Fire Department Allowed to Make New Hire Offers Before Board OK

One of the agenda items discussed during the Feb. 13, Board of Selectmen meeting was related to how firefighters are hired in town.
“Selectman [David] Morin has requested that an item be placed on the Board of Selectmen’s agenda to discuss conditional employment offers to Firefighter/AEMT candidates moving forward,” Town Administrator, Steve Malizia, wrote in a memo to the Board of Selectmen.
He explained that “in order to ensure that Hudson is able to hire qualified candidates in today’s competitive labor market, time is of the essence and being able to provide a conditional offer to a candidate before the Board meets to formally approve the hire may improve our ability to secure a candidate’s commitment to Hudson.”
Morin said if there is a delay from the time the Fire Department decides to hire someone to the time the Board of Selectmen meets to approve the hire(s), there is a chance they may have lost out on that candidate.
Essentially, he thinks that the Fire Department should be able to make a conditional offer to candidates “to kind of lock things in before he has to meet with us.”
Morin explained that they would still have to go through the normal process and procedure in order for anyone to be officially hired, meaning that the Selectmen would have to approve any hires.
“At least he can make that offer to hold the person,” Morin said about the conditional offers.
Fire Chief, Scott Tice, said they have interviewed candidates, and then they have already taken a job somewhere else before they can even offer them a job since they had to wait for the Board of Selectmen to approve it.
“There’s a lot of openings, there’s not a lot of candidates,” he said.
The Board of Selectmen unanimously approved allowing for conditional offers to be made moving forward.
Also during the meeting, a number of hires were announced after votes were taken during the Jan. 30, nonpublic meeting.
One of the hires was Corey McLaughlin, who was hired for the Firefighter/EMT position within the Fire Department, with a starting pay of $18.14 an hour.
The Board of Selectmen also approved the hiring of Connor Roche for a Firefighter/EMT position with a pay of $18.14 an hour to start as well.
The next Board of Selectmen meeting is slated to take place on Feb. 27 at 7 p.m.

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