November 5, 2025 – Personnel Board – Video & Transcript
November 5, 2025 - Personnel Board
I will call the Personnel Board meeting of Wednesday, November 5th to order.
It is now 4.09.
Jill is taking the minutes.
Our Zoom manager is Robbie Bullard.
At the meeting, we have Jill Zukerman and Mary Ellen Castagno and Mary Ann Peabody,
members of the Personnel Board.
And we have Kate Ryan, the Weyland Personnel Board Director.
The first, oh, pursuant to one may watch or participate remotely, this is a remote meeting with the Zoom meeting link that can be found at www.weyland.ma.us slash public-body-meeting-information-virtual-in-person-and-hybrid. Pursuant to Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2023, this meeting will be conducted via remote participation. No in-person attendance by members of the public will be permitted. The meeting is being recorded and will be made available to the public on WACAM as soon after the meeting, as is practicable. So I've called the meeting to order at 4.09. The first item is announcements and public comment. I have no announcements. Does anyone else have any announcements? Robbie, is there any public comments? No, I don't see anyone. Okay, thank you. The next item is discussion and possible vote to recommend revisions to the following non-union personnel policies. The first one is, and I'll read the agenda for the public, I'm sorry. N4-01-0.04 sick leave, then N4-1.1 annual leave, and N4-5.1 bereavement leave. Then we will have the Human Resources Director Report and Personnel Board questions and comments. We'll have an update on the Classification and Compensation Study that's ongoing, and we'll have an update on the Human Resources Staffing Update and the UMass Boston Collins Center Combined Organizational Operational Review that's also underway. We will have, then, a discussion and approval of open session meeting minutes from June 11th, 2025, and then we will have personnel board members' reports and concerns, followed by topics not reasonably anticipated 48 hours in advance, if any. And then we will enter executive session pursuant to mass general laws to discuss strategy with respect to a collective bargaining grievance at step two with the Fire Firefighters Association, and to review and approve personnel board executive session minutes from May 6th, 2025, with the intent to release those minutes, and then we will adjourn directly from executive session. So, okay, so the first item on the agenda is to review the sick leave policy, and that's the one we began to look at at our last meeting, right, Kate? Yes. Okay, and that we received in our packet.
And Kate and I did go over this. That's the one we worked on together, right, Kate? Yes, it is. And we added some things back. So, does anyone have any questions on this particular policy? The N4-4, what is it, 0.1? 4.1, non-union employees sick leave. I had a question, and it was in relation to, I think, Mary Ellen's concern the first time we looked at this, Kate, whether we need to say anything about the Small Necessities Act that also provides people to take time for the same circumstances, and that is on utilization, paragraph two, where we talk about people can take their sick leave for an immediate family member who's ill or recovering from injury. If we need to say also that there is a Small Necessities Act that provides days for these same circumstances, but that under the Small Necessities Act, the time wouldn't be compensation, whereas if someone decides to take it from sick leave, they receive compensation. Yeah, I mean, we could do, I could add language, we could add language about that, it's not a bad idea, we're already referencing the FMLA and MPLA, which isn't a policy, it's a state law, both are governed by either federal or state law, but Small Necessities Act, we do have a separate policy on that, and it applies to everyone across the board, but we could do that. Yeah, and you could also say, please see Small Necessities Act, because people may not have the time, or they may not want to use their sick time. There's also an intermittent LOA that they can take as well, and that's one of those things that you can take, you know, a day that's not a sick day, that you can call and say, I'm taking one of my FMLA days, intermittent FMLA days. But for that, you'd have to file for FMLA. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. But does it say specifically intermittent, is what I'm asking, Jill? I know what the difference is, but I'm just saying, does it say intermittent LOA?
It says that if an employee requires more than five consecutive sick days, they must complete paperwork for the FMLA, family medical leave. This is different. This is different. And it says you can take it by hour, an hour leave. Correct. And that's without pay, right, as well? Sick leave may be used in one hour increments. Right. Sick leave can, but FMLA would not. An intermittent FMLA is different than an FMLA. No. Well, it's a different type of FMLA. You can either take FMLA in an up to 12-week block, like you'd be out completely for 12 weeks, or you can take it, you know, you have a doctor's appointment once a week. No, that's different. That's different. That's a year. The intermittent LOA is for a year. It's not for three months. Correct. But you get 12 weeks of FMLA in a 12-month period, is what I'm saying. And not with the intermittent, because you're not taking a block of time off. Either. But the time adds up to the 12 weeks, yeah. No, you know what? You need to look in that more, because I've taken it before, and that's not my understanding. So we need to look into that more, because an intermittent, you can take up to a year. And it doesn't have to be one day a week, two days a week. It's as you need it. Correct. But it's the legally protected FMLA part of it, is let's say you work a 35-hour work week, you get 35 hours times 12 weeks. You've got that same amount of hours over the course of a year. No, the intermittent is a percentage of your hourly, of your weekly hours. It's a percentage. You need to look into that, because it's not the same. It's only a percentage that you can take. If you work 40 hours, you don't get, if you work 40 hours a week, you don't, it doesn't equal 40 hours. It's a percentage of the time that you work, your hourly, your position, how many hours in your position per week. Are you familiar with that, Kate? I'm not. I'm not familiar with that. My understanding of FMLA is you can either take it for incapacity for an extended period of time. You can take it all at once. You are eligible for 12 weeks of FMLA in a 12-month period. Whether you take that all at once or intermittently, it's basically, we treat it the same way. Just with intermittently, we have to sort of track it a little differently. And the FMLA is also non-paid, right? It's paid. It can, well, it's paid with sick leave. An employee can use their sick leave on vacation time or personal leave. They can use any combination of that. They don't pay into the state. I'm sorry, they don't pay into the state. Oh, I think, are you referring to family and medical leave, which is paid family medical leave, which is different than FMLA? In the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, there's a separate program called PFML, which is a paid family and medical leave, which municipalities are exempt from unless we, you know, a town meeting wouldn't vote. So you don't take it out of their check, right? So they don't pay into it. Correct. They don't pay into it. Okay. It's not, that's one thing, but what I'm talking about is something totally different.
I'm happy to look into it. My understanding is the same as Kate. It's the same number of hours, but instead of using it in a bulk 12-week period, you can spread out those hours throughout the course of the year, however you need to use them. But I'll look into it. Because you can take that for either yourself or for a family member, and there's a separate, it's a different form that you fill out. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. So are those the only things we want to just clarify that there are other leaves that people might want to use for, in lieu of sick time, for the small necessities or family necessities? Well, there's only the small necessities, and that's just a certain amount of hours that you can use in a period. I think they give you, I don't even know how many hours they give you, but it's for only a short amount of time. Right. But we have a policy on that, so we can reference it. We do. We can reference it. Great. Thank you. All right. There is, if I could, there is one thing that I noticed I actually put in here, which amended, which is not actually accurate, under sick leave payout at the bottom. I changed, we pay out 20 years or more of service to Wayland. You get a payout, but not to exceed $10,000. That first one with the 15 years of service, we actually wouldn't be able to do that because we'd have to grandfather existing employees who were hired under this prior. So I was just going to remove that 15 years and make it less. Or the other thing is you could have starting today, like it's November the 5th, 2025, people who are hired after now, not to, to change that to 15 years of service. You'd want to say people who terminate now, not people who are hired now, because if somebody was hired 15 years ago and terminates next week, they wouldn't be. Well, it's the people that are hired now, they, when they terminate, they have to have put in 15 years of service before they can get that payout. For current employees. Well, currently now the wording, and Kate pointed this out when we met, is that it says less than 20 years, it was always intended to be for longer term employees. But so anybody who leaves now with less than 20 years of service can get paid. Well, they'd have to retire. It's either retirement or if they pass away. Right. Yeah, just resignation, they wouldn't get a payout. But that is true. You could be here for just a couple of years and get paid out if you retire. And we did have an instance of that. Recently, we had, I think had an employee who was here for about six years. Okay. So I think it's worth putting in there if that's what you mean it to mean, rather than just less than 20, I think was probably a wording issue with the past going, but it would protect anybody that's currently employed. And then people that are employed after November 5 2025 would come under a new policy. You actually want to put less than 20, but more than 15 years of service. Otherwise, people with 16 years of service actually are uncovered by this. Yes. Yeah. Good catch. Yes. Thank you. Yeah.
