do have that money in labor and then if we can we do that where we start at like 85 and then if we end up so I just would be concerned to your point if if it's not Steve right we're not getting rid of Steve so that 58 still has to stay there for
Steve so if that happens then and if we decide to hire someone else then we can add that to our upcoming upcoming special meeting so we do have one coming up in September and we could look at moving some funds
for for this year into that to to pay for that and then next year we would rework the budget. So, let me get this straight. We're going to replace Steve or we're going to hire a superintendent and keep
Steve or is Steve going to be the superintendent? We wouldn't know that now. We have to go through the due diligence of posting and everything, but we're just saying if Steve were to be hired as the superintendent, they wouldn't replace him. So, we could use some funding from that line item, which
is 58,000 to cover and that would actually give us up to almost 100,000. Oh, actually up to 100,000 for the division. So, otherwise we don't have the option of promoting from within. We whatever we
do, we have to go outside. Well, we have to post the position anyways. Yeah, you post it. I mean, you if you're posting it, I don't know in Springfield, you could they would do like internal postings, right? So, it was you're hiring from within, but you still have to post it whether you're hiring from
within or you're looking for outside candidates. Um, but it still needs to be posted. The way it happens in Westfield is it gets posted internally and if no one applies then it gets posted externally. Okay. I don't know legally if we can just post internally,
but that's it's a different thing there because it's all union. It's not union and it's a salary. It's not union. I think I don't think we have a choice, DJ. I think Okay. No, just but for salary, we could say between 80 and 100,000. It I'm trying to find
Jackie's email. She had done some research on the um the average price for water superintendent. Let me see if I can find it from Jackie.
I don't think you'd want to compare us to Springfield or Westfield or No. Yeah, definitely not. Definitely not. That's a higher range you're looking at there. Okay. She said, "My review online demonstrates that an average full-time water superintendent makes 108. Going
with 60 to 80K as this states, we may not get anyone qualified. So she was looking at average at 108. So do you guys think it posting from 80 to 100 gives us a chance to fill that position? Do you think some that's a a
fair? So if we hire from without we would have to move then what what would happen? He he would stay as his labor position as
he is as he is right now prior to all this. Yeah. And we would be looking at moving between 40 and 60,000 um depending on if there's extra money in the labor line item or not. 80 to 100,000. You're going to be
stealing one of my operators from water. You will they will apply to it. Steven is an operator. So calling him just a laborer I don't think is I don't No I don't but that's where I'm just that's the line I mean he gets paid out
of Okay. Yeah. No there's just cuz we said there's a primary water operator and that's Bernie at 41. There's a second or just water operator and that's Norine at 18. And then it just says labor is the other position
and labor went from 29,000 last year to 58,000 this year. And it says it's a 2.5% hourly increase including overtime. Now, you didn't have to you didn't have to build that up because we're paying him as a supervisor now, right?
Right now, because Gordon's gone, we're paying him that 19 hours as it gets split. So, he puts um because it's the position as it is right now is not up to 19 hours a week. So he gets 19 hours out of the existing superintendent
line item and the rest of his hours out of his normal labor. Okay. So that's not the reason that's up to 58. No, no, that was up to 58 to begin before the whole situation. Yeah. Wow. That would have been up to 58 previous to July whenever the when the budget was
done. So probably April or May it would have been finalized. Steven hasn't worked for over five years, has he? It's got to be pretty close. I think he's close. He said he was like a few weeks away from having the hours. I think he What he's talking
about is just our required minimum. Oh, so we to change it to 40. Do So you're saying that a offering a salary of 80 to 100 is too much? I It's too much for this. Okay. Yeah. So the original one was 60
to 80. That's probably not enough. Should we do like 70 to 90? And then I mean I wouldn't you I wouldn't leave a $20,000 range. It's too much of a range. I mean, we do have the flexibility when we hire to decide how much we're going to give
someone based on their experience. Yeah, that's that's pretty good for Bford. I'm just saying. I mean, yeah, if it works, why not? What do we think is a $10,000 range is
better? between 80 and 90 commensurate upon experience or I think it sound okay. You guys will be deciding if they're experienced or what their worth is. Yeah. Between 80 and 90. And so the way that this would work is um you guys are going
to be doing like the inter the first interviews and then when you have a candidate that you would like, they should put probably bring two unless there's not enough that you would like to put forward. Then you would bring it to the board and we'll ask them a couple questions and based on your
input, okay, we can point someone or hire someone. Sorry. What that's going to do with with having a full-time position on that is when when Bernie does retire and stuff, you don't lose everybody you have. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. And he's got to be close to retirement, I believe. I know that he's
talked about it for a while. I don't know if his wife will leave them, too. That was always a concern. Um, all right. So the other questions we had um we wanted to change the reports too to water commission and select board
on the job description. I think right now it's just I go back and forth just water commission. Um so we would add both and um we wanted to add a mandatory monthly attendance at departmental meetings. We're starting up our
departmental meeting. Um when is our first one? The the 25th of August. 25th of August where we're going to be having department heads come. So we just wanted to put that in the job description um to begin with. And then um managing
so adding to the job description, managing of all departmental grants, loans, and large scale projects um to not only job duties but also as qualifications. Okay, that sound good? Yeah. Okay,
so then that's four changes we're going to make and then we're going to get it posted. Um, Christina, is Jasmine going to get it posted or how are we working this? Um, if she needs help, I can help with her help her with it.
