Hire of LHS grad still leaves public works just a few employees short

LACONIA — While retention of staff at the city’s public works department has improved over years past, pay compared to private industry still lags behind, councilors learned at a budget meeting on Monday night.

“From a personnel standpoint, I went into the winter, I was short five people,” Public Works Director Wes Anderson said. “I was able to get two Forest Service seasonal employees working for me over the winter, so I was actually three short. They left, in the spring time I was able to hire two, so I was sitting at 13 until the most recent job fair at Laconia High School. We were lucky, one of the graduating high school students just accepted a job offer with us and will be starting on June 16, so that means I’m still looking for two people.”

Starting salaries in that department are set to increase on July 1, but still fall short of those offered by private companies in the area. For example, the starting wage for a laborer without a commercial drivers license is increasing to $21 an hour, up from $20.21 an hour. For a driver with a CDL, the starting wage is set to increase to $22.68 an hour, up from $21.81 an hour.

At Busby Construction, Anderson told councilors, laborers start between $22 and $28 an hour, and CDL class B drivers start between $30 and $36 an hour. At GMI, CDL drivers start at $30 an hour.

“Most of the people that we hire right now don’t have a commercial drivers license, so they’re starting off as a laborer,” Anderson said.

The city’s Public Works Department offers an additional $100 per week stipend from Nov. 1 to March 31. That’s because drivers are essentially on call during the winter in case of inclement weather. New Hampshire Department of Transportation offers a $5,000 bonus for plowing over the winter, the City of Concord offers a $300 per week stipend between Dec. 1 and March 31 — which amounts to about $5,100 — and the Town of Ashland offers a $200 per week stipend for being on call and ready to plow.

“The guys who work for us right now are appreciative of that, because they’re basically on call all winter, but it hasn’t been that major of an attraction for a person coming to us,” Anderson said.

“From a price standpoint, from what I’ve been tracking on Indeed and other sources, our high end — which is about $24, $26 an hour — is pretty much the starting salary for competitors,” Anderson said. “Of course, you can’t really compare what their benefits are versus our benefits because they don’t advertise it.”

At the budget meeting, Anderson identified salary, vacation, the impact of the work on employees' bodies over time, winter storm hours and the condition of public works structures as challenges to the department’s recruiting and retention of employees. One perk offered by the city’s department — which contributed to the recent hiring of a Laconia High School graduate — is the ability to fund the cost of obtaining a CDL, to the tune of $5,500.

The process to obtain a commercial drivers license is structured and intensive. Anderson told councilors that, pursuant to federal guidelines, candidates must complete a certified driver training school with 40 hours of classroom instruction, and another portion where candidates have to meet certain driving standards.

As it stands, Anderson is still looking for two more employees in the highway department, plus a city project inspector in the engineering department.

“We have advertisements out, we haven’t had much interest yet,” Anderson said. “As it sits right now, as of June 16, I’ll be at 27 people — short three.”

Ward 2 Councilor Robert Soucy asked Anderson how benefits could be compared between private companies and the municipal department.

“That’s the piece you don’t really see, the benefits that they’re putting, they just say they have 401K and they have health insurance, but they don’t go into detail about it,” Anderson said.