Time slip submissions lack consistency

A time slip submitted by Jason Cole shows only hours worked for the week.

Selectmen’s pay slips often lacking detail and not submitted in timely fashion led to sharp exchanges at Wednesday’s Budget Committee meeting, but a preliminary examination by The Lebanon Voice shows the charges by budget board members justified.

Town documents released on Wednesday also show that for the months both Selectmen Chairman Bob Frizzell and Selectman Jason Cole submitted time slips, Cole’s selectman’s hours charged to the town were about 22 percent higher than the chairman’s.

Cole has only submitted time slips for July through October of last year, the first four months of the current fiscal year which ends June 30, but in those four months he was paid $2,757, about $700 a month.

Frizzell, meanwhile, collected $3,456 for the six months ending Dec. 31, an average of $575 a month.

For her part, Selectwoman Karen Gerrish has been paid about $3,700 through March averaging about $400 a month.

What most irked Budget Committee members, however, was Cole’s lack of detail on time slips that were submitted with just “the week of” and the hours worked, and no detail of duties performed.

Another practice that has drawn fire is Frizzell’s use of “misc” (miscellaneous) in his description of selectman work performed.

Regarding work on Sept. 6, he notes: “office 11-12 and 2:30-5:30, plus 1 misc. 5 hrs.

On Sept. 7: “two hours misc”

On the 10^th: “2:30-6:30 and one misc. 5 hrs.”

From July through September Frizzell was paid nearly $400 for “miscellaneous” hours.

For Lebanites who recall the practice where selectmen would charge taxpayers an hourly wage for the time it took them to drive to Town Hall, nebulous charges such as the miscellaneous variety strike a chord.

The shoddy time cards “have got to stop,” Budget Committee Chairwoman Nancy Neubert said on Wednesday, a theme sounded by member Tony Bragg and others.

Neither Gerrish nor Cole were at the meeting to defend themselves, but Bragg put it to Frizzell that it was his duty to toe the line and see to it that his colleagues do as well.

Frizzell, in his pay slip notes, often would scribble specifics, like “Office Meeting” or “GA” (General Assistance), but was more likely to just write: “office and misc: four hours,” for instance.

Gerrish, it should be pointed out, reports her selectman’s earning faithfully every two weeks with detailed specifics.

Frizzell, meanwhile, files his every three months, and Cole hasn’t submitted a time slip since November, a fact that Bragg found indefensible.

“I thought we had this conversation a couple of years ago and this stuff was going to stop, and here it is happening again,” he told Frizzell.