Pittsfield Council Ordains 3 New City Positions, HR Reclassification
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The City Council approved three new city positions and the reclassification of Human Resources Director Michael Taylor's position for a salary increase.
This motion passed 7-4 with Ward 1 Councilor Helen Moon, Ward 2 Councilor Kevin Morandi, Ward 4 Councilor Christopher Connell and Ward 7 Councilor Anthony Maffuccio voting in opposition.
The three new city positions are a grant manager, chief assessor, and an information technology (IT) position.
Taylor's job reclassification is aimed to better compensate him for his responsibilities. He will experience an increase of about $7,500 annually as a result of the change. Currently, his position is an M7 classification with a salary ranging from $68,000 annually to around $89,000, Taylor confirmed that he is compensated around $75,000 annually.
The human resource director position was reclassified to an M9 classification, adjusting the salary range from about $83,000 to $108,000 at the maximum end of the compensation spectrum.
This topic sparked controversy between Maffuccio and Mayor Linda Tyer at last week's Ordinances and Rules Committee meeting, as Maffuccio believes that during a global pandemic and recession it is not appropriate to be handing out raises.
Also at the preceding O&R meeting, the three new positions were outlined.
The city's IT position was created in regards to the growth of the network and concerns over cybersecurity. IT Support Specialist Director Michael Steben reported that 2020 saw an unprecedented amount of attacks against municipal networks and Pittsfield's network had numerous breaches attempted, especially around the election.
A single loss expectancy from a breach would be north of $1 million, he claimed, given the city's size.
Pittsfield Police Chief Michael Wynn spoke on the importance of a grant manager, claiming that by the time he took over the chief's office in 2007 the grant administration process had essentially become a full-time contracted job.
The position will pay between $45,000 and $60,000.
Board of Assessors Chairwoman Paula King said the chief assessor position in the Assessor's Office is being created so that one of the full-time assessor's positions can be eliminated and the staff will be reduced to four positions.
The chief assessor's job is to keep everything functioning, being the liaison and signing all contracts with vendors. They will also be in charge of the office staff and have an assistant assessor.
Many of the opposing councilors expressed that they wished the items were voted on separately as they were at the O&R meeting when first presented. Maffuccio and Morandi, for example, voted in opposition of the motion because they don't agree with Taylor's job reclassification.
"There's different pieces of the puzzle here. There's just not one. And that's where I think Attorney Pagnotta and President Marchetti are wrong because we debated it as a single item," Maffuccio said in regards to the decision to debate the items together.
Moon was in opposition because of the Police Department's grand administrator position and voiced concerns over how it would be funded.
"I guess my concern with that is that it really is dependent than on the capacity of each department. Right. So the more capacity a department has, the more staff they have, the more funding that they have for that department. They're able to take on more of a burden to apply for and then administer the grant," she explained.
"It just seems like this would be a position that could really benefit all of the city of Pittsfield, and, and not so heavily focused on the police department. I don't think I've been very shy about the fact that I'm concerned about the increases in our police budgets via grants, because those funds don't offset our federal budget, it just adds more dollars to the Police Department."
Wynn's longtime administrative assistant Maggie Gregory-Bilotta is finding the grant application process "a lot more consuming" because the Department of Justice has changed its reporting system.
"I guess, at this point, I just don't have the time," she said. "And I'm working till 9, 10 o'clock at night after I get out of my job."
Tyer addressed Moon's concerns, saying these grants are not used to fund Police Department operations or adding money to its budget.
"I just want to clarify something, while Chief Wynn has indicated that the department for the last two years has been awarded $1.2 million worth of grants, as we have acknowledged here already this evening, the largest majority of those grants are pass-through grants that fund programs and services that are run by 18 Degrees, and by the Elizabeth Freeman Center," Tyer said.
"So I would encourage members of the City Council just to support this grant administrator that we want to have situated in the Pittsfield police department so that we can continue to receive these community partner grants, apply for them, manage them appropriately with our partners."
Tyer pointed out that the council's ordainment of these positions simply created them and that they may be subject to further debate in the future.
"So the action that you're taking this evening on all of these positions is classifying them so in other words, creating them, then when you enter into budget deliberations, you will either see a line item attached to those positions, or you won't," she said.
"So, in the case of the grant administrator position that we are talking about right now, you're not going to see a line item in the Pittsfield Police Department budget for that position because the intention is to use the administrative fees for the various grants to fund the position. So, if for some reason, that line item shows up in an FY22 budget, you can say 'Mayor you said that line item would not appear.' And that would be the time for us to then debate it further."