This, it just, just for reference, this is a very small number of employees. We have basically, we have about 30 positions that this would cover. So the impact is pretty minimal. It's, and it's better to also have it clear. Sure. The wording wasn't clear on the last one. Great. Okay. Thank you, Katie. Um, the next policy is in for 1.1 annually. Marianne, do we need to vote on? Yes, we do. We need to vote on. Yeah, we can, we'll vote on it going through each one. That's a better idea than waiting till the end. May I have a motion on, uh, the sick leave policy and for time. We're not able to vote once again. So, the amendment is done. I just want to be clear, the amendment is to add some language, um, to, uh, the small necessities leave act, um, if that's an language around payout the 50 uh more than 15 years but less than 20 they would receive the 7500 at hired after today okay does that does that also take care of your concern mary ellen with fmla well i just have it in front of me so it says intermittent most likely refers to intermittent leave of absence loa which allows an employee to take off in separate blocks of a single qualifying reason reason such a serious health condition but also for a family member it's not just them yeah it can it can be for a serious health condition to care for a family member with a serious health condition for a birth adoption foster care of a child is reasonably accommodated under ada so it's different the other one is only for a three-month period of time but at an fmla you can do both your serious medical and a family medical and both of them it's if you do it in a block it's 12 weeks but if you do it in intermittent it's the same number of hours over a 12 month period and depending on how your your handbook is written it could be in a 12 month of a fiscal year or like any 12 month period either a calendar year a fiscal year however it's delineated in a handbook but it's not for the same amount of pay it's different that's the that's the qualifying thing the the pay is the it's if it's pfml then the state of massachusetts will you know will will run the numbers fmla it's up if your employer pays for it or if they allow you to take sick time then that's how it gets paid we're talking two different things jill we're talking two different things okay we can refer them to the fmla policy that we have and then did you say kate that we do not participate in pf mla correct um municipalities are exempt unless town meeting were to vote to opt in okay which i don't wayland has not done i don't believe there are any communities in massachusetts who have done that yet in fmla here says that it's entitled up to 12 work weeks of intermittent leave in a 12 month period yeah the okay so we can refer people to the other two policies but just so that we're we're just saying there's another way of doing that okay so jill isn't it that you have to i'm sorry so jill when you have the f the fmla or the pf whatever it is but then does it don't you have to wait a period of time before you could apply for another one what's the wait period it depends on the the law is you have to be employed for a certain number of hours i believe it's it's over a six month period to qualify for fmla so you can have your 12 weeks your three months or whatever you and then you have to wait another period of time before you're eligible oh if you've used an fmla again it depends on how it's delineated in the handbook let's say it's a calendar year you finish your fmla on december 31st if you qualify for another fmla you could start a new one january 1st if you if your doctor has you know filled out the paperwork and you have a qualifying event okay that's not all right yeah that hasn't been the case that's why i'm asking so okay i mean i can always if you want i can bring our town we have a policy on fmla i could bring it to another meeting yeah we could discuss if you'd like sure and then we can look at it vis-a-vis this one when does anybody want to second the yes yes i'll second it thank you with the amendments uh and i'll have a roll call vote because we're on zoom jill yes mary ellen yes mary ann yes okay the measure passes thank you we're going to go to annual leave which is 4 dash m4 dash 1.1 um and that is annual leave oh one thing on the the sick leave payout that last paragraph kate remember it says 15 years of service to wail and the not to exceed belongs in the column yeah and then just move that over there yeah i'll fix the formatting thank you thank you all right so now the annual leave i had a question on whether we should define the probationary period where do we define the probationary period for people uh we have it is six months we have a separate policy on probationary the probationary period okay so again you may want to just say see probationary period sure and it seems like the accrual is different uh it's been upped it was uh it's now zero to five years of employment is was originally it was 13 days 13 and now it's 15 15 so it's a and then oh i see so it went from nine and then five years but less than 15 years went from 19 to 20 okay correct and 15 years to severance 25 i just want to ask go ahead oh no that's just for uh non-department heads so i i so we have this um you know before and after this april 7th 2026 2016 date and what i'm finding is that um you know we can be a little more generous in our vacation time i think two weeks is probably a little low um for some of our employees especially in the public sector um starting at three weeks and that's most of our collective bargaining agreements start around that area as well so i wanted to be to have some parity i was just going to ask you that because my i wanted to ask other people what they're what they see in other places because i i always see like a month is the most and i we've gone to a month at um five but less than 15 years and then we've gone to six weeks 15 years to severance so uh what do you guys see in the private sector what i see in the private sector is usually max at a month but that's wildly variant wildly it depends on the company it depends on the industry but i mean i've seen like one week five days to you know eight weeks depending on the company so uh mary ellen what do you see in your place what is the usual vacation times i can't hear you oh you're you're muted you're muted here we go it depends i know it depends where you are because i think we get up to um 12 weeks depending how long you've been there okay all right that's very generous that's very generous that's because i'm special jill remember that well we knew we knew i asked my daughter whose company is notoriously great on benefits and and they get a month but then the company closes for a week between christmas and new years but that but that was their max and i work for myself and my and my my employer only grants me a month and i've never been able to take a month i've only been able to take this is for severance right that's what you're talking no this is just vacation whoops okay i lied so i thought you're talking about severance oh i was like mary ellen gets three months of vacation i mary ellen gets whatever she wants no so the the thing is is that what do we get we get we get it by it's hours per week so we get the first year that we're hired we get three weeks so as you move up the continuum in in so you get one i'm just making this up say 1.45 days a week you know it adds up pretty quickly nurses always have gotten generous well we know we're all hard working aren't we so yeah yeah yeah so i just was curious and i didn't know how how the public would would feel if they only get four weeks and all of our town employees get more but that's um i just dropped my pen on the floor hold on guys wait a minute i'll get it you're not gonna get it i may not get it let's see i'll come my computer will come crashing down on top of me here we are anyway but that was my i was like wow that seemed very generous but that's all right so um well i just wanted to speak a little to that we we again this is you know we're talking about maybe 30 35 employees um the vast majority are actually department heads in this you know group um and um the the you know in in today's employment marketplace um we're seeing you know average tenure of like three to five years um having someone stay for 15 to 20 you know that just it does it's not that it doesn't happen it's just not as common and so um you know this might be a yeah you know it's like a recruitment tool to try and make it a little more enticing and you'd hope that after 15 years on the job you'd be more efficient than you were at three years so yeah yeah and stability is important so yeah yeah yeah i don't see anything else here that i would change and i well i was questioning about under the usage the amount 48 hours notice um seems little and i i can get it in an emergency but um and then if a request of like a week um they need to give five days of notice that doesn't seem like a lot of notice to me but again coming from health care where you you really have to make sure you have you have um you have your your everybody there that you need there usually notice usually notice is reasonably longer than that so i just didn't know what people are seeing in the companies uh that they work for i think it depends if it's an emergency it's an emergency right they fill out the paperwork after the fact right yeah and i don't know how many people know that they're unless it's a a planned um surgery or planned procedure and even with that i don't know how much in advance they would know about you know what i'm saying yeah right i can see it for an emergency but if it's planned don't you usually have more time to give more notice if if it's planned you should yeah yeah so i don't i don't know um if it's i mean maybe we want to put in some wording for for planned absentees you know my my question is does this mirror what the union contracts have what yeah what do they have uh i should have looked at ask me sorry oh let me pull up the contract it just seems like short if people are relying it is and i can see it if it's an emergency and maybe that's the language you want in there but for normal times you usually know if you're going to take some vacation you usually plan it about a month ahead i would assume you'd be able to do that all right it's taking me a second to get to the contract my computer you can do it all right leave okay here it is um so in the AFSCME it's this it's identical in the same in the AFSCME contracts it's 48 hours for leaves less than five days and uh five days or more you give five days notice i mean i agree mary and it's short but that makes sense to me if that's what's in the union contract that it should mirror are they all the same though we have the police and we have the fire so i mean are they all the same contracts might be different right they might be different but but don't we usually for the non-union it usually mirrors closer to what the AFSCME it doesn't have to sometimes it's they there have been times they use the teachers contracting past years i think i you know you don't want to stick to one union because i mean if you know because then then that union can say that they are absolutely representing those employees so i think it's important to to think about i mean certainly i would say i would agree that you know in an emergency that that that's a that's sufficient notice but i think planned i think planned vacations because we're talking about annual leave planned vacations if people could the town would prefer to have you know like four weeks notice or something so people can plan um that way the work can get done before they go on vacation or if they're you know or somebody else can be found to fill in if they're if they're you know they need to be gone so i i guess i want to understand the distinction between emergency versus planned um in a vacation context for sick leave that makes perfect sense like you you were in a car accident or whatever you slipped and hurt yourself and you needed to be out um but for vacation time that is a pre-planned event i mean you can't use it as sick time so i was um 48 hours is a short turnaround that's that's true um i don't know of anybody who's given 48 hours to be honest with you um in practice but and it um it says with man a part department head approval so the department head could potentially decline that's a sticky wicket huh yeah it puts then it puts the onus on the department head to be the bad guy if they if they or to just have to suck it up and deal with it you know but that's still not fair to the employee if they really need that time off right well that's why i think in an emergency if some sometimes people use their vacation time in an emergency because they have no other alternative but because they can't wait 48 hours to be approved right right right right i don't know i just really felt that it was really short notice that the department had and that's what my thought was and i don't know if there's another way to state it we could say at least 48 hours was a notice for i don't know an extreme situation under 48 hours may be considered i'm just throwing it out i i any other thoughts that could because that that i think that's really tough for a manager i don't know about you guys so i don't know i'm not the authority i mean you could change it to non-union employees shall provide their department head or the town manager with 38 48 hours of notice at least 48 hours of notice for requests less than five days um oh well actually i'm trying to think that through do we bring it back well yeah we can i can always bring it back to you that's that's true this i think this is the first time i've brought this policy forward so yeah i would just like to have some ordinarily giving no and if and if you say people do it that's fine and i think that's that's good and people should do that but we could say ordinarily people should request annual leave you know four weeks in advance um in an emergency or an unplanned event extenuating circumstances will be considered or something like that there you go yeah then then i would be fine with that other thing but i i would just want to be out there saying we would expect that you plan your vacation and you let your manager know so that they're not stuck think about if somebody doing benefits or payroll now you know the thing you could be you have to be careful when those people take their vacation time or they take their holidays because you can really be sunk as an organization because you only have one or two people in that department so i mean those are the kinds of things that could be a problem but anyway that's what i would prefer if we could do that yeah um and you know no the separation of employment part i thought that that was stated a little bit awkwardly so it says non-union and i know it's similar to the last one we had non-union employees separated from employment with the town whether by termination resignation death dismissal retirement or otherwise will be paid or in the event of a death they're designated beneficiary so i think we need to say something like non-union employees separated from employment with the town whether by termination resignation death dismissal retirement or otherwise will be paid or in the event or comma in the event of death comma their designated beneficiary will be paid for any accrued and unused leave so will be paid goes after the person yeah and again after the um the beneficiary yep and that's the only thing i saw there does anybody else have any other thing so this one's going to come back to us just to retweet retweet yeah okay thank you so did i i do want to ask about the language regarding proration um so this is new for us in the past we um non-union employees have accrued vacation time monthly so this is front loading which is is different and so we put out of this language so that if someone were to leave we're actually going to prorate what we pay out um and i wanted to make sure it was clear what that how we were going to prorate it uh this is the annual leave right yeah on the separation of employment oh here yes yes i thought it made it clear right yeah it made sense to me i made a lot of sense to me as well
okay good uh and the next one is so i have i saw something okay twice i saw something so i don't know if this is it's it's um a box i know anyway so it says instead of department head it says department dead oh yes i thought oh that's right that's sorry
