Preston to study vacation, sick time for town employees

Preston — The Board of Finance will oversee a study being conducted by an audit firm of the town’s payroll practices, including systems for keeping track of vacation and sick time, in preparation for converting the tracking to a new software system.

The finance board this week approved spending up to $3,600 to hire Sandra E. Welwood LLC to conduct a review and analysis of the town’s socalled “compensated absences” data from July 1, 2010 to June 30, 2015.

Board of Finance Chairman Norman Gauthier said the study should take about one month, and the first meeting with the audit firm will be Feb. 17.

After gathering and analyzing the data, the firm will assist town officials to determine whether changes to tracking systems for vacation and sick time. Employees now must use vacation time within the year, but can accrue up to 50 sick days, Gauthier said.

Gauthier said the board is not assuming there are errors in calculating vacation and sick time, but if problems are detected, they would be addressed after the review is completed.

Gauthier said the town currently uses a 10-yearold spreadsheet system for tracking vacation and sick time that is antiquated and inadequate.

He said the Welwood firm would start the review by looking at the time cards town employees fill out, which also are obsolete and “lends itself to errors.”

Gauthier said the time cards have no space for anomalies, such as partial sick days if someone goes home early or ways to calculate hours for employees who split time working at two different departments. Often, Gauthier said, time cards have hand-written notes in margins to mark some calculations, or employees have to fill out multiple time cards in one week.