March 2, 2026 – Personnel Board – Video & Transcript
March 2, 2026 - Personnel Board
Okay, while we're, and Mary Ellen's here, okay, so I will call the Whelan Personnel Board meeting of March 2nd to order at, I always get the timer on, let's say 4.07, okay.
And this meeting is being recorded and is a Zoom meeting, and it will be made available to the public on WACAM as soon as possible after the meeting.
Pursuant to Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025, this meeting will be conducted via remote access in accordance with applicable law.
If this meeting has only remote access, no in-person attendance by members of the public will be permitted.
If this meeting has remote access, which it does, one may watch or participate remotely with the meeting link that can be found at
HTTPS colon slash slash www.weyland.ma.us slash public dash body dash meeting dash information dash virtual dash in-person dash and dash hybrid.
Persons wishing to provide public comment or otherwise participate in the meeting may do so via remote access.
It is suggested that public comment should be limited to two minutes per person.
Please note that the agenda item times, if listed or approximate, items may not be discussed in the order or at the time listed.
All topics may be subject to deliberation and vote.
The first item, I'll read the agenda for the public.
The first item is the call to order.
And then our second item, which is going to take most of our meeting today, is the presentation and discussion of the classification and wage and salary classification and compensation study that was approved at 2025 annual Weyland Town meeting and completed by MGT Impact Solutions in February 2026.
And present, we have board members, Jill Zukerman, Paul Morenberg, Mary Ellen Castagno, myself, Mary Ann Peabody.
And absent is Dave Williams.
He can't be with us today.
And also present at the meeting is Kate Ryan, our HR director for Weyland, and Michael McCall, town administrator.
And also for the presentation part, Katie and me from MGT Solutions.
Then we will go to discussion and approval of open session minutes of 12-16-2025.
Then topics not reasonably anticipated 48 hours in advance, if any.
We'll set the next meeting date, and then we will adjourn.
And I would like to welcome Katie Lee Yee.
Oh, why did I thought it was Lee?
I'm sorry.
Katie Yee.
I'm sorry, Katie.
From MGT Solutions.
Thank you very much for your study and for all the good reading we've had this weekend.
And I know that you have a presentation planned, so we'll hear the presentation.
And then I know that the board probably has lots of questions that we would like to ask.
And, Michael, have you had a chance to ask questions as well yet?
Hold on. Yeah. Yes, I have. I had a briefing last Thursday with MGT. Okay. Great. So, thank you. And I'll just turn over the time to Katie so she can begin the presentation. Oh, and I'm taking minutes. Okay. All right. Well, thank you all for your time this afternoon. Actually, early evening for you, right? So, I'm outside of Chicago in Illinois, so it's only 311 by me. So, I'm an hour ahead of you. But we have a sunshiny day today, so hopefully you have the same after all that snow you guys got last week. So, again, my name is Katie. I have been working with MGT. We were previously GovHR for just about three and a half, four years now. The whole time, I've been working primarily on these classification and compensation studies. I do have a lot of clients that I work with within the state of Massachusetts. And then I also work with clients across the United States, you know, Illinois, California, Wisconsin, a variety of different states I've worked in. Prior to joining MGT, I did work in the public sector in human resources for just about 30 years. So, I'm familiar with quite a few different public sector positions and structures. And, actually, I've learned a great deal of working with my Massachusetts clients over the years. So, it's been a lot of fun. Anyway, so, as mentioned, I am going to do an overview of the classification and compensation study process for you. And I'm going to get started here by just sharing my screen.
And it should pop over now. And hopefully, you can all see that. Thumbs up. Yes, you can see my screen. All right. Thanks, Kate. And then, if this would just go away, I'll go ahead and make it a full screen.
And here we go. All right. So, again, we started this classification and compensation study last year. And we're wrapping it up now. And there's a lot of different components to a class and comp study. So, we're going to talk about that as we kind of go through the agenda today. So, again, we're going to start with the scope of work. We'll talk about the job evaluation or classification process, the market survey process, proposed compensation plan, implementation of a classification and compensation plan, and future administration. So, why would an organization do a classification and compensation study? As you saw in the draft report, it's a lot of data. So, you have to kind of be excited about data when you're doing a classification and compensation study. And luckily, I love this kind of stuff. So, that's why I've been working on these studies for the last couple of years. But from a human resources perspective, a classification and compensation study is really considered to be a best practice. The classification component of the study, which is also known as the job evaluation component of the study, provides your organization with a consistent methodology to internally structure or rank your positions. And so, that's really an important kind of guideline for your organization. The compensation component of the study, which is also referred to as the market survey, is where we get data from comparable communities. And we use that data to kind of evaluate where your position within the market is and whether you're remaining competitive within the market. I think I shared the story with some that, you know, I have a friend who works in human resources, and every time they get a new position at her organization, it's kind of like throwing a dart at a dartboard. They just kind of guesstimate what the salary range is going to be for that position. And it really creates a lot of inconsistencies and inequity in their process and actually kind of makes her a little bit loopy sometimes because it's not a consistent process. Whereas, you know, this classification and compensation study, we have a very consistent methodology, something for you to fall back on.
So then in this slide here, we talk about the scope of work and the process for a class and comp study. And there's a lot of bullet points up here because there's a lot of moving parts. As mentioned, we are doing the classification or the job evaluation part, and that includes employees fill out position, job analysis questionnaires. It involves meeting with the employees and discussing their positions with them. And then there's the compensation side of the study that involves kind of surveying the comparable communities, collecting the market data and putting it together in some type of an easily readable format. And then from there, we put together, you know, the draft report, which you've seen, as well as, you know, this type of presentation. So, again, a lot of moving parts.
So the job evaluation or classification component of the study, let's talk about that.
The methodology that we use is a point factor methodology for evaluating or classifying positions. The way we do that is we have a set of nine factors, which are here on the screen, everything from education, work experience, to supervision of others, working conditions, and use of technology are all part of the factors that we take into account when we're doing the job evaluation process. All employees were asked to complete a job analysis questionnaire that had some questions for them regarding these nine factors. And as you can see from these nine factors, these are factors that can be measured across an organization no matter what department a position is in. So when we get to the classification plan, and I talk to you a little bit about the recommended structure, you will see positions from different departments falling within the same bucket. So you might have a finance position in the same salary grade or salary bucket along with a public works position. And, again, that's so it gives you an opportunity to look at your organization, you know, across the whole organization based on a consistent nine factors. The other thing that this does for you is, you know, in the state of Massachusetts, you do have some equal pay regulations. And the job evaluation process helps you kind of reflect or, you know, comply with some of those those types of regulations. So, again, with the job evaluation process, we did have employees complete job analysis questionnaires, but we also took a look at current job descriptions. On the job analysis questionnaire, there was space for supervisors to add comments. So if supervisors added comments, we took a look at those. And then we also conducted virtual interviews with employees who wanted to participate in the process. We always try to conduct a virtual interview with at least one employee from each position that was part of the study. And for this particular study, we had well over, you know, 100 positions, just maybe a little over 100 positions that were part of this study. When we're developing the proposed classification plan, besides using these particular resources, we also rely on feedback from administration and human resources. So after we did put together our proposed classification plan, you know, I did go back to Kate and asked her questions about, you know, maybe supervision or organizational structure or those types of things, just to make sure that where we were evaluating the position actually was appropriate within the organization to make sure we were understanding all of the information that we had collected correctly. And so then again, we put together the proposed classification plan based on the job analysis questionnaires, and that sort of creates your internal structure or your internal equity, so to speak. And our proposed classification plan has 16 pay grades within it, or I also refer to those as buckets of positions. Okay, so then we'll switch gears a little bit, and we'll talk about the market study or the compensation side of the study. And for that particular process, we begin by putting together a list of comparable communities. And within, you know, within the state of Massachusetts, we use a very consistent, again, set of criteria when we're establishing comparable communities. You can see, again, those are the eight criteria here up on the screen. Population, per capita income, equalized value per capita, assessed value, tax levy, total budget, state aid, and proximity. So, again, these are the kind of consistent criteria that we use when we're working with Massachusetts clients. One of the reasons that we use this criteria is because, as you can see, there are a lot of financial factors. So they do kind of, you know, give you some type of reflection on a community's ability to pay. And what do I mean by that? Well, I think I mentioned, so I'm in Illinois, I'm outside of Chicago, I live in a suburb of Chicago, right? If I were doing a comparable community analysis for my suburb, I would not use Chicago as a comparable, right? Because Chicago is, you know, a million times larger and has a ton more positions and their budget is very different. So if we were establishing comparable communities in Illinois, we use a similar set of criteria, again, based on different financial factors that are available from a consistent source. So that's another important part of this is all of this data, or most of this data, I should say, is available through the Massachusetts Department of Revenue through financial reporting. And so we, again, are able to collect that data for the comparable community analysis from a consistent source. So it's data that's, you know, reported for different communities in a consistent manner. So, again, we can kind of say that we're comparing apples to apples as much as possible in order to establish those comparable communities. Now, I will also make a note here just to say that in some situations, you know, we might add other communities to the comparable community list that might be bigger or smaller than a particular community that we're working with. But sometimes we do that in situations where maybe a community has recently lost employees to job offers at other communities. I don't think we had that with this particular list of communities, but that is something that we also take into consideration when it happens.