funny not funny sorry my fingers got away from me let's not consider that a harpinger let's um consider it a typo well it is recently yes so does this what all the employees have the you know it's it's good because it's the you know mother father you know children you know sister brother grandparents you know father-in-law blah blah blah do they all have the same wording you know uncle aunt niece nephew or is this just for the non-union folks so this language is very similar to AFSCME in fact i think it's almost identical it is identical to AFSCME DPW and library i think police and fire have some different language in there but i'd have to look at those contracts okay so i just i'm not sure why it wouldn't be this the same straight across the board that's all it depends what they've negotiated right yeah yeah i suppose i always think i always think as someone who has a very small family small family now but comes from a huge family some people will have more time than other people but that's just the way it is right but you know you would at least want you know immediate family if your uncle died or your aunt died at least you yeah you would hope to get time off but yeah that's it better than me i come from families of like 14 on each side so yeah so i did want to um if i could point you to that i added a new paragraph uh it's one two three four such lead is outlined above shall be taken on the day of the funeral um i think there was discussion last time we brought it here about when it's when it can be taken when it can't i mean we want to give people some flexibility because sometimes you you wait a few months to do a memorial um but i added that i'm happy for feedback on it yeah i thought it was good because of people's tendency now to do memorial services correct after and not right away so i thought it was good do we vote on this this doesn't have to come back right can i have a motion so moved i moved to approve the bereavement policy as amended with the spelling
with the spell check thank you okay thank you jill and mary ellen you seconded it i heard you both speak up so i'll take a roll call vote jill yes mary ellen yes mary ann yes so that one's done thank you all right um the next item so annual leave will that come back in december kate sure yeah i can bring that back in december and also in december will we have others like i know we talked about the workplace uh courtesy in the workplace or non-violence in the workplace issues those those policies do we have any of those getting ready uh yeah i i think i've i've yes i've been working on that we have mutual respect in the workplace standards of conduct um there's the protection from retaliation and then there's this uh there is one about violence i can't remember the title of the policy but yes yes facing my right now but okay okay so that's four do you think we'll have them ready for the next one well if i if we want to bring annual lead back i i think i was trying to kind of keep it to either three or four per meeting just not to um so why don't we do mutual respect in the workplace and um do we need to do retaliation this next one or is that more important than the standards of care probably yeah i think so yeah okay great thank you the next item on the agenda is human resources direct report with personnel board questions and comments and the update on the classification and compensation study um right so we've actually um we're making a lot of progress with our consultant we have um a draft final report again it's draft so we haven't really released it to anyone we're we're reviewing it now um i'm gonna hopefully sit down with michael soon to review that also the classification um structure is is in place it's pretty pretty well formed um there's a couple of little uh pieces we may you know positions we may need to tweak and then they have also um provided us with the salary survey um and combining the two i haven't we're not quite ready to present it but i'm hoping that by next time we'll have something a lot more concrete i just received the the draft report i believe last week so we're we're um we're working on it and it's it's coming so i'm hoping it'll be done um by like end of november early december which is a good hopefully a good time frame any surprises um not no not not from what i've seen um it's you know our our AFSCME and um non-union scales because they've both gone through a market adjustment over the last three fiscal years are much more closer to the market than i i thought they were i mean and our hiring has shown that we we haven't had to hire people at higher steps we're hiring them at the lower you know entry steps um so that's that's actually really good to to see that we're we're pretty close to where we should be on those scales um we didn't do police and fire weren't involved weren't part of the study uh fire is doing their own study separately right now and then police were going to um you know we're going to do probably uh soon but i i we have to talk to michael about next steps on that one um and then dpw and library are we're you know again not surprises but we have to figure out how we're gonna you know work with that yeah it's hard getting people to have some of those licenses for in the dpw uh these days so that makes it a hard harder job to fill um the fire study is a staffing study right and when is that going to be ready do you know i you know i don't know i haven't been as involved in that process the chief has been managing it um i mean i know that they are actively working on it i i was part of the original you know so when they started it kicked it off um and they interviewed a number of people and i was one of them so i don't but i'm not sure where it is okay and if we could get when you're ready with the classification and compensation study if we can get it in advance because that's a complicated one to get through i mean a couple of weeks before we discuss it um that would be great sure we could um
and because that's hard to go through and figure out what what's going on and the um the human resources staffing update in umass boston collins center combined organization operation study i had asked about that last year the town was getting some money and it's looking at facilities it's looking at the schools and it's looking at the town so um that was interesting to get and so if you can give us an update on that information and that's now on the town website right yes it's out there for anyone to review um so we're still working through this from the hr perspective our department we've we're actually have restructured already a little bit um so as you know our our benefits manager uh for many years donna lemoyne recently retired um so you know when she retired we we decided based on this um recommendations from the collins center uh to restructure so we have an hr uh director rather than a manager which and i was recently promoted into that role um and then to hire to have an hr generalist which will um do have a sort of a dual role do both hr recruitment collective bargaining policies but then also um have a role with benefits and benefit coordination and then a benefits coordinator which will be more of an administrative role processing paperwork making sure all of that um moves it keeps moving and as uh we don't you know lose any lose anyone um so we were already in process there our hr generalist um we hired uh ritana so is with us she's doing a great job uh we're we're still getting up to speed on the benefits piece um after you know departure uh and then i think we wanted to hold on the benefits hiring the benefits coordinator until we have a better handle on um how we how we want to reconfigure our functions internally to help it be a little bit more efficient um to make sure whether because we may not need a full-time person i think i'm not sure but i think we may not need full-time we're gonna we're gonna see because ritana was here before and she she asked benefits background right yes she was the hr assistant so yeah we're able to rehire her that's correct that's a good thing because she had good good background for us um and and benefits is really very specific and so require they have to be excuse me do they have to have any kind of certification for benefits administrator i don't think so um i mean i think there are certifications for benefits administration but uh it's not a requirement a lot of benefits at least in my experience uh few people who are experts in benefits administration have sort of learned on the job um and and work their way and maybe provide you know receive some training along the way but and she knows that special uh program that you put munis yes yes she does know that okay she's a huge help yeah so the um the study as i read through it um i read you know benefits used to be part of finance and now it's part of hr and has been for a number of years but they talked about payroll now payroll is part of finance right is it going to move over to hr uh i don't think we've made a determination on that um right now payroll is still a part of finance and still being housed there so how it works on the school side they have their own payroll administrator i'm not sure what the title is up there but and then uh we have our payroll administrator on the town but most of that gets funneled down into the town finance department so ultimately our payroll administrator is doing a lot of more of the auditing making sure everything moves um uh we're not making any errors in terms of pay and and those types of things um that come from the school department but they're managing their own payroll on the school side um and i think the collins center was recommending bringing that all into one one place um but i i don't know where that's um we're we're still discussing that sounded like it made sense i i had a question on whether the collins center was going to answer questions to the public on this survey are they going to come and do a report and be open for questions i yeah i don't know i i would have to um talk to michael i'm not sure if that was part of uh the contract that we originally signed but i can take a look because they'll probably be reporting to the select board at some point the one thing i saw and i i've done a lot of auditing of organizations for quality assurance and for boards of directors and and the question i had on that whole thing was the talking about gaps but they never defined what they meant by a gap so usually if you audit something you say well we looked at seven you know 17 employee records and uh 10 of them didn't have their licensure uh checked off um but they just said there were gaps on the school side of x percent or there were gaps on the town side and they didn't define what they meant by a gap and i i felt that that was not clear enough and that they also spoke about gaps in civil service well we don't have civil service here correct we don't but they're grandfathered in no we don't there aren't anybody left anymore so that so the people for the police side they're grandfathered in if they were civil service yeah there aren't that many left are there anyway yeah there are people left they don't have to take the test any longer but they grandfathered the folks that was right but the question is they were saying that there were gaps on the school side and the town side in civil service and we have very few civil service and the only people the only ones we have left are the ones on the police department i don't know how many there are how many are there thank you uh i think four or five i can't remember i'd have to look at the contract so i kind of thought that was no i agree i noticed that as well i think they may have sort of a format that they use and didn't catch it that we we aren't a civil service community so right so what does the town do i'm sorry what does the town do now the town has to they write a corrective action for this or how do they you know how do they follow up on this report um with the deficits that they have here on the report you know the five areas where there are concerns uh i think that's that's a really good question i think um we're we're already working on it here in hr i think it's going to require some conversations between the town manager and the superintendent on how they want to move forward with structuring if there's going to be any kind of restructuring or moving movement um between the various departments uh but i you know i can talk to him about next steps and how we could um you know be be as transparent as possible and how we're addressing some of these these issues so marianne there are some areas that say gap i know that they're not specific yeah but they do say yeah but they do no no no but it does say you know it tells you what the what the gap is so you know like on page 19 is highlighted in yellow and then on the following page it tells you if it's a gap on the town side or the school side and the first one on page 30 20 says preparation for town school employee orientation programs right so it looks like there's a huge gap on on actually if the x is is the town that has the gap right yeah and the licensure i was astonished that they say there's a gap at the school of 80 percent that doesn't make sense to me i can't you know yeah well what if they're not licensed and they're working as a teacher's aide if they're a teacher that didn't take the test or see you know you only have for licensure you you should be checking the licenses of the licensed personnel i get it marianne but they hadn't been doing that for a i but i i can't believe it i mean maybe they aren't doing it but that's you know that's a that would be serious but that's what i mean that's why i'm not sure what they really meant by some of that some of their gaps well it's not a gap year the way to go to it's not a gap year that they're waiting to go to college no the only gap i could figure out was that they didn't check licensure are the other gaps i don't know what they mean maybe that there's no professional development programs yeah that kind of stuff but i thought you know and the hris the uh information system now hard here we go i'm sorry marianne here we go on page 20 again see what it says licensure so it says they also have a waiver maybe that's you know long-term substitute waiver maybe that's why this you know there's no license there to check on you know what i'm saying they don't they don't specify right they don't specify what they're what they're defining by gaps i think and i think that that was the part that i had problem with i mean i know like for instance under performance evaluation training for all county school employees the personnel board did have a uh something in place and uh it had to go to the union and we never saw it after that but some some departments used that and some departments never used that um and only the non-union employees used it at the time we did it so um i do i do think we have to work on that but some of the other things i just didn't know what they meant by well if they're listed on 21 don't they have a little they kind of a little definition well they don't say they don't say they don't give you a percentage like we looked at oh okay well maybe it was a quantity this is what we looked at you know um i'm trying to like coaching supervisory staff and or principals on disciplinary processes well maybe they talked with department heads and they found there were gaps in both places and that that's that's fine but i thought it was a little i needed i thought it needed to be more crisp um and they're you know they have uh the town gap theory under civil service when you know really what what where the janitors used to be civil service at one point i don't know if they still are no and they were outsourced for a while and then they were hired again so they no i don't think there are no civil service employees in the are there i don't no i don't think there aren't i don't to the best of my knowledge i don't believe they are the last last group that were civil service were the police and that's been at least 10 years uh so there are some people that are grandfathered under civil service but four or five doesn't mean that it should be evaluated for the entire town particularly the school side the school side wouldn't have anybody in um in civil service well it doesn't again on page 25 and 26 it doesn't give you a percentage per se but it does tell you what the deficits are yeah i don't know how this goes marianne do you have to specifically ask them for a quantitative you know so you get the numbers i don't know how these things that are well i think i guess i think they have to report to the town and sort of let the town know what they did what they looked at what they found i would have thought it would be more specific than it is but yeah
