Personnel Committee - Regular Meeting

Recording in progress. Can you hear me, Mayor?

Yes.

Okay.

Alright. It is 05:30. I will call the personnel committee meeting to order. First up on the agenda is roll call. We have three members present this evening. Alder Cummings called and let me know he was excused, and Alder Dunbar, I have not heard from. So he might be on his way. I'll also move on to public comment. Is there anybody from the public that wishes to address the personnel committee for any item germane to the city business this evening? Second call for public comment. Third and final call for public comment? Anybody online for public comment, Debbie?

No. There's nobody.

And any previously received public comment? No. Alright. Then I'll move on. I will close public comment and move on to presentations. We have one presentation tonight by the fire department. It was a request by Phil to come and address the committee to kinda talk about a different shift potential or a trial period, but wanted to lay it out in front of us so we have the facts tonight before we move forward on any proposal. Feel free to take the floor.

I'll just wait for her to pull up the presentation. While she's pulling up the presentation, I'll give you a little background on how we even came about this 4896 discussion. Every month before our union meeting, the executive board of the union meets with the chiefs and whatever battalion chief was on duty. When I took over presidency a little over a year ago, a lot of the discussions we were having was our employee shortage and finding qualified candidates and what we could do as a department. Just kind of brainstorming together on things that we could do to attract quality and qualified candidates to our department.

One of the aspects that we came up with was the forty eight ninety six. And it's not something that we've come up with. It is a new work schedule that has been popping up across the country as a benefit to both firefighters and city. So the chief said, well, why don't you guys look into it and see if you can find something? This last January, January, we got a committee together of members to work on doing some research, and, we presented it to the chiefs.

The chiefs were like, this looks pretty good. They do have a few concerns about it. Nothing that we couldn't work through, but, they said, well, let's bring it to personnel and see where you guys stand with it. So first off, what is a forty eight ninety six? A 40,896 would be working two twenty four hour shifts back to back followed by four twenty four hour days off.

How that compares to what we currently do? We currently work what is called a California. With a California shift, we work twenty four hours on, twenty four hours off, and we do that three out of five days. After that fifth day, we have four twenty four hour shifts off. So it equates to a fifty six hour work week.

With the $48.96, it also is a fifty six hour work week. You work the exact same amount of days working the forty eight ninety six as you do the California. With the forty eight ninety six, we don't have to change shifts. We don't have to add personnel and there's no wage change because we're working the exact same amount of days a year as we already currently do. The benefits that the city and fire department, have been reaping when we did the research was a massive drop in sick leave.

This is in part due to members not misusing the sick leave because they have more large clumps of time off rather than smaller breaks of time off in between workdays as well as a reduction in stress and, injuries. The other one is an increase in retention. They really, what it comes down to is a better home work life, which we're gonna cover soon. But working only forty eight hours and then coming home to your wife and kids for four days in a row, is a lot better than what we currently work with the 24 on, 24 off. A lot of times that middle day, we aren't our normal selves.

We're recouping from the shift before and then our mind is still on, I have to work the next day and go back and do the same thing again and it just starts to compound on you. This actually works better for our true cohesion because when we come to work, we're here at work. We're not thinking about the next day and the next day after that of work. The biggest benefit to the city is increased recruitment. We have been talking to all the departments across the state that are currently working forty eight ninety six.

And as you guys are well aware, there is a national shortage of firefighter medics. There just aren't as many kids going into this line of work. So there's less kids. I started in the fire service sixteen years ago, I was one of 42 candidates for one position. Now we have multiple positions with not even that same amount of candidates to hire.

So when we go out and we talk to these students, these students are being taught from day one that they are a high commodity. They are like, if you come out of school and you have your paramedic and you have your fire degree, you can go to any department you want. So these kids are being taught from school to look for three things, pay, vacation, and work schedule. And right now, the hot work schedule is the forty eight ninety six. It used to be the California because you either had the two choices of a Chicago or a California and California was the better option.

Now it's the 4896. Last year, I went down to LTC to present to their paramedic program representing Mansawa Fire Department as kind of a recruitment thing. The number one question that came out of the question and answer is, are you guys going to 4896? Are you guys considering a 4896? And who in the state works at 4896?

So they are openly looking for that as new employees coming into the workforce. We have from Eric Wang. He's the chief of SAFR. They switched to Assistant chief. I They said they went from two to three qualified applicants per opening to eight to nine when they switched to 4,896.

Wausau deputy chief, Plouis, he was a former captain for Wisconsin Rapids before he took the Chief's position in Wausau. And when Rapids switched to it, they haven't had an issue hiring a qualified candidate. And when I mean qualified, they have not had to lower their standards, their minimum qualifications. They still hold the same qualifications as they always have. So they're hiring fully fire paramedics.

The benefits for us, like I said, a better work life balance. We actually with this schedule you've seen on another slide, we actually have more mornings we wake up at home. What I mean by that is we're not coming off shift and going home in the morning. That's we get to wake up in bed, get a normal night sleep and wake up to our family and do the things that we can. The divorce rate in the fire service is about fifty percent.

