TRURO – After shelling out more than $32,000 in snow maintenance overtime costs last year, Colchester County has decided to create two new staff positions to deal with the workload.
Between last November and March, the county’s public works crews logged 1,162 hours of overtime, with most of that being devoted to snow maintenance operations, a staff report says.
Of that number, 817 hours were billed at time-and-a-half rates while the remaining 345 hours were paid out at double the regular hourly rates.
Overtime hours averaged 232.5 per month, which calculated to about a 25 per-cent increase over the regular monthly hours for the six-person crew.
Given that the total overtime figure of $32,580.50 amounts to close to the annual wage of a full-time employee (based on a rate of about $17 per hour), staff suggested that hiring two term employees for five months of the year would help keep overtime costs in line while also reducing the “burn-out factor” for regular workers.
With the current workload of its winter operations the county plans to have four people working at a time during snow removal - two for clearing sidewalks and two for plowing roads.
The county doesn’t expect the staff additions to fully eliminate overtime costs but believes it should alleviate the bulk of the extra hours.