like they're they have a percentage but they don't tell you how many how many records they looked at or how many people they spoke to i'm sorry i would assume you're allowed to ask questions though once you've received the report yeah yeah yeah but that's it to um marianne's uh to that end uh are people going to be able to ask questions because we have questions here you know right now and you know who who do who do we direct those questions to at the call-in center yeah i don't know i guess oh i'm sorry um i i can follow up with um michael and you know even the call-in center i'm not sure what was agreed to when the contract was signed originally and whether whether they were going to present this or not so i can come back with some more information on that and you've made some changes in hr and there are other changes that still they may be they may be advised by the collins center and whether the town implements them or not is still needs to be determined i would assume by the town manager and the select board but it would assume that via report people would evaluate whether they were whether they would work for the town or not you know um and whether they wouldn't so anyway but that was my question on whether they were going to give a report and have people be able to comment or ask more specific questions on it it was a lot to look at in a short period of time you want the reader's digest version right i like all the detail no no i'm just saying that was to the you know it would have been helpful to have somebody on the committee you know what i mean when this was presented because marianne has the background and the knowledge and you know you get the questions answered real time in my opinion well they haven't haven't reported back to the town yet right you know they haven't reported to the select board right i i don't know i i i'm not sure that that was planned that whether yeah i'm not sure if it was part of what what was agreed to so and did they sit down with michael or they did yeah they did okay yes good that would be good to know what you know what what he thought about you know the recommendations and what kinds of things on did they the town think that they wanted to move forward with and and what things are serious and what things need to be changed we were kate and i were talking a little bit about the munis system it's a really clunky system for hr when it was chosen it was chosen it was really a financial model that they kind of hooked on the hr stuff too so it works for benefits and calculations but for a lot of the hr functions it's a little bit rough of a system to use and kate says we don't even have i don't think we bought all the different portions of it and i don't even know if all the different portions would even work for the town so i don't know what's planned as far as updating the software for hr yeah i don't that's still a work in progress um we we own i know we own one one module that we haven't yet implemented which is the online onboarding so that meaning we could send someone a link a secure link they can log you log in fill out all of their onboarding documentation that would be sent back we basically download that from a site um because right now we're still doing everything in paper um so that would be my goal is to neck for next steps but it you know there's a lot of moving parts with that what parts of things do you have to do manually because they did say there was a lot that hr does manually uh well we don't have any kind of applicant tracking system so everything's done through through email uh which is you know i've created a rudimentary tracking system in excel just so that i can at least keep track of um who we are for reporting purpose who's applying for reporting purposes um we don't uh you know our benefits process is almost entirely manual so all all of our enrollment forms those are all done in paper um we don't have an online enrollment system um we you know there is a mechanism in um i'm sorry immunist um called employee self-service which we do have um working but there's a lot more there are a lot more features to it like you know how allowing employees to um say i want to take this week on vacation and send that to their manager and their manager can just um approve it and then it would go right into would feed right into their system in terms of you know their accruals being deducted and that's not up and running yet so that would be how long have we had that how long have we had that system we've i i don't i don't know how long we've had mutis no no the new one that you said hasn't been you know um it hasn't been turned on up and running the one that you were just talking about the system that the town purchased uh well employee self-service it actually comes with our current um contract uh so we didn't have to pay anything extra for it but there's a p we had to implement it which we have done it's just not fully implemented there are extra pieces to it that we can roll out hopefully in the future what does the future mean like in a month a year two years i i don't know i mean there's a lot of um there's just a lot going on right now we have a new i.t director um you know so we're we're sort of trying to there's a lot happening in a short period of time so i we don't have a plan yet okay and will you have the opportunity to look at any of the software that's available um through munis so that you can see if it would work for you or if it's just going to be really clunky add-on yeah we've done i we've had a demo actually with our our sales uh person at munis at tyler tyler munis um but again you know it's it's funding and and staffing it's it's a big endeavor to to take on so we're uh we're just we're still kind of figuring out what our options are and whether we can make that work yeah the self-service would be good because some people don't have to track down the manager and make sure that they got the letter and you know it's it would save a lot of time and angst i think on people's parts yeah okay well thank you and if we could if we could find out if they're going to give a if they're supposed to if it's part of the contract or not that they're going to give a um uh a presentation that would be good to know sure thank you um the next item on the agenda and by the way i uh kate did tell me the last time we met that she was made uh hr director and so congratulations kate for that thank you thank you thank you and um so the next item on the agenda is to discuss and approve the open session meetings of june 11th uh 2025 mary ellen did you get them because i only got one so i got the one that jill sent it by mail yeah that's the only one i got and that's all there is yes so we can those are the best ones mary ellen you don't need any more okay where did i do oh here's yeah i just had one question did you have any questions on the mary ellen did you have a chance to look at them i only got one set of minutes is what i'm saying i only got yeah okay but it says it says june 11th um september 3rd and october 8th i said if available okay yeah we only have the june 11th we have june 11th okay i think you did a marvelous job job well thank you so much mary ellen mm-hmm the the question i had was on page two yeah in paragraph three where uh you say uh paul morenberg suggests that the policies are reviewed prior to the meeting with proposed markups or kate ryan should send her thoughts two weeks in and ahead and one personnel board member will review before the meeting that is what that was what we that's what we said so that because we can't all get it before the meeting we can only discuss it during the meeting because of the open meeting laws so if one personnel board member got it and reviewed then they could bring it to the meeting for discussion oh i think that's why it was kate i saw you nod is that correct i think that's why it was that way yeah that's correct you can't you can't discuss it um before a meeting right we can't disseminate the same thing to all the board members and have us like comment on it before the meeting it has to be done right we do we we comment on it at the meeting right yeah and but one personnel board member will like review it before the meeting okay with kate and then bring it to the meeting oh i didn't know that whether or not that's correct that was what was discussed at the meeting okay thank you i looked at my wasn't hey that's odd anyway okay so can i have a motion it's just my accurate note taking
must have proposed it because she remembered it verbatim that's why she remembered it i did remember it may i have a motion on the minutes uh the open session on june 11 2025. so move but we're not making any amendments correct no amendments i will second it yep we okay so jill's perfect minutes we have a roll call vote jill i so needed a win this week i can't even tell you yes great yeah i'm your go-to girl yes mary ellen are you yes absolutely and marianne yes thank you yeah okay so now um the next item on the agenda personnel board members reports and concerns are there any there are i just wanted to bring up the packet and you know the red the readiness of the packet so my hours have changed at work and so i'm not available after 12 o'clock uh actually probably to take the travel there probably the latest i could get it is 11 o'clock and even 11 30 is pushing it so when we have the meetings it would be very much appreciated to have those minutes i mean the packet ready in the morning of the day that i it's usually if it's a tuesday i pick it up on friday barring any kind of holiday is that doable sure yeah okay i think we usually talk about the agenda about tweaks in advance sometimes getting information to the packets from different parties can can delay part of it but if we can get the most of it done and ready for you that would be that would be appreciated right and then we don't have to the back and forth i will just go pick it up you know in the in the mail room and usually what is you know what's since late maybe be a stray in my um experience is a stray set of minutes yes right now mary ellen is there a time frame by which you mean by by a time of do you mean 11 or do you mean at 8 o'clock or 8 30 any time before 11 would be preferable okay but not you know right at 11 because i will you know i will be there at 11 i have to leave for work so actually you know what 10 30 would be better is that possible kate yeah i will do my best okay thank you all right okay thank you kate okay is there anybody else have any concerns or reports no okay um the next item is topics not reasonably anticipated 48 hours in advance if any i have none does anybody have any kate do you have anything nope not for me thank you all right so i will move do you want to choose the next meeting date before oh no it's the second wednesday what's the date of the second wednesday december 10th december 10th okay so that is our meeting at 4 p.m huh yes i thought you were doing the first wednesday of every month not the second i thought we were doing tuesdays we moved to wednesday i'm so confused we're all gonna meet on a different day no in a different place in a different state i think it was wednesdays wasn't it wednesday it's definitely wednesdays okay and i thought it was the second but i thought it was tuesdays but you tell me so well i have another meeting on the second wednesday of every day of every month so i so it must have been the first it must have been the first okay so then that would be december the third okay correct that's going to be coming quick because it's going to be right after um thanksgiving but that's fine so december 3rd at four o'clock and we will endeavor to have some minutes i think those are paul's i will contact him and we also have some personnel policies uh at that time if we can begin to uh look at those uh is there anything else that you think we will be working on then or maybe an update on classification yeah i i hope to have a little more concrete um information i can i can share with you by then okay good good and then also if there's anything from the collins center what the town is going to do or if the changes you've made or what you're going to do but it does it doesn't mean that there are as soon as the it director gets his feet on the ground there are some systems that probably might be able to help i i do know um most municipalities complain about munis dhr people at any rate um but you know it's it's they've got the market right they do they are cornered the market okay so let me just get my here i'm going to make a motion uh to go into executive session for the wednesday november 5th executive session i move that the personnel board enter into executive session pursuant a to massachusetts general hours chapter 30 a section 21 a 3 to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining relating to a grievance at step 2 with the international association of firefighters afl cio local 1978 and be pursuant to massachusetts general laws chapter 30 a section 21 a 3 to review and approve the personnel board executive session minutes of may the 6th 2025 with the intent to release stead minutes um because to do so in open session would be not beneficial to the towns could be detrimental to the town's bargaining uh position is there a second to the motion to enter into executive session i will second thank you we're going to split that second huh yeah okay i'll quarter it okay either one thank you um the chair declares a public discussion of these matters may have a detrimental effect on litigating negotiating or bargaining position in the town i will take a roll call vote to go into executive session um uh i will uh attend we i will invite the attendance of uh kate ryan personnel director for the town of wyland is anybody else going to be there kate no no yeah just me uh and the committee will adjourn immediately from executive session and will not be returning to open session i would anticipate that our time in executive session may be 30 to 40 minutes total max okay so i will take a roll call vote to move into executive session jill yes mary ellen yes yes mary ann yes okay and our link is on that same email so hopefully we'll see you in executive session okay okay okay thank you thank you thanks
The first, oh, pursuant to one may watch or participate remotely, this is a remote meeting with the Zoom meeting link that can be found at www.weyland.ma.us slash public-body-meeting-information-virtual-in-person-and-hybrid. Pursuant to Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2023, this meeting will be conducted via remote participation. No in-person attendance by members of the public will be permitted. The meeting is being recorded and will be made available to the public on WACAM as soon after the meeting, as is practicable. So I've called the meeting to order at 4.09. The first item is announcements and public comment. I have no announcements. Does anyone else have any announcements? Robbie, is there any public comments? No, I don't see anyone. Okay, thank you. The next item is discussion and possible vote to recommend revisions to the following non-union personnel policies. The first one is, and I'll read the agenda for the public, I'm sorry. N4-01-0.04 sick leave, then N4-1.1 annual leave, and N4-5.1 bereavement leave. Then we will have the Human Resources Director Report and Personnel Board questions and comments. We'll have an update on the Classification and Compensation Study that's ongoing, and we'll have an update on the Human Resources Staffing Update and the UMass Boston Collins Center Combined Organizational Operational Review that's also underway. We will have, then, a discussion and approval of open session meeting minutes from June 11th, 2025, and then we will have personnel board members' reports and concerns, followed by topics not reasonably anticipated 48 hours in advance, if any. And then we will enter executive session pursuant to mass general laws to discuss strategy with respect to a collective bargaining grievance at step two with the Fire Firefighters Association, and to review and approve personnel board executive session minutes from May 6th, 2025, with the intent to release those minutes, and then we will adjourn directly from executive session. So, okay, so the first item on the agenda is to review the sick leave policy, and that's the one we began to look at at our last meeting, right, Kate? Yes. Okay, and that we received in our packet.