So once we set up the comparable communities, each of those eight factors gets kind of a point value. And then depending upon how closely a community aligns with Weyland, they get, you know, either the maximum number of points or the minimum number of points. So, you know, if a community's population is significantly higher or lower than Weyland's, then that's reflected in the scoring that is done kind of behind the scenes. And then what we did is we set a cutoff of 85 points, and we, you know, grabbed the communities that scored at least 85 points on the comparable community analysis. And those are the communities you see here up on the screen. And the good news for this study, which is fantastic, is that we had almost 100% participation in our market survey. So kudos on that, because that is an amazing feat. You can see we only had one community that did not respond to our request for data. And that is awesome, because what that means is you have a lot of really good data to work from when we're putting together our recommendations. I will say, you know, I do a lot of work in Massachusetts, and I do a lot of work in Illinois. And because we have relationships with a lot of communities in both of those states, we do tend to get really good participation. But this is fantastic. This is probably one of the better participation rates that I've had recently. So, again, with the market survey, you know, the way we structure it is we send out an electronic survey to the comparable communities. And when we're putting that survey together, we do not always include all of the positions within an organization. And the reason that we do that is because once a survey gets too big or too unruly, we notice a significant decline in participation. So when we're putting together a survey, we usually limit it to about 40 to 50 positions, just so that when the responding community gets the survey, they're not like, oh, my goodness, this is going to take me forever to fill out. So, you know, again, we do kind of limit that. And we select benchmark positions to survey for. And what I mean by benchmark positions are positions that are very common across organizations, positions that maybe have multiple incumbents in them, and positions that are, you know, again, relatively common. So, you know, administrative assistant or department assistant, laborer or wastewater operator or water operator, those are the types of positions that, you know, we commonly see across the board in different communities. We also surveyed for some benefits information for this particular survey, everything from health insurance premiums to health savings account, vacation time, and that. And there is a summary of the benefits information in the draft report. You know, I will say that when we do these surveys, we do see that within the public sector, benefits are relatively consistent, especially around time off. You know, you know, most of us, you know, I, again, I was in the public sector for a long time. We're very generous with our time off. And so we see that consistently across the board with a lot of these surveys that we're, that we're doing.
Oops, wait, go back. Okay. So from there, what we do with the market data is we take that market data and we marry it together with that, with that classification plan. So the classification plan had 16 grades in it, and we bring over that market data and we align the two. And then from there, we use that market data to inform our decision-making as to what type of pay ranges we're going to be proposing for the study. And now, Waylon has historically targeted the 75th percentile of the market. And what do I mean by that? Well, when we're collecting that data back, the 50th percentile is the middle. So if you look at all that data and you go right smack dab in the middle, 50th percentile would mean that 50% of the payers were higher and 50% of the payers were lower. When you're targeting the 75th percentile, that means that you're, you're really striving to be a little bit higher, a little bit of a market leader, which is, which is very good for a community when they're trying to fill some of those hard to fill positions. And I will say that when we got the market data back, again, good news, you've been keeping pace with that 75th percentile of the market. When we were getting some of that data back, we did see that a lot of your current pay ranges were aligning with the 75th percentile of the market. So that's, that's good news. As far as implementation of a proposed classification and compensation plan, the first thing that I want to kind of, you know, talk about is the fact that really everything that we put together are proposals or recommendations based on our process and based on the data. From there, we completely understand that each community is unique and that, you know, some of your positions may have collective bargaining agreements with them. So you may have to go through collective bargaining to implement, you know, some of these things. Or it might be that, you know, you're in a fiscal situation right now where, you know, maybe not all of the changes can be implemented or so, or only some of them can be implemented. So again, we completely recognize that each community is unique and has different circumstances as far as what implementation will look like for them. With that said, one of the, one of the, one of the kind of primary recommendations that we always have when we do these studies is that if any current employees are falling below what we see as the proposed minimum of the range, you know, then it's really recommended that those employees be brought up to the minimum as soon as financially possible. Because it may indicate that that employee has been being paid below that market rate that you're kind of targeting. So that's really our, our main recommendation is to look at any of those employee salaries that might be falling below the minimum and do some estimations as to when those employees might be able to be raised up. From there, if an employee's compensation falls within the proposed range, that's fantastic. That means they're being paid at the market rate that you're kind of targeting. Now, if an employee's salary falls above the proposed range, then that's a different scenario also. And again, each community might decide to approach that differently. Some communities say that if an employee is above the max, we're going to, you know, redline that salary and kind of leave that employee there until the range catches up to them. Or they might say, you know, we're going to grandfather that employee in and we're going to let that employee continue to get raises into the foreseeable future. No matter how an organization approaches that, you know, we do recommend that that practice is consistent across the board. So if there are, you know, five employees that are above the maximum, then all five should really be, should be treated consistently.
As far as future administration for the classification and compensation system, you know, for the classification system, we completely recognize that positions change. More duties might be added and a position might grow or duties might be, you know, reduced and a position might shrink. Or maybe services change and a position is no longer needed because that service is no longer being provided. So with the classification plan, you know, we recommend really, you know, that usually falls on human resources, that human resources is reviewing the classification plan on a regular basis and making those adjustments. As far as the compensation side or the salary range side, we recommend that organizations review their salary ranges on an annual basis. There are a lot of different ways that you can review your salary ranges and decide whether you're going to adjust the ranges or how you're going to approach employee increases. Some organizations look at the consumer price index. Some organizations might look at different surveys that organizations out there do, like Society for Human Resource Management, also known as SHRM. They do an annual market survey and they kind of talk about what the annual increases are looking like for the upcoming year. We also recommend that you use those comparable communities. So we've identified those comparable communities as most similar to Waylon. And at this point, you know, reach out to those communities and find out if they know what their plans are for the upcoming fiscal year. Then you can take all of that information holistically and make an informed decision from there with all of that data. And that is the end of my exciting slides. So I am going to let's see, I'm going to close the slides and I am going to open up some sections of that draft report. And I wish this little thing up here would go away on the screen, but I can't get that to go away. But I want to open up table one and table two and just kind of walk you through what you're looking at on table one and table two. And this might be a little small for you. And if I make it too much bigger, it falls outside of the screen. So I'm just going to kind of, again, walk you through what you're looking at here. So at the far left is position title. Right. So that's relatively self-explanatory. That's the current position title. So in some cases within the draft report, we did make some recommendations for title changes. Again, those are just recommendations based on what we're seeing in the market. You know, so it's up to each organization if they, you know, decide to move forward with those or not. Then from there, the next column we have is skill level. And what is that exactly? Well, you notice between each of these numbers, like 750 to 785, that's 35 points, right? 710 to 745, that's 35 points. So when we go back to that job evaluation process, all of those factors, the nine factors, are assigned a point value. And then from there, we put breaks within the total points. And that's how we develop the levels, the buckets, the grades. So we had, you know, if we start, I don't want to make you dizzy, but if we go down to grade level one, you can see we started at, you know, the most entry level positions up to 225 points, all the way up to, you know, level 16, which is the top level position within the organization. And does usually stand alone in its own kind of grade. From there, and we'll just look here, we have skill level, and then we have proposed grade. And then we have the 75th percentile of the market data. So what these numbers are within here are the minimums and the maximums that were reported to us through the market survey, and this is the 75th percentile of the data that was reported to us. So, for example, for this payroll administrator position here on, you know, in level six, the minimum 75th percentile data was 69,760, and the maximum 75th percentile data was 95,185. So that gives you an idea of the range of the data that was reported to us. Then from there, we have the current salary ranges for those positions, and then we have the proposed salary ranges for those positions. And one of the first questions that we always get is, why doesn't the proposed range exactly match the 75th percentile data? And one of the reasons it doesn't exactly match is I like to say that developing proposed salary ranges is a bit of an art and a science. So what we do is we look at all the 75th percentile data that was reported to us. So we look at all this data in bucket number six, but then we also look above it in the data that was reported in bucket number seven, and below it in any of the data that we have in bucket number five. And so from there, we look at what is the flow of the data, what is the difference between each grade, and how can we make the ranges consistent when we're putting together the proposed ranges. I think with all the clients I've worked with over the years, there's only been one client that I've worked with, and it was in the state of California, where they lined up the data to match their proposed ranges almost spot on. And the reason they did that was because that was part of their collective bargaining process, actually. It was in their collective bargaining agreement to do it that way. But we look at the averages of that data. And again, this goes back to kind of some of those equal pay regulations and the fact that, you know, all of these positions in level six have been identified as relatively similar in their scope of work through the job evaluation process. So then what we say is then all of those positions should receive a relatively similar pay range. And so, again, we use kind of those averages. And when we scroll down then to table two, and again, I'm going kind of slow because I don't want to make you dizzy. You can see we have here all of the grades, you know, one, two, three, four, five, six, all the way to grade 16 and the grades and the salary ranges that go with each of those grades. Again, some of these you might, you know, have to go through collective bargaining, so it's not going to look exactly the same. Or, you know, there might be some adjustments here and there, depending on, you know, if you have a step plan. Step plan. The way we develop our proposed ranges, there's a 35% spread from minimum to maximum. And, you know, if you have a step plan, that doesn't always work out to an even 35%. So, again, some of these things might be fine-tuned as you move forward with implementation. But, again, this is how we would structure some proposed ranges for the positions within your classification plan. And that was a lot of talking, so I'm going to stop now and see what questions you have. Just before we leave this, because I had a question on it, you've answered a lot of my questions, but the range data is what you're recommending. Is that correct? And what was the actual data that appeared on some of those positions next to the range data, and what's the distinction of that? So, this first column here, 75th percentile salary data, that's the market data. The next one that says current salary range, that is the current Wayland salary range for that position. So, that is whatever you have for your current range for FY26. And then this red row over here, proposed salary ranges, those are the proposed salary ranges based on the analysis and the market data. I guess, but when you did page by page and you did each position, there was something called range data versus actual data. What was that actual data? Oh, okay. So, you're down here. Hold on. I'm really going to make you dizzy. Sorry about this. I don't mean to. Okay. All right. So, this is what you're talking about. So, this is the information that we collected through, and this is actually a bad example, but I can still explain it. This is the data that we collected through the market survey. So, department assistant was the position title. Here's the comparable communities. Here's their comparable job titles. This is the minimum rate that they all reported, the maximum rate that they all reported, and if they gave us an actual salary, this was the actual salary that they reported. When you scroll down here, the first grouping of data all has to do with the minimums and the maximums. So, 75th percentile minimum was 58,559. 75th percentile of the maximum data that was reported, 78,132. These rows down here, if they're filled in, and let me scroll and see if the next one is filled in, and I don't have a lot of actual data. I know. That's right. Which is okay, because we actually prefer using ranges, and I can explain that a little bit. But if we have actual data in here, what we did is we took the actual data that was reported, so 64,5, 65,6, 86,5, and then we came up with the percentiles, and then we kind of developed what I would call kind of a faux range. And it's a range that, given our best guesstimate, based on what the actuals are, if this position were to have a range associated with it, it would look something like this. And it's basically 10% below the actual and 20% above the actual. So if you take this 75th percentile number here, I'm going to try and highlight it, of 76,112, and you came down here to this 75th percentile, 68,5 would basically be 10% below, and 91,3 would be 20% above. And the reason we do that is that if there are any situations where we did not collect enough range data, then we can use the actual data within our analysis by doing this, because you never want to throw away good data. So it may not be ideal, because we prefer to use minimums and maximums, but in some situations, if the best data that we have is actual data, we don't want to let that go to waste. We still want to use it within our analysis. So that's why we do that in that particular situation. And then going back to why we prefer using minimums and maximums, I think it's important to note, especially, and I think all of us can relate to this, in the public sector, there are so many variables that go into an employee's actual salary. You know, I worked, the last organization I worked at, we had an employee that had been with us 40 years, 4-0. As you can imagine, she was at the top of her scale, right? But her position didn't necessarily, you know, align with being at the top of her scale. She just happened to be there because she was there for 40 years. She has since retired. But, you know, again, that's why we really prefer to use those minimums and maximums, because they more closely align with what the market's actually paying versus some of the variables that we may or may not know about that go into somebody's actual salary.
