PERSONNEL & ADMINISTRATION

Wednesday, February 12, 2025 - 10:00 AM

Meg Wood, Chairperson

JoePete Wilson, Vice-Chairperson

Chairwoman Wood called this Personnel Meeting to order at 10:00 am with the following Supervisors in attendance: Clayton Barber, Matthew Brassard, Chris Clark, Robin DeLoria, Derek Doty, Ken Hughes, Steve McNally, James Monty, Favor Smith, Matt Stanley, Davina Thurston, Ike Tyler, Margaret Wood and Mark Wright. Shaun Gillilland and Joe Pete Wilson were excused. Charlie Harrington and Cathleen Reusser were absent.

Department Heads present: Judy Garrison, Dan Manning and Michael Mascarenas.

Also present: Erica Sadowski.

News media: None present.

WOODS: Good morning everyone. When Mr. McNally is done, we can invite Erica up.

SADOWSKI: Good morning. Everyone should have Jennifer’s report in front of you. Do you have any questions?

WOOD: Anyone? Any questions, comments, remarks? No? This is going to be fast.

MASCARENAS: I do have one thing to report I don’t have the specifics I may have it for ways and means, I should have it for ways and means I just want to prepare the board and Personnel committee. We do have an individual that’s interested in an attorney position for DSS but they are looking, this individual is looking for part time work but with like full time insurance. Our current rules don’t allow for that. It does for certain position we do it with a handful like our Election Commissioners and those types of individuals. The board could certainly do that if they felt that it was beneficial. I feel looking at it, I need the details of the salary so I can do a comparison of benefit costs but –

MCNALLY: Isn’t it twenty hours a week to qualify?

MASCARENAS: Qualifying for full time benefits so all our benefits are prorated based on time of hours worked so if you were a 19 hour you would get so much, if you were 20 hour you’d get so much all the way up to 35 we considered full time so if we were to put a part time person on our health insurance for example that person would contribute $18,000 a year for our family plan. If we were to allow them to pay the full time rate they would pay five so it’s a substantial cost difference between a part time employee the way it’s prorated to a full time employee in those hours that people are giving us.

MANNING: Mike, but we really need attorneys.

MASCARENAS: What I was getting at that point.

MANNING: And it’s an exempt class.

MASCARENAS: It’s an exempt class and like I said we do it with a handful of positions that we have here for those people in that class. I think the benefit to this in particular which you don’t see is Bill Tansey filling in at support court which is taking him away from county attorney work and he’s happy to do it he’s not complaining even a little but we want to keep people focused on the jobs they were hired to do and when you’re short you don’t see the masses filling in to cover for everyone else and we’ll look at the final numbers and we’ll have a recommendation for the board but I just wanted to prep you on these maybe some of the things we have to do in order to attract these qualified individuals and relieve some of the capacity issues we are having.

MANNING: Yeah and it’s not something we haven’t similarly done before. I mean when I came in I brought my secretary from my old office and I set the salary because we needed somebody so this is sort of like that. We have no attorneys. He’s right Bill has done support. I’ve done liens and other things. Poor Michelle Bowen is the only one there, when they had three so I think it should be fine and as you said, it’s a non-competitive position in the exempt class we should double check but I don’t think our rules would apply that’s more for rank and file.

DELORIA: Mike is there anything we can do from committee to support that resolution that you are going to prepare to the board?

MASCARENAS: Well, what I know and I’m waiting to touch base. It sounds like the woman is a go if we can do that. The initial talk was that she wanted a salary of $50,000 for part time work and be able to pay the full time health insurance benefit but whether or not that’s changed I’m unaware so that would be the resolution if we were to that point and I believe that’s a fair kind of resolution to take that work load off those individuals but things change rapidly and I don’t want to get out in front of it.

MANNING: To put that in context our Assigned Counsel Administrative attorney is part time and he makes $55,000 a year.

MONTY: Does he get full benefits?

MANNING: He does not. No. I believe at one point when I had Dave Scaglione, family court under my belt Dave and Carl although they didn’t start something like that I think they were pushing $60,000 again, without benefits but we are in some really funky times right now where there’s a dearth of attorneys Michelle can’t continue to function trying to do three jobs I think it’s the right way to go.

DOTY: I just want everyone to know I totally support this idea. In North Elba in order for legal representation to raise a hand and help out with joint review board, zoning board appeals, health insurance is the number one attraction and just like Dan said, that’s where we are at now otherwise we won’t have the legal representation we need so I think it’s a good move. It doesn’t mean that we won’t have to negotiate the $50,000 plus full benefits maybe it ends up being $38,000 and full benefits I don’t know.

