Double duty for Nahant top pay

NAHANT – Town Administrator Mark Cullinan was the highest-paid town employee in 2008 with a combined salary of $120,984. Cullinan earned $102,218 in his role as town administrator and an additional $18,766 for serving as the town engineer.Without detail work and overtime, the highest-paid employees in town were department heads, tenured educators and police officers.Click Here for the complete list -NahantPolice Chief William F. Waters ranked second on the highest-paid town employee list with an annual salary of $98,133.Cullinan is not the only town employee pulling double-duty. Robert Ward, who is the fire chief and public works superintendent, was the third highest-paid employee in town last year. He earned $95,346 for serving in both positions.Cullinan said having one employee fill two positions is financially beneficial to the town.”If you have one person qualified to perform both sets of duties it actually saves the town money,” he said. “You are able to hire one person to do one job for less than what it would cost to fill both positions. The town also saves money because it is paying benefits to one employee not two.”Johnson Elementary School Principal Diane Mulcahy, who made $81,070 last year, was the fourth highest paid town employee and Town Accountant Deborah Waters rounded out the top five with a salary of $81,070.Without overtime and details in the mix, six of the 20 highest paid town employees are teachers and all six of them earned more than $60,000. The highest paid teacher was Marsha White, who earned $73,427.When detail work and overtime are added to mix, four of the five highest paid town employees were police officers. Detail and overtime were enough to put four police officers in the $100,000 club.Police Officer Stephen Shultz, who earned $117,799, was the second highest-paid employee in town when all sources of income are taken into consideration.He was followed by officer Eugene Spelta, who earned $110,837 in salary, overtime and details. The the fourth spot was claimed by Sgt. Robert Dwyer, who made $107,949, and Lt. Thomas Hutton, who earned $105,751 was the fifth highest-paid employee in town.Shultz supplemented his base salary of $70,069 with $32,952 in overtime and an additional $14,776 in details. Spelta, who had a base salary of $64,393, earned an additional $27,866 in overtime and another $18,577 in detail work.Seven police officers made more than $20,000 each in overtime and four of the same officers made more than $10,000 each in detail work.Hutton said residents are not picking up the tab for most of the overtime and detail worked.”Detail work is not paid by the town,” he said. “It is paid for by private contractors and a large portion of the overtime is paid for with grants the chief acquired. We have had traffic patrols, drunken-driving enfo-rcement and other programs that were paid for by the federal and state grants he secured.”Overtime was also a factor within the fire department – six firefighters earned more than $20,000 each last year in overtime alone. Firefighter Kevin Howard, who had a base salary of $54,037, earned an additional $39,813 in overtime and another $1,080 in details making him the highest paid firefighter in the department.