How I Spent My Time as Newtown Supervisor in January 2022

I keep track of my activities as a Supervisor partly because I want to be accountable to residents, but also to make sure I am making the best use of my time. It's really an honor to serve the community! I learn something new every day and have met many fine people and volunteers who also put in a lot of time without any compensation at all.

Hours Per Month

January 2022 was a busy month for me as Supervisor. In January, I spent a total of 54 hours engaged in official Supervisor activities that included preparing for and attending meetings and interacting with residents. This compares to an average of 46 hours per month in all of 2021. The following chart shows the hours per day of the week that I spent on these activities.

Breakdown by Type of Activity

I keep track of the time spent on the following activities:

Attending “Required” Meetings (BOS regular & special meetings and Executive Sessions; Supervisors are not required to attend Work Sessions)
Preparation for BOS Meetings
Attending Optional Meetings/Activities
Interaction with Residents
Travel To & From Meetings

What This Report Does Not Include

My log of Supervisor-related activities does not include the many hours I spend posting to this blog, maintaining my personal website, writing a newsletter, creating and posting video clips from meetings, hosting podcast interviews, summarizing decisions made by the Board of Supervisors (BOS Definition), etc. Also not included is the time I spend posting to my personal Facebook page, Twitter account, and Instagram account. These activities are NOT part of my official duties as Supervisor, but represent my personal views.

The following chart shows the percentage of time I spent on all these activities in January 2022:

Interacting With Residents

Interestingly, I spent only 8% of my time attending required Board of Supervisors (BOS) meetings. However, 35% of my time is spent preparing for these and other official - but not required - meetings.

In my opinion, personal interaction with residents regarding their concerns is an important part of my responsibilities as Supervisor - as important as attending required meetings. I want to be sure that I spend enough time reaching out to and responding to residents via personal contact, official email via my johnm@newtownpa.gov account and via my personal john@johnmacknewtown.info account, and via phone and/or Facebook.

Probably the biggest change in how I interact with residents is via my Meet Mack Monday meetings. Thanks to COVID-19, I began hosting these meetings remotely using Zoom - usually every month before the first BOS meeting. More residents are able to join in these remote discussion discussions - usually between 7 and 15 people attend each meeting.

My Compensation

Every Supervisor is provided a yearly stipend of $4,125 per year. This has not changed in many years. Thus, I earned $6.38 per hour in January as a Supervisor. That's less than the $7.25 per hour PA minimum wage (a disgrace!). For all of 2021 I made more than minimum wage: $8.60 per hour.

But it's possible to make a higher hourly wage as a Supervisor. That's because Supervisors only need to attend "required" meetings as noted above. If I only attended required meetings, my hourly wage would be about $61. Not bad at all! If I also include hours spent preparing for these meetings, then my hourly wage drops to about $14. Still a lot more than minimum wage.

Posted on 02 Feb 2022, 12:39 - Category: Open Records/Transparency