And Kate and I did go over this. That's the one we worked on together, right, Kate? Yes, it is. And we added some things back. So, does anyone have any questions on this particular policy? The N4-4, what is it, 0.1? 4.1, non-union employees sick leave. I had a question, and it was in relation to, I think, Mary Ellen's concern the first time we looked at this, Kate, whether we need to say anything about the Small Necessities Act that also provides people to take time for the same circumstances, and that is on utilization, paragraph two, where we talk about people can take their sick leave for an immediate family member who's ill or recovering from injury. If we need to say also that there is a Small Necessities Act that provides days for these same circumstances, but that under the Small Necessities Act, the time wouldn't be compensation, whereas if someone decides to take it from sick leave, they receive compensation. Yeah, I mean, we could do, I could add language, we could add language about that, it's not a bad idea, we're already referencing the FMLA and MPLA, which isn't a policy, it's a state law, both are governed by either federal or state law, but Small Necessities Act, we do have a separate policy on that, and it applies to everyone across the board, but we could do that. Yeah, and you could also say, please see Small Necessities Act, because people may not have the time, or they may not want to use their sick time. There's also an intermittent LOA that they can take as well, and that's one of those things that you can take, you know, a day that's not a sick day, that you can call and say, I'm taking one of my FMLA days, intermittent FMLA days. But for that, you'd have to file for FMLA. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. But does it say specifically intermittent, is what I'm asking, Jill? I know what the difference is, but I'm just saying, does it say intermittent LOA?
It says that if an employee requires more than five consecutive sick days, they must complete paperwork for the FMLA, family medical leave. This is different. This is different. And it says you can take it by hour, an hour leave. Correct. And that's without pay, right, as well? Sick leave may be used in one hour increments. Right. Sick leave can, but FMLA would not. An intermittent FMLA is different than an FMLA. No. Well, it's a different type of FMLA. You can either take FMLA in an up to 12-week block, like you'd be out completely for 12 weeks, or you can take it, you know, you have a doctor's appointment once a week. No, that's different. That's different. That's a year. The intermittent LOA is for a year. It's not for three months. Correct. But you get 12 weeks of FMLA in a 12-month period, is what I'm saying. And not with the intermittent, because you're not taking a block of time off. Either. But the time adds up to the 12 weeks, yeah. No, you know what? You need to look in that more, because I've taken it before, and that's not my understanding. So we need to look into that more, because an intermittent, you can take up to a year. And it doesn't have to be one day a week, two days a week. It's as you need it. Correct. But it's the legally protected FMLA part of it, is let's say you work a 35-hour work week, you get 35 hours times 12 weeks. You've got that same amount of hours over the course of a year. No, the intermittent is a percentage of your hourly, of your weekly hours. It's a percentage. You need to look into that, because it's not the same. It's only a percentage that you can take. If you work 40 hours, you don't get, if you work 40 hours a week, you don't, it doesn't equal 40 hours. It's a percentage of the time that you work, your hourly, your position, how many hours in your position per week. Are you familiar with that, Kate? I'm not. I'm not familiar with that. My understanding of FMLA is you can either take it for incapacity for an extended period of time. You can take it all at once. You are eligible for 12 weeks of FMLA in a 12-month period. Whether you take that all at once or intermittently, it's basically, we treat it the same way. Just with intermittently, we have to sort of track it a little differently. And the FMLA is also non-paid, right? It's paid. It can, well, it's paid with sick leave. An employee can use their sick leave on vacation time or personal leave. They can use any combination of that. They don't pay into the state. I'm sorry, they don't pay into the state. Oh, I think, are you referring to family and medical leave, which is paid family medical leave, which is different than FMLA? In the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, there's a separate program called PFML, which is a paid family and medical leave, which municipalities are exempt from unless we, you know, a town meeting wouldn't vote. So you don't take it out of their check, right? So they don't pay into it. Correct. They don't pay into it. Okay. It's not, that's one thing, but what I'm talking about is something totally different.
I'm happy to look into it. My understanding is the same as Kate. It's the same number of hours, but instead of using it in a bulk 12-week period, you can spread out those hours throughout the course of the year, however you need to use them. But I'll look into it. Because you can take that for either yourself or for a family member, and there's a separate, it's a different form that you fill out. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. So are those the only things we want to just clarify that there are other leaves that people might want to use for, in lieu of sick time, for the small necessities or family necessities? Well, there's only the small necessities, and that's just a certain amount of hours that you can use in a period. I think they give you, I don't even know how many hours they give you, but it's for only a short amount of time. Right. But we have a policy on that, so we can reference it. We do. We can reference it. Great. Thank you. All right. There is, if I could, there is one thing that I noticed I actually put in here, which amended, which is not actually accurate, under sick leave payout at the bottom. I changed, we pay out 20 years or more of service to Wayland. You get a payout, but not to exceed $10,000. That first one with the 15 years of service, we actually wouldn't be able to do that because we'd have to grandfather existing employees who were hired under this prior. So I was just going to remove that 15 years and make it less. Or the other thing is you could have starting today, like it's November the 5th, 2025, people who are hired after now, not to, to change that to 15 years of service. You'd want to say people who terminate now, not people who are hired now, because if somebody was hired 15 years ago and terminates next week, they wouldn't be. Well, it's the people that are hired now, they, when they terminate, they have to have put in 15 years of service before they can get that payout. For current employees. Well, currently now the wording, and Kate pointed this out when we met, is that it says less than 20 years, it was always intended to be for longer term employees. But so anybody who leaves now with less than 20 years of service can get paid. Well, they'd have to retire. It's either retirement or if they pass away. Right. Yeah, just resignation, they wouldn't get a payout. But that is true. You could be here for just a couple of years and get paid out if you retire. And we did have an instance of that. Recently, we had, I think had an employee who was here for about six years. Okay. So I think it's worth putting in there if that's what you mean it to mean, rather than just less than 20, I think was probably a wording issue with the past going, but it would protect anybody that's currently employed. And then people that are employed after November 5 2025 would come under a new policy. You actually want to put less than 20, but more than 15 years of service. Otherwise, people with 16 years of service actually are uncovered by this. Yes. Yeah. Good catch. Yes. Thank you. Yeah.
