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Breaking NewsTown Manager voices support for town employees
By: Aaron Keebaugh
DPW employees are frustrated.
Last week, Town Manager Heather Lemieux said that she had listened to complaints from the department over lingering problems like the turnover of wages, how many leave to find higher paying work in the private sector and neighboring towns, dearth of proper equipment, and a general lack of understanding for all that they do.
The heavy work for what feels like little compensation emerged as the biggest concern. "Almost all of [the employees] need to work a second job to make ends meet," Lemieux said. "And at least one depends on the food pantry to supplement feeding [their] family."
The highway department has been stretched especially thin. Now down to two employees, the department must manage the same amount of work as neighboring towns who have designated stormwater and tree and removal divisions, Lemieux added.
"There's a general feeling that residents and administration did not understand and appreciate the range of everything the highway department does," she went on to say. "We depend on them to come in during flooding and snowstorm events when we have the worst weather possible to keep our roads safe."
"They care about this town as do all our employees," Lemieux said. "I can attest that other departments feel the same way. The DPW is an example of how our departments work together and how they care about what they do, help each other out when needed, working as a team for the good of the town as they care about the town."
"It is our collective responsibility to care about them," Lemieux added. "We’re fortunate to have the department heads we have that support the employees in the respective departments like they do. But that is not enough in itself. I need to use my voice and the board needs to use their voice to support them."
Lemieux went on to say: "Everyone needs to better understand what all the employees in our town do to make Lunenburg a better place to live work, and most importantly make it a community. We are proud to be part of something --that was said to me--and I think it rings true. And times like this we tend to focus on the negative. But we cannot stop to think of is all the things that are going wrong --a lot is going right. An amazing amount of work gets done every day by our staff and through their efforts even right now, and we are short-staffed. We are all human and we are all a work in progress, and there will always be ways we can improve and times to consider what we can do better. But we also need to focus on the positive and right now it’s that time."
In another public comment made at last week's Select Board meeting, Paula Bertram confirmed that morale among DPW employees was indeed low. "Employees are being asked to do more with less," she said. "And while everyone's level of responsibility has increased, their salary hasn't."
"Staff feel that they are not respected or appreciated," Bertram added. "People do not have a true understanding of the work that every employee performs working at the DPW."
"Years ago they were at ten highway employees," Bertram went on to say. "We are now down to three, not including the superintendent. I can tell you that the employees there are some of the hardest working people I’ve ever met."
The comments come in the wake of disagreements over questions asked on October 17 about the number of paid hours for cemetery workers. But last week the Select Board sought to assuage Lemieux's and Bertram's concerns.
"I could not agree more with the statement made, and on the timeliness of it," said Tom Alonzo. "I don’t know what to attribute it to--I know that it’s probably all by now attributed to the pandemic or something. But the lack of socialization that happened is that it leads people to come to what I think is just wild and reckless behavior. And one of those is the kind of criticism and critiques made to people in general. But, you know, in this case, specifically to people who are providing the very services that people in the town are looking for."
"I think the worst part of any employment--and I think this is probably universally true-- is to go to work every day and feel you’re not appreciated," Alonzo added. "I don’t know anything worse than that."
Micheal-Ray Jeffreys, who had raised the questions, expressed his reasons for doing so. "I think in this role, number one it is important to ask questions. Last week we were provided by the town manager--as she corrected it tonight with a number--that said that the cemetery was allocated 3900 and something hours a year that was corrected today to 2431. That’s a big difference between the two, and I think one kind of caused alarm and I think the correction does not cause as much alarm."
"I’ve been on this board I’ve argued for more pay for staff. I voted against a union agreement because I didn’t think it was enough money for staff. [But] I think that we need to re-examine some of the positions that we have here in town, and that we are funding what we have, and when we look at the last time we’ve had an organizational kind of evaluation, do we have positions in the right place? Are people doing the job that they were hired to do? Are they doing more than they were hired to do? I think when we look at numbers broadly, will we see especially in public safety is the amount of contact hours are extremely high."
But Jeffreys stressed that he is actively listening to concerns. "I appreciate all the comments for that were made tonight. I think it’s always good when we have staff that appear before us and vocalize concerns. It doesn’t fall on deaf ears . . . . We all got here because we want to help the community."
