Town Plans New Payroll System

Johnston town employees will soon have a new system for tracking time on the job, Mayor Joseph Polisena announced during a press conference at on Monday.

"I like the music of the 70s, because that's my generation, but I don't like the payroll of the 70s, and we're doing the payroll of the 70s," Polisena explained.

Under the current system, Human Resources Clerk Jen Goldberger maintains a three-ring binder with pages full of printed grids for each employee, manually checking off each box to show whether the worker was in attendance or absent.

"What happens is, if someone takes time off, whether it's a vacation or sick time, Jen's got to get the paperwork and go into a book — and it ties up her time," Polisena said.

"It's crazy," Goldberger added, as she showed the binder to the reporters assembled in the mayor's office.

Polisena said the town is in the process of preparing Requests for Proposals (RFPs) for a new biometric system, where each employee will check in and out by pressing their thumb on a thumbprint reader.

Each department director will also have access to the system to make corrections and enter vacation and sick time.

"Number one, it's going to make it easier for the personnel to know how many hours they have, and number 2, if someone comes to Jen [and asks how much vacation time they have], Jen can just run a report and present it to that person," Polisena explained. "It's going to make her job easier, but most importantly, it's going to modernize our payroll."

Chris Rao, the town's municipal information services director, explained that it will cost about $10,000 to install new time clocks at seven department offices in town — and vastly improve the way the town tracks its payroll system.

"It's going to be much more accurate, and much more in detail, where if they want to find out something, put the person's name up, boom — there's the history," Rao said. "Its right there in front of them, instead of [Goldberger] having to go through her book, find the person, count the number of days and all that — it'll all be tallied all the time."

Rao said the town hopes to issue the RFP — which will include therequirement that the contractors' systems work with the ADP's payroll software — within the next couple of weeks, and award the bid within the next month or so.