FARMINGTON – SAD 9 directors voted 12-2 Tuesday to restructure the administrative side of transportation and physical plant departments to be overseen by one director and an assistant director.
Voting against the proposal were Directors Bob Flick of Farmington and Charisse Keach of Chesterville.
The board voted unanimously to appoint David Leavitt, director of transportation, as the new director of support services to supervise both departments.
Currently there are two department directors for the support services. Director of Physical Plant David Gould plans to retire at the end of the school year.
Under the restructuring, Leavitt’s salary would increase from $46,994 to $60,000, a difference of $13,006.
The salary for the assistant director would be in the range of $35,000.
The new proposal, which would be on a probationary two-year basis to see how it would work, would cost a total of $95,000, if an assistant director was hired at a salary in the mid-$30,000 range. Combined, the existing salaries for physical plant director and transportation director are $93,988.
The proposal also calls for a part-time secretary position to be increased to full-time.
Overall the restructuring, if everything stays the same as proposed, would cost nearly an estimated $7,000 more, not including a benefit package for the secretary.
Superintendent Mike Cormier said there are a couple of existing benefit packages in these departments that were not taken last year.
Flick, who said he wasn’t opposed to the restructuring, but wanted to make the salary issue separate, said the raise for the director would be 30 percent, which is “just too much.”
Director Jo Josephson of Temple said she did the numbers and they would only be spending about $1,000 more than they are now for the two positions.
Flick said it should be less.
“This is a huge responsibility,” Josephson said.
Bob Neal of New Sharon said it is a nice clean organization line that they know where the buck stops.
He said they really need to give serious thought to the maintenance issues at each of the buildings. He also added that the physical plants are valued between $21 million and $27 million and they need to take care of them.
The restructuring will hopefully remedy some of the decisions made in the past that have severely hurt the physical plants, Bob Pullo of Wilton said. “I don’t see this salary out of line,” Pullo said.
Director Ted Ellis of New Vineyard said he would like to see the assistant’s salary closer to that of director.
Moving the secretary position to full-time to go with the other full-time secretary is expected to decrease the amount of paper work that Leavitt and the assistant would have to do and increase efficiency in bill paying.
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