In an effort to take a "hard look" a the staffing needs in the town's department, an ad hoc committee is forming to assess that very issue.
Board of Selectman Chairman Bill Pantazis said that because workforce planning is 60 percent of town's annual budget, the board and administration needed to take a closer look at the municipal personnel positions.
"Like everything else, we need to take a hard look at it and study it and make sure we make the right decisions," said Pantazis.
The committee, which will include two selectmen, administration and members of the Appropriations committee, will be confirmed at the next Board of Selectmen meeting, said Pantazis.
Town Administrator John Coderre added that, as with much of the town's approach, the committee is an effort to be proactive and assess the situation for fiscal budgets beyond 2014. In a suffering economy, Coderre said that while no positions have been cut, they have also not been replaced when someone vacates.
"Painfully, the last four years have been some of the most difficult to manage through," said Coderre. "We've had state aid reduced. We were able to work through changes through union groups, and we've adopted comprehensive policies, and we've constrained our spending and outsourced positions such as the dog officer. We've gotten through the last four or five years with no layoffs or significant reductions in services. But when people left, we didn't replace them."
These positions included five at the DPW, and a "whole host of positions in finance and administration."
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"It's a great way to budget, but it doesn't mean you are cutting positions in the way that makes the most sense," said Coderre. "At this point, we have our fiscal budget for 2014 set, and now would be the time to look at subsequent years. We are proposing to form a committee to look at the departments, not only to review data, but find out information that we need. Let's be clear: unless buckets of money come raining down, my sense is we'll have some additional budget capacity, and we will be able to add staff ... but say we need 10 additional fulltime bodies. The contest that goes into it is what can we afford and what do we have at our disposal to add?"
Coderre predicted that the committee's work would be "labor intensive," particularly at first, and would begin to meet throughout the summer.