by Alex Brooks
At a Special Meeting held December 1, the Petersburgh Town Board took up a number of issues. First, they passed a resolution to adopt New York State’s archives records retention and disposition schedule, called Schedule MU-1, which details which records need to be kept and for how long. Town Clerk Deidra Michaels said she has been working with a woman from the New York State Archives to modernize the Town’s record keeping practices. [private]She will be converting documents into electronic form so that some of the paper files can be disposed of. Michaels said that until now the Town has been keeping everything forever. She said they can’t get rid of anything until they adopt a policy spelling out what needs to be kept and what can be disposed of. Adoption of Schedule MU-1 takes care of that.
Michaels also said she hopes to get a grant to help pay for setting up a records room in the Town Hall.
Advertising Positions
Ann Crisp introduced the issue of advertising Town position saying if the Town advertises a position that has an incumbent who intends to continue in the job, people may take some trouble to apply for the job only to find that there isn’t really an opening. If that happens all the time, she continued, people might not apply even when there really is an opening. Town Supervisor Siegfried Krahforst said he thought it is misleading to advertise a job that isn’t really available. But Councilman Neil Geary said he thought the Board should always let the public know when an appointed position is to be filled, even if there is an incumbent in it. Councilwoman Denise Church said she thought it is silly to make one year appointments for jobs that are normally held for many years. She suggested making all one year appointments by the Town Board into two year appointments, and the Board passed a motion to that effect. The Board agreed to continue advertising all open positions.
Job Descriptions
The Board discussed drafts of job descriptions supplied by Denise Church for Highway Superintendent, Deputy Highway Superintendent and Highway Worker. Some changes were suggested, and these will be incorporated into a new draft.
The Board also had a draft job description for Code Enforcement Officer, but Martin Conboy said his job is mostly defined by Local Law #1 of 2014 which adopts the State Building Code. The Board tabled that job description until they could review and integrate the text Conboy referred to with the text Church had supplied.[/private]