Governance & Charter Review Committee - Regular Meeting

Welcome back to this monthly meeting of the governance and intergovernmental relations committee of Denver City Council. Thanks for joining us for the discussion. The governance and intergovernmental relations committee starts now.

All right. Good morning, everyone. It is Tuesday, August 18th. I apologize for our delayed start. This is the governance and international government and governmental international. Wow. It's been one of those days already. All right. This is the governance committee. I'm Amanda Sawyer. I'm the chair of this committee. I also have the honor of representing the residents of district five. Before we get started with our two items today, I want to do a round of introductions and I will start to my left. Hi, everyone. Sedona Gonzalez Gutierrez, one of your council members at large.

Good morning. Darrell Watson, District 9.

Good morning. Diana Romero Campbell, Southeast Denver, District 4.

Jamie Torres, West Denver, District 3. Kevin Flynn, Southwest Denver, District 2.

Great. And do we have anyone online? No one online. Fantastic. Thank you. So our first item is 1190 and the office of human resources is here to present. I will let you guys introduce yourselves and take it away and then we'll have public comment and then we will move to council member questions.

Great. Thank you so much. Madam Chair, members of Council, my name is Marissa Pacheco. I'm the Classification and Compensation Director for OHR here at the City and County of Denver. I'm joined today by a couple of my colleagues who will be available to answer questions as well. Allison Moore, Senior Assistant City Attorney with the City Attorney's Office, soon to be Assistant Director, I might add. and Blair Molloy, who is the classification and compensation supervisor for OHR. So appreciate this opportunity to come and speak to the committee today and provide a briefing on an ordinance that will be making its way through the process over the next couple of weeks connected to a classification study involving safety positions within the city. So to begin with, I just wanted to provide a brief background on this study. A lot of things have happened with this study to get us to here today, so I wanted to make sure that you have the history on this. To provide background, the study started back in 2024. Actually, late 2024, we received position audit requests from one of our agencies. And as is standard protocol, we collected what are known as PDQs or position description questionnaires from the affected employees to evaluate their duties and responsibilities. Upon review of those PDQs, it was initially determined by OHR that not all but a good portion of the duties that were listed were non-exempt under the Fair Labor Standards Act, even though the position is currently exempt under the Fair Labor Standards Act. So that prompted what is a standard review by the city attorney's office to verify that our initial assumptions were correct. Those were verified by the city attorney's office and that then prompted a broader review of all of the classifications throughout the city and the incumbents to make sure that we weren't missing other classification issues. The review involved approximately 29 employees across five agencies. And to be clear, this is kind of an outline of the classification series that we're talking about. There are five positions in the series, safety and industrial hygiene professional one, there's a professional two, an administrator, a supervisor, and a manager. And as the study progressed, it became clear that really the issues that we were seeing in terms of exemption were at that administrator and professional two level as we were going through that process. So in May of 2025, going back about a year now, we made a recommendation to the Career Service Board that after the review that was conducted by OHR and confirmed by the city attorney's office, that both the administrator and the professional two should change from an exempt status to a non-exempt status and therefore be eligible to earn overtime. This recommendation predates my time with the city, so if you have historical questions, Blair will be happy to answer those. But needless to say, there was some unhappiness from the employees that were affected by this, and they expressed their scrutiny of the study. And so that prompted the Career Service Board to ask OHR to go back and do some additional review to include job shadowing, as well as the city attorney's office to do a deeper dive review into the data to make sure that we were not missing anything. So since that time with the Career Service Board back in May, we have some post-May 2025 activities. We did partner with our HR business partners within OHR to do job shadowing. That occurred October through December of 2025. There was a slight delay between the Career Service Board meeting and those job shadowing activities because we had layoffs. And so those took the precedent in terms of staff time and resources. But we did engage in those for October through December of last year. The city attorney's office then began their legal analysis and review in December. That concluded in April of this year. They shared their findings with OHR. Recommendations were developed based on those findings, and then we took it back to the Career Service Board in April, presented a briefing to the Career Service Board then, and then again in May for the official class notice. At that time, the Career Service Board asked for a little bit of additional information from the City Attorney's Office, which Allison provided, and then ultimately in June it was approved. the recommendations were approved and we'll share what those recommendations were today. With respect to job shadowing, we did about 54 sessions. 648 hours of staff time was spent on job shadowing and gathering pertinent specific information regarding nature and duty of responsibilities for each of the positions that were impacted by the study. In addition to job shadowing, the city attorney's office did a very thorough review of the documents that you see listed on your slide here to include the Fair Labor Standards Act, which is the federal law that really governs exemptions for classifications, code of federal regulations and case law, FLSA opinion letters, Office of Personnel Management opinion letters, Department of Labor interpretive guidance, and all related case law that the city attorney's office could find. So we appreciate the deep dive review that was done on this. And I would mention that although Allison Moore was the lead attorney on this particular project, she was not a lone wolf. There were others that peer reviewed this within the city attorney's office as well. Now, I wanted to just take a brief moment to do a quick FLSA refresher. I don't know how many of you are intimately familiar