Part-Time Supers: Managing Them — Or Dismissing Them — Effectively

It's a tightrope, admits Peter Grech, president of the Superintendents Technical Association and a super himself at a 350-unit building in the Turtle Bay neighborhood of Manhattan. The board should always send the message, "We pay you. You do it our way or look elsewhere," explains Grech. Yet, he adds, there is often more nuance in communications between the board and the super. Board members, he says, "need to put themselves in the super's shoes and need to be telling themselves, 'If I were him, I'd have to do all this cleaning, all this trash, the recycling,' and that can take a long time." For the relationship to work, "The super needs to be aware of the board's needs and the board needs to be aware of what the super is doing."

David Goodman, director of business development at Tudor Realty, advises that boards first go over the super's list of responsibilities, and see if that matches the requirements of the building: cleaning the lobby every day, sweeping the hallways, wiping down the glass, washing/sweeping the stairs at least once or twice a month, keeping the boiler running, and taking out the trash and garbage. Then the board should determine how many hours it takes for the part-time super to do the work, and calculate his salary on the basis of that.

For non-union part-timers, $15 to $20 an hour is average, says Grech, who as STA director often consults with co-ops to assess how the building operates, how many hours per week are needed to keep the building maintained, and how much the board should be paying. Matthew Nerzig, director of communications for SEIU 32BJ, the building-workers union, says the range for small buildings runs from $310 a week for a part-time super to $979 a week for a full-time super, and then increases if it is a large building that is a member of the Realty Advisory Board.

Hand It to the Handyman

It's important for board members to be flexible and creative in these situations. At a 25-unit co-op on the East Side, the board members were fed up with a young superintendent, who worked a second job and never seemed to be around to get the job done, recalls Goodman. The part-time super "would go out and party [or] he was at work all day [away from the co-op] and something would come up and he wasn't home." Goodman stepped in when the board complained, and he asked a local handyman in a neighboring building, also managed by Tudor, to help out. The handyman agreed, and a deal was struck.

The super would

go out and party....

The board fired the part-time super, hired the handyman as the new part-timer, and gave him the former super's apartment. Because the handyman-turned-super is married, his wife would pick up the slack when the handyman would be at the neighboring property. The arrangement has worked out well for all affected, says Goodman. It "provides almost full-time coverage for the building. The spouse can take and make emergency calls, allow repairmen into the building, and accept deliveries for residents." And because the East Side co-op is small, "there are few expectations for the super beyond [cleaning] and keeping the boiler running."

Calling in back-up for a place running on a part-time super's work schedule is always a good idea. If the building is self-managed, one of the board members should be assigned to know all the critical phone numbers in case of emergency: the name of a good plumber, boiler operator and oil supplier.

And even if the part-timer is working as hard as he can, if he doesn't live in the building, the board should be paying another, local super or handyman as back-up. In that case, the board needs to call the super into a meeting, diplomatically go over his job duties and decide whether it's time to increase his hours and salary or to fire him and get another part-timer.

Boards also need to recognize when it comes time to pay for the services of a full-time super, observes Goodman. That's what a Tudor-managed 32-unit condo finally did, when its old super left and the board made the position full-time. It found a new super with good credentials and levied a 12 percent maintenance increase to pay for his salary. The residents are reportedly very pleased with the change.

Adapted from Habitat December 2005. For the complete article and more, join our Archive >>