Great. So thank you, Katie, for your presentation. I'd like to open it up for questions from the board members. Paul, you had a question. Yeah, hi. Thank you for all this data and information. Do any of the towns that you surveyed use a variable percentage for different job titles? Like, it seems to me that, you know, you'd want to have the most competitive salaries for the positions that are hardest to fill based on marketplace conditions. And then you could potentially have a lower percentile target for unskilled workers or job titles where there's a, you know, a lot of marketplace where there's a lot of people competing for entry level positions, for example. Yeah, so I totally understand that. And in fact, I have seen one community that I was working with recently did do something like that for their IT positions. They pulled them out of the study and they put them separately. However, our philosophy is to remain consistent across the board. Again, when you're looking at, you know, kind of those equal pay for equal work factors, you know, your best bet is to remain consistent across the board and treat all of your employee groups in a consistent manner. So if you're going to target the 60th or the 70th percentile for one group, we would recommend that you target that for all the groups. And, you know, the thing that you can do with some of those harder to fill positions is maybe adapt your pay, your new hire policies so that you're taking into account, like if you need to bring someone in a little bit higher within the range, you know, because of a hard to fill skill or something like that. Maybe then you could, you know, start someone in a little bit higher within the range rather than starting them at the minimum of the range. But yes, I so to your question, yes, I've seen communities do that, but that's not typically part of our recommendation.
Does anyone else have any questions? Mary Ellen? Let me see. Hold on for a second. Sorry, because I'm on my phone. So I just have a question because it's, you know, Katie, it's very, for me, I'm so visual, it was kind of difficult for me to follow. So you have some of the salaries. So, for instance, the town manager, his is blanked out. It would be interesting to know what he currently makes, as with some of other, the chiefs and the other high-paid employees, to kind of take a look at this and judge from that. And also, where do you take into consideration an employee who may have stipends rolled into their salaries? And do they ever take a look at, maybe I'm going too far to the left or to the right, what about folks that get other perks? Is that, you know, that's above and beyond their salary? Or is that included in their salary? Say, if one was to have a leased car or, you know, I'm just making these things up. What if we subsidize an apartment? How does that roll into that? Just curious.
Your first question about actual salaries, we did not include actual employee salaries in this particular report. You know, if you were interested in seeing some of those actual salaries, I'm sure that's something that you could work with Kate on. But we don't typically include employee actual salaries in this report, because chances are you're going to make this report, right, public. And so, granted, employee salaries tend to be public information, but we don't necessarily want to put that out there as part of our draft report, unless the community asks us to do that. But in most situations, we do not. But my other question, Katie, was, I don't know when we hung our hat on a 75th percentile, because that was a little curious to me. I'd have to look back as to when your last study was, but I believe there was another study that was done previously. And at that point, that was when I think the 75th percentile was identified. It was probably about five years ago, five years ago, yeah.
And again, you're hanging tight with that. So I don't know if I would necessarily, you know, suggest abandoning it, because if you're hanging tight with it, then that's a good thing. You're keeping pace. And then your other question had to do with add-on benefits. And that's a great question. When we do the market study, we are looking at base salary only. And the reason we do that is so that we can, again, try to compare apples to apples as closely as possible. You know, I know there's so many different factors that can go in, and those might vary based on employee group. You know, in Massachusetts, there's the police education, the Quinn Bill. I know that comes into play a lot of times with public safety positions. And, you know, but when we're doing these studies, we really just look at base compensation so that you can get at least an idea at that level if your pay ranges are consistent. If you were going into some, like a total compensation situation, then at that point, you would start adding in some of those additional compensation pieces. And we did survey benefits as part of this. And when we scroll down here, and, again, I try not to go too fast because I know it can be a little dizzy when you're looking. But you can see we have some of that collected benefit information in the draft report so you can get an idea of that benefit information.
Thank you. Thank you, Mary Ellen. Jill, do you have any questions? No, I think this is all really interesting. I would, I do wonder kind of where our current employee base falls within all of this information. Right. Yeah. And then plans for the next steps. Right. Yeah. I guess I had some questions too, and one was similar to Jill's. And in order to maintain internal equity, would you advise that we look at, you know, where people are on the scale? And because we had a lot of, we have people under the 50th and we have people at the 80th and we have a town manager who's not a magician and he has to normalize this. And how, how would you advise a town to deal with it? I mean, I know you said stay at the 75th, but if the budget is constrained, do you go to the 70th and then try to normalize people over time when you've got such a spread? And what's the, what's the, what's the dollar spread between those ranges, say 50th to 80th, what's that dollar spread? Well, the difference between the percentiles when it comes to proposed salary ranges is somewhere between like a thousand to maybe $2,000 per minimum, salary range minimum. So if you were to go from the 75th to the 80th percentile, you'd be looking at somewhere between $1,000 to maybe $1,500 additional at the minimum. And then same opposite, if you were going to go, you know, down to the 70th or the 65th, that's, that's kind of what we, what we see when we do the analysis. So somewhere in that range, as far as next steps, one of the first things that, you know, we'd probably want to do, and I, you know, and Kate and I can work on something like this. And I think we already have some initial, initial numbers are like what, how many employees are falling below the proposed minimums and what that would look like to maybe bring them up to the proposed minimum. So that would be something that, you know, we could definitely kind of fine tune as next steps. And then from there, some communities, as I say, some communities do decide to do like an implementation increase so that if you have really long-term employees that are like really right at the beginning of the range, perhaps you do an additional increase or an adjustment to bring them up a little higher within the range. And what other ways have you seen for communities to handle it? If there's a budget, I mean, we have a, you know, there's, there's a tight budget right now and the town is trying to, the town manager has to figure it out. What, what other kinds of ways have you seen towns handle it? Well, another way that, so the first is again, bringing employees to the minimum and seeing what you can afford around bringing employees to the minimum. In some situations when budget constraints are, are there, we have seen communities phase it out over like maybe two years. So if they have, you know, employees that are falling below the minimum, maybe they do partial adjustments during year one and then the rest of the adjustment during like a year two and they phase it in maybe over multiple years. I've even seen, you know, we have had some communities that have been pretty far below the 50th percentile of the market and they've worked on plans to like phase it in to get themselves to the 50th percentile market, you know, over like two to three years. So that would be one option would be to phase that in, uh, as you kind of move it forward. Um, you know, another thing that communities do look at, uh, especially if they have, uh, defined increment or step plans is they might look at bringing the employee to the next closest step based on the proposed ranges. So, you know, what does the proposed range look like? What would the steps be within that range and what would it look like or how much would it cost to bring the employee to the next closest step? Um, so that is another option that we've seen, but I think when it comes to budget constraints, it would be more like, can we phase this in over multiple years? Uh, Paul, did you have something to add to that? Yeah, are there employees who would have to, who would theoretically be cut because they're above the, the max 75, 75th percentile range? And, um, if that's not the case and you're, um, and everyone's within the range, but you're trying to implement it over a couple of years to, um, cushion the financial impact, can you freeze those employees who are at or above the range while you're doing that?
Red circle them, right? Yes. Uh, we, yeah, we, yes, we don't, we don't recommend cutting salaries. Um, you know, the whole idea behind a comp study is to make sure you're staying competitive. And so we would never recommend that you cut someone's or reduce someone's salary. However, uh, one option would be to kind of redline that salary and, and have it freeze until the range catches up. Uh, or, or another option is to redline the salary, but allow the employee an opportunity maybe to receive bonuses or lump sum increases. Um, so that is an, another option, um, that, you know, some communities have, have toyed with. I mean, during, during COVID, there was a difficulty getting employees and there was a lot of competition, particularly in IT from the external sector. Well, that's turned around now, but we have people that are highly paid and then we have people that have to catch up. And, and so I think having multiple years is tough because then there's some people waiting, right? And I don't know how you, you know, or does everybody just get a little, I mean, I don't know how towns do it. I mean, that's why I, I, I was thinking, well, you could pick a different percentage point and then, and kind of normalize the money over everybody that you had, you know, instead of 75th, go to 70 and, and, and you have what you have, you know, but. That's it. And that's essentially what you could do. And like, um, you know, you would still be targeting the 75th percentile of the range, but maybe you only move, uh, folks like 2% during the first year. And then another 2% during the second year or something like that. So everybody's moving, um, a small or a half amount, uh, instead of trying to play catch up with, with all the employees, uh, that might be impacted. So Katie, that was my, it's Mary Ellen. So that was my question to begin with. How do we know where we're at? If we don't know the employees' salaries, you can't really judge, you know, where we are on your, I can't, on your, um, table when I don't know what I'm looking at. And as Marianne said, there's some people that may be at 80th and there's some people that may be really low. I agree. If somebody is really low, let's get them up there. But, you know, I don't know what people are because you can't see it. Um, yeah, no, that's understandable. And we do have that information, you know, we have worked on that. Um, and let me just see. Well, it kind of would have been helpful to have it within the packet that we have. And then, you know, that would eliminate some of the questions. Okay. I'm just going to scroll down here and see, it looks like, uh, there weren't a whole lot based on, um, I'm just looking here quickly. Okay. Uh, you know, I'm counting less than 20 employees, um, out of my list here that were falling below the proposed minimum below the 50th, but, uh, below the 75th, 75th percentile. Um, I'm seeing, uh, let's see, uh, let's see, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, 11, about 11 or 12 employees. And that's a really quick count. Oh. Um, and that was our initial pass that, you know, again, um, that, that Kate and I worked on.