with the law, but I just wanted to give sort of a baseline groundwork of what the FLSA is to make sure we're operating from the same set of information. So the Fair Labor Standards Act is a federal law. Again, it is the primary law that governs the results of this study and the recommendations. And under FLSA, you are either considered exempt or non-exempt under the law. And the differences are pretty clear. For exempt employees, they're excluded from both the minimum wage and overtime provisions of the law. Non-exempt employees are subject to both of those. Exempt employees are paid on a salaried basis, whereas non-exempt employees are paid on an hourly basis and are eligible to earn overtime for any hours worked in excess of 40 in the designated work week. And the way that exemptions are determined under the law is using a salary basis, a salary test, as well as a duties test. The most important one of those three-pronged tests really is the duties test. That in particular helps identify which category of exemption that you might fall into or the classification falls into. So there are a number of exemptions that were considered as part of this study. The first is the executive exemption, and this exemption has primary duties have to be to manage an enterprise on a department level, and most key is it regularly directs two or more employees and has the power to hire, fire, or their recommendations carry significant weight. Most likely the manager and the supervisor within the series of classifications that you saw on the slide would meet that executive exemption. The next exemption is a little trickier. This is the administrative exemption. The primary duty for this is performing office non-manual work directly related to management or general business operations. It's fairly wide open in terms of its description. However, the key is that it must exercise discretion and independent judgment on matters of significance. And Allison can confirm, over the last few years, the courts have really changed their opinion on this particular exemption. They are very critical of anyone who wants to use this exemption. It's under a lot of scrutiny, and they've sort of narrowed their interpretation of what an administrative exemption is. The final exemption that we looked at is the professional exemption. And there are really two buckets within this particular exemption, creative professional and learned professional. And creative professional doesn't really apply here. That's artists and things of a creative nature. The one that really applies is the learned professionals. And the primary duty associated with this is that it requires advanced knowledge, intellectual discretion-based knowledge that's gained via specialized education. So this has kind of a three-prong approach for the professional exemption. It carries equal weight for education, certification, and duties. All three of those elements are considered in the learned professional exemption. So in addition to FLSA being reviewed, of course, we shared with the city attorney's office all of the position description questionnaires, any stakeholder meeting notes, job shadowing notes, also shared the workday education and certifications. This is our HR. system workday that we use, and so reviewed that information. If there wasn't information in that system, we looked at resumes. City Attorney's Office even went on to the extent of pulling other public employer job descriptions and exemption worksheets for similar positions and reviewed those as well. In terms of legal considerations, the city attorney's office is obviously best positioned to make comments on those, but I will just share some initial thoughts with respect to the study and those considerations. So exemption provisions are very narrowly construed by auditors in the courts. The employer, so the city, bears the burden of proving exemption. Exemption for learned professionals, again, has a high focus on education and certifications. We've already talked about executive exemption, supervision of at least two FTEs. And the exemption for administrative work, again, should not be about ultimately providing the services of an agency to the public. This includes maintaining safe spaces. That's excluded out of that particular exemption. As far as the findings and what the city attorney's office shared with us in their study is that duties and responsibilities between these five agencies for these positions varied greatly, depending on department assignment, all definitely safety and hygiene focused areas, but still there were some variations there, as well as education experience and certification of the actual incumbents. That also varied. The other piece of the study that the city attorney's office found was that there might be some title changes that would be necessary to better reflect duties and industry standards. What they found was that the industrial hygiene portion of those titles is typically reserved for the exempt or higher level positions, whereas the safety component is generally for the lower level positions. Regarding exemption, this is where the meat of the findings really are, and that is that for the entry-level professional one, the classification which is currently non-exempt requires no change. It is appropriately classified as non-exempt under the law. The mid-level, so the professional two level, the classification currently exempt does require an exempt status change to non-exempt. The administrator, this classification is currently exempt with mixed findings. So some positions fall under FLSA non-exempt status and require a change while others do not. And so our original recommendation to the Career Service Board was that we make this entirely non-exempt. Our findings and recommendations changed after the city attorney's office did a deeper dive review and believed that the classification itself should remain exempt, but there are incumbents within that classification that no longer meet that exemption status that we need to address. And we'll talk about what the employee impacts are related to the study. And then the supervisor and manager level, these classifications are currently exempt and they require no FLSA status change. They were appropriate. So this is kind of a busy chart, but this basically encapsulates everything that I've just said in terms of findings into one chart. Anything that is in red font indicates a change. So starting at the top, you can see the industrial professional one would only just experience a title change there to safety specialist one. Really, the biggest change is in that safety and industrial hygiene professional two level that changes both the FLSA status to non-exempt, but also it requires a pay grade change. Our pay grades are listed as either EX, that's exempt. Or NE for non-exempt. So because we're changing that FLSA status, we have to make that pay grade