WESTFIELD – During its Nov. 19 meeting, the Westfield City Council appointed the city’s new personnel director and discussed looking into ways to more easily take notes during full council and subcommittee meetings.

After weeks of discussion and going back to the drawing board, the council finally voted to approve the hiring of Robert Bishop as the city’s new personnel director and Councilor Cindy Harris discussed his Army resume before the council made the motion.

“As a veteran of the Army, Mr. Bishop served 13 years including in an imminent danger zone in Iraq and service in Afghanistan. He was the assistant training operations supervisor, including budget management, providing leadership of a 677-person unit. He developed and implemented a standardized procedure to manage professional development,” she said.

Harris added that Bishop has spent several years in Colorado working as a planner and human resource manager.

“Since 2016 he has been employed in Monument, CO, as a planner, which is similar to an assistant town manager, for one year and the human resource manager for approximately four years,” she said.

While the rest of the council approved the motion and welcomed Bishop aboard, Councilor Dave Flaherty said he was against the appointment.

“I was really looking for more in the way of experience with Massachusetts. I think the size of the city, the number of employees, we have laws in Massachusetts that are very strict and burdensome, we have many labor unions in Massachusetts. I was hoping for somebody with more experience in those areas, I was just looking for a little bit more,” he said.

During the public comment portion of the meeting, Councilor John Beltrandi addressed residents’ concerns over higher water bills this quarter.

“I received numerous emails from Ward 5 citizens regarding the water bills. I’m compiling a list, I talked to the Water Department today and they are going to work through this and see if there are some discrepancies or what the issue is. I am on top of it and will get somebody to come in to talk about it,” he said.

For the meeting’s final order of business, Councilor Bill Onyski brought forward a motion to look into new ways to easily record meeting minutes in writing.

“I’m looking for a way we can do it somehow without raising taxes or anything. I hopefully just want to come up with some innovative ways that we can do this utilizing our own staff or some other means,” he said.

Councilor James Adams said that it can be distracting to write the minutes down and also participate in the meeting.

“I know things are recorded and you can go back but that person is totally out of the discussion because they are focused on what they have to do. I don’t think every committee needs that or for every meeting, but if it’s a lengthy agenda it could be beneficial to everyone on the committee if someone else took the notes,” he said.

While she was in favor of alternative minute taking methods, Councilor Cindy Harris said she was against increasing taxes at all for it.

“I’m totally opposed to having anything that will cost the tax payers even one cent and I’m not a fan of using take money for this but if we can figure it out, especially during this COVID situation I will absolutely vote for it,” she said.

The Westfield City Council next meets on Dec. 3.