UPPER FREEHOLD: 2 percent raises for employees approved

By Joanne Degnan, Managing Editor
UPPER FREEHOLD — The Township Committee voted unanimously last week to spend $8,000 to provide 2 percent raises, retroactive to July 1, for the township’s 26 municipal employees.
The Township Committee said it intends to also re-evaluate the number of paid holidays that salaried municipal employees receive with an eye toward eliminating Good Friday and the Friday after Thanksgiving. The municipal building has been closed on Fridays since 2009, but township workers use those two Friday holidays as “floating holidays” at other times of the year.
Township Committeeman Bob Faber and others have objected to this floating Friday holiday practice, saying it essentially gives employees a paid holiday for two days that they weren’t scheduled to work in the first place.
“We’re losing hours as far as production goes,” Mr. Faber said.
Changes to the holiday schedule for public employees must be done by a separate resolution that amends the township’s personnel policies. The resolution the Township Committee approved Oct. 4 pertains only to salaries.
The Township Committee also asked Business Administrator Dianne Kelly to come up with suggestions for its next meeting on Oct. 18 for another possible personnel policy change: a “paid time off” system that doesn’t distinguish between sick days, personal days and vacation days. Instead, employees would instead be given a lump amount of “paid time off.”
The Township Committee did not quantify how much paid time off would be given under the new system, only that longtime workers, who now have more vacation days than newly hired employees, would be given more paid time off days than new hires as well.
“There currently is vacation, sick, and personal (days),” Township Attorney Granville Magee told the Township Committee. “You’ll be simplifying this into one category with a total number.” 