change. You'll note that we are moving it to a non-exempt 22 pay grade. That is the highest pay grade that you can be assigned in the non-exempt pay schedule. We did originally recommend to the Career Service Board that it be something less than that. I can't remember if it was a 21 or a 20, but the employees of one particular group came forward and said, you know, would you please be willing to look at this again? We did. We went back, looked at market data, looked at some other items and decided that we could agree that an E22 was an appropriate pay range. for that particular classification. No change on administrator then or supervisor. And then for the safety manager, we're proposing that the safety and industrial hygiene manager title be added there instead of just safety manager. So that kind of is the nutshell of the findings and what recommendations are. So let's talk about employee impacts. So again, this affects 29 employees across five agencies. So eight professional twos will have their status changed from exempt to non-exempt with a title change. One of the professional twos we found through this study should really be an administrator. So that person will actually be reallocated up to administrator. Two safety professional ones will remain non-exempt with a title change. Safety managers, there are six of those remain exempt with the title change. And then 12 administrators currently will be reallocated to a safety specialist to non-exempt. If an employee is currently in that particular situation, so those 12 individuals that are moving from exempt to non-exempt and being reallocated to the safety specialist, they're moving into a classification that's changing pay grades. their new pay is calculated by simply taking their annual pay and converting it to an hourly amount. So there's no loss of pay. It's just converting from an annual to an hourly rate. The budget impact of this is relatively small. It's about $25,000 and that really comes from the change in the pay grade to the non-exempt 22. We have several individuals who will not be at the minimum. of that pay grade once we make that change. So it's bringing those individuals up to the minimum pay grade to make sure they're within grade. The bulk of that money is that particular cost. So just to provide a little bit of foundation on the exemption adjustment and the justification. So again, the burden is on the employer to prove proper exemption. The detailed duties of each active employee were considered in great detail, looking at PDQs, job descriptions, et cetera. The education certifications were also considered very carefully. For the learned professional, again, it's so important that that education certification and job duties all are equally weighed in consideration on exemption. Also, considers whether the primary work duties involve requisite discretion and independent judgment to be supported as exempt. This is really important when looking at the job duties themselves. And what the city attorney's office found in all of those resources was that ordinary inspection work that is typical with these safety positions is generally not exempt administrative work. And the city then faces a very high burden to overcome the presumption that it should be exempt. Here's a little bit more information again about exercising discretion and independent judgment. What does that kind of look like in real life? If you're taking well-established techniques, procedures, codes, regulations, contract obligations, and applying them to a certain situation within closely prescribed limits to determine a correct response, that is considered non-exempt work under the law. And then the monetary effect of decision-making on work stoppage. We've heard that argument that we have the authority to stop work on a project if it was unsafe. That's absolutely true, but that's true for any city employee, and that is not considered exempt work. So with respect to recommendations, in addition to what we've covered today, we're also proposing back pay for a look back period of two years for any hours that may have been worked in excess of 40 hours for those that are moving from exempt to non-exempt. It is at the discretion of department leadership, but I can tell you that most of the departments seem to be open to this in this situation to look at that back pay component. So this is sort of the why does this all matter slide. This is the risk analysis. So what happens if we get this wrong? So violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act do have severe financial and legal risks to the city, including back wage liability, fines, and lawsuits. So civil money penalties of up to $1,000 can be imposed for each willful or repeated overtime violation. And that is very concerning to us sitting at this table because we know that there is an issue associated with these exemptions, and the longer we allow that to go, the more we are falling into that willful category, which is concerning as an employer. Criminal prosecution can also happen with willful violations leading to criminal penalties and very significant fines for violations. And I would just note that one of the top causes for FLSA liability is exactly what we're talking about here, incorrectly classifying workers as exempt from overtime when they should be non-exempt. So in conclusion, I would just say that this review was very thorough. It was legally based and we believe it constitutes a fair pay practice. It will allow employees that previously were unable to earn overtime will now be able to earn overtime pay. It reduces risk to the city in terms of FLSA compliance. We believe it maintains the integrity of the class system, consistent with what the city attorney's office found. No employee will experience a reduction in pay. And we have taken the job descriptions, and assuming that this committee approves today, it makes it to the council agenda and is ultimately approved. We have those job descriptions, which have been realigned to delineate the differences between each of those levels, including class. certification and education. And I guess just as a final statement before I turn it back over to you Madam Chair is that you know there have been very strong feelings about this study with some of the employees and I just would say that You know, this study was never intended to diminish the importance of the work that these employees are doing. We believe their work is critical to the city. It's very important. And it certainly was not intended to do that, even though I think that's some of the feelings that are out there. We just feel very strongly that they are entitled to compensation that they are not currently receiving under the law. And we feel that that's important that they have access to that. And we feel like this reduces risk to the city by making this change. And that concludes our presentation.

