MAYOR DANIEL M. KNAPIK
WESTFIELD – The City Council’s Personnel Action Committee will review the job description of the city’s personnel director post, ending the exploration of a combined City Hall and School Department human resource department.
Mayor Daniel M. Knapik said Thursday that the duties of the two offices are distinctly different and require disparate skill sets because of special review of employees, contractors, as well as volunteers, who deal directly with schoolchildren, a vetting process required by the state Board of Higher Education.
The City Council and the School Committee began to look at combining municipal and school office and administrative functions as a means of curtailing the increasing costs of maintaining separate staff who often perform similar duties.
The city’s Law Department is currently providing the School Department with legal services, especially in the area of labor negotiation, eliminating the need for the School Department to hire law firms.
The School Department’s payroll staff is currently in City Hall and at some future time, Knapik said, will be rolled into the municipal payroll office.
Human Resource offices were also a candidate for the consolidation, where the School Department HR supervisor would be the head of the unified department and the city hall HR supervisor serve as the assistant director. The current City Hall HR supervisor, Karin Decker, holds the post as Assistant Personnel Director.
“We’ve explored the idea of a joint HR department, but it became unworkable,” Knapik said. “When you look at the complexity of the School Department certification process, a joint department became unworkable. The skill sets are very different.”
Knapik said that the payroll function will eventually become a unified department.
“We will have a joint payroll office and will need to add a payroll supervisor to that department, something that may happen in December,” Knapik said.
City officials, in particular the City Council, are examining the possibility of a unified building and grounds maintenance department because of the huge investment, about $50 million, to repair buildings and grounds, as well as energy efficiency upgrade to city and school buildings.
The City Council is concerned that that investment may not be properly maintained in the future and deferred maintenance, which led to deterioration of the city and school buildings, may be avoided by creation of a dedicated central Maintenance Department.
The city has a $386,000 annual contract with Siemens to maintain those new energy systems, Knapik said, a cost that could be reduced through creation of a new department and the additional of a new facilities director post who could also serve as the city’s owner project manager for new construction, further reducing the cost of capital projects.