So that even, even though the, the range is low, they may be at the high end of the range. Is that what, is that what's happening? So that we have fewer people that are actually out of range? Uh, yeah, you only have a handful that are, uh, below the minimum. Okay. At which again, that's why I said it overall, it was, it was really good news because your current salary ranges were keeping pace with that 75th percentile. Wow. So are there any other, uh, questions that people have? Um, Kate, Michael, do you have any questions that have come up for you, um, during the presentation that you didn't have before that you'd like to answer, ask?
Okay. No, I don't. I'm, we, this is, um, hi, it's Kate. Um, this is familiar information. We just, we just, uh, had the same presentation from Katie last week. So, um, but it's useful to hear your questions and get a sense of, um, some other ideas and, um, so, but I don't have anything to add. Okay, great. Thank you. Similarly, Madam Chair, I don't really have any new questions. I think the interesting discussion, as was pointed out by you and others, is, you know, how do we roll this in, phase this in, so that, that it's interesting to listen to that discussion. And, uh, uh, I'll keep listening to see what people have to say in questions. Great. Thank you. Um, thank you very much, Katie, and thank you for your time and thank you for the presentation. And, um, that's, I mean, the town has, has, has to figure out how to, how to implement it because we do want to have internal equity for sure. And we do want to be able to retain and, and keep our employees, but we, the internal equity is a really important thing and really important piece. And there's so many different ways that you can approach it. Um, you know, it's again, compensation can be handled in a multitude of ways. So I can definitely, you know, work with Kate on different options, um, you know, and different methods for implementation as, as she moves forward. And so your, your ranges that you put the 16 groupings, is that going to be, it's sort of, uh, it means all of the particular jobs will be on that same salary range. So we won't have different ranges for each of the positions. They'll all be on the same one. Well, that would be our recommendation. Um, however, again, I think, you know, some of your positions might be in collective bargaining. Some positions might be historically in different, um, employee groups. So it might look a little different, uh, when you are kind of going through those implementation processes. Uh, so, uh, but at least you have kind of a guiding, you know, where you want to go, uh, as you're going through those processes and, and what you might want to be recommending. Okay. Great. Thank you so much. And thank you for the presentation. Thank you. Great. All right. Okay. So, all right. Thank you. Thank you. We don't have to do anything with it. We just accept the presentation, right? We don't have to vote on anything. Right, Kate? Yeah. Yeah, correct. Right. Okay. So we just accept the presentation. That'll be fine. Um, okay. So, um, is there, um, our next, uh, is discussion on the open session minutes from 1216, which I sent you on, um, Friday, I guess. Um, um, I'm going to excuse myself for this portion right ahead, but thank you so much. We still have a quorum so we can finish up. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay.
Did, did anybody, did everyone have a chance to look at those minutes? Um, I see that I have, um, Mary Ellen, I have your initials in red because I wasn't sure that you moved that, but I watched the video and you indeed did move that. Um, but Kate, I do not know when we returned to open session. And when I looked at the link that I got with the video, it didn't have a timestamp on it, but you could find that out from Wacom for me. Sure. Yeah. I think I probably wrote that, um, time down in my own notes, so I can, I can figure that out for you. I can add it. Okay. Does anybody see anything on page one that needs, um, updating, changing?
No? Page two, um, the, when we return to open session, we need to put that in. And Mary Ellen, I will change your initials into black ink because you did move that issue. Anybody see anything else on that page? Page two. Page three. Anything on there? Okay. Can I have a motion on the minutes? So moved. As amended, Mary Ellen? Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Uh, roll call vote, uh, Mary Ellen? Yes. Do you need a, sorry, I don't think I can have a second. I'll second. Oh, second. I could first and second it all. Okay, Paul, thank you. Thank you. Okay. And, and, and Mary Ann, yes. Okay. Yes. Um, great. Uh, and we don't have them yet for 120. We'll have those at the next meeting, right? And, um, topics not reasonably anticipated 48 hours in advance, if any. I don't have any. Does anyone else have any? Um, this is actually more of a, uh, a question for me, uh, technology wise. And I don't know if Kate has, can help. Um, I, I, I, I'm being told that I have to, um, change the password on my Wayland email and it won't let me do it. It says contact the administrator. Do you know who that is? Or can you have the administrator contact me? Yeah, I can, I can reach out to them. It's someone in our IT, IT department. They can reach out to you. Okay. I have no way to contact them to tell them I can't change my password. Yeah. Okay. I will, I will have them reach out to you. Yep. Okay. Thank you. Great. Thank you, Paul. Sorry. I'm just writing that down.
Yeah. So please, please keep using my, uh, my, my other email for now. Okay. Okay. Great. Um, the next meeting date. Now Kate sent out a message. What do we, do we, did we get a, a consensus on the meeting in March, Kate? I think it was either the 23rd, uh, or 20, is that right? Yeah. 23rd or 24th, right? Right. Monday or Tuesday. Right. And did, did people respond? They did. I, I believe it was the 23rd was the consensus. Does that work for you, Paul and Mary Ellen? Um, I think so. I, I didn't respond to all those emails, but I was, most of those dates were okay for me. Okay. Great. Mary Ellen, you good with the 23rd? Yeah. The 23rd's fine unless, you know, something unexpected comes up, but it looks good to me. Okay. Great. And that's four o'clock, correct? Yes. And that will be hopefully, I mean, Michael, you can tell me, do you think you'll have, uh, something for the warrant article that we can, uh, approve at that meeting or, uh, or is that still going to be tight and we, and we use it to do our policies, Kate? But I know that we don't have much time before the warrant closes. That's my question. Yeah. We will have a, um, we will have a warrant, um, uh, an article for you to vote on by then. Um, the, the warrant goes to print on March 30th, I believe, but we need to have everything ready the prior week. Around the 16th. Oh, I'm sorry. Say that again, Michael. I think everything has to be into the select board by the 16th, but we can probably make some last minute changes, but it does go to the print by the end of the month. Okay. Well, Michael, does that mean that you will have a recommendation on the study to go with the warrant article or, or, or is that going to be going out with errata at the very end? Do you have any sense? Well, we're going to have this on the agenda this evening with the select board, give a similar presentation. Uh, I'll look to see what the select board would like to do relative to the warrants. Um, and maybe we'll just have it as, uh, an appendancy as a, you know, a report to be submitted with town meeting. You can have just, uh, reports, um, because we, in all likelihood will not have, uh, uh, a plan how to roll this out. As you mentioned, there's, um, not Kate, but Katie said, you know, there may be different ways to phase this in. We have, I have five collective bargaining units that I'm working with. Um, several of them could be impacted by this study and they each have their own contracts, their own salary tables. So it won't be a one size fits all rollout. It could, you know, that might be easy if we got them all to do one salary grade and things, but you know, given the amount of time we have between this coming to the, you know, the final report and how much time to town meeting, we may not, but I think, you know, I can't predict the future with a hundred percent certainty, but I think if we're going to first tackle some of those people that are below minimums, you know, we'll be looking at it through the lens of a potential override in the next couple of years and how we would best address that. And it may, may turn out to be a phased approach where just like the market rate adjustment happened over a series of years, maybe the phase in, or as was suggested, you move somebody up a step initially and then work on the plan. So to recognize where they fell. So a lot to consider, a lot to digest and a lot to, you know, try and, um, you know, work in between now and town meeting. Do you think there'll be any money set aside to begin it this coming year, or is it going to have to wait till next year? What do you think? Well, we're coming to, you know, not to get ahead of ourselves. We're coming to the close of FY26. And, you know, we, without playing my hand too much, because we have to talk a little bit about this sometimes in my reports at, um, uh, at the select boards meeting, but I, I, I'm sure you can figure out by now, um, with all these, uh, unusual snowstorms, we're already running over on our snow and ice. So, you know, there's not going to be a lot of money at the end of this fiscal year, because we're going to use up from other areas at the end of the year to cover for, for things like that snow and ice budget. And then, you know, we're finalizing the FY27 budget and it'll, it'll just have to see how that when the dust settles, what's there. Um, we again, um, mentioned it at several of the select board meetings, but we, we had to close a very large gap of at least $1.8 million. And then we've had a lot of level funding and level service, um, in there. So we, we had a couple of wins in our favor and we had a couple of things that didn't break. We're still hoping that, um, the state legislature will come back and add more to our chapter 70 and unrestricted general government aid. And so that might give us a little bit more breathing room in FY27 to start implementing this. Um, we're also going to have a fire station staffing study coming out in the distant future. So there's going to be a lot of things that we're going to have to look at and we're going to be financially challenged in the, the upcoming years. So we're going to have to work very closely with you and other folks to see how we're going to implement these things. So I have a question. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt anybody if I did, but when will this study become public for the public? When is it's going to be posted on the internet? So folks can see the, um, study in its entirety. Uh, my guess would be after we talk about it tonight with the select board, we'll probably put it up tomorrow on the select board page and under HR with links to it. So the other question, thank you, Michael, for that. The other question I had in the past, you know, some of the different folks in your seat, you know, have made the packets complete and put it up with the agenda so people can see ahead of time. I know if there's sensitive things, obviously you can't put anything that's an executive session and you wouldn't, but I'm just wondering why that big, if that could go back to that, because then people would have more information ahead of time. And if we could just consider it again, because it was very helpful in the past when I wasn't even in the seat just to see what was coming up. And I could watch it on, you know, um, what do you call it on the, um, the, uh, weight cam. And I would have write my questions down to myself and see if they were answered.
