Finance Committee - 03/17/2021 Page 18
Alderwoman Lu
You know, | may be — maybe | don’t understand municipal, so in business you typically try to avoid overtime.
And maybe these are Departments that cannot do that, | don’t know. But! just thought I’d bring it up and
would look forward to a little discussion.
Mayor Donchess
Well maybe we should have the other Departments report as well. But remember when they are out on the
road when the day is over and there is snow on the ground or there is snow coming or they are putting brine
down or they are salting the roads or whatever. We don’t bring them in because the day is over, we keep
going until the storm is done. And the same might be true on a Saturday or Sunday if the streets are slippery
on Saturday and Sunday, those crews are sent out to clear the streets regardless of the fact that it’s not during
the regular work day. And that, of course, means incurring overtime. And | think that’s what the citizens
expect, you know? | mean | don’t think they would accept very well ,"Well we didn’t this weekend because it
was an overtime deal”. But there’s no problem in having Ms. Fauteux come in and kind of discuss how they
handle it. | would just say this, no problem having her come in.
They did a very good job in negotiating the last contract which we just entered. For many years, decades, the
contract had required shotguns in a truck with a wing plow. Shotgun is a second person right? Now
traditionally or a long a time ago, before more modern technology what the shotgun did was kind of manually
operate the wing plow. But that has now been taken over by automation but the contract required still the
shotgun and that created a lot of inefficiency in the snowplowing operation for reasons even beyond having 2
people in the truck. So Ms. Fauteux and Attorney Bolton in negotiating this contract, were able to obtain an
agreement that shotguns would no longer be required. And so for the first time now and, you know, forever,
the truck drivers are going out with just 1 person in the truck. So that will save some overtime, but certainly we
are still going to use overtime during snowstorms and other winter events. Again, though, no problem having
Ms. Fauteux come in and | will talk with her and probably have her come in at the next meeting. How does that
sound?
Alderwoman Lu
| thought just a report would be fine just to get a sense of what the trend has been. But yeah that would be...
Mayor Donchess
It might be easier to just kind of explain it but certainly she’ll have something on paper. | am sure she’d be glad
to talk about it. She’s very into the whole snowplowing operation so I’m sure she’d be glad to talk about. In
fact, sometimes in previous years or every so often, we have a snowplowing briefing, which | don’t think we
had this year, but we could sort of doing something like that now.
Alderwoman Lu
Thank you.
Mayor Donchess
Anyway, thank you for the question. And that was what, under Aldermanic Comments? Yes, Remarks by
Aldermen, any other Remarks by Aldermen?
Alderman Dowd
Mr. Mayor?
