Ken O’Brien
According to some of those present, last night’s meeting of the General Government subcommittee reviewed a proposal to add another employee to the town manager’s office.
The responsibility of this person would be to review resumes of applicants for town positions. In essence, they would act as a “personnel officer”, thus sparing our town manager of one more task that has been traditionally performed by this office. (How much more do we have to pay him to do the job for which he was hired?)
According to those commenting, the salary range under discussion was $50,000 per year plus benefits.
The subcommittee took no action on this matter, but the sense was that it would go forward as discussed.
I can only go back to my earlier posts where I noted the relentless pattern of this town manager to engage in hiring more and more town employees that we have to pay for while our property taxes skyrocket. The only suggestion I could make was to suggest your dream job to this guy.
According to those present? I was present last night. I don't know who gave you this info but it's very inaccurate. I have the notes from last night's meeting. Wow. What a rumor mill this town is.
ReplyDeleteKen, you are doing a great job with your graphs. If you find the time it would be very informative for the voters of Southbridge to see what's happened over the last ten years with increased salaries and new positions. I recently heard that Chris Clark makes close to Governor Patrick's salary? Please tell me that's not true! How do the salaries of our department heads in Southbridge compare with other towns this size?
ReplyDeleteFunny you should make that comment, Big Jim.
ReplyDeleteI am in the process of working with someone else on that very area.
It will take time though, since such information will require filing FOIA requests.
Stephanie:
ReplyDeleteI’ve read your notes and I would be happy to run them as a separate piece rebutting this article.
I will say, however, that I don’t think that this piece was rumor-mongering. I had two sources for what I wrote, as I do for all pieces I write where I am not reporting on a first person basis.
You will find upon review that I have not had to retract any prior articles. When the facts were eventually acknowledged they supported the accuracy of what I had reported.
Having said that, I don’t feel that your notes contradict what I reported. What was expressed did reflect the opinions of those who I consulted. But, if you consider Clark’s history of dissembling incrementalism, the conclusions will, I predict, accurately reflect what will really happen in the end.
aka Jester
ReplyDelete"The taxpayer - that's someone who works for the federal government but doesn't have to take the civil service examination."
- Ronald Reagan
"When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him: 'Whose?'"
- Don Marquis
I'm not insisting that you retract however let's be clear here, No salary was discussed. I've already told you in email what was discussed, creating a structured Employee Handbook for all 120 town employees to follow, finding by way of re-organizing enough hours to create an HR position because as of right now there is not an HR position for the Town of Southbridge. It is done by way of piece meal broken up throughout the Dept heads, Finding out how much it would cost to hire a Consultant first to come in and provide a layout of what would be the best way to do this and finally preliminary discussion of the FY2013 Budget. From whomever you spoke to, it is apparent that they drew their own conclusion and in doing so came up with their own idea of the salary amount. But at no time during our General Government meeting was there ever a mention of any salary dollar amount.
ReplyDeleteFinally, If you are going to report on the General Government subcommittee meetings, may I suggest that you attend them in person so that you can listen to what is actually being said.
AKA: Maverick:
ReplyDeleteSo what Stephanie is saying is that you should listen to her drawn conclusions rather than those of others.
Perhaps she didn't hear everything. However, Ken says he got the info from 2 other sources to Stephanie's one. But of course she is always right now isn't she?
I hope that this issue says tabled for a long time... This is the job of the town manager..I do understand that it can be time consuming to review employment application as jobs become available. But this not the time to put more people on the payroll and its not the time to have someone come in to tell the town to do this. Its time to consolidate some things to save money. Are the jobs that plentiful in the town that we need to do this. I will agree that the town should have some type of employee handbook, but by doing this what happens to the towns personel bylaws do we disregard them... bottom line the manager is going to have the final say anyway....stop spending money that we don't have.
ReplyDeleteWhat's wrong with this town? We are getting raped with taxes and water bills! Time to send this bureaucrat packing! Please replace Denise Clemence this June with someone who fights AGAINST increased taxes, bloated salaries and garbage fines!
ReplyDeleteYa Maverick. Why should Ken believe me anyway.
ReplyDeleteOf course he shouldn't. All I do is lie. Great response Maverick. Have a great day.
Ken, There's no point in providing notes from the subcommittee meetings to you since it's obvious you would rather base your posts on opinions. That's all I have to say.
ReplyDeleteStephanie - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjmB4v23Vr4
ReplyDelete