This, it just, just for reference, this is a very small number of employees. We have basically, we have about 30 positions that this would cover. So the impact is pretty minimal. It's, and it's better to also have it clear. Sure. The wording wasn't clear on the last one. Great. Okay. Thank you, Katie. Um, the next policy is in for 1.1 annually. Marianne, do we need to vote on? Yes, we do. We need to vote on. Yeah, we can, we'll vote on it going through each one. That's a better idea than waiting till the end. May I have a motion on, uh, the sick leave policy and for time. We're not able to vote once again. So, the amendment is done. I just want to be clear, the amendment is to add some language, um, to, uh, the small necessities leave act, um, if that's an language around payout the 50 uh more than 15 years but less than 20 they would receive the 7500 at hired after today okay does that does that also take care of your concern mary ellen with fmla well i just have it in front of me so it says intermittent most likely refers to intermittent leave of absence loa which allows an employee to take off in separate blocks of a single qualifying reason reason such a serious health condition but also for a family member it's not just them yeah it can it can be for a serious health condition to care for a family member with a serious health condition for a birth adoption foster care of a child is reasonably accommodated under ada so it's different the other one is only for a three-month period of time but at an fmla you can do both your serious medical and a family medical and both of them it's if you do it in a block it's 12 weeks but if you do it in intermittent it's the same number of hours over a 12 month period and depending on how your your handbook is written it could be in a 12 month of a fiscal year or like any 12 month period either a calendar year a fiscal year however it's delineated in a handbook but it's not for the same amount of pay it's different that's the that's the qualifying thing the the pay is the it's if it's pfml then the state of massachusetts will you know will will run the numbers fmla it's up if your employer pays for it or if they allow you to take sick time then that's how it gets paid we're talking two different things jill we're talking two different things okay we can refer them to the fmla policy that we have and then did you say kate that we do not participate in pf mla correct um municipalities are exempt unless town meeting were to vote to opt in okay which i don't wayland has not done i don't believe there are any communities in massachusetts who have done that yet in fmla here says that it's entitled up to 12 work weeks of intermittent leave in a 12 month period yeah the okay so we can refer people to the other two policies but just so that we're we're just saying there's another way of doing that okay so jill isn't it that you have to i'm sorry so jill when you have the f the fmla or the pf whatever it is but then does it don't you have to wait a period of time before you could apply for another one what's the wait period it depends on the the law is you have to be employed for a certain number of hours i believe it's it's over a six month period to qualify for fmla so you can have your 12 weeks your three months or whatever you and then you have to wait another period of time before you're eligible oh if you've used an fmla again it depends on how it's delineated in the handbook let's say it's a calendar year you finish your fmla on december 31st if you qualify for another fmla you could start a new one january 1st if you if your doctor has you know filled out the paperwork and you have a qualifying event okay that's not all right yeah that hasn't been the case that's why i'm asking so okay i mean i can always if you want i can bring our town we have a policy on fmla i could bring it to another meeting yeah we could discuss if you'd like sure and then we can look at it vis-a-vis this one when does anybody want to second the yes yes i'll second it thank you with the amendments uh and i'll have a roll call vote because we're on zoom jill yes mary ellen yes mary ann yes okay the measure passes thank you we're going to go to annual leave which is 4 dash m4 dash 1.1 um and that is annual leave oh one thing on the the sick leave payout that last paragraph kate remember it says 15 years of service to wail and the not to exceed belongs in the column yeah and then just move that over there yeah i'll fix the formatting thank you thank you all right so now the annual leave i had a question on whether we should define the probationary period where do we define the probationary period for people uh we have it is six months we have a separate policy on probationary the probationary period okay so again you may want to just say see probationary period sure and it seems like the accrual is different uh it's been upped it was uh it's now zero to five years of employment is was originally it was 13 days 13 and now it's 15 15 so it's a and then oh i see so it went from nine and then five years but less than 15 years went from 19 to 20 okay correct and 15 years to severance 25 i just want to ask go ahead oh no that's just for uh non-department heads so i i so we have this um you know before and after this april 7th 2026 2016 date and what i'm finding is that um you know we can be a little more generous in our vacation time i think two weeks is probably a little low um for some of our employees especially in the public sector um starting at three weeks and that's most of our collective bargaining agreements start around that area as well so i wanted to be to have some parity i was just going to ask you that because my i wanted to ask other people what they're what they see in other places because i i always see like a month is the most and i we've gone to a month at um five but less than 15 years and then we've gone to six weeks 15 years to severance so uh what do you guys see in the private sector what i see in the private sector is usually max at a month but that's wildly variant wildly it depends on the company it depends on the industry but i mean i've seen like one week five days to you know eight weeks depending on the company so uh mary ellen what do you see in your place what is the usual vacation times i can't hear you oh you're you're muted you're muted here we go it depends i know it depends where you are because i think we get up to um 12 weeks depending how long you've been there okay all right that's very generous that's very generous that's because i'm special jill remember that well we knew we knew i asked my daughter whose company is notoriously great on benefits and and they get a month but then the company closes for a week between christmas and new years but that but that was their max and i work for myself and my and my my employer only grants me a month and i've never been able to take a month i've only been able to take this is for severance right that's what you're talking no this is just vacation whoops okay i lied so i thought you're talking about severance oh i was like mary ellen gets three months of vacation i mary ellen gets whatever she wants no so the the thing is is that what do we get we get we get it by it's hours per week so we get the first year that we're hired we get three weeks so as you move up the continuum in in so you get one i'm just making this up say 1.45 days a week you know it adds up pretty quickly nurses always have gotten generous well we know we're all hard working aren't we so yeah yeah yeah so i just was curious and i didn't know how how the public would would feel if they only get four weeks and all of our town employees get more but that's um i just dropped my pen on the floor hold on guys wait a minute i'll get it you're not gonna get it i may not get it let's see i'll come my computer will come crashing down on top of me here we are anyway but that was my i was like wow that seemed very generous but that's all right so um well i just wanted to speak a little to that we we again this is you know we're talking about maybe 30 35 employees um the vast majority are actually department heads in this you know group um and um the the you know in in today's employment marketplace um we're seeing you know average tenure of like three to five years um having someone stay for 15 to 20 you know that just it does it's not that it doesn't happen it's just not as common and so um you know this might be a yeah you know it's like a recruitment tool to try and make it a little more enticing and you'd hope that after 15 years on the job you'd be more efficient than you were at three years so yeah yeah and stability is important so yeah yeah yeah i don't see anything else here that i would change and i well i was questioning about under the usage the amount 48 hours notice um seems little and i i can get it in an emergency but um and then if a request of like a week um they need to give five days of notice that doesn't seem like a lot of notice to me but again coming from health care where you you really have to make sure you have you have um you have your your everybody there that you need there usually notice usually notice is reasonably longer than that so i just didn't know what people are seeing in the companies uh that they work for i think it depends if it's an emergency it's an emergency right they fill out the paperwork after the fact right yeah and i don't know how many people know that they're unless it's a a planned um surgery or planned procedure and even with that i don't know how much in advance they would know about you know what i'm saying yeah right i can see it for an emergency but if it's planned don't you usually have more time to give more notice if if it's planned you should yeah yeah so i don't i don't know um if it's i mean maybe we want to put in some wording for for planned absentees you know my my question is does this mirror what the union contracts have what yeah what do they have uh i should have looked at ask me sorry oh let me pull up the contract it just seems like short if people are relying it is and i can see it if it's an emergency and maybe that's the language you want in there but for normal times you usually know if you're going to take some vacation you usually plan it about a month ahead i would assume you'd be able to do that all right it's taking me a second to get to the contract my computer you can do it all right leave okay here it is um so in the AFSCME it's this it's identical in the same in the AFSCME contracts it's 48 hours for leaves less than five days and uh five days or more you give five days notice i mean i agree mary and it's short but that makes sense to me if that's what's in the union contract that it should mirror are they all the same though we have the police and we have the fire so i mean are they all the same contracts might be different right they might be different but but don't we usually for the non-union it usually mirrors closer to what the AFSCME it doesn't have to sometimes it's they there have been times they use the teachers contracting past years i think i you know you don't want to stick to one union because i mean if you know because then then that union can say that they are absolutely representing those employees so i think it's important to to think about i mean certainly i would say i would agree that you know in an emergency that that that's a that's sufficient notice but i think planned i think planned vacations because we're talking about annual leave planned vacations if people could the town would prefer to have you know like four weeks notice or something so people can plan um that way the work can get done before they go on vacation or if they're you know or somebody else can be found to fill in if they're if they're you know they need to be gone so i i guess i want to understand the distinction between emergency versus planned um in a vacation context for sick leave that makes perfect sense like you you were in a car accident or whatever you slipped and hurt yourself and you needed to be out um but for vacation time that is a pre-planned event i mean you can't use it as sick time so i was um 48 hours is a short turnaround that's that's true um i don't know of anybody who's given 48 hours to be honest with you um in practice but and it um it says with man a part department head approval so the department head could potentially decline that's a sticky wicket huh yeah it puts then it puts the onus on the department head to be the bad guy if they if they or to just have to suck it up and deal with it you know but that's still not fair to the employee if they really need that time off right well that's why i think in an emergency if some sometimes people use their vacation time in an emergency because they have no other alternative but because they can't wait 48 hours to be approved right right right right i don't know i just really felt that it was really short notice that the department had and that's what my thought was and i don't know if there's another way to state it we could say at least 48 hours was a notice for i don't know an extreme situation under 48 hours may be considered i'm just throwing it out i i any other thoughts that could because that that i think that's really tough for a manager i don't know about you guys so i don't know i'm not the authority i mean you could change it to non-union employees shall provide their department head or the town manager with 38 48 hours of notice at least 48 hours of notice for requests less than five days um oh well actually i'm trying to think that through do we bring it back well yeah we can i can always bring it back to you that's that's true this i think this is the first time i've brought this policy forward so yeah i would just like to have some ordinarily giving no and if and if you say people do it that's fine and i think that's that's good and people should do that but we could say ordinarily people should request annual leave you know four weeks in advance um in an emergency or an unplanned event extenuating circumstances will be considered or something like that there you go yeah then then i would be fine with that other thing but i i would just want to be out there saying we would expect that you plan your vacation and you let your manager know so that they're not stuck think about if somebody doing benefits or payroll now you know the thing you could be you have to be careful when those people take their vacation time or they take their holidays because you can really be sunk as an organization because you only have one or two people in that department so i mean those are the kinds of things that could be a problem but anyway that's what i would prefer if we could do that yeah um and you know no the separation of employment part i thought that that was stated a little bit awkwardly so it says non-union and i know it's similar to the last one we had non-union employees separated from employment with the town whether by termination resignation death dismissal retirement or otherwise will be paid or in the event of a death they're designated beneficiary so i think we need to say something like non-union employees separated from employment with the town whether by termination resignation death dismissal retirement or otherwise will be paid or in the event or comma in the event of death comma their designated beneficiary will be paid for any accrued and unused leave so will be paid goes after the person yeah and again after the um the beneficiary yep and that's the only thing i saw there does anybody else have any other thing so this one's going to come back to us just to retweet retweet yeah okay thank you so did i i do want to ask about the language regarding proration um so this is new for us in the past we um non-union employees have accrued vacation time monthly so this is front loading which is is different and so we put out of this language so that if someone were to leave we're actually going to prorate what we pay out um and i wanted to make sure it was clear what that how we were going to prorate it uh this is the annual leave right yeah on the separation of employment oh here yes yes i thought it made it clear right yeah it made sense to me i made a lot of sense to me as well
