Selectmen set new pay schedule for clerks

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BEACON FALLS — The Board of Selectmen last week voted unanimously to adopt a new pay schedule for board and commission clerks.

The flat rate of $35 for attending a meeting remains the same under the new schedule. However, the hourly rate is based on the number of years working for a board or commission.

There are five payment steps under the new schedule. The steps start at $16 per hour for clerks who have been working on a board or commission for up to two years and increases to $20 an hour for clerks who have been with a board or commission for 12 years or longer.

A clerk that starts on a new board would be paid the starting amount of $16, even if he or she was making a higher amount on a different board or commission.

First Selectman Christopher Bielik said there is no clerk currently who has worked for a single board or commission for more than 12 years.

The move comes one year after the board approved consolidating the salaries for the clerks into one line item in the budget and paying them on a case-by-case basis.

Prior to that, the salaries were set by the boards and commissions clerks served on and varied widely.

“If you just put money in the budget, the commission adjusted their own salaries. It was the big argument that they don’t set salary scales. It’s the Board of Selectmen that should be doing that,” Selectman Michael Krenesky said.

Bielik said simply consolidating the salaries did not help as much as the board had hoped because there were a number of factors to take into consideration, such as the length of time someone has served.

“There is kind of a hodgepodge of varying board and commission clerks we have. Some with varying degrees of experience. Some are new to the boards they are on. Some of them have been doing lots of work for a lot of time,” Bielik said.

According to information from the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, the new pay scale puts Beacon Falls near the middle of what municipalities pay their clerks, Bielik said.

Some clerks will see an increase in their pay and some won’t under the new schedule, but no one will see a decrease, Bielik said.

“I think that this is a fair approach to take. Whether they are happy with it or not, at least it is a fair approach to take,” Bielik said.