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Senators question ESPA hiring, pay adjustments, board compensation and unused wells
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Summary
ESPA defended an independent job-evaluation process that raised pay for lower-ranked staff while leaving some managers unchanged, said it employs about four foreign workers per 100 staff to fill technical roles, confirmed board compensation ($5,000 for members, $6,000 for chair) and pledged to review a private-family well that has been inactive for years.
Senators probed ESPA human-resources decisions and governance. Speaker 4 said employees complained that recent pay increases favored new hires over longer‑serving staff; Speaker 2 said an independent consultant performed a job-evaluation study, the board approved its recommendations and "in any job population, there are winners and losers." Speaker 2 said rank-and-file lower-paid positions received increases while some managers and senior engineers did not.
On hiring, Speaker 2 said roughly 4 out of every 100 ESPA staff are foreign workers from Fiji, Samoa and the Philippines, and that the utility has recruited regionally for specialist roles (for example, professional engineers who demand salaries around $140,000 in U.S. markets). ESPA said training and sending local students abroad is expensive but ongoing.
Senators also asked whether ESPA employees or board members own construction businesses; Speaker 2 denied that and said employees who do must leave the utility. When asked about a long-unresolved well behind Family Mart on family land, Speaker 2 said some drilled wells produce no water or degrade over time and promised to investigate that specific site after the meeting.
Speaker 2 confirmed ESPA has a five-member board and that regular board members are paid $5,000 annually and the board chair $6,000 annually.
