Note: FY 2021 is last year (July 1, 2020 to June 30, 2021). The report was prepared to cover the business for the FY 2021 period. This year’s report FY 2022 (July 1, 2021 to June 30, 2022) is in preparation now and is normally available for distribution at the polls for the November election.
When last reporting in the 2020 Annual Report, the Town had just finished contract negotiations with our seven (7) different unions. We spent some time in FY21 reorganizing these contracts and making them easier to read. Human Resources and department heads worked closely with the Department of Public Works and the Fire Department to consolidate the old contracts with the new MOUs and clean up typos and irrelevant language. We now have fresh, clean copies for 4 of the 7 contracts and are just working to do some adjustments for the Facilities Maintenance union, Police Patrol and Police Sergeants. We hope to have these completed by the end of calendar year 2021. This will be done just in time to start preparing for the new contract negotiations, since our current contracts expire on June 30, 2022!
Fiscal Year 2021 was another busy year in terms of recruiting and hiring. Between July 1, 2020 and June 30, 2021 we hired 18 full-time employees and a number of part-time employees. New full-time employees included: Water/Sewer Superintendent Doug Martin, Assistant Town Engineer Brook Cotta, Heavy Motor Equipment Operators at the DPW (3), Water Pump Station Operator at the DPW (1), Assistant Treasurer Marina Malamud, Deputy Town Clerk Dyan Fitzgerald, 7 new Firefighters, and 3 new Police Patrol Officers.
The Town lost a lot of institutional knowledge with some high level retirements this year, but they provided a great opportunity for long term employees to step up into new roles! Karen Alves retired as the Senior Center Director at the end of August 2020 after 19 years of dedicated service.
Erin Rogers was promoted into this role and has kept the Senior Center running seamlessly. Deacon Perrotta retired from his role as Deputy Director of Operations for the DPW in September 2020 after 10 years of service to Franklin and a lifetime of public service in DPW and Water positions. We reviewed the staffing levels and funding and decided to split Deacon’s job into 2 new superintendent positions by promoting Tony Brunetta and Jake Standley. Long- term employee Megan Woodacre left her position as Deputy Director for the Recreation Department and we were able to convert some part-time positions into full-time positions to fully support Ryan Jette’s active Recreation Department.
We continue to deal with the rising cost of employee benefits, especially health insurance. The Town continues to offer three different health insurance plans and we are seeing more and more employees shift from the standard HMO plan to the High Deductible HMO plan. Over the course of the year, we continued to have virtual meetings with the Insurance Advisory Committee (IAC) to attempt to keep our insurance costs down. This past spring, Harvard Pilgrim came to us saying that we were about to face a 12% rate increase. We were able to work with our broker NFP and Harvard Pilgrim to get a final quote of 8.95%. We will continue to work with our IAC to try to keep costs down for future health care renewals.
Respectfully submitted,
Karen M. Bratt
Human Resources Director
The full Annual Report for 2021 can be found
The collection of Annual Reports can be found online
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| Annual Report Of The Town of Franklin - FY 2021 |
