On March 10th, the citizens of Litchfield will have a decision to make on warrant article 14 as to whether they will provide their Town non-bargaining employees the opportunity to begin moving to a wage plan that makes sense.  In the past, the Town’s wage structure was composed of a system of grades with 8 steps in each grade.  This system required that employees only had to spend time in their grade before automatically being “promoted” to the next step.  It didn’t matter on performance, ability at their job or the knowledge they possessed the promotion was simply tied to their time in grade.  The Selectmen would then ask for a cost of living increase “COLA” that would be added to all non-bargaining employees salary irrespective of their grade, step or merit performance.  It was the belief of the Selectmen that this process was inefficient, unfair to both the employees and Litchfield’s citizens.

In 2013, the Selectmen voted to institute a system that rewarding performance of employees for their work, knowledge and effort; a merit performance based system.  The Selectmen undertook a study of the town’s jobs for our non-bargaining employees in order to arrange them into a rational system of grades based upon duties and responsibilities.  Unfortunately, to get to this system, the many of our employees must be moved in terms of salary.  Warrant article 14 commences that process by starting the movement of employees whose positional duties and responsibilities are grossly out of line with their current salaries.  This process will continue over several years.

This system has been approved by the Selectmen and presented to the Budget Committee who has voted unanimously to support this effort.  The Selectmen ask you to also support this effort at bringing a rational salary system to Litchfield.

Litchfield Board of Selectmen

Budget Litchfield