You're talking about the packets that. Yeah. I'm talking about the packets. When we get the packets, if it has the policies and procedures, anything in it that may pique someone's interest, um, versus going out after to look, you know, on the net and, um, on the website and to try to, um, to get up, find it, you know, find the information they need, uh, a request put in. It would just, I think, save a lot of work and a lot of questions for the public. Thank you. Anyone? Nobody's going to answer me. Anyone? Any consideration? Like Ferris Bueller? Bueller? Bueller? Nobody's answering me. So what she's saying is the, the, the select boards packet people get to see, but I guess our packet people don't get to see. And I don't know about other boards and whether their packets are posted. That was the question, I guess. Right. Um, so, I mean, my understanding is that it's not required to put the packet out on, out on the website. We of course would provide it if we were requested. We could, I think the board could have a conversation about that in future on how you want to move forward with packets. Sure. I mean, they're, they're after the fact. We do have them after the fact. People can look at them and, and, and refer to them. Okay. Great. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Um, so there being, and thank you, Michael, for, for the input that, that was very helpful. Um, there being no further business may have a motion to adjourn. So moved. Okay. Okay. 515. And I will say, I say, as I always say, you don't really need a motion to adjourn, but everybody does it. So, okay. So I'll take a roll call vote. Mary Ellen. Yes. Paul. Yes. Mary Ann. Yes. Mary Ann. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you.
Hold on. Yeah. Yes, I have. I had a briefing last Thursday with MGT. Okay. Great. So, thank you. And I'll just turn over the time to Katie so she can begin the presentation. Oh, and I'm taking minutes. Okay. All right. Well, thank you all for your time this afternoon. Actually, early evening for you, right? So, I'm outside of Chicago in Illinois, so it's only 311 by me. So, I'm an hour ahead of you. But we have a sunshiny day today, so hopefully you have the same after all that snow you guys got last week. So, again, my name is Katie. I have been working with MGT. We were previously GovHR for just about three and a half, four years now. The whole time, I've been working primarily on these classification and compensation studies. I do have a lot of clients that I work with within the state of Massachusetts. And then I also work with clients across the United States, you know, Illinois, California, Wisconsin, a variety of different states I've worked in. Prior to joining MGT, I did work in the public sector in human resources for just about 30 years. So, I'm familiar with quite a few different public sector positions and structures. And, actually, I've learned a great deal of working with my Massachusetts clients over the years. So, it's been a lot of fun. Anyway, so, as mentioned, I am going to do an overview of the classification and compensation study process for you. And I'm going to get started here by just sharing my screen.
And it should pop over now. And hopefully, you can all see that. Thumbs up. Yes, you can see my screen. All right. Thanks, Kate. And then, if this would just go away, I'll go ahead and make it a full screen.
And here we go. All right. So, again, we started this classification and compensation study last year. And we're wrapping it up now. And there's a lot of different components to a class and comp study. So, we're going to talk about that as we kind of go through the agenda today. So, again, we're going to start with the scope of work. We'll talk about the job evaluation or classification process, the market survey process, proposed compensation plan, implementation of a classification and compensation plan, and future administration. So, why would an organization do a classification and compensation study? As you saw in the draft report, it's a lot of data. So, you have to kind of be excited about data when you're doing a classification and compensation study. And luckily, I love this kind of stuff. So, that's why I've been working on these studies for the last couple of years. But from a human resources perspective, a classification and compensation study is really considered to be a best practice. The classification component of the study, which is also known as the job evaluation component of the study, provides your organization with a consistent methodology to internally structure or rank your positions. And so, that's really an important kind of guideline for your organization. The compensation component of the study, which is also referred to as the market survey, is where we get data from comparable communities. And we use that data to kind of evaluate where your position within the market is and whether you're remaining competitive within the market. I think I shared the story with some that, you know, I have a friend who works in human resources, and every time they get a new position at her organization, it's kind of like throwing a dart at a dartboard. They just kind of guesstimate what the salary range is going to be for that position. And it really creates a lot of inconsistencies and inequity in their process and actually kind of makes her a little bit loopy sometimes because it's not a consistent process. Whereas, you know, this classification and compensation study, we have a very consistent methodology, something for you to fall back on.
So then in this slide here, we talk about the scope of work and the process for a class and comp study. And there's a lot of bullet points up here because there's a lot of moving parts. As mentioned, we are doing the classification or the job evaluation part, and that includes employees fill out position, job analysis questionnaires. It involves meeting with the employees and discussing their positions with them. And then there's the compensation side of the study that involves kind of surveying the comparable communities, collecting the market data and putting it together in some type of an easily readable format. And then from there, we put together, you know, the draft report, which you've seen, as well as, you know, this type of presentation. So, again, a lot of moving parts.
So the job evaluation or classification component of the study, let's talk about that.
The methodology that we use is a point factor methodology for evaluating or classifying positions. The way we do that is we have a set of nine factors, which are here on the screen, everything from education, work experience, to supervision of others, working conditions, and use of technology are all part of the factors that we take into account when we're doing the job evaluation process. All employees were asked to complete a job analysis questionnaire that had some questions for them regarding these nine factors. And as you can see from these nine factors, these are factors that can be measured across an organization no matter what department a position is in. So when we get to the classification plan, and I talk to you a little bit about the recommended structure, you will see positions from different departments falling within the same bucket. So you might have a finance position in the same salary grade or salary bucket along with a public works position. And, again, that's so it gives you an opportunity to look at your organization, you know, across the whole organization based on a consistent nine factors. The other thing that this does for you is, you know, in the state of Massachusetts, you do have some equal pay regulations. And the job evaluation process helps you kind of reflect or, you know, comply with some of those those types of regulations. So, again, with the job evaluation process, we did have employees complete job analysis questionnaires, but we also took a look at current job descriptions. On the job analysis questionnaire, there was space for supervisors to add comments. So if supervisors added comments, we took a look at those. And then we also conducted virtual interviews with employees who wanted to participate in the process. We always try to conduct a virtual interview with at least one employee from each position that was part of the study. And for this particular study, we had well over, you know, 100 positions, just maybe a little over 100 positions that were part of this study. When we're developing the proposed classification plan, besides using these particular resources, we also rely on feedback from administration and human resources. So after we did put together our proposed classification plan, you know, I did go back to Kate and asked her questions about, you know, maybe supervision or organizational structure or those types of things, just to make sure that where we were evaluating the position actually was appropriate within the organization to make sure we were understanding all of the information that we had collected correctly. And so then again, we put together the proposed classification plan based on the job analysis questionnaires, and that sort of creates your internal structure or your internal equity, so to speak. And our proposed classification plan has 16 pay grades within it, or I also refer to those as buckets of positions. Okay, so then we'll switch gears a little bit, and we'll talk about the market study or the compensation side of the study. And for that particular process, we begin by putting together a list of comparable communities. And within, you know, within the state of Massachusetts, we use a very consistent, again, set of criteria when we're establishing comparable communities. You can see, again, those are the eight criteria here up on the screen. Population, per capita income, equalized value per capita, assessed value, tax levy, total budget, state aid, and proximity. So, again, these are the kind of consistent criteria that we use when we're working with Massachusetts clients. One of the reasons that we use this criteria is because, as you can see, there are a lot of financial factors. So they do kind of, you know, give you some type of reflection on a community's ability to pay. And what do I mean by that? Well, I think I mentioned, so I'm in Illinois, I'm outside of Chicago, I live in a suburb of Chicago, right? If I were doing a comparable community analysis for my suburb, I would not use Chicago as a comparable, right? Because Chicago is, you know, a million times larger and has a ton more positions and their budget is very different. So if we were establishing comparable communities in Illinois, we use a similar set of criteria, again, based on different financial factors that are available from a consistent source. So that's another important part of this is all of this data, or most of this data, I should say, is available through the Massachusetts Department of Revenue through financial reporting. And so we, again, are able to collect that data for the comparable community analysis from a consistent source. So it's data that's, you know, reported for different communities in a consistent manner. So, again, we can kind of say that we're comparing apples to apples as much as possible in order to establish those comparable communities. Now, I will also make a note here just to say that in some situations, you know, we might add other communities to the comparable community list that might be bigger or smaller than a particular community that we're working with. But sometimes we do that in situations where maybe a community has recently lost employees to job offers at other communities. I don't think we had that with this particular list of communities, but that is something that we also take into consideration when it happens.
So once we set up the comparable communities, each of those eight factors gets kind of a point value. And then depending upon how closely a community aligns with Weyland, they get, you know, either the maximum number of points or the minimum number of points. So, you know, if a community's population is significantly higher or lower than Weyland's, then that's reflected in the scoring that is done kind of behind the scenes. And then what we did is we set a cutoff of 85 points, and we, you know, grabbed the communities that scored at least 85 points on the comparable community analysis. And those are the communities you see here up on the screen. And the good news for this study, which is fantastic, is that we had almost 100% participation in our market survey. So kudos on that, because that is an amazing feat. You can see we only had one community that did not respond to our request for data. And that is awesome, because what that means is you have a lot of really good data to work from when we're putting together our recommendations. I will say, you know, I do a lot of work in Massachusetts, and I do a lot of work in Illinois. And because we have relationships with a lot of communities in both of those states, we do tend to get really good participation. But this is fantastic. This is probably one of the better participation rates that I've had recently. So, again, with the market survey, you know, the way we structure it is we send out an electronic survey to the comparable communities. And when we're putting that survey together, we do not always include all of the positions within an organization. And the reason that we do that is because once a survey gets too big or too unruly, we notice a significant decline in participation. So when we're putting together a survey, we usually limit it to about 40 to 50 positions, just so that when the responding community gets the survey, they're not like, oh, my goodness, this is going to take me forever to fill out. So, you know, again, we do kind of limit that. And we select benchmark positions to survey for. And what I mean by benchmark positions are positions that are very common across organizations, positions that maybe have multiple incumbents in them, and positions that are, you know, again, relatively common. So, you know, administrative assistant or department assistant, laborer or wastewater operator or water operator, those are the types of positions that, you know, we commonly see across the board in different communities. We also surveyed for some benefits information for this particular survey, everything from health insurance premiums to health savings account, vacation time, and that. And there is a summary of the benefits information in the draft report. You know, I will say that when we do these surveys, we do see that within the public sector, benefits are relatively consistent, especially around time off. You know, you know, most of us, you know, I, again, I was in the public sector for a long time. We're very generous with our time off. And so we see that consistently across the board with a lot of these surveys that we're, that we're doing.
