Transfer station crew proves they do fine half-staffed

The Lebanon Transfer Station staff proved last month what we've been saying for a long time: that two employees are more than enough to oversee the pushing of buttons and billing people for the occasional dropped-off TV or couch on the facility's busiest day of the week.

On June 20 transfer station manager Ronal Patch and Lebanon Selectman Paul Nadeau left their work stations to attend a memorial for the late road commissioner Larry Torno, who died in February.

The two failed to log out on their timesheets for their pay that day for the time they spent at the service, roughly a couple of hours.

Maybe they thought that since they were going to a former town employee's memorial service, it was OK; maybe they felt they were entitled. Government workers are prone to that, and their supervisors are often prone to look the other way since it's no skin of their back, just the taxpayers.

That's why government and wasteful spending are practically synonymous.

Nadeau was gracious enough to offer to take the two hours off his timesheet at a recent selectmen's meeting, but that's not really the headline here.

We feel that what's most remarkable is that two - shall we say of advanced age like us - people, Patch's wife and brother, were able to keep the station up and running on its busiest day of the week.

After an earlier column in which The Lebanon Voice suggested that the transfer station was far overstaffed, one Facebook commenter defended the present staffing levels retorting something to the effect of "And on Saturday they're pushing that button every five or 10 minutes."

We're sure someone was soaking their thumbs in Epsom salts the next day, that's for sure.

Using a Right to Know request, The Lebanon Voice learned that Ronal Patch, his wife and his brother were paid for 7-4 that Saturday, while Nadeau was paid for 7-2.

That means only Patch's brother and wife were able to keep the transfer ship afloat while selectman Nadeau and former selectman Patch went to the service.

We would suggest that if two people can run the transfer station on the busiest day of the week, that is a fait accompli. It can be done.

And if two people can run it on the busiest day of the week, then one can run it on Monday-Wednesday.

Happily, now that two of the three selectmen who used to work at the transfer station have resigned, we're sure they can now as a board impartially pursue a path toward making the facility a leaner, meaner, less nepotistic, more customer friendly, and more efficient department.

- HT