PHILLIPSTON – The Selectboard decided at its Wednesday meeting to approve a revision to Phillipston’s personnel policy relative to paying overtime to town employees.

The change, however, affects only members of the Fire Department.

Some town officials and residents had expressed concern that the overtime policy was overly generous when it comes to firefighter/EMTs who respond to calls during their off-hours. The current policy commits the town to paying employees four hours of overtime – one and a half times their normal hourly rate – for all such calls.

Under the new policy, Fire Department employees will now be paid a minimum of three hours of overtime for calls that come in Monday through Friday. They will still receive four hours of overtime for responding to calls on weekends and holidays. Under the policy, weekends are defined as 12 a.m. Friday through 12 a.m. Sunday. Employees will receive one hour of overtime for canceled calls and calls requiring a response of 30 minutes or less, providing the responding employee has already left their home.

Asked why the Selectboard singled out the Fire Department, Chief Administrative Officer Melanie Jackson explained, “Last fiscal year, the Finance Committee had asked me to look at the Fire Department’s overtime. So, I took the call logs and put them into a spreadsheet, just kind of outlining all of the calls – what they were for, and that kind of thing. Stemming from that, this whole discussion on the overtime pay for the different calls came to light.

“The overtime hours don’t really add up as much for police and public works, because they really don’t have as many calls to go out to,” Jackson continued. “That’s why they separated out the police and highway versus the Fire Department, which gets calls on a regular basis throughout the week.”

In compiling the spreadsheet, Jackson said, it became apparent the town was paying four hours of overtime for calls which may not last an hour, or calls that were canceled as a firefighter arrived at the station to prepare to respond.

The change also covers calls for full-time firefighters that come in before the start of their regularly scheduled shift. As long as the call is within four hours of the shift’s start, the firefighter would then get overtime based on the length of the call response.

“If they got called at 6:30, they’d put in for four hours (of overtime) even though their shift started at 7:00,” said Jackson. “And then there was the issue with canceled calls. They’d get a call for mutual aid that lasted only a few minutes and they would end up being four hours of overtime.”

Call firefighters are not paid time-and-a-half for calls to which they respond. They will continue to receive regular hourly pay of three hours on weekdays, four hours on holidays and weekends, and one hour for canceled calls. In order to qualify for the additional three or four hours of pay, the calls must take over 30 minutes for a response.

Fire Chief Jeff Parker was agreeable to the proposed changes. While all three board members were in agreement on the policy revision, it was decided to wait until the next meeting on Sept. 18 to vote to formally memorialize the changes. This is to give time for Jackson to put the new policy in writing.

Greg Vine can be reached at gvineadn@gmail.com.