Why is the project manager position being cut from the facilities department?

The Financial Planning Committee meeting on Wednesday, June 17th had a discussion about this question. These are notes taken during the meeting, not approved minutes and also not an exact quotes.

Town Administrator, Melissa Malone: We looked at the Facilities Project Manager (PM) and looked across board and felt the position was a WANT not a NEED, but we NEED more custodians. We also heard you preferred our employees vs. an outside Custodial Company. We cut the PM and added 2 custodians. We recognize differences of opinions but when it comes to Personnel Board Employees, TA does have authority to make decisions, even if the Director of Facilities falls under the MOA (Agreement between the schools and town to manage the facilities director jointly.) Director John Gasdson Current KMS is 105,000sf. New KMS is 180,000sf. The increase is 75,000sf of utilization and it is more complex and requires more maintenance. We have had 3 custodians for 105,000sf and we will need to add 2 for the additional 75,000sf in January. Ideally, we need to do an assessment of how many are needed at each building. Not specifically now, but we have a long way to go and its going to cost more in the future. I recommend DELAYING 2 new custodians until January. I hoped to say that those 2 could be cut entirely, but with COVID we will need them in January. At this time, I’m spending 12 hrs/day, 6 days/week just to understand what's going on. Not even to get ahead. In the past, projects were not getting done because nobody was here to do it. Anytime you make a change or a modification to a building is a PROJECT. Right now there are 10,000+ line items of things to be installed. We are spending 2.8M dollars to procure and install all of them in a short period of time. We need the PM from a Facilities Management standpoint. Adding KMS and getting everything on-line can be tasked to the current PM. She is LEED Certified and we need to get LEED Credits for our installation at KMS and the new Fire Station. The punch list will be thousands of line items. To see the full set of notes taken please click here. We will also request approved minutes when they are available.