Is there a water place that we should post it on? I know for like municipal we have Is there a water the New England Waterworks. Okay. Would help pass it around. So, New England Waterworks y
um our other options are um I think we said Indeed was a free one. Yeah, we have an account on on indeed mass rural water. Mass rural water. Okay. And then people are going to be submitting
resumes and letters of interest to Jasmine and then she'll disperse them to you guys to do your interviews. And we'll do a um dates. Drink your water. Dates.
Dates. Uh that we need people. When do you want um them to submit their applications by? Well, we need to figure out when can this be posted, right? So, if we make the updates and say that we have it posted by Friday, right?
So, Friday is what? The 8th. Yes, Friday is the 8th. So, post it by the 8th. Do you want to give people a month and have it them submit by September 5th? Do you want to give them more than a
month? I mean, you could always extend it if you're not getting No, more. Oh, not more than a month. No. Okay. I don't want a 100 out. Okay. So, but submit by September. Submit. Okay. And then after September 5th, you guys
will review all the um the excuse me applications. pick whoever you want to interview, do your interviews and then select maybe two candidates to send to us. Okay. But they would be I think involved in that too. Of course. Yeah. It'll be a joint
meeting and you guys are the experts. So we're looking for you. We just legally make the hire. Correct. And then we would um go into contract negotiations and like to uh develop a contract with that person and talk about what we want to offer starting today.
Okay. What are you going to put it up for? We were going to do 80 to 90K. That sounds okay. And then plus benefits. Um should it say anywhere here that like mandatory um overtime?
Oh, is that not in the job description? Well, if it's salary, it's salary. Yeah. Right. But but if they work 40 hours, they might still have to come in on a call in, you know. Let's see. Anyway, what did we say about overtime in our
new We just did a new policy, personnel policy. Yeah. Salari positions don't get overtime. Um, so you know what I mean though? No, I do know. Yeah. Yeah. Um, what are you guys going to start for
vacation? Um, in our What did we say? Yeah. So I think it would uh start um unless they negotiate something different for themselves during contract negotiations. Um the first year I believe you get 10 days vacation
and from after your completion of your first year till 5 years you get 15 days vacation. Uh I think the max you can get is 20. So I think after the five years you get 20. That's where it maxes out. You can't get it. And what did we say about rollover? I
can't remember. Um I don't believe your vacation rolls over. We said sick time, but vacation. After five years, you're already up to um four weeks, I believe. So, that's good.
Yeah. You want want to keep on? Um Okay. So, you want 20 at Springfield for four weeks. Really? I think I worked five in Springfield for four. Really? Yeah. You did? Oh, yeah. Well, I worked for the city,
not for Springfield Water Server. Wait, do you work for the city? Well, no. Uh, no. Water. Oh, yeah. Um, so you want to add something in about um overtime. I know that there's verb somewhere.
You just don't want somebody saying, "Well, I can't come in. I already worked my 40. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And there's a main break. Well, if their salary hours are unlimited. Yeah, that's what it's just be somewhere in
there. Man, you do your job. Yeah, you need to ability to come in during main breaks or other emergencies. That's a given. I I can pull the verbage from some of the other stuff and send it to
you guys first to make sure that Okay, thank you. like be on call basically. Yeah. All right. Do you guys have any more questions or concerns or anything?
So, do you want me to make these changes? Well, I don't have the original. I don't know if it matters. Was it a PDF? Did she send a PDF or did she send a I was just trying to open it in Word? It doesn't matter. I can convert it. Do you want me to make the changes? It's a word doc. Do you want me to make the changes and
send it to all of you guys and then go from there? All right. Then we're good. I don't have anything else I want to do. The meeting is adjourned. I don't want to mess with the Zoom because last time I lost it up.
Yeah, she left me instructions to not let me touch it. That's exactly what it said. Don't let the Zoom. That's nice. Thank you guys for coming in. Thank you. Have a good one. You too. My goodness.
I don't know what to do with myself. I I was going to go pick up Charlotte and Southampton. Um question. Yeah. Um but it says no hearing for the planning board. Yeah, they're not doing their hearing
because they did not um receive Oh, I have all the word here. Hold on a second. I said I just sent it to