EXETER — Dedication, far more than money, runs this town.

With only 14 full-time employees and no town manager, police force, finance department, paid firefighters, street lights or trash pickup, Exeter functions as a town because of volunteers, extra effort and devotion to a rural way of life.

The highest-paid employee in 2006 was the foreman and interim director of the Public Works Department, which employs half the town’s full-time workers, 5 of them in the Top 10.

Second-highest was the library director, because, to get state grants, the library must be run by a professional librarian with a master’s degree in library and information science.

In the rest of South County, the town manager is often the top wage-earner. Exeter doesn’t have one.

Town clerks don’t usually make the Top 10 list. Exeter’s town clerk, the lowest-paid in the state, shows up as the town’s eighth-highest-paid employee.

Ninth on the list is the full-time tax collector.

And the 10th-highest paycheck in town goes to the part-time planner, who works two days a week.

SOME PEOPLE might see Exeter as backwards.

“It depends upon your definition of backwards,” says Town Clerk Cheryl Chorney, who, with her deputy clerk and a staff worker, both full-time, keep Town Hall running during business hours.

“Are we a rural community? Yes, we are, and we like being a rural community,” she said. People who weren’t born in Exeter chose it because of its rural nature, “and we want it to remain that way.

“Those of us who work at the Town Hall are very forward-thinking,” she said.

“We try to do the best with what we have,” always thinking 5 or 10 years down the line, always keeping in mind how “to make our workload more cost-effective, more efficient.”

Chorney, her workers and Tax Collector Lynette L. Lussier were the only full-time Town Hall employees on the municipal payroll during calendar year 2006, the year for which The Journal asked town and school officials to provide municipal payroll figures that could be compared across the state.

The Journal project looked at total gross pay, which is the total amount paid to employees before taxes are deducted. For comparison purposes, benefits were excluded. Base salary or wages and other forms of income, such as overtime, stipends and severance packages, were counted.

The top municipal earner was Stephen R. Mattscheck, now director of public works. That year he was foreman of the Public Works Department and stepped in as interim director. He grossed $46,222 supervising the town’s biggest department.

The six full-time workers he supervises, all members of the bargaining unit, did all the road work, snow removal, emergency repairs, mowing, brush cutting, grading of gravel roads and street sweeping, plus catch-basin maintenance and vehicle repair and maintenance. His department also carries out capital improvements, such as building or resurfacing the roads that need it most and installing drainage systems and catch basins.

With no police department and each highway worker certified as a flagger, “we do our own traffic control,” Mattscheck said. “That’s a savings on every project.”

Other towns pay $30 to $35 an hour to police officers on traffic details. Exeter Public Works employees earn about half that. The department has its own certified welders, and everyone in the department is getting certified in CPR this week, Mattscheck said yesterday.

“We’re self-sufficient out here. We try to do things efficiently to save money, and we’re fairly good at it.”

Each year his department incurs about 1,000 hours of overtime, Mattscheck said. Those earnings were reflected in the gross pay for public works employees, five of whom made the Top 10 list, ranking 3 through 7.

HOW MUCH OF THAT was overtime was not provided by the town treasurer, who works part time. He has an assistant, also part time. The town doesn’t have a Finance Department.

It also doesn’t have a chief executive.

“Technically it’s me,” says Town Council President Calvin A. Ellis. As a retired teacher, he is able to devote daytime hours to town business, such as dealing with banks and insurance companies. Much of the town’s business is done evenings, weekends and holidays by people who hold full-time jobs elsewhere.

The difficulty, Ellis said, is that town government works part time, and rarely at the same time.

Tax Collector Lynette L. Lussier, ninth on the list with 2006 earnings of $31,202.17, works full time and supervises a part-time clerk, a position that’s open at the moment. To fill that, or any position, including a 10-hour-a-week animal control officer, members of the Town Council must meet to interview candidates, choose the finalists, possibly re-interview, offer the job and negotiate terms.

Attending more than two or three evening meetings a week can be taxing on these officeholders, who get a stipend of about $100 a month.

Hiring a town manager, Ellis said, “would probably expedite a lot of the business that the town has to get done.”

He worries that the town is missing opportunities, such as grants, workshops, savings and efficiencies that a town manager could bring.

Compiled by Paul Edward Parker

THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL

Source: Town of Exeter

Compiled by Paul Edward Parker

THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL

Source: Exeter-West Greenwich Regional School Dept.

dnaylor@projo.com