MASCARENAS: Yeah and what you heard from Mike Langey on Monday was that our attorney pool is aging at a rate that is alarming in terms of they are all going to retire at the same time, they are all the same age. This individual in particular I mean there’s no guarantee that they stay or don’t stay the reason why they are looking for part time work is because they are a young mom and they want to be able to practice being a lawyer while at the same time provide health insurance. I’m guessing at some point in time that individual is going to want to go to full time once this child ages and if they are with us I feel like that gives us an opportunity to maybe retain an attorney long term so I think there’s other things we’ve got to consider rather than just what’s in front of us but rather that long term succession planning that we need to look at.

MONTY: When you say part time hours Mike is it set hours or as needed?

MASCARENAS: It’s going to 14 to 20, there’s defined hours in the work child support work doesn’t stop so they would be responsible minimally for child support cases and court dates so if they didn’t work a Monday this week they wouldn’t get benefit time so they are not getting full time benefits they are getting full time health insurance that’s kind of what we are looking at here.

MONTY: I didn’t know if there was a set time?

MASCARENAS: They work Monday and Tuesday this week they may work Wednesday and Thursday next week depending on court schedule and what’s happening there.

MONTY: And if there was a busy court schedule they could actually work three days right?

MASCARENAS: Yeah, absolutely there’s nothing prohibiting them from that. That’s like any of us are Dan Manning is that way, I am that way, we all are again in that exempt class we are defined as hourly’s for benefit time purposes but really what our jobs are is get the job done regardless of how much time it takes you. It may take you twelve hours today, it may take you six hours tomorrow but that’s kind of what we are supposed to be doing.

STANLEY: I’m not on this committee but does there need to be any change to the policy manual to allow and hire somebody and give them full time health insurance benefits while not being full time?

MASCARENAS: I don’t believe so.

MANNING: We’ll take a look at it.

MASCARENAS: Yeah, we will make sure before bringing that resolution but again it has been done before it’s currently being done. Like I said, our election commissioners are a really good example of that, our Coroners right? Our coroners are very part time and they receive full health insurance benefits so it’s not something we haven’t done.

MANNING: I think that would get back to the exempt class under the civil service law 41 you’ve got a lot of leeway there, it’s noncompetitive you don’t need a test for it. Also, the extensities of the circumstances that were in with respect to lawyers I feel that exceptions can be made even let’s say I don’t think the policy manual speaks to this at all because like management confidential those types of things are negotiable. When you hired me I negotiated a salary, I negotiated benefits outside of the policy manual but let’s say for the sake of arguing the policy manual doesn’t address it you certainly by resolution can do whatever you want and when you do it by resolution I would just flesh out the reason therefore so if someone comes again and says well, you did it for them well, this is why we couldn’t find anybody, we had to do this.

MASCARENAS: I don’t think it addresses it but we’ll make sure Matt. That’s a great question.

STANLEY: I just want to make sure especially it’s a lawyer.

THURSTON: I just want to verify that this person will be on payroll, they are not billing us for their hours?

MASCARENAS: Correct. This is not a contract employee. This is an employee that will have the right to join the New York State Retirement System. They will be required to submit timesheets on a bi-weekly basis justifying their pay. Trust me, we get rid of those folks that don’t. We did last year there was an individual that we hired under a contract that wasn’t meeting their obligations to us, they are no longer with us and they were an attorney also so we take our jobs very seriously when it comes to the oversight of people receiving compensation for work done.

THURSTON: This is kind of off topic, maybe it’s not but if the county were to hire an attorney at an hourly rate not under payroll would the county be allowed to pay for that person’s health insurance or would they have to be on payroll in order to get that?

MANNING: They would have to be on payroll.

MASCARENAS: Absolutely would have to be on payroll, yes.

THURSTON: Thank you.

WOOD: Anyone else? Anymore comments or questions? Okay, thank you. Before we move on I just want to remind everyone because I forgot last month, that Thursday, May 8 is a job fair at the Essex County Fairgrounds from 9:30 to 4:30 and I promised Mr. Hughes I would say so. Okay. Moving on, Judy.

GARRISON: Good morning. I submitted a monthly report and I do not have anything in addition to that unless anyone has any questions for me today?

WOOD: Any questions? Any comments? Okay, thanks. Mr. Manning.

MANNING: I have nothing. I did not submit a monthly report but if you have any questions I’m here to answer them. I don’t submit a monthly report that was a joke.

WOOD: No questions. No comments, no nothing? Okay does anybody have anything else that they want to bring to the committee? Okay then I guess we are done.

As there was no further discussion to come before this Personnel and Administration committee it was adjourned at 10:15 a.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Judith Garrison, Clerk

Board of Supervisors