Oops, wait, go back. Okay. So from there, what we do with the market data is we take that market data and we marry it together with that, with that classification plan. So the classification plan had 16 grades in it, and we bring over that market data and we align the two. And then from there, we use that market data to inform our decision-making as to what type of pay ranges we're going to be proposing for the study. And now, Waylon has historically targeted the 75th percentile of the market. And what do I mean by that? Well, when we're collecting that data back, the 50th percentile is the middle. So if you look at all that data and you go right smack dab in the middle, 50th percentile would mean that 50% of the payers were higher and 50% of the payers were lower. When you're targeting the 75th percentile, that means that you're, you're really striving to be a little bit higher, a little bit of a market leader, which is, which is very good for a community when they're trying to fill some of those hard to fill positions. And I will say that when we got the market data back, again, good news, you've been keeping pace with that 75th percentile of the market. When we were getting some of that data back, we did see that a lot of your current pay ranges were aligning with the 75th percentile of the market. So that's, that's good news. As far as implementation of a proposed classification and compensation plan, the first thing that I want to kind of, you know, talk about is the fact that really everything that we put together are proposals or recommendations based on our process and based on the data. From there, we completely understand that each community is unique and that, you know, some of your positions may have collective bargaining agreements with them. So you may have to go through collective bargaining to implement, you know, some of these things. Or it might be that, you know, you're in a fiscal situation right now where, you know, maybe not all of the changes can be implemented or so, or only some of them can be implemented. So again, we completely recognize that each community is unique and has different circumstances as far as what implementation will look like for them. With that said, one of the, one of the, one of the kind of primary recommendations that we always have when we do these studies is that if any current employees are falling below what we see as the proposed minimum of the range, you know, then it's really recommended that those employees be brought up to the minimum as soon as financially possible. Because it may indicate that that employee has been being paid below that market rate that you're kind of targeting. So that's really our, our main recommendation is to look at any of those employee salaries that might be falling below the minimum and do some estimations as to when those employees might be able to be raised up. From there, if an employee's compensation falls within the proposed range, that's fantastic. That means they're being paid at the market rate that you're kind of targeting. Now, if an employee's salary falls above the proposed range, then that's a different scenario also. And again, each community might decide to approach that differently. Some communities say that if an employee is above the max, we're going to, you know, redline that salary and kind of leave that employee there until the range catches up to them. Or they might say, you know, we're going to grandfather that employee in and we're going to let that employee continue to get raises into the foreseeable future. No matter how an organization approaches that, you know, we do recommend that that practice is consistent across the board. So if there are, you know, five employees that are above the maximum, then all five should really be, should be treated consistently.
As far as future administration for the classification and compensation system, you know, for the classification system, we completely recognize that positions change. More duties might be added and a position might grow or duties might be, you know, reduced and a position might shrink. Or maybe services change and a position is no longer needed because that service is no longer being provided. So with the classification plan, you know, we recommend really, you know, that usually falls on human resources, that human resources is reviewing the classification plan on a regular basis and making those adjustments. As far as the compensation side or the salary range side, we recommend that organizations review their salary ranges on an annual basis. There are a lot of different ways that you can review your salary ranges and decide whether you're going to adjust the ranges or how you're going to approach employee increases. Some organizations look at the consumer price index. Some organizations might look at different surveys that organizations out there do, like Society for Human Resource Management, also known as SHRM. They do an annual market survey and they kind of talk about what the annual increases are looking like for the upcoming year. We also recommend that you use those comparable communities. So we've identified those comparable communities as most similar to Waylon. And at this point, you know, reach out to those communities and find out if they know what their plans are for the upcoming fiscal year. Then you can take all of that information holistically and make an informed decision from there with all of that data. And that is the end of my exciting slides. So I am going to let's see, I'm going to close the slides and I am going to open up some sections of that draft report. And I wish this little thing up here would go away on the screen, but I can't get that to go away. But I want to open up table one and table two and just kind of walk you through what you're looking at on table one and table two. And this might be a little small for you. And if I make it too much bigger, it falls outside of the screen. So I'm just going to kind of, again, walk you through what you're looking at here. So at the far left is position title. Right. So that's relatively self-explanatory. That's the current position title. So in some cases within the draft report, we did make some recommendations for title changes. Again, those are just recommendations based on what we're seeing in the market. You know, so it's up to each organization if they, you know, decide to move forward with those or not. Then from there, the next column we have is skill level. And what is that exactly? Well, you notice between each of these numbers, like 750 to 785, that's 35 points, right? 710 to 745, that's 35 points. So when we go back to that job evaluation process, all of those factors, the nine factors, are assigned a point value. And then from there, we put breaks within the total points. And that's how we develop the levels, the buckets, the grades. So we had, you know, if we start, I don't want to make you dizzy, but if we go down to grade level one, you can see we started at, you know, the most entry level positions up to 225 points, all the way up to, you know, level 16, which is the top level position within the organization. And does usually stand alone in its own kind of grade. From there, and we'll just look here, we have skill level, and then we have proposed grade. And then we have the 75th percentile of the market data. So what these numbers are within here are the minimums and the maximums that were reported to us through the market survey, and this is the 75th percentile of the data that was reported to us. So, for example, for this payroll administrator position here on, you know, in level six, the minimum 75th percentile data was 69,760, and the maximum 75th percentile data was 95,185. So that gives you an idea of the range of the data that was reported to us. Then from there, we have the current salary ranges for those positions, and then we have the proposed salary ranges for those positions. And one of the first questions that we always get is, why doesn't the proposed range exactly match the 75th percentile data? And one of the reasons it doesn't exactly match is I like to say that developing proposed salary ranges is a bit of an art and a science. So what we do is we look at all the 75th percentile data that was reported to us. So we look at all this data in bucket number six, but then we also look above it in the data that was reported in bucket number seven, and below it in any of the data that we have in bucket number five. And so from there, we look at what is the flow of the data, what is the difference between each grade, and how can we make the ranges consistent when we're putting together the proposed ranges. I think with all the clients I've worked with over the years, there's only been one client that I've worked with, and it was in the state of California, where they lined up the data to match their proposed ranges almost spot on. And the reason they did that was because that was part of their collective bargaining process, actually. It was in their collective bargaining agreement to do it that way. But we look at the averages of that data. And again, this goes back to kind of some of those equal pay regulations and the fact that, you know, all of these positions in level six have been identified as relatively similar in their scope of work through the job evaluation process. So then what we say is then all of those positions should receive a relatively similar pay range. And so, again, we use kind of those averages. And when we scroll down then to table two, and again, I'm going kind of slow because I don't want to make you dizzy. You can see we have here all of the grades, you know, one, two, three, four, five, six, all the way to grade 16 and the grades and the salary ranges that go with each of those grades. Again, some of these you might, you know, have to go through collective bargaining, so it's not going to look exactly the same. Or, you know, there might be some adjustments here and there, depending on, you know, if you have a step plan. Step plan. The way we develop our proposed ranges, there's a 35% spread from minimum to maximum. And, you know, if you have a step plan, that doesn't always work out to an even 35%. So, again, some of these things might be fine-tuned as you move forward with implementation. But, again, this is how we would structure some proposed ranges for the positions within your classification plan. And that was a lot of talking, so I'm going to stop now and see what questions you have. Just before we leave this, because I had a question on it, you've answered a lot of my questions, but the range data is what you're recommending. Is that correct? And what was the actual data that appeared on some of those positions next to the range data, and what's the distinction of that? So, this first column here, 75th percentile salary data, that's the market data. The next one that says current salary range, that is the current Wayland salary range for that position. So, that is whatever you have for your current range for FY26. And then this red row over here, proposed salary ranges, those are the proposed salary ranges based on the analysis and the market data. I guess, but when you did page by page and you did each position, there was something called range data versus actual data. What was that actual data? Oh, okay. So, you're down here. Hold on. I'm really going to make you dizzy. Sorry about this. I don't mean to. Okay. All right. So, this is what you're talking about. So, this is the information that we collected through, and this is actually a bad example, but I can still explain it. This is the data that we collected through the market survey. So, department assistant was the position title. Here's the comparable communities. Here's their comparable job titles. This is the minimum rate that they all reported, the maximum rate that they all reported, and if they gave us an actual salary, this was the actual salary that they reported. When you scroll down here, the first grouping of data all has to do with the minimums and the maximums. So, 75th percentile minimum was 58,559. 75th percentile of the maximum data that was reported, 78,132. These rows down here, if they're filled in, and let me scroll and see if the next one is filled in, and I don't have a lot of actual data. I know. That's right. Which is okay, because we actually prefer using ranges, and I can explain that a little bit. But if we have actual data in here, what we did is we took the actual data that was reported, so 64,5, 65,6, 86,5, and then we came up with the percentiles, and then we kind of developed what I would call kind of a faux range. And it's a range that, given our best guesstimate, based on what the actuals are, if this position were to have a range associated with it, it would look something like this. And it's basically 10% below the actual and 20% above the actual. So if you take this 75th percentile number here, I'm going to try and highlight it, of 76,112, and you came down here to this 75th percentile, 68,5 would basically be 10% below, and 91,3 would be 20% above. And the reason we do that is that if there are any situations where we did not collect enough range data, then we can use the actual data within our analysis by doing this, because you never want to throw away good data. So it may not be ideal, because we prefer to use minimums and maximums, but in some situations, if the best data that we have is actual data, we don't want to let that go to waste. We still want to use it within our analysis. So that's why we do that in that particular situation. And then going back to why we prefer using minimums and maximums, I think it's important to note, especially, and I think all of us can relate to this, in the public sector, there are so many variables that go into an employee's actual salary. You know, I worked, the last organization I worked at, we had an employee that had been with us 40 years, 4-0. As you can imagine, she was at the top of her scale, right? But her position didn't necessarily, you know, align with being at the top of her scale. She just happened to be there because she was there for 40 years. She has since retired. But, you know, again, that's why we really prefer to use those minimums and maximums, because they more closely align with what the market's actually paying versus some of the variables that we may or may not know about that go into somebody's actual salary.