Fifty percent of marriages don't last. And a lot of it has to do with our work schedule and the stressors of the work schedule. With the four eight ninety six, they're finding that it creates a better home life dynamic. The other thing is the fatigue. So long term and short term fatigue. Short term fatigue is what we would be dealing with with the four eight ninety six. That's your first twenty four hour shift that first night. You have a really rough night. You run multiple calls overnight. Now you gotta get up and you gotta work another twenty four hours.

Right? So what they are finding and there are studies we have, at the end of the presentation, we have all of the studies that we used for our data. But they are finding that it is easier and quicker to recover from short term fatigue than it is if we were to, our first day, run a bunch of calls overnight, go home, get sleep, come back the next day, run a whole bunch of calls. That long term fatigue is adds to increased cortisol levels, which increases hypertension, diabetes, cardiac disease. So and doing that year over year, it just incurs more cost to the city through healthcare and, possible workman's comp, it's a lot easier to recover from that short term fatigue than it is the long term fatigue.

So when you work those three out of five days, it actually takes you multiple days of your four day to recover so you're ready for the next swing. When you have that short term fatigue, it takes you shorter amount of time. So when you get back to work, you're more refreshed. So here, we're just comparing the actual days. So with California swing, we currently get forty we call them four days, four days off.

With the forty eight ninety six because you're taking those middle days out of the equation and putting them into four days, we'll have 60 a year. There's the mornings at home. We increase that by 60 a year. The Saturdays and Sundays off, we get Saturday or a Sunday. With the forty eight ninety six, we'll up that to 26.

And that again is this is all that work life balance that this helps with. Working one day of the weekend there, it's 35 per year with the 48.96 that drops to 17. Saturday and Sunday working, right now none unless you're on a trader overtime, which happens quite frequently. We would up that to nine a year. So we'd be working nine full weekends a year, but that's different than working 35 half weekends a year, which really shoots your entire And to

we'll able

actually can focus on that. Fire inspections. And right now, the way our calendar is built out, we may have one day out of that swing where we can do fire inspections. Well, if that city implodes and we run five, six ambulance calls back to back to back, fire inspections are done for the day. We aren't we can't get back to them because most businesses are only open till five.

Well, with the 4,886, we can come back to whatever we left off of that last day and do it the next day. Same thing with training. We can develop our training schedule to work around that as well. And actually, deputy chief Plus said that when he worked in Rapids as a captain, the first year they tangible number of training hours doubled that first year. So they got twice as many hours in of training the first year they worked at forty eight ninety six than when they were working their previous schedule.

Communication. It's probably one of the biggest pitfalls of the fire service is communication between crews. You have three different crews, three different battalion chiefs, three different ways of thinking. When things happen one day, we have to pass that on to the next crew. And if you've ever played the game telephone, you pass it on to the next crew.

Then the next day is another crew, you pass it on to them. And by the time that first crew comes back, they don't know if what they talked about the first day was actually addressed or not. Some things may fall through the cracks that way. You have less handoffs with the $48.96. I can find an issue day one and with how proficient we are, usually by day two, can have that stuff corrected rather than handing it off to another crew.

We can take care of it ourselves. So way less things will fall through the cracks with maintenance repairs and follow through. Other departments currently in the state that are running a forty eight ninety six, the only one that's left off of this list is Appleton Fire Department, but they are such a larger department than us that these are more comparable to the size of department we are. Lacrosse even is kind of on that edge of being a little bit bigger than us for a department. But Wausau Fire is probably our best example.

They run almost 1,000 more calls than us with one less station. So they're running it out of three full time ambulances, almost 7,000 calls a year. West Bend Fire also 5,100 calls out of three stations and their staffing levels are a little bit close to ours with 15 cross staff. But all of these departments now Wausau just went to a 4,896 this last year. So they are new to it.

But I can tell you having worked in Stevens Point, I know a lot of the guys in the Wausau Fire Department. I know the Wassa Fire Chief very well. They have tried everything in the book from running their own in house paramedic program to get qualified candidates in and they have failed miserably. They have a safer grant to hire 14 new firefighters and they can't fill it, couldn't fill it. They switched to a forty eight ninety six and they filled it in the first hiring process with qualified candidates.

Wisconsin Rapids has been and Merrill have been running it for Rapids has been about five years. Merrill has been probably closer to seven, ten years. And they have not felt the staffing shortage. They never have an issue hiring when they have an opening. Additional information.

After departments, when they switch to a 4,896, they run a one year trial period just to see how it will fit within their department. And after that one year trial department, they have an over a 90 what we're to then of sense we're doing. Currently working. And Out of the 44 members, because we were short three or four, we had 31 approved, seven against, and five abstain saying, one, didn't vote because he knew he was leaving. He went to Madison Fire.

But the rest of them that abstained said they didn't care if they went California or 48.96. They were happy with whichever way we went. So we already are at an 85% approval rating within the membership. Concerns brought to us by the firefighters. Obviously, with the contract, the way things are laid out in there, they were concerned with how things might look.

With holiday and vacation picking, reading the language, there would be no change except for right now in the language, says we pick a three day swing. We would just be picking a two day swing because our swings would be forty eight hours. Our current swing is 72 with that three out of five days. The sick time and calling off sick, calling off sick is kind of unique to us. When we call in sick for twenty four hour