The Wrangell Borough Assembly met Monday, Feb. 10, to workshop some staffing issues at the Irene Ingle Public Library and the Nolan Center. The assembly originally planned to hold a special assembly meeting right after the workshop, but instead decided to just have the workshop and revisit the topic at a later meeting.
An assistant position is currently open, one of three permanent positions the city maintains at the library: Library Director, Assistant II, and Assistant I. The Assistant I position is currently the unfilled job. However, with the borough going through its budget season and assembly members wanting to save money where they can, the question of the evening was whether or not the assistant position was necessary, and if so how the position could be used most efficiently.
Borough Manager Lisa Von Bargen presented the assembly with five different options, briefly summarized as follows:
Option 1: Maintain the Library Assistant I position at 21 hours a week, and consider creating a different health insurance benefit tier for part-time staff.
Option 2: Increase the hours of Library Assistant II, while reducing the hours of the Nolan Center Collections position.
Option 3: Increase the hours of Library Assistant II, while reducing the hours of the Accounts Payable Clerk at city hall.
Option 4: Eliminate the Library Assistant I position altogether.
Option 5: Increase the Library Assistant I position to full-time, and consider making a new health insurance tier for part-time staff.
During the workshop, Assembly Member Drew Larrabee proposed a sixth option; to increase the hours of the position in question, but to share the employee with the Wrangell High School Library. This idea drew interest from the rest of the assembly, but they decided that it would have to be revisited at a later date. They needed to decide on some immediate direction during the workshop, said Mayor Steve Prysunka, and the feasibility of Larrabee's suggestion would take time to determine.
"We've been struggling at the high school with the fact that our high school library has essentially been closed," Larrabee said. "We don't have the staffing to cover it, the check-out system has been outdated and is obsolete. It needs a lot of work."
Both Jeff and Kay Jabusch, Wrangell residents and members of the Friends of the Library, spoke against eliminating the Assistant I position. The library provides many important programs and educational opportunities to the public, they said, and they needed all the staff they could get to keep things running smoothly. Library Director Margaret Villarma said that the ideal situation for them would be to have the assistant position with more than part-time hours.
"That would be the ideal situation for us, to be honest with you," she said. "That would work out the best. The city would get more for their money, because you're paying the benefits already, so we would be able to offer more to the community."
One of the questions revolving around the library assistant position was the health insurance benefits. The Wrangell Sentinel reported in an article on November 7, 2019, that the position in question pays a salary of about $17,000 a year. When benefits are added, however, total compensation can range between $22,000 and $53,000 a year. Assembly Member David Powell said he was against giving so many benefits to only part-time employees. The rest of the assembly seemed to agree that full benefits for part-time employees was a high cost for the city to bear. After some discussion about what options were the most feasible, and what level of benefits they should consider for part-time employees, the assembly came to a consensus.
"I'm going to throw out that we change to a 70/30 [healthcare] split, and employee-only insurance, maintaining the position at the 21 hours," Prysunka said.
With the question of the library position handled, and a quick recess, the assembly moved on to discuss two positions at the Nolan Center. The Nolan Center serves as the community's movie theater, museum, and civic center. Director Cyni Crary said that if the assembly wanted to continue to see growth in the Nolan Center's programs and revenue, she needed the creation of two permanent positions: A museum collections employee and an attendant. Von Bargen pointed out that Crary was spending a lot of time training temporary employees to fill these roles, and it would be more efficient to seek stable employment for these jobs.
The discussion on these jobs was relatively brief, as the assembly decided to look at these positions similarly to the library assistant position. They agreed that both positions should be 29-hours a week, with employee-only health insurance at a 70/30 split. As this was a work session and not a full meeting, no official action was taken. The purpose of the workshop was to give the borough a direction to move towards.
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