Personnel Finance Commitee Minutes 3-24-2025

Personnel Finance Commitee Minutes 3-24-2025

Rutland Town Select Board

Personnel Committee and Finance Committee

Meetings on Monday, 3-24-25

4:PM

Rutland Town Hall—Center Rutland, VT

Personnel Committee

The meeting was called to order at 4PM.  Present were Select Board members Matt Getty and Mary Ashcroft, and Town Clerk Kari Clark.

Teresa Miele of HR Acquired had emailed Mary and Matt a proposed work plan and contract for the next six months.  The group reviewed the work that they felt still needed to be done.  The group recommended as follows:

1. Teresa Miele will be asked to provide a “clean” copy of the HR Handbook as approved by the Select Board, as that document had not yet been provided.
2. Teresa will be asked to provide the completed revised timesheet to Kari for use by town employees.
3. Kari identified 3 HR areas in which she would appreciate assistance:

–What to keep and maintain in town employee files?

–What “onboarding” process, orientation and documents should be used with new employees?

–What claim process and procedures should be used to unify workers’ compensation claims? Right now, department heads, Bill and Kari are variously involved, and there needs to be one office in charge.

Kari will contact VLCT to see what resources they may have on the above, and let us know what is still needed if VLCT can’t assist.

4. Kari has been exploring the idea of contracting payroll and some HR work to be done by an independent contractor, likely ADP. This would free up some time in the clerk/treasurer’s office and provide HR advice and resources for town employees.  Estimated cost would be $50 per employee per month, or about $18,000 per year with a start-up one time cost of $3,000, and $600 per year for W-2 preparation.  There is no money in the budget for this, and Kari is looking at this long term, and will provide more information.

Finance Committee

Matt Getty, Mary Ashcroft and Kari Clark then move on to Finance Committee matters.

1. The Public Safety Building is nearing completion. Joe  Denardo and our architect Ed Clark need to agree on a punch list of remaining items to be done, and calculate the amount of retainage needed to insure completion.
2. Kari provided the binder of PS building expenses she has kept for our reference.
3. Matt Getty mentioned the items from AM Peisch’s audit which were recommended to the Town. Among these were a formal accounting manual, a disaster recovery plan, and a fraud risk assessment.  We will ask Bill if templates for any of these are available through VLCT.
4. For review of town finances after the 3^rd and 4^th quarters, Kari reminded the group that Department Heads have this information, and that the Board Committees should be reviewing finances with their Departments on a regular basis.
5. We will set up another meeting with Kari and the Finance Committee for mid-April after finances are ready at the end of the 3^rd quarter.

 

There being no further business to conduct, the meeting was adjourned at 5:20PM.

 

Respectfully Submitted:  Mary Ashcroft, Select Board