Personnel Board - Regular Meeting

Being recorded.

First order of business is roll call. So I'll do all those roll calls real quick. And we have Member Best online, Member Catco, Member Hoover, and Member Hampton in chamber. So everyone's in attendance. There is no public attending, so there is no public comment for items not on the agenda. Does anyone have any changes to the minutes? All right. The minutes are approved unanimously. which takes us to our first order of business, election of officers. So is there any nominations or self-nominations for chair?

I'm willing. If nobody else wants to. I feel like I'm kind of new for it, but I'm willing.

And that would be fine, because I'm currently chair on two others, so... It's awkward when we go to, like, boards and commissions luncheons.

Yeah.

All right. Are there any other self-nominations or nominations? All right. All in favor of Member Best being made chair?

Cat Coat.

All right, it's unanimous. And are there any nominations or self-nominations for vice chair?

I'll help you. Jennifer doesn't want it.

I'm good either way, Sarah. You've got this. Okay.

All right, all in favor of Member Hoover being vice chair? By the way, vice chairs are allowed to go to the boards and commissioners' lunches, too.

Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Lunch. We get lunch for this. It's free lunch. And they do serve a great lunch.

It's a great lunch, and you get to learn things you never knew you didn't know. So it's great. It's a lot of fun. All right. Would you like to take over the meeting? Sure. All right.

Okay. So HR manager's report. Berna? Okay. Okay.

So we have a lot going on in HR. So we'll start, this is for the month of May. So starting with administration. As you're all aware, personnel board, we still have one vacancy. So we're working on still trying to get that vacancy recruited for. I'll work with the PIO office to send out another announcement to see if we can get that vacancy.

People, is it? Do you have to get party balance or anything like that on it at all? All right. I don't believe so, right?

I think we still have to have party balance.

Okay. I'll have to double check.

We're trying to get that eliminated right now. But, yeah, so it would be – but it's simple. You can't have more than three of one party.

Okay. I think we're in good shape on that all right.

So we'll be advertising for that again. HR and risk. So risk is under the HR division. We just attended a team building retreat in Glorietta. So that was actually really successful. We got to take the whole team and do some rock climbing and some other events. It was really scary, but it was a great team building retreat. experience for HR and risk. So it was really great. Out of that team building experience, we recognized a few of our members that really stood up for like leadership and helping other team members go through this exercise. So it was great. We also recognized a few other of our staff members for completing their degrees. Just got her bachelor's degree. So we've been working on recognition of HR employees and working on that team building. We are working on updating policies to be more consistent and in alignment with the county code and personnel rules. I think I said this in the last meeting, we updated our compensation policy. I am working on the recruitment policy. We should have that update signed probably within this week. And then just working on other policies to be in alignment and hopefully no contradictions. I am planning on working on personnel rule updates probably starting in July, which that will include the personnel board. So I'll have to bring these changes to the personnel board, which will also require council approval. Personnel rule updates is going to be a pretty lengthy process as we go through. There's a lot in the personnel rules. So hopefully we can get that kicked off sometime in July. For safety and risk management, safety training is at 94% compliance. So we've been doing really well with that. Risk management held two heavy equipment academy trainings. So we try and get our field crews that deal with heavy equipment together. We set up little obstacles for them and we have training to help them and give them guidelines for heavy equipment. So that was really successful. The New Mexico Self-Insurance Fund and Lost Control Department was on site to conduct facility safety walkthroughs, so we've been doing that. They've been going really well. The New Mexico Self-Insurance Fund, Aon Insurance, and Star Insurance also conducted a safety inspection of Abiquiu and El Vado hydro plants, so those are going really well. For compensation and HRIS, The compensation team continues to partner with our training team to ensure timely completion of all of our PPAs. So a PPA is our performance evaluations. We have to do those every year. The deadline for PPAs this year was May 8th. Our performance evaluations are tied to merit increases. So we had a new process this year. It was online. It was, there was a little bit of, you know, a few hiccups in it, but for the most part, it was really successful. So we're just kind of working on making some improvements to that. That's huge. Yes, it was a massive project. So I'm pleased even with the little bugs that we had, it was still really great. Now that the PPAs are done, we are in preparations for our annual increases. As I said, increases are tied to merit, so we're now working on that. And that'll be for FY27. One of the changes in the compensation policy was a change to casual and temporary employees. Casual and temporary employees are now on a single rate. Previously, they were kind of like on a salary table where they had grades and then 50 steps within that grade. We did away with all of that and they're now at a single rate. And they get step one of what we call like the parent position. So for example, if we have a casual lifeguard, they get step one of the lifeguard position. And so this was a big increase for most of our casual employees. The reason for this is being able to recruit and retain employees, trying to stay competitive even with McDonald's. So this is actually a really big change for us. We think it's going to be a lot easier for administration, but it's also going to help us hopefully recruit and retain casual employees.

