Does the Rochester Select Board have the right to eliminate one of the new, better-paying job classifications that the Personnel Board was formed to create?
A week after the Select Board did just that regarding an Executive Assistant position that was proposed for the FY24 budget, Rochester Personnel Board Chairman Adam Murphy on Monday afternoon posed the important question to Town Counsel labor expert Jane Medeiros Friedman.
Friedman said, unfortunately, she didn’t know enough about the circumstances surrounding the matter to provide an immediate answer.
Murphy concluded he will have to email her the specifics to get her answer, but not before exploring the scope of the problem. “Can the Board of Selectmen hand select and strike out our reclassification vote?” he asked.
Friedman responded that it depends on whose control the position falls under and other details.
Murphy pointed out the Executive Assistant position is a reclassification of a job that already exists and is already occupied by a town employee. It is one of two existing positions that the Personnel Board reclassified because of evolving job duties that were undercompensated. The other job, Administrative Assistant to the Select Board, Murphy noted, was not similarly eliminated from the FY24 budget, and he found that strange.
At a May 1 meeting, Select Board members Woody Hartley and Brad Morse argued no one had discussed the plan for the new position with them in advance, and they wanted more time and needed more funding than budgeted to consider a new job that would be under the Select Board’s jurisdiction.
Murphy said then that the new Personnel Board’s mission is to categorize job descriptions to be financially compensated in a like manner. Now someone will keep doing the duties in the Executive Assistant job description for less compensation.
At the May 8 meeting, Friedman said she needed more information before offering an opinion.
After the meeting, Murphy acknowledged that the Executive Assistant position could be reinserted into the town budget that will be voted by citizens on the May 22 Town Meeting floor. “A citizen could do that,” he said.
Murphy declined to say whether he himself would make that motion. “That’s not a fair question,” he said. “That will not be my role.”
The Personnel Board set its next meeting for Thursday, June 1, at 5:00 pm at Town Hall, 1 Constitution Way.
Rochester Personnel Board
By Michael J. DeCicco