Great. Thank you. We do have 15 minutes of public comment on this, given that it is an extremely volatile topic that has a lot of feelings in a lot of different ways. We only have one person who has signed up to speak, but after they speak, I'm going to just see if there's anyone else in the room that would like to speak as well. Because we do have... 15 minutes set aside for public comment. So, let's go to public comment. Our first speaker is Greg Kirshman. And Greg, if you just come up to the microphone here, introduce yourself, you'll have two minutes.

Okay, yeah, Greg Kirshman, thanks for allowing me to speak. So I am a current Safety Industrial Hydrogen Administrator, so I'm being affected, downgraded in my opinion. I've submitted detailed comments for you guys to read, so I'm gonna be brief in my comments here. I recognize CS conducted a questionnaire Interviews, job shadowing, and other analysis, I recognize the value of education and professional certifications. My concern is that the conclusion appears to define professional qualifications too narrowly across the safety profession. Extensive experience, technical knowledge, specialized training, and demonstrated competency are commonly recognized alongside or in place of regular degrees and certifications. Affected employees Experience has not changed, so my responsibilities, according to what I understand, have not changed and will not change. The responsibilities are complex and professional judgment is required to perform my duties. I actually do industrial hygiene work. Before reclassification of these 12 employees, the city should demonstrate that this decision reflects a broader employment market and explains their successful professional experience is no longer efficient. For these reasons, I respectfully ask you to vote no on this reclassification notice. I'm actually being considered for a position outside of the city. none of this was brought up. So I don't have the certifications and background that this proposal, it wasn't even brought up in the interview. So I don't think it's an industry standard and the salary range that they're talking about is significantly higher than what we're offering employees at the city. So thanks for your consideration and your time.

Great, thank you very much. Is there anyone else in the room who would like to take an opportunity to have two minutes to speak? All right, is there anyone online? Nope, fantastic. Then we will go to council member questions and I have Council President Romero-Campbell in the queue.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for the presentation and also for the comments. The change in overtime, right? So going from exempt to non-exempt would mean that's also a change in like an hourly clock in, clock out. Is that where the roughly $25,000 is coming from that you expect in the change? Are we expecting significant overtime incurred?

The $25,000 is not related to any overtime. That is just the cost to move employees that will not be at that new range minimum of that non-exempt class 22 to move them into that range. So that 25,000 has nothing to do with overtime. So there will be some additional expense if there is overtime worked by these employees. And I don't have an estimate of that, but yes. Thank you.

And you said across five different agencies? Correct. For the work that's being performed, I'm making assumptions as to what the work is. Are those... Are those regular work hours, like traditional work hours, like day, you know, start morning to evening? I believe so. Or a lot of them in the evening or inspections?

I don't know what the... Yeah, I believe they're normal hours. Probably our folks in the gallery could answer that better than I can, but I believe they're normal kind of daytime hours. Daytime, yeah. Yeah, there may be after hours work that has to be done if there are inspections and things. And so, you know, that's when the overtime would come into play.

Okay. Do you have anything you... An answer you want to add to that? So the question, you need to come to the microphone so people online can hear. But the question is, what are your working hours? Are they standard daytime working hours or do you do nights and weekends?

All of the above. So I represent three groups that I'm street maintenance, traffic operations, and ROAS. So street maintenance has a third shift they run. Traffic signals go out all the time. So we have people working those shifts. So I need to be available 24-7 a lot of times during those operations. So it's all over the place.

Great. Thank you. That's super helpful. Thank you. Anything else? Yeah. No, I'm good. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Watson.

Thank you, Committee Chair. Quick question on pay differential for additional hours. Has there been any consideration of how that impacts kind of the pay scale for folks who are now due for overtime? Is there pay differential, I guess, is the initial question for overnight when folks are working?

It's time and a half, obviously, for any overtime. And is there a night differential? I don't know. Okay, there's shift differential. Okay. All the pay premiums available to any city employee under the career service rules.

And I'm assuming since the overtime or the possible overtime based on casework or workload has not been fully calculated as well, has the pay differential also not been considered when we're looking at amount of hours that exempt folks were doing in third shifts? Has any of that been identified?

We have not. Go ahead. Thank you so much council member for that question. No, it hasn't been calculated because as part of this process, if adopted, the agencies would need to see what the budget impact may be on their organizational structures individually. They all use these positions in different ways over different shifts and there are organizational changes they can make to reduce any budget impacts to make it effectively zero. Because these positions were previously exempt, they weren't looking at the issues of when work was being done. And now we can look at that issue and we can propose solutions unique to their working environments.