okay good uh and the next one is so i have i saw something okay twice i saw something so i don't know if this is it's it's um a box i know anyway so it says instead of department head it says department dead oh yes i thought oh that's right that's sorry
funny not funny sorry my fingers got away from me let's not consider that a harpinger let's um consider it a typo well it is recently yes so does this what all the employees have the you know it's it's good because it's the you know mother father you know children you know sister brother grandparents you know father-in-law blah blah blah do they all have the same wording you know uncle aunt niece nephew or is this just for the non-union folks so this language is very similar to AFSCME in fact i think it's almost identical it is identical to AFSCME DPW and library i think police and fire have some different language in there but i'd have to look at those contracts okay so i just i'm not sure why it wouldn't be this the same straight across the board that's all it depends what they've negotiated right yeah yeah i suppose i always think i always think as someone who has a very small family small family now but comes from a huge family some people will have more time than other people but that's just the way it is right but you know you would at least want you know immediate family if your uncle died or your aunt died at least you yeah you would hope to get time off but yeah that's it better than me i come from families of like 14 on each side so yeah so i did want to um if i could point you to that i added a new paragraph uh it's one two three four such lead is outlined above shall be taken on the day of the funeral um i think there was discussion last time we brought it here about when it's when it can be taken when it can't i mean we want to give people some flexibility because sometimes you you wait a few months to do a memorial um but i added that i'm happy for feedback on it yeah i thought it was good because of people's tendency now to do memorial services correct after and not right away so i thought it was good do we vote on this this doesn't have to come back right can i have a motion so moved i moved to approve the bereavement policy as amended with the spelling
with the spell check thank you okay thank you jill and mary ellen you seconded it i heard you both speak up so i'll take a roll call vote jill yes mary ellen yes mary ann yes so that one's done thank you all right um the next item so annual leave will that come back in december kate sure yeah i can bring that back in december and also in december will we have others like i know we talked about the workplace uh courtesy in the workplace or non-violence in the workplace issues those those policies do we have any of those getting ready uh yeah i i think i've i've yes i've been working on that we have mutual respect in the workplace standards of conduct um there's the protection from retaliation and then there's this uh there is one about violence i can't remember the title of the policy but yes yes facing my right now but okay okay so that's four do you think we'll have them ready for the next one well if i if we want to bring annual lead back i i think i was trying to kind of keep it to either three or four per meeting just not to um so why don't we do mutual respect in the workplace and um do we need to do retaliation this next one or is that more important than the standards of care probably yeah i think so yeah okay great thank you the next item on the agenda is human resources direct report with personnel board questions and comments and the update on the classification and compensation study um right so we've actually um we're making a lot of progress with our consultant we have um a draft final report again it's draft so we haven't really released it to anyone we're we're reviewing it now um i'm gonna hopefully sit down with michael soon to review that also the classification um structure is is in place it's pretty pretty well formed um there's a couple of little uh pieces we may you know positions we may need to tweak and then they have also um provided us with the salary survey um and combining the two i haven't we're not quite ready to present it but i'm hoping that by next time we'll have something a lot more concrete i just received the the draft report i believe last week so we're we're um we're working on it and it's it's coming so i'm hoping it'll be done um by like end of november early december which is a good hopefully a good time frame any surprises um not no not not from what i've seen um it's you know our our AFSCME and um non-union scales because they've both gone through a market adjustment over the last three fiscal years are much more closer to the market than i i thought they were i mean and our hiring has shown that we we haven't had to hire people at higher steps we're hiring them at the lower you know entry steps um so that's that's actually really good to to see that we're we're pretty close to where we should be on those scales um we didn't do police and fire weren't involved weren't part of the study uh fire is doing their own study separately right now and then police were going to um you know we're going to do probably uh soon but i i we have to talk to michael about next steps on that one um and then dpw and library are we're you know again not surprises but we have to figure out how we're gonna you know work with that yeah it's hard getting people to have some of those licenses for in the dpw uh these days so that makes it a hard harder job to fill um the fire study is a staffing study right and when is that going to be ready do you know i you know i don't know i haven't been as involved in that process the chief has been managing it um i mean i know that they are actively working on it i i was part of the original you know so when they started it kicked it off um and they interviewed a number of people and i was one of them so i don't but i'm not sure where it is okay and if we could get when you're ready with the classification and compensation study if we can get it in advance because that's a complicated one to get through i mean a couple of weeks before we discuss it um that would be great sure we could um
and because that's hard to go through and figure out what what's going on and the um the human resources staffing update in umass boston collins center combined organization operation study i had asked about that last year the town was getting some money and it's looking at facilities it's looking at the schools and it's looking at the town so um that was interesting to get and so if you can give us an update on that information and that's now on the town website right yes it's out there for anyone to review um so we're still working through this from the hr perspective our department we've we're actually have restructured already a little bit um so as you know our our benefits manager uh for many years donna lemoyne recently retired um so you know when she retired we we decided based on this um recommendations from the collins center uh to restructure so we have an hr uh director rather than a manager which and i was recently promoted into that role um and then to hire to have an hr generalist which will um do have a sort of a dual role do both hr recruitment collective bargaining policies but then also um have a role with benefits and benefit coordination and then a benefits coordinator which will be more of an administrative role processing paperwork making sure all of that um moves it keeps moving and as uh we don't you know lose any lose anyone um so we were already in process there our hr generalist um we hired uh ritana so is with us she's doing a great job uh we're we're still getting up to speed on the benefits piece um after you know departure uh and then i think we wanted to hold on the benefits hiring the benefits coordinator until we have a better handle on um how we how we want to reconfigure our functions internally to help it be a little bit more efficient um to make sure whether because we may not need a full-time person i think i'm not sure but i think we may not need full-time we're gonna we're gonna see because ritana was here before and she she asked benefits background right yes she was the hr assistant so yeah we're able to rehire her that's correct that's a good thing because she had good good background for us um and and benefits is really very specific and so require they have to be excuse me do they have to have any kind of certification for benefits administrator i don't think so um i mean i think there are certifications for benefits administration but uh it's not a requirement a lot of benefits at least in my experience uh few people who are experts in benefits administration have sort of learned on the job um and and work their way and maybe provide you know receive some training along the way but and she knows that special uh program that you put munis yes yes she does know that okay she's a huge help yeah so the um the study as i read through it um i read you know benefits used to be part of finance and now it's part of hr and has been for a number of years but they talked about payroll now payroll is part of finance right is it going to move over to hr uh i don't think we've made a determination on that um right now payroll is still a part of finance and still being housed there so how it works on the school side they have their own payroll administrator i'm not sure what the title is up there but and then uh we have our payroll administrator on the town but most of that gets funneled down into the town finance department so ultimately our payroll administrator is doing a lot of more of the auditing making sure everything moves um uh we're not making any errors in terms of pay and and those types of things um that come from the school department but they're managing their own payroll on the school side um and i think the collins center was recommending bringing that all into one one place um but i i don't know where that's um we're we're still discussing that sounded like it made sense i i had a question on whether the collins center was going to answer questions to the public on this survey are they going to come and do a report and be open for questions i yeah i don't know i i would have to um talk to michael i'm not sure if that was part of uh the contract that we originally signed but i can take a look because they'll probably be reporting to the select board at some point the one thing i saw and i i've done a lot of auditing of organizations for quality assurance and for boards of directors and and the question i had on that whole thing was the talking about gaps but they never defined what they meant by a gap so usually if you audit something you say well we looked at seven you know 17 employee records and uh 10 of them didn't have their licensure uh checked off um but they just said there were gaps on the school side of x percent or there were gaps on the town side and they didn't define what they meant by a gap and i i felt that that was not clear enough and that they also spoke about gaps in civil service well we don't have civil service here correct we don't but they're grandfathered in no we don't there aren't anybody left anymore so that so the people for the police side they're grandfathered in if they were civil service yeah there aren't that many left are there anyway yeah there are people left they don't have to take the test any longer but they grandfathered the folks that was right but the question is they were saying that there were gaps on the school side and the town side in civil service and we have very few civil service and the only people the only ones we have left are the ones on the police department i don't know how many there are how many are there thank you uh i think four or five i can't remember i'd have to look at the contract so i kind of thought that was no i agree i noticed that as well i think they may have sort of a format that they use and didn't catch it that we we aren't a civil service community so right so what does the town do i'm sorry what does the town do now the town has to they write a corrective action for this or how do they you know how do they follow up on this report um with the deficits that they have here on the report you know the five areas where there are concerns uh i think that's that's a really good question i think um we're we're already working on it here in hr i think it's going to require some conversations between the town manager and the superintendent on how they want to move forward with structuring if there's going to be any kind of restructuring or moving movement um between the various departments uh but i you know i can talk to him about next steps and how we could um you know be be as transparent as possible and how we're addressing some of these these issues so marianne there are some areas that say gap i know that they're not specific yeah but they do say yeah but they do no no no but it does say you know it tells you what the what the gap is so you know like on page 19 is highlighted in yellow and then on the following page it tells you if it's a gap on the town side or the school side and the first one on page 30 20 says preparation for town school employee orientation programs right so it looks like there's a huge gap on on actually if the x is is the town that has the gap right yeah and the licensure i was astonished that they say there's a gap at the school of 80 percent that doesn't make sense to me i can't you know yeah well what if they're not licensed and they're working as a teacher's aide if they're a teacher that didn't take the test or see you know you only have for licensure you you should be checking the licenses of the licensed personnel i get it marianne but they hadn't been doing that for a i but i i can't believe it i mean maybe they aren't doing it but that's you know that's a that would be serious but that's what i mean that's why i'm not sure what they really meant by some of that some of their gaps well it's not a gap year the way to go to it's not a gap year that they're waiting to go to college no the only gap i could figure out was that they didn't check licensure are the other gaps i don't know what they mean maybe that there's no professional development programs yeah that kind of stuff but i thought you know and the hris the uh information system now hard here we go i'm sorry marianne here we go on page 20 again see what it says licensure so it says they also have a waiver maybe that's you know long-term substitute waiver maybe that's why this you know there's no license there to check on you know what i'm saying they don't they don't specify right they don't specify what they're what they're defining by gaps i think and i think that that was the part that i had problem with i mean i know like for instance under performance evaluation training for all county school employees the personnel board did have a uh something in place and uh it had to go to the union and we never saw it after that but some some departments used that and some departments never used that um and only the non-union employees used it at the time we did it so um i do i do think we have to work on that but some of the other things i just didn't know what they meant by well if they're listed on 21 don't they have a little they kind of a little definition well they don't say they don't say they don't give you a percentage like we looked at oh okay well maybe it was a quantity this is what we looked at you know um i'm trying to like coaching supervisory staff and or principals on disciplinary processes well maybe they talked with department heads and they found there were gaps in both places and that that's that's fine but i thought it was a little i needed i thought it needed to be more crisp um and they're you know they have uh the town gap theory under civil service when you know really what what where the janitors used to be civil service at one point i don't know if they still are no and they were outsourced for a while and then they were hired again so they no i don't think there are no civil service employees in the are there i don't no i don't think there aren't i don't to the best of my knowledge i don't believe they are the last last group that were civil service were the police and that's been at least 10 years uh so there are some people that are grandfathered under civil service but four or five doesn't mean that it should be evaluated for the entire town particularly the school side the school side wouldn't have anybody in um in civil service well it doesn't again on page 25 and 26 it doesn't give you a percentage per se but it does tell you what the deficits are yeah i don't know how this goes marianne do you have to specifically ask them for a quantitative you know so you get the numbers i don't know how these things that are well i think i guess i think they have to report to the town and sort of let the town know what they did what they looked at what they found i would have thought it would be more specific than it is but yeah