They used to be Like the top of their scale was the bottom of the regular scale?

They were four grades below the regular position, and now we're just putting them at step one. So moving on to training and staff development. Training and compensation teams, as I said, they're working together on annual increase and PPAs. Training has been working on rolling out two new trainings, which will be available in June. So it's Manager Need to Know and Anti-Harassment Training. Employees are required to take these trainings, and then they can view it in LAC University. That's just our online training portal. The Manager Need to Know, that's a really great training. All of our managers and supervisors are required to go through it. And that's just going through county code, personnel rules, different areas of HR, such as relations, recruitment, how to fill out certain forms, things like that. So that's been a successful training. We're wrapping up with tuition reimbursements for FY26. Currently accepting applications for the fall semester. Moving on to recruitment. We have 13 jobs posted in May, 70 year-to-date and that's for calendar year. We've had 192 applications received in May, 993 year-to-date. Average applications per posting for May is 15 and 14 year-to-date. 19 new hires in May, 64 year-to-date. We've had six promotions in May. 63 promotions year to date. Vacancy rate is 5.98. And that doesn't include our temps and casuals.

It's just our regular employees.

So moving on to benefits. We have a lot going on in benefits right now. We're currently in the RFP process for four of our contracts. So that's going to be for dental vision, long-term disability, and our benefits consultant. All four contracts expire at the end of the year, so we're trying to get through the RFP, take it to council, get approval, and all of this done before annual enrollment in November. So Benefits is staying busy with that. Benefits conducted five retirement planning meetings in May. It seems like we have a lot of eligible retirees coming up. The benefits team conducted seven exit interviews in May. And we have congratulations to the following individuals on their service anniversaries. Let's see who we got.

Thank you. Quick question. So medical isn't included in the RFPs? Is that because it's off the current cycle? Correct. Thank you.

So for 10 years, we have Carlos Martinez. 15 years to Mateo Martinez. 20 years is Catherine Deanna, and I believe she just retired. She may still be on the books. And then congratulations to the following team members who earned recognition coins. Matthew Martinez, he is in HR, and that was for leadership and personal development. Victoria De Vargas is in risk. Hers was for personal development. Mia Casados, who we have here with us, also in HR for personal development. Jennifer Rogers, also in HR for cooperation. We have Jason Sherhill, who is in risk for leadership, and Sonia Ortiz for cooperation. The purpose of these coins is when we see a team member going above and beyond or achieving something such as degrees, completing certifications, really showing leadership skills, completing projects. This is our way of recognizing employees. So as I said, HR's had a busy couple months, so we recognized quite a few of our staff members. Retirements, we would like to congratulate the following on their retirements. In May, Gilbert Padilla, he's with police. He's only been with us for three years, but he came to us with quite a bit of law enforcement experience. John Fesser, who is with DPU Water Production after 27 years of service. Mary Tapia, who you guys know was our previous HR manager after seven years. And then moving on to Employee and Legal Relations. Negotiations with the plumbers and pipefitters is complete. The contract was ratified. It went to BPU on June 3rd and council on June 9th. We should have the contract signed this week and a new contract for the next five years. Yes. You were very pleased to get a five-year contract. All I have for my manager report.

Any questions? Did you have a report? I did not. Okay. I didn't either. And Beverly's not here.

One thing I'd like to say, though. So just for your information, so the next Boards of Commission's luncheon is on September 10th. Okay. And there's another one in November.

September 10th? Notification of it?

The reason I'm bringing it up is probably you'll get notification, but it's also possible that you won't. So the other one's November 12th.

So are you having to get off all of your boards in commission?

Yeah.

Depending on the results, right? Yeah.

Okay, and then preview of upcoming agenda items. Is there anything besides the usual things that we have coming up? I'll probably, like I said, have personnel roles that we'll start working on.

That'll possibly be on the next agenda. Future items... We're required to do market studies every four years for our positions. We will be going out to RFP this year, or preparing RFP this year, going through the compensation market study analysis next year, so that'll be something coming up. I don't know that it'll be in 26, probably more of 27, but just to kind of put that on your radar, that'll be another big project that we'll be working on with the personnel board as well.

Anything else? Okay, so our next meeting will be July 28th, it looks like. With that, if there's nothing else, we'll adjourn at 11.46. 16 minutes.

The recording has stopped.