This is kind of aside that question, since we are going into budget season, what has been the dialogue? And obviously it may not be you, maybe someone, this will be a separate meeting, so I'll just put it on the record. It would be helpful to understand as we're going into budget season, What impacts this will have on the actual budgets that some of these departments are gonna propose? Are they doing calculations on differential pay now that's gonna be not only time and a half, but also a different rate above time and a half? Does that exceed the current budget that they're expecting as far as per individual headcount within their agencies? Putting that all out there, you may not have those answers, but I'm certain I'm gonna be following back up with those questions. Was there also a consideration or thought process on promotional impacts? Are any changes from being considered exempt, non-exempt, do those impact the line of kind of ascendance or promotional opportunities for folks from an HR perspective?

I'd be happy to take that one. We believe it actually provides more opportunity. It provides more paths and more incentive to further their careers and reach other levels where they can actually reach salary ranges now that were beyond where they are currently. And so it creates a deeper well for the career to grow rather than stagnating it.

Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for stepping forward and speaking. Thank you, Committee Chair.

Great, thank you. And I will just note for my fellow council members and the public who might be watching online, there are a number of public comments that came in via our written public comment form online. Those are all posted in Legistar for the public to read. So you can take a look there to see those as well. Other questions from council members?

Oh, Council President. Thank you, Madam Chair. I guess I was just going to state just so also as part of process, for folks to know that, you know, if this were to move out of committee today, that it is a move to the full body for continued conversation and deliberation. And so, you know, this isn't necessarily a place where it would just go away. And so I just want to be clear on that kind of process step for the folks that, you know, may be engaging that are not aware of that.

Yeah, thanks for flagging that. So just so everyone understands the threshold for committee, because not all 13 members sit on any committee, is whether this is ready to be considered by the full body, not whether we support it or not. So a yes vote in committee does not mean, yes, I support this. It means, yes, this is ready to be considered by all 13 council members on the floor. So thank you for flagging that. It's really important. Council Member Flynn.

I think Greg mentioned being reclassified into a lower pay scale. Is that correct?

Greg, you've got to go to the microphone.

I was hoping you would just nod his head yes or no.

I think I want to be clear that they've identified that we wouldn't be lowered in a pay scale. They're just making us an hourly rate. I consider it... lower in classification because that's how they're listing it. So it's a demotion in my opinion. I think most people are feeling that way on the floor. Thanks.

Thank you. So my question is that if it were to be the case that someone was classified into a pay scale that was different than the one they're in now, they would not actually have their pay lowered. That's correct. We're not reducing anybody's pay through this.

That's correct. Employees would have no legal adverse impact based on this decision. It has more to do with how you feel about how your pay is calculated. And it actually allows employees access to much more compensation and benefits than they have now.

But in a different scale, would it take them longer? Would they be stuck at that pay level and not get any merit increases until experience and longevity caught up with that pay scale?

No. No, they would still be able to move through the range through merit increases.

From where they start on the scale.

Correct, correct. And there's no one within the study that, for example, would exceed the top of this new proposed pay range. Everyone is within the pay range still.

Thank you. Last question. Would the $25,000 estimated cost of this, does that include the two-year retroactive makeup, or is that an additional cost? That's an additional cost. Do we know what that would be? We have not. How are we calculating if somebody who's on salary went out and worked hours over 40 over the last two years? In what world have we kept those records?

Very carefully, and we have not because we're not required to do so. I mean, that is the baseline answer to that question. However, there are industry standard ways to address that problem when there is, for example, liability found in a lawsuit situation. There are certain methods that we can rely on to estimate those payments. And it would be different for every agency how we approached it because some keep records in different ways that were more informal. They were not for timekeeping purposes, but could be very instructive. And so we would work very closely with the supervisors and the employees themselves to figure out how we can go forth with that.

What how long would it take to estimate that? One of my concerns is 25,000 right now. We go back two years. Could that be 250,000? Could that be a million or could it be like 100 bucks? I mean, what are we talking about in a range? Do you know or do you want to hazard a guess at this point?

It might be inappropriate to hazard a guess at this point. That may be considered attorney-client privilege, which wouldn't be appropriate in this particular forum. But I can tell you that estimating it does not take long, as long as it's a priority project and we have resources to do so. And if that's a concern, it would not take long to address.

Okay, all right, thank you. That's all, I'll just reiterate what Madam Pro Tem said, that moving it out of committee, if we voted no here, we would then have to postpone it to another committee meeting, because we don't kill bills or resolutions in committee. So it has to go to the floor for a final vote. Thanks.

Great, thank you. Just a couple of follow-up questions. So the Career Service Board, has approved this, correct, okay. Functionally, in day-to-day life, what is the difference between exempt and non-exempt employees?

functionally they will have to keep track of their hours. So we have a system work day that they can check in and check out each day. That's really the primary difference that they will experience is that time tracking piece, which they don't now have to do.

