FinBoard wants to reign in Town worker's comp time
Published on March 5th, 2008
STONEHAM, MA - The town's Finance and Advisory Board grappled with Stoneham's growing comp-time liability on Monday night.
Joining the Finance Board for its FY'09 budget review this week, Town Administrator David Ragucci warned that Stoneham needs to reign-in the amount of comp-time given to municipal employees.
According to the Town Administrator, he has recently discovered that a handful of municipal employees have earned a significant number of comp-time hours.
Based upon the town's policy, a department head may allow employees to work extra hours, in excess of their regular schedule, in order to respond to an increased demand for manpower.
The employee can then bank those hours, with the understanding that he or she will be able to take time-off at a future date.
In particular, Ragucci pointed to his office and the Stoneham Arena as two areas where the practice is widespread due to a demanding workload with limited personnel to shoulder the burden.
"I want to say the entire liability town-wide, and please don't hold me to this figure, is around $60,000," said the Town Administrator, who has since calculated the amount to be just short of $70,000.
"It's not a good policy to keep comp-time as a regular practice in operating our town," Ragucci warned.
Finance Board veteran Ben Caggiano later suggested that the town adopt a policy that prohibits department heads from giving-out additional comp-time. Agreeing with his counterpart, Finance Board member John D'Amicis later questioned why workers were allowed to carry over time from year to year.
"I sounds like comp-time carries over from year to year, which I've never heard of. And now its become subject to buy-back, which I think is absurd," D'Amicis said. "I don't want to fund a new liability, because then someone will say, 'Oh, we can get paid for this [instead of taking the time off].'"
However, according to the Town Administrator, the situation was a little more complicated, as personnel reductions in previous years have shifted a greater workload onto fewer employees.
And with no replacements to back-up municipal workers who had racked-up a significant number of comp-time hours, especially in his office and at the Arena, unfinished work would again pile-up should those employees take advantage of the earned time-off.
"When she's gone, there's no one down there to replace her for those functions. So the question is, how do we catch up to this," explained Ragucci, referring to Arena employee Sue Hito.
"So we don't have the luxury of numbers where we can say, 'Let's throw this person down here'. So you have to try to prevent [the practice of giving comp-time]," the Town Administrator concluded.
In order to solve the problem at the Stoneham Arena, Ragucci is considering a proposal that would shift the Recreation Department offices over to the ice-rink.
By doing so, the Town Administrator hopes that Recreation Director Christine DelRossi can take on some of the workload at the rink, freeing-up time for employees to use their comp-time.
"One thought I'm having is moving over to the Recreation Department down to the Arena to possibly help-out with the functions that distract from [other duties]," Ragucci said. "If we could create a situation where she [Hito] could have two to three hours undisturbed, then we could get rid of the problem all together."
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