Politics & Government

Town to Redistribute Payroll Functions

Stand alone job abolished, duties spread across two existing employees.

The Town Council was briefed Tuesday evening on a plan to eliminate the vacant position of town payroll manager and distribute the duties between two existing town employees.

Town Administrator Jim Gildea said the position, which became vacant following a retirement in June, had been slated to be reduced to part time status. The decision to reduce the job to part time status was made before the retirement of the previous job holder. In an effort to save further money, Gildea said the part time position will not be filled and two finance department employees will take on payroll duties.

The payroll job handles various internal human resources functions for the municipal government. These include paying employees, employee benefits and other HR related issues.

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The two employees will be promoted by the council at a future meeting in order to reflect their new duties. Gildea said most of the savings will be seen in the 2010 budget with any savings in this year's budget being seen mainly in an increased surplus going into next year. He could not immediately quantify the savings expected from the decision to eliminate the payroll job.

"One of the reasons this job could be done this way is technology has made parts of the job easier to do," Gildea said.

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