Okay. And then it's a new change to benefit options, no change to retirement options. None of all of that stays the same. Correct. Okay. I just want to make sure it's on the, on the record for the public, right? Yes. I am just thinking back, right? Because like Greg said, city council members work 24 seven, like you didn't go to the grocery store without someone being like, can I just ask you a quick question about a stop sign in my neighborhood? So I couldn't possibly go back and tell you if I was moving from an exempt employee to a non-exempt employee, how many more hours over 40 I work every single week in this job. Can you just explain to me a little bit more about, like, you said that there are some industry standards. Can you just give me a little bit more meat on that bone?

Absolutely. It goes from a range of different things as far as documentation. The agencies, some of them do have records of When certain employees are at certain locations, you can use things such as badging history for certain agencies that use badges to start work and stop work. So there will be some objective data to look at. But ultimately, you have to make some assumptions and take those assumptions through a period of time based on an employee's actual hire date and term date, because there will be employees, of course, that didn't... weren't working during this period. So you use all of that objective data first. You make some assumptions as to what has been observed by managers and what managers would say is an average amount per week. And then you add it up and you discuss it with the employees. And it's part of a process, an interactive process, where you talk to them about those estimates. You hope that they understand and agree with them. But ultimately, you try to apply those standards across the board if you don't have objective data to verify A divergence from that significantly, you may have 1 employee that's attached to a project that's been working that project 24, 7 for 7 months during the back look back period. You might want to account for that because it's obvious that that is happening and the others were not part of that project. So you look at each position individually, and you don't assume anything from the beginning. Okay, you mix the 2 types of data.

Okay. I really appreciate that. Thank you for just like, a little more context there. 1 last follow up question to that. I think that I have and then I see council member Torres wants to get in the queue as well. Are there tax implications to that? Moving from exempt to non-exempt and then getting two years worth of overtime that you didn't know you had because you were in a different classification, that comes as a giant pile of money, which then... that must have some tax implications, right? Do you guys think through that piece of it when you're having these conversations? Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

Sure, absolutely. Just generally, you know, anytime pay or wages is given to an employee, there could be tax implications as far as income tax, you know, issues with holding, things like unemployment insurance, things like other benefits and things that are tied to the actual amount of income that's coming in, always the case. However, our teams and our payroll processes are set up to handle those, and they would have to adjust back reports. They'd have to move money around. However, it happens on a day-to-day basis in the city more than you would know. Anytime we have to make a correction to pay in a back pay period, anytime we pay a settlement that may include a wage portion that is apportioned to it, there are many processes in place to address those issues, and the amount can readily be calculated.

Okay, great, thank you.

Council Member Torres, did you? Yep, thank you so much. I don't know if this is one of the reasons that folks might be reacting negatively to this, but I know when I was a city employee for 18 years, I had roles that were both non-exempt and exempt during that period of time. There is culturally, perceptively, a difference where you think exempt is better, you think it is more stable, you think it is more permanent, it is a higher wage, it isn't always. Is that one of the things that's being aired about the change from exempt to non-exempt?

I would say that there's a feeling there, yes, that there's a change in status there that people are perceiving.

One of the things, because I'm looking at the classifications that you raised, which was exempt 11 in terms of the pay grade and non-exempt 22. Exempt 11 starts at $80,217. Non-exempt at the hourly rate in a year is $92 It's already 12,000 more in pay, direct pay, before we even do overtime. Just noticing, I think, that that range. The thing that would come up for me personally, if this was happening to me, is that the new non-exempt classification is the cap. you are at the top. Exempt classification goes all the way up from exempt seven to exempt 28. So there are other titles, classifications that could take you higher than your current exempt 11 pay grade if you were to advance or move up. If you're in the non-exempt, you're at 22, you're at the top. Is OHR considering additional non-exempt pay grades? so that there is movement beyond the non-exempt 22?

We're always looking at that, so there is a potential of that. But I would also note that, you know, if there are individuals that were lacking like the education and certification piece of this, they could get those education and certification components and then be reallocated up back into that exempt level role. So there's also that potential. But, yeah, we're always evaluating our job grades each year to see if we need to add additional grades.

Did you have an estimate of how many employees this is likely to affect?

Twelve employees. There were administrators that would be reallocated to safety specialists, too.

Okay. Thank you. The only other question I have is, is there any implication or is there feedback from the employee retirement program on whether or not this affects an employee's DERP status? It does not have any impact on DERP status.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Great. Thank you. I did just have one follow-up question after Councilman Torres' questions. So there is an opportunity for these 12 employees that are being moved from exempt to non-exempt status to move back up to exempt status with additional training, certifications, qualifications, et cetera. That's what you said, right? Okay. That's good to know. I would like to understand a little bit more about what that means. Is there a, do they have to go back to school? Sure. Is this a cost to them in terms of, We classes they have to take like what is what is that? Right.

