Problems with Personnel Board

As some of you may know, I have had a number of issues with the Personnel Board since being elected. I wanted to take some time to explain to everyone exactly what my concerns are with this Board and why I strongly feel that board needs a shakeup.

The Personnel Board is supposed to work like Human Resources department. They create policy, set payscales, keep employee records and work with disiplinary issues. But the board, like a Human Resource Department for a company, is supposed to work with the Town’s best interests in mind. The problem with our Personnel Board is that they have shifted into a board who thinks their sole purpose is to get the best possible benefits and terms for the non-union employees. Many times the Town’s best interest and the employees best interest align, but as anyone who has ever been involved in a union negotiation can attest, there are also many times when they do not. This group has essentially turned the Personnel Board into the non-union barganing unit for town employees and that is a direct contradiction to the bylaws of that board. Personnel Board memebrs are not supposed to have ANY conflicts of interest and are supposed to be an impartial entity.

How did we get to this place? Well to start, at Town Meeting a few years ago, an article passed that allowed an employee on the Personnel Board. While I’m sure the original intentions of this article were good, this move has so far proved to be extemely troublesome. And keep in mind, just because town meeting approved this, it does not prevent that employee from still having to abide by all ethics laws. Specifically they cannot vote or advocate for anything that they themselves or a family memebr can directly benefit from.

Immediately the new employee on the board started to steer policy decisions in a way that would directly benefit employees. I was made aware of this but at the time did not think it was too serious. Then that employee became Chairman and an additional memebr of the board was a direct relative of another town employee. So now 2 of the 5 memebrs are an employee and a direct relative of an employee. More and more decisions began to favor employees over the Town. Eventually new memebers joined the Board and watching how the board was operating, they too began to think it was the Board’s job to do nothing but advocate for all employee demands.

Its at this point when the Assistant Town Administrator position was approved and we were trying to work with the personnel board on a job description. It was widely known that this position was going to help the Town Administrator with Evaluations and work performance of Town employees. Not wanting a new position that would be tracking progress of employees, the Personnel Board went to work.

At our first meeting, the Personnel Board essnetially told our Selectboard Chair that this position was not necessary. They tried equating the position to the existing one of Executive Admin Assistant and claimed that it was not necessary due to being a duplicate role. This is like saying that the head Administrative Assitant working the front desk at a high school is equivalant to a Vice Principal. Two totally differnet positions with totally different roles and responsibilities. The personnel board was so rude to our Selectboard Chairman that he just left the meeting in frustration. We thought we were showing up for a job description, instead we were witnessing an attempt to kill the position entirely, something the Personnel Board has zero authority to do.

So the next month I decided to give it a go. I was shocked at the brazen manner in which the board was dictating to me certain things they will “not allow”. Most troubling was the notion that they will not allow this position to enforce accountability. In the Personnel Board Chairman’s own words “I will not let this new role become a hammer to keep people in line.” Think about that for a second……this is a town employee telling an Elected Official, an official representing the tax payers, that she is not going to “allow” a position to monitor employee performance. I was blown away. This is when I realized we had a big problem here. I tried telling the board that this is outside of their purview, but they didn’t care and just held the Job Description hostage for 6 months. If they couldn’t kill the position, they were just going to delay it as long as possible. After 6 months, when they had exhuasted every opportunuty to delay the position, they reluctantly approved it.

Their next move was to artifically deflate the starting salary in an attempt to further delay the hiring. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that…. this is another tactic that the Personnel Board uses. Anytime a new position is created, their only goal is to ensure that the salary is as low as humanly possible. Now if you think they are doing it out of fiscal responsibility, let me assure you, they are not. They do this ONLY so that a new person coming into the town hall does not make more money than other town employees. And they openly admit it. Doesn’t matter the role or years experience, all the Personnel Board cares about is for this new role to make less than current town employees. It is the craziest way to handle starting salary and just guarentees that you get either no applicants or underqualified ones. Twice while I was involved in new position searches the finalist left because they were frustrated with the low salary and the time it takes for the Personnel Board to make any movement to a salary closer to market value. Its literally happening RIGHT NOW with our applicatns for the new Human Resources Director.

However the straw that broke the camels back was this recent salary study. I was able to look the other way when the employee on the Personnel Board was shifting policy or deflating new hire salary……but when I discovered the salary study for non union personnel was being driven by the Personnel board employee along with another town employee and that the proposal for salary increases were falsely pawned off as the “results” of the study, I could not ignore this problem any longer. The salary study is another issue I will get into and dedicate a page to in the near future, but bottom line this was the last straw and I had to bring this up as an ethics violation. The Personnel Board’s proposal was giving large salary increases of 25% to employees who were driving the study. And then throw in that another memeber of this board is a son to a town employee, this is a black and white ethics violation. How these people did not know to recuse themselves is beyond me. On every other board, memebrs recuse themselves all the time if themselves or a direct family memebr will benefit from the outcome of a vote. But the peronnel board did not do that. And appear to have no intention to ever do it.

So these are my issues with the personnel board. We need to make some changes to that Board.

I will probably be adding to this as time goes on, so feel free to check back in!