Great. So thank you, Katie, for your presentation. I'd like to open it up for questions from the board members. Paul, you had a question. Yeah, hi. Thank you for all this data and information. Do any of the towns that you surveyed use a variable percentage for different job titles? Like, it seems to me that, you know, you'd want to have the most competitive salaries for the positions that are hardest to fill based on marketplace conditions. And then you could potentially have a lower percentile target for unskilled workers or job titles where there's a, you know, a lot of marketplace where there's a lot of people competing for entry level positions, for example. Yeah, so I totally understand that. And in fact, I have seen one community that I was working with recently did do something like that for their IT positions. They pulled them out of the study and they put them separately. However, our philosophy is to remain consistent across the board. Again, when you're looking at, you know, kind of those equal pay for equal work factors, you know, your best bet is to remain consistent across the board and treat all of your employee groups in a consistent manner. So if you're going to target the 60th or the 70th percentile for one group, we would recommend that you target that for all the groups. And, you know, the thing that you can do with some of those harder to fill positions is maybe adapt your pay, your new hire policies so that you're taking into account, like if you need to bring someone in a little bit higher within the range, you know, because of a hard to fill skill or something like that. Maybe then you could, you know, start someone in a little bit higher within the range rather than starting them at the minimum of the range. But yes, I so to your question, yes, I've seen communities do that, but that's not typically part of our recommendation.
Does anyone else have any questions? Mary Ellen? Let me see. Hold on for a second. Sorry, because I'm on my phone. So I just have a question because it's, you know, Katie, it's very, for me, I'm so visual, it was kind of difficult for me to follow. So you have some of the salaries. So, for instance, the town manager, his is blanked out. It would be interesting to know what he currently makes, as with some of other, the chiefs and the other high-paid employees, to kind of take a look at this and judge from that. And also, where do you take into consideration an employee who may have stipends rolled into their salaries? And do they ever take a look at, maybe I'm going too far to the left or to the right, what about folks that get other perks? Is that, you know, that's above and beyond their salary? Or is that included in their salary? Say, if one was to have a leased car or, you know, I'm just making these things up. What if we subsidize an apartment? How does that roll into that? Just curious.
Your first question about actual salaries, we did not include actual employee salaries in this particular report. You know, if you were interested in seeing some of those actual salaries, I'm sure that's something that you could work with Kate on. But we don't typically include employee actual salaries in this report, because chances are you're going to make this report, right, public. And so, granted, employee salaries tend to be public information, but we don't necessarily want to put that out there as part of our draft report, unless the community asks us to do that. But in most situations, we do not. But my other question, Katie, was, I don't know when we hung our hat on a 75th percentile, because that was a little curious to me. I'd have to look back as to when your last study was, but I believe there was another study that was done previously. And at that point, that was when I think the 75th percentile was identified. It was probably about five years ago, five years ago, yeah.
And again, you're hanging tight with that. So I don't know if I would necessarily, you know, suggest abandoning it, because if you're hanging tight with it, then that's a good thing. You're keeping pace. And then your other question had to do with add-on benefits. And that's a great question. When we do the market study, we are looking at base salary only. And the reason we do that is so that we can, again, try to compare apples to apples as closely as possible. You know, I know there's so many different factors that can go in, and those might vary based on employee group. You know, in Massachusetts, there's the police education, the Quinn Bill. I know that comes into play a lot of times with public safety positions. And, you know, but when we're doing these studies, we really just look at base compensation so that you can get at least an idea at that level if your pay ranges are consistent. If you were going into some, like a total compensation situation, then at that point, you would start adding in some of those additional compensation pieces. And we did survey benefits as part of this. And when we scroll down here, and, again, I try not to go too fast because I know it can be a little dizzy when you're looking. But you can see we have some of that collected benefit information in the draft report so you can get an idea of that benefit information.
Thank you. Thank you, Mary Ellen. Jill, do you have any questions? No, I think this is all really interesting. I would, I do wonder kind of where our current employee base falls within all of this information. Right. Yeah. And then plans for the next steps. Right. Yeah. I guess I had some questions too, and one was similar to Jill's. And in order to maintain internal equity, would you advise that we look at, you know, where people are on the scale? And because we had a lot of, we have people under the 50th and we have people at the 80th and we have a town manager who's not a magician and he has to normalize this. And how, how would you advise a town to deal with it? I mean, I know you said stay at the 75th, but if the budget is constrained, do you go to the 70th and then try to normalize people over time when you've got such a spread? And what's the, what's the, what's the dollar spread between those ranges, say 50th to 80th, what's that dollar spread? Well, the difference between the percentiles when it comes to proposed salary ranges is somewhere between like a thousand to maybe $2,000 per minimum, salary range minimum. So if you were to go from the 75th to the 80th percentile, you'd be looking at somewhere between $1,000 to maybe $1,500 additional at the minimum. And then same opposite, if you were going to go, you know, down to the 70th or the 65th, that's, that's kind of what we, what we see when we do the analysis. So somewhere in that range, as far as next steps, one of the first things that, you know, we'd probably want to do, and I, you know, and Kate and I can work on something like this. And I think we already have some initial, initial numbers are like what, how many employees are falling below the proposed minimums and what that would look like to maybe bring them up to the proposed minimum. So that would be something that, you know, we could definitely kind of fine tune as next steps. And then from there, some communities, as I say, some communities do decide to do like an implementation increase so that if you have really long-term employees that are like really right at the beginning of the range, perhaps you do an additional increase or an adjustment to bring them up a little higher within the range. And what other ways have you seen for communities to handle it? If there's a budget, I mean, we have a, you know, there's, there's a tight budget right now and the town is trying to, the town manager has to figure it out. What, what other kinds of ways have you seen towns handle it? Well, another way that, so the first is again, bringing employees to the minimum and seeing what you can afford around bringing employees to the minimum. In some situations when budget constraints are, are there, we have seen communities phase it out over like maybe two years. So if they have, you know, employees that are falling below the minimum, maybe they do partial adjustments during year one and then the rest of the adjustment during like a year two and they phase it in maybe over multiple years. I've even seen, you know, we have had some communities that have been pretty far below the 50th percentile of the market and they've worked on plans to like phase it in to get themselves to the 50th percentile market, you know, over like two to three years. So that would be one option would be to phase that in, uh, as you kind of move it forward. Um, you know, another thing that communities do look at, uh, especially if they have, uh, defined increment or step plans is they might look at bringing the employee to the next closest step based on the proposed ranges. So, you know, what does the proposed range look like? What would the steps be within that range and what would it look like or how much would it cost to bring the employee to the next closest step? Um, so that is another option that we've seen, but I think when it comes to budget constraints, it would be more like, can we phase this in over multiple years? Uh, Paul, did you have something to add to that? Yeah, are there employees who would have to, who would theoretically be cut because they're above the, the max 75, 75th percentile range? And, um, if that's not the case and you're, um, and everyone's within the range, but you're trying to implement it over a couple of years to, um, cushion the financial impact, can you freeze those employees who are at or above the range while you're doing that?
Red circle them, right? Yes. Uh, we, yeah, we, yes, we don't, we don't recommend cutting salaries. Um, you know, the whole idea behind a comp study is to make sure you're staying competitive. And so we would never recommend that you cut someone's or reduce someone's salary. However, uh, one option would be to kind of redline that salary and, and have it freeze until the range catches up. Uh, or, or another option is to redline the salary, but allow the employee an opportunity maybe to receive bonuses or lump sum increases. Um, so that is an, another option, um, that, you know, some communities have, have toyed with. I mean, during, during COVID, there was a difficulty getting employees and there was a lot of competition, particularly in IT from the external sector. Well, that's turned around now, but we have people that are highly paid and then we have people that have to catch up. And, and so I think having multiple years is tough because then there's some people waiting, right? And I don't know how you, you know, or does everybody just get a little, I mean, I don't know how towns do it. I mean, that's why I, I, I was thinking, well, you could pick a different percentage point and then, and kind of normalize the money over everybody that you had, you know, instead of 75th, go to 70 and, and, and you have what you have, you know, but. That's it. And that's essentially what you could do. And like, um, you know, you would still be targeting the 75th percentile of the range, but maybe you only move, uh, folks like 2% during the first year. And then another 2% during the second year or something like that. So everybody's moving, um, a small or a half amount, uh, instead of trying to play catch up with, with all the employees, uh, that might be impacted. So Katie, that was my, it's Mary Ellen. So that was my question to begin with. How do we know where we're at? If we don't know the employees' salaries, you can't really judge, you know, where we are on your, I can't, on your, um, table when I don't know what I'm looking at. And as Marianne said, there's some people that may be at 80th and there's some people that may be really low. I agree. If somebody is really low, let's get them up there. But, you know, I don't know what people are because you can't see it. Um, yeah, no, that's understandable. And we do have that information, you know, we have worked on that. Um, and let me just see. Well, it kind of would have been helpful to have it within the packet that we have. And then, you know, that would eliminate some of the questions. Okay. I'm just going to scroll down here and see, it looks like, uh, there weren't a whole lot based on, um, I'm just looking here quickly. Okay. Uh, you know, I'm counting less than 20 employees, um, out of my list here that were falling below the proposed minimum below the 50th, but, uh, below the 75th, 75th percentile. Um, I'm seeing, uh, let's see, uh, let's see, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, 11, about 11 or 12 employees. And that's a really quick count. Oh. Um, and that was our initial pass that, you know, again, um, that, that Kate and I worked on.
So that even, even though the, the range is low, they may be at the high end of the range. Is that what, is that what's happening? So that we have fewer people that are actually out of range? Uh, yeah, you only have a handful that are, uh, below the minimum. Okay. At which again, that's why I said it overall, it was, it was really good news because your current salary ranges were keeping pace with that 75th percentile. Wow. So are there any other, uh, questions that people have? Um, Kate, Michael, do you have any questions that have come up for you, um, during the presentation that you didn't have before that you'd like to answer, ask?