So obviously, if if they went back to school, the city does have some education reimbursement funding available, but certainly not enough to cover an entire bachelor's degree or master's degree, for instance. But in addition to the college piece of it, formal education, there are six certifications that have been recognized nationally as associated as industry standards. And those are certifications that individuals can get and dependent on, you know, department budget, there may be budget to help support that effort to get those certifications. We have at least one individual that is in this particular position. They are an administrator being reallocated to safety specialist that is just on the verge of getting the certification that's necessary. and we've already committed to that department that once they get that certification, we would be happy to look at it again to see if they, for instance, could be reallocated up to the administrator level. Okay.

Really appreciate that. Thank you. Absolutely. Any final questions? All right. This is an action item, so I will need a motion and a second on this to move it to the floor. Moved by Councilmember Watson. We have a second. Seconded by Councilmember Flynn. Do we need a roll call vote?

Do we need a roll call vote? I'm not on this committee.

Oh, you're not on this committee. Wait, I'm looking at you, Torres. What are you doing here? Okay, great. So no roll call vote from voting members on this committee. Fantastic. Thank you. Torres, I have you on this committee.

Oh, why did I think that? I can second.

Okay, for the watching public at home, just so you guys know, we just switched our committee assignments. We're all just getting used to the new committees that we are voting members on. Apologies, everyone. Okay, great. So this will move forward to the full council body. And I would just say for anyone watching in the public, anyone who has sent in comment to the city council comment area, and anyone who has come to speak publicly, this will not have a public comment option at this time. However, I just want to remind everyone that there is always an opportunity every Monday from 5 to 5.30 p.m. for public to come and comment on anything that you would like at City Council. And so if it is something that we're considering that does not require a public hearing and therefore does not have public comment associated with it like this, you can always start. Sign-up opens at 5 o'clock on Thursdays. You can always come and speak to the entire City Council body by signing up online for that opportunity. City Council public comment between 5 and 5.30 on Mondays. So, perfect. Thank you, guys. Thank you very much for coming. Really appreciate it. And now, Council Member Torres. Thank you. Why did I think I was in a different committee?

I'm presenting this proclamation. Yeah. It's the only reason I'm here.

Yeah, because it's been busy. I feel that deeply.

I want to ask Jay to join me up here really quickly because he was pretty instrumental in helping us draft this proclamation. Yeah, please come and sit at the table. Yeah, you're right. And Jay, if you wouldn't mind introducing yourself real quick.

Sure. Jay Homestead, Senior Director of Preservation Advocacy at Historic Denver.

Great. Thank you so much. We don't have a PowerPoint. I just have a couple points to make about the proclamation that we're bringing through. And it's coming through committee because it is an actual position on something legislatively that's happening. So we've always bring those through committee first. before we post them on the floor. But I was part of outreach from a local community member who I believe was probably reacting to an historic Denver email blast that went out letting folks know that there are major changes happening to the federal historic preservation process that we should know about and we should care about in Denver. And so that led to our conversation about drafting a proclamation, sharing Denver's perspective on those proposed changes. So I'll just go through them really quickly. And maybe if you want to chime in on what Historic Denver's kind of been doing. The language for the proclamation is in Legistar. There is also a one pager that Jay provided from Historic Denver that describes like Why would we care about this in Denver? This is written around an advisory council on historic preservation having voted in July of this year to advance a pretty sweeping rewrite of what's called Section 106. These are the regulations that would make public participation optional and reduce consultation with state, tribal, and local governments to basically a formality rather than a real pathway. to agreement. So why is that drawing opposition? Because for the past 60 years, Section 106 has required federal agencies to identify historic places and consult with tribes, state, and local governments before moving forward. The rewrite also reduces quote unquote certified local governments to optional invitees. We are, Denver is a certified local government. It dramatically changes our ability to give voice to historic interest and importance. Colorado Sun just today put out an article as well about this, really giving, I think, two sides of why this is happening at the federal level. And some of the language from them, consultation with organizations and officials charged with protecting cultural landmarks against damage from projects permitted or funded by the federal government could be from infrastructure to energy, many things in between, would be discretionary. Decision-making power would reside almost solely with federal agencies. So this isn't just about Denver. It's about our entire state and two tribes in the state of Colorado and all of our communities. Dr. Prince quoted in that article, I think, something really meaningful. Whether you live in an urban or rural community, Local decision-making, including local voices, is a core Colorado value, yet the clearest objective of these revisions is to weaken opportunities for public input and what history we preserve and what impacts our communities. One of the examples she discussed, which is something that Historic Colorado has done a lot of work on, is the Sand Creek Massacre site. Southern Creek wouldn't be what it is today without the consultation process with the tribes. This removes those protections and those obligations to tribal voices. So this proclamation was done in partnership with Historic Denver, so I want to turn it over to you for any additional points or comments.

