Annual Salaries

Returning to the salary overpayment matter: The best and fairest way to handle the problem of 52 weeks and one day in a year (two days in a leap year) is to determine the number of full pay periods in the upcoming fiscal year, divide the employee's annual salary by that number, and pay accordingly. That will always result in the employee getting exactly the annual salary that was approved at town meeting, and will make it much easier to handle the situation when an employee quits in mid-year and a replacement comes on board without any hiatus. But that's not what the selectmen decided to do. They decided to treat each year as having 52.2 weeks and determine salaries accordingly. That doesn't work as well and is mathematically flawed, but apparently other Massachusetts towns follow that path so we're not alone in our error.

I'm not sure what all this says about the state of math education in Massachusetts, but it's not comforting. Also, I'm ignoring the fiscal year ended 6/30/08. I'm waiting to see if we overpaid people in that year, which would be contrary to what we decided at town meeting.