Okay. No, I don't. I'm, we, this is, um, hi, it's Kate. Um, this is familiar information. We just, we just, uh, had the same presentation from Katie last week. So, um, but it's useful to hear your questions and get a sense of, um, some other ideas and, um, so, but I don't have anything to add. Okay, great. Thank you. Similarly, Madam Chair, I don't really have any new questions. I think the interesting discussion, as was pointed out by you and others, is, you know, how do we roll this in, phase this in, so that, that it's interesting to listen to that discussion. And, uh, uh, I'll keep listening to see what people have to say in questions. Great. Thank you. Um, thank you very much, Katie, and thank you for your time and thank you for the presentation. And, um, that's, I mean, the town has, has, has to figure out how to, how to implement it because we do want to have internal equity for sure. And we do want to be able to retain and, and keep our employees, but we, the internal equity is a really important thing and really important piece. And there's so many different ways that you can approach it. Um, you know, it's again, compensation can be handled in a multitude of ways. So I can definitely, you know, work with Kate on different options, um, you know, and different methods for implementation as, as she moves forward. And so your, your ranges that you put the 16 groupings, is that going to be, it's sort of, uh, it means all of the particular jobs will be on that same salary range. So we won't have different ranges for each of the positions. They'll all be on the same one. Well, that would be our recommendation. Um, however, again, I think, you know, some of your positions might be in collective bargaining. Some positions might be historically in different, um, employee groups. So it might look a little different, uh, when you are kind of going through those implementation processes. Uh, so, uh, but at least you have kind of a guiding, you know, where you want to go, uh, as you're going through those processes and, and what you might want to be recommending. Okay. Great. Thank you so much. And thank you for the presentation. Thank you. Great. All right. Okay. So, all right. Thank you. Thank you. We don't have to do anything with it. We just accept the presentation, right? We don't have to vote on anything. Right, Kate? Yeah. Yeah, correct. Right. Okay. So we just accept the presentation. That'll be fine. Um, okay. So, um, is there, um, our next, uh, is discussion on the open session minutes from 1216, which I sent you on, um, Friday, I guess. Um, um, I'm going to excuse myself for this portion right ahead, but thank you so much. We still have a quorum so we can finish up. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay.
Did, did anybody, did everyone have a chance to look at those minutes? Um, I see that I have, um, Mary Ellen, I have your initials in red because I wasn't sure that you moved that, but I watched the video and you indeed did move that. Um, but Kate, I do not know when we returned to open session. And when I looked at the link that I got with the video, it didn't have a timestamp on it, but you could find that out from Wacom for me. Sure. Yeah. I think I probably wrote that, um, time down in my own notes, so I can, I can figure that out for you. I can add it. Okay. Does anybody see anything on page one that needs, um, updating, changing?
No? Page two, um, the, when we return to open session, we need to put that in. And Mary Ellen, I will change your initials into black ink because you did move that issue. Anybody see anything else on that page? Page two. Page three. Anything on there? Okay. Can I have a motion on the minutes? So moved. As amended, Mary Ellen? Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Uh, roll call vote, uh, Mary Ellen? Yes. Do you need a, sorry, I don't think I can have a second. I'll second. Oh, second. I could first and second it all. Okay, Paul, thank you. Thank you. Okay. And, and, and Mary Ann, yes. Okay. Yes. Um, great. Uh, and we don't have them yet for 120. We'll have those at the next meeting, right? And, um, topics not reasonably anticipated 48 hours in advance, if any. I don't have any. Does anyone else have any? Um, this is actually more of a, uh, a question for me, uh, technology wise. And I don't know if Kate has, can help. Um, I, I, I, I'm being told that I have to, um, change the password on my Wayland email and it won't let me do it. It says contact the administrator. Do you know who that is? Or can you have the administrator contact me? Yeah, I can, I can reach out to them. It's someone in our IT, IT department. They can reach out to you. Okay. I have no way to contact them to tell them I can't change my password. Yeah. Okay. I will, I will have them reach out to you. Yep. Okay. Thank you. Great. Thank you, Paul. Sorry. I'm just writing that down.
Yeah. So please, please keep using my, uh, my, my other email for now. Okay. Okay. Great. Um, the next meeting date. Now Kate sent out a message. What do we, do we, did we get a, a consensus on the meeting in March, Kate? I think it was either the 23rd, uh, or 20, is that right? Yeah. 23rd or 24th, right? Right. Monday or Tuesday. Right. And did, did people respond? They did. I, I believe it was the 23rd was the consensus. Does that work for you, Paul and Mary Ellen? Um, I think so. I, I didn't respond to all those emails, but I was, most of those dates were okay for me. Okay. Great. Mary Ellen, you good with the 23rd? Yeah. The 23rd's fine unless, you know, something unexpected comes up, but it looks good to me. Okay. Great. And that's four o'clock, correct? Yes. And that will be hopefully, I mean, Michael, you can tell me, do you think you'll have, uh, something for the warrant article that we can, uh, approve at that meeting or, uh, or is that still going to be tight and we, and we use it to do our policies, Kate? But I know that we don't have much time before the warrant closes. That's my question. Yeah. We will have a, um, we will have a warrant, um, uh, an article for you to vote on by then. Um, the, the warrant goes to print on March 30th, I believe, but we need to have everything ready the prior week. Around the 16th. Oh, I'm sorry. Say that again, Michael. I think everything has to be into the select board by the 16th, but we can probably make some last minute changes, but it does go to the print by the end of the month. Okay. Well, Michael, does that mean that you will have a recommendation on the study to go with the warrant article or, or, or is that going to be going out with errata at the very end? Do you have any sense? Well, we're going to have this on the agenda this evening with the select board, give a similar presentation. Uh, I'll look to see what the select board would like to do relative to the warrants. Um, and maybe we'll just have it as, uh, an appendancy as a, you know, a report to be submitted with town meeting. You can have just, uh, reports, um, because we, in all likelihood will not have, uh, uh, a plan how to roll this out. As you mentioned, there's, um, not Kate, but Katie said, you know, there may be different ways to phase this in. We have, I have five collective bargaining units that I'm working with. Um, several of them could be impacted by this study and they each have their own contracts, their own salary tables. So it won't be a one size fits all rollout. It could, you know, that might be easy if we got them all to do one salary grade and things, but you know, given the amount of time we have between this coming to the, you know, the final report and how much time to town meeting, we may not, but I think, you know, I can't predict the future with a hundred percent certainty, but I think if we're going to first tackle some of those people that are below minimums, you know, we'll be looking at it through the lens of a potential override in the next couple of years and how we would best address that. And it may, may turn out to be a phased approach where just like the market rate adjustment happened over a series of years, maybe the phase in, or as was suggested, you move somebody up a step initially and then work on the plan. So to recognize where they fell. So a lot to consider, a lot to digest and a lot to, you know, try and, um, you know, work in between now and town meeting. Do you think there'll be any money set aside to begin it this coming year, or is it going to have to wait till next year? What do you think? Well, we're coming to, you know, not to get ahead of ourselves. We're coming to the close of FY26. And, you know, we, without playing my hand too much, because we have to talk a little bit about this sometimes in my reports at, um, uh, at the select boards meeting, but I, I, I'm sure you can figure out by now, um, with all these, uh, unusual snowstorms, we're already running over on our snow and ice. So, you know, there's not going to be a lot of money at the end of this fiscal year, because we're going to use up from other areas at the end of the year to cover for, for things like that snow and ice budget. And then, you know, we're finalizing the FY27 budget and it'll, it'll just have to see how that when the dust settles, what's there. Um, we again, um, mentioned it at several of the select board meetings, but we, we had to close a very large gap of at least $1.8 million. And then we've had a lot of level funding and level service, um, in there. So we, we had a couple of wins in our favor and we had a couple of things that didn't break. We're still hoping that, um, the state legislature will come back and add more to our chapter 70 and unrestricted general government aid. And so that might give us a little bit more breathing room in FY27 to start implementing this. Um, we're also going to have a fire station staffing study coming out in the distant future. So there's going to be a lot of things that we're going to have to look at and we're going to be financially challenged in the, the upcoming years. So we're going to have to work very closely with you and other folks to see how we're going to implement these things. So I have a question. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt anybody if I did, but when will this study become public for the public? When is it's going to be posted on the internet? So folks can see the, um, study in its entirety. Uh, my guess would be after we talk about it tonight with the select board, we'll probably put it up tomorrow on the select board page and under HR with links to it. So the other question, thank you, Michael, for that. The other question I had in the past, you know, some of the different folks in your seat, you know, have made the packets complete and put it up with the agenda so people can see ahead of time. I know if there's sensitive things, obviously you can't put anything that's an executive session and you wouldn't, but I'm just wondering why that big, if that could go back to that, because then people would have more information ahead of time. And if we could just consider it again, because it was very helpful in the past when I wasn't even in the seat just to see what was coming up. And I could watch it on, you know, um, what do you call it on the, um, the, uh, weight cam. And I would have write my questions down to myself and see if they were answered.
You're talking about the packets that. Yeah. I'm talking about the packets. When we get the packets, if it has the policies and procedures, anything in it that may pique someone's interest, um, versus going out after to look, you know, on the net and, um, on the website and to try to, um, to get up, find it, you know, find the information they need, uh, a request put in. It would just, I think, save a lot of work and a lot of questions for the public. Thank you. Anyone? Nobody's going to answer me. Anyone? Any consideration? Like Ferris Bueller? Bueller? Bueller? Nobody's answering me. So what she's saying is the, the, the select boards packet people get to see, but I guess our packet people don't get to see. And I don't know about other boards and whether their packets are posted. That was the question, I guess. Right. Um, so, I mean, my understanding is that it's not required to put the packet out on, out on the website. We of course would provide it if we were requested. We could, I think the board could have a conversation about that in future on how you want to move forward with packets. Sure. I mean, they're, they're after the fact. We do have them after the fact. People can look at them and, and, and refer to them. Okay. Great. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Um, so there being, and thank you, Michael, for, for the input that, that was very helpful. Um, there being no further business may have a motion to adjourn. So moved. Okay. Okay. 515. And I will say, I say, as I always say, you don't really need a motion to adjourn, but everybody does it. So, okay. So I'll take a roll call vote. Mary Ellen. Yes. Paul. Yes. Mary Ann. Yes. Mary Ann. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you.