Sure. No, I think you made several great points, Councilwoman. Thank you so much. I think from Historic Denver's point of view, we are a community-led organization that was founded in a time when Denver was losing a lot of its historic fabric. Just imagine downtown in the 1960s, pre-urban renewal and post-urban renewal. Think of Auraria, the neighborhood of Auraria and the displacement that occurred there. Now, these were occurring right around the time that these were becoming law, the Section 106 review, and didn't have the teeth at that time to actually have that level of oversight. And by repealing this, by taking this away, taking away our seat at the table, they don't even have to tell us if these projects are happening or consult us. And really, at the end of the day, this isn't, as you mentioned, a Denver issue. This is a statewide issue, and it's an urban issue. It's a rural issue. if the people who know the place best don't have a seat at the table, we should be very concerned. And so thank you so much for partnering with us to make sure that we spread the word.

Thank you very much. And I just want to mention, if there are any questions, our landmark team is also here, Kara Hahn and Abby Christman, if there are any questions as well about their roles.

Thank you. Fantastic. Thank you. Before we go to council member questions, Kara or Abby, do you guys have anything you want to add? They're shaking their heads no for those online. Okay, great. Thank you. Council President Romero-Campbell.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you for bringing this forward. I think our community voice is so important. And to hear that there's actions to remove it, like, out is... I shouldn't say shocking. I shouldn't be as shocked as I am. Where is it currently? I guess I didn't read the email or this blast that went out for information, but where is this? This proclamation is out there. I think it's good that the city, I would be supportive of this. Good to have the city say what our position is, but where is it on a federal level and how does this impact or is there additional...

Sure. Right now, it's still a draft, these changes, and we're waiting on a public comment period, which will be a 30-day public comment period. And it's expected to open up sometime before the end of the year. So we're keeping a very close eye on when that occurs. So again, we can make sure as many voices are heard during that public comment period as possible.

And where does the decision finally get made?

Well, so that's the... That would be a good question. Thanks, Abby.

Yeah, so in addition to being on staff with Landmark, I am also currently the chair of the board of directors for the National Alliance of Historic Preservation Commissions. So I am really involved with the Nationals Partners Network, so I can give a little bit more detail. Also happened to be in my role with NAPC, an observing member to the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. So kind of had a seat to watch all of this happen. So yeah, as Jay mentioned, so it was passed by the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. And these are updates to the regulations of how the Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act works. And after they approved them, it went to ORIRA, which is the presidential office of regulation that reviews proposed regulation changes. So it's currently there for review. As part of during that process, impacted organizations can also request meetings to say how it's going to impact them. So we have been working and put in a request for the city of Denver to get a meeting specifically with ORIRA to talk about how this would impact us. If OIRA at this stage, they could decide to drop it and say it's not moving forward. They could decide to make changes to what's been proposed and send it back to the Advisory Council. Or they could decide, yes, we're good with this and publish it in the Federal Register. If it gets published in the Federal Register, And then that's what Jay was talking about that then there would be typically a 30-day comment period before then either, you know, they could decide that they're going to take more time to make revisions or they could decide just to move forward and adopt it after that point. And then likely a lot of legal action would proceed.

There's a lot of work already on potential lawsuits.

And just want to mention, at the same time that this is happening, there is also a movement in Congress to also do regulatory reform. And so there is also a group in Congress that is working to actually amend the act. So at the same time, there's two different processes going forward. Both Congress is looking at amending Section 106, the actual statute, and then there's also this movement to amend the regulations. And it's expected that that's going to come through in Congress sometime this fall.

I'll make a motion. I don't know if there's more. I don't know if there's more. I mean, that's pretty sobering. Yes.

Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Yeah, thank you. I don't see any other council members in queue. Want to just double check? Great. I want to just say thank you for bringing this forward. Having dealt with the historic preservation issue multiple times in District 5, particularly around the old medical campus that has been changed into 9th and Colorado and the VA building that is being adaptively reused and the nurse's dorm and all of those kinds of things. Having experienced that and seen the power of the State Historic Preservation Office in particular, SHPO, around working with the federal government, selling federal land to ensure that that, you know, that everyone is in agreement on what that looks like, this is incredibly disturbing. because we could lose as a country, not just as the city of Denver, we could lose a significant amount of our history and never even know about it until it's too late, which is just disturbing. So thank you guys for your work on this and for bringing it forward and for your advocacy. I am fully in support of this as well. And I just want to check and make sure this proclamation does not need, is this an action item? It's just a briefing. Just a briefing. So we don't need, you know, motion or second to move this forward. Really appreciate you flagging this for all of us. Really appreciate you bringing this forward. And we'll see you on the floor. With that, there's two or three consent items that are happening. You guys, I really got to get on it today. Holy cow. And no one has called those off. So those will move forward to the floor as well. And we're adjourned. Thanks for joining us.