like they're they have a percentage but they don't tell you how many how many records they looked at or how many people they spoke to i'm sorry i would assume you're allowed to ask questions though once you've received the report yeah yeah yeah but that's it to um marianne's uh to that end uh are people going to be able to ask questions because we have questions here you know right now and you know who who do who do we direct those questions to at the call-in center yeah i don't know i guess oh i'm sorry um i i can follow up with um michael and you know even the call-in center i'm not sure what was agreed to when the contract was signed originally and whether whether they were going to present this or not so i can come back with some more information on that and you've made some changes in hr and there are other changes that still they may be they may be advised by the collins center and whether the town implements them or not is still needs to be determined i would assume by the town manager and the select board but it would assume that via report people would evaluate whether they were whether they would work for the town or not you know um and whether they wouldn't so anyway but that was my question on whether they were going to give a report and have people be able to comment or ask more specific questions on it it was a lot to look at in a short period of time you want the reader's digest version right i like all the detail no no i'm just saying that was to the you know it would have been helpful to have somebody on the committee you know what i mean when this was presented because marianne has the background and the knowledge and you know you get the questions answered real time in my opinion well they haven't haven't reported back to the town yet right you know they haven't reported to the select board right i i don't know i i i'm not sure that that was planned that whether yeah i'm not sure if it was part of what what was agreed to so and did they sit down with michael or they did yeah they did okay yes good that would be good to know what you know what what he thought about you know the recommendations and what kinds of things on did they the town think that they wanted to move forward with and and what things are serious and what things need to be changed we were kate and i were talking a little bit about the munis system it's a really clunky system for hr when it was chosen it was chosen it was really a financial model that they kind of hooked on the hr stuff too so it works for benefits and calculations but for a lot of the hr functions it's a little bit rough of a system to use and kate says we don't even have i don't think we bought all the different portions of it and i don't even know if all the different portions would even work for the town so i don't know what's planned as far as updating the software for hr yeah i don't that's still a work in progress um we we own i know we own one one module that we haven't yet implemented which is the online onboarding so that meaning we could send someone a link a secure link they can log you log in fill out all of their onboarding documentation that would be sent back we basically download that from a site um because right now we're still doing everything in paper um so that would be my goal is to neck for next steps but it you know there's a lot of moving parts with that what parts of things do you have to do manually because they did say there was a lot that hr does manually uh well we don't have any kind of applicant tracking system so everything's done through through email uh which is you know i've created a rudimentary tracking system in excel just so that i can at least keep track of um who we are for reporting purpose who's applying for reporting purposes um we don't uh you know our benefits process is almost entirely manual so all all of our enrollment forms those are all done in paper um we don't have an online enrollment system um we you know there is a mechanism in um i'm sorry immunist um called employee self-service which we do have um working but there's a lot more there are a lot more features to it like you know how allowing employees to um say i want to take this week on vacation and send that to their manager and their manager can just um approve it and then it would go right into would feed right into their system in terms of you know their accruals being deducted and that's not up and running yet so that would be how long have we had that how long have we had that system we've i i don't i don't know how long we've had mutis no no the new one that you said hasn't been you know um it hasn't been turned on up and running the one that you were just talking about the system that the town purchased uh well employee self-service it actually comes with our current um contract uh so we didn't have to pay anything extra for it but there's a p we had to implement it which we have done it's just not fully implemented there are extra pieces to it that we can roll out hopefully in the future what does the future mean like in a month a year two years i i don't know i mean there's a lot of um there's just a lot going on right now we have a new i.t director um you know so we're we're sort of trying to there's a lot happening in a short period of time so i we don't have a plan yet okay and will you have the opportunity to look at any of the software that's available um through munis so that you can see if it would work for you or if it's just going to be really clunky add-on yeah we've done i we've had a demo actually with our our sales uh person at munis at tyler tyler munis um but again you know it's it's funding and and staffing it's it's a big endeavor to to take on so we're uh we're just we're still kind of figuring out what our options are and whether we can make that work yeah the self-service would be good because some people don't have to track down the manager and make sure that they got the letter and you know it's it would save a lot of time and angst i think on people's parts yeah okay well thank you and if we could if we could find out if they're going to give a if they're supposed to if it's part of the contract or not that they're going to give a um uh a presentation that would be good to know sure thank you um the next item on the agenda and by the way i uh kate did tell me the last time we met that she was made uh hr director and so congratulations kate for that thank you thank you thank you and um so the next item on the agenda is to discuss and approve the open session meetings of june 11th uh 2025 mary ellen did you get them because i only got one so i got the one that jill sent it by mail yeah that's the only one i got and that's all there is yes so we can those are the best ones mary ellen you don't need any more okay where did i do oh here's yeah i just had one question did you have any questions on the mary ellen did you have a chance to look at them i only got one set of minutes is what i'm saying i only got yeah okay but it says it says june 11th um september 3rd and october 8th i said if available okay yeah we only have the june 11th we have june 11th okay i think you did a marvelous job job well thank you so much mary ellen mm-hmm the the question i had was on page two yeah in paragraph three where uh you say uh paul morenberg suggests that the policies are reviewed prior to the meeting with proposed markups or kate ryan should send her thoughts two weeks in and ahead and one personnel board member will review before the meeting that is what that was what we that's what we said so that because we can't all get it before the meeting we can only discuss it during the meeting because of the open meeting laws so if one personnel board member got it and reviewed then they could bring it to the meeting for discussion oh i think that's why it was kate i saw you nod is that correct i think that's why it was that way yeah that's correct you can't you can't discuss it um before a meeting right we can't disseminate the same thing to all the board members and have us like comment on it before the meeting it has to be done right we do we we comment on it at the meeting right yeah and but one personnel board member will like review it before the meeting okay with kate and then bring it to the meeting oh i didn't know that whether or not that's correct that was what was discussed at the meeting okay thank you i looked at my wasn't hey that's odd anyway okay so can i have a motion it's just my accurate note taking
must have proposed it because she remembered it verbatim that's why she remembered it i did remember it may i have a motion on the minutes uh the open session on june 11 2025. so move but we're not making any amendments correct no amendments i will second it yep we okay so jill's perfect minutes we have a roll call vote jill i so needed a win this week i can't even tell you yes great yeah i'm your go-to girl yes mary ellen are you yes absolutely and marianne yes thank you yeah okay so now um the next item on the agenda personnel board members reports and concerns are there any there are i just wanted to bring up the packet and you know the red the readiness of the packet so my hours have changed at work and so i'm not available after 12 o'clock uh actually probably to take the travel there probably the latest i could get it is 11 o'clock and even 11 30 is pushing it so when we have the meetings it would be very much appreciated to have those minutes i mean the packet ready in the morning of the day that i it's usually if it's a tuesday i pick it up on friday barring any kind of holiday is that doable sure yeah okay i think we usually talk about the agenda about tweaks in advance sometimes getting information to the packets from different parties can can delay part of it but if we can get the most of it done and ready for you that would be that would be appreciated right and then we don't have to the back and forth i will just go pick it up you know in the in the mail room and usually what is you know what's since late maybe be a stray in my um experience is a stray set of minutes yes right now mary ellen is there a time frame by which you mean by by a time of do you mean 11 or do you mean at 8 o'clock or 8 30 any time before 11 would be preferable okay but not you know right at 11 because i will you know i will be there at 11 i have to leave for work so actually you know what 10 30 would be better is that possible kate yeah i will do my best okay thank you all right okay thank you kate okay is there anybody else have any concerns or reports no okay um the next item is topics not reasonably anticipated 48 hours in advance if any i have none does anybody have any kate do you have anything nope not for me thank you all right so i will move do you want to choose the next meeting date before oh no it's the second wednesday what's the date of the second wednesday december 10th december 10th okay so that is our meeting at 4 p.m huh yes i thought you were doing the first wednesday of every month not the second i thought we were doing tuesdays we moved to wednesday i'm so confused we're all gonna meet on a different day no in a different place in a different state i think it was wednesdays wasn't it wednesday it's definitely wednesdays okay and i thought it was the second but i thought it was tuesdays but you tell me so well i have another meeting on the second wednesday of every day of every month so i so it must have been the first it must have been the first okay so then that would be december the third okay correct that's going to be coming quick because it's going to be right after um thanksgiving but that's fine so december 3rd at four o'clock and we will endeavor to have some minutes i think those are paul's i will contact him and we also have some personnel policies uh at that time if we can begin to uh look at those uh is there anything else that you think we will be working on then or maybe an update on classification yeah i i hope to have a little more concrete um information i can i can share with you by then okay good good and then also if there's anything from the collins center what the town is going to do or if the changes you've made or what you're going to do but it does it doesn't mean that there are as soon as the it director gets his feet on the ground there are some systems that probably might be able to help i i do know um most municipalities complain about munis dhr people at any rate um but you know it's it's they've got the market right they do they are cornered the market okay so let me just get my here i'm going to make a motion uh to go into executive session for the wednesday november 5th executive session i move that the personnel board enter into executive session pursuant a to massachusetts general hours chapter 30 a section 21 a 3 to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining relating to a grievance at step 2 with the international association of firefighters afl cio local 1978 and be pursuant to massachusetts general laws chapter 30 a section 21 a 3 to review and approve the personnel board executive session minutes of may the 6th 2025 with the intent to release stead minutes um because to do so in open session would be not beneficial to the towns could be detrimental to the town's bargaining uh position is there a second to the motion to enter into executive session i will second thank you we're going to split that second huh yeah okay i'll quarter it okay either one thank you um the chair declares a public discussion of these matters may have a detrimental effect on litigating negotiating or bargaining position in the town i will take a roll call vote to go into executive session um uh i will uh attend we i will invite the attendance of uh kate ryan personnel director for the town of wyland is anybody else going to be there kate no no yeah just me uh and the committee will adjourn immediately from executive session and will not be returning to open session i would anticipate that our time in executive session may be 30 to 40 minutes total max okay so i will take a roll call vote to move into executive session jill yes mary ellen yes yes mary ann yes okay and our link is on that same email so hopefully we'll see you in executive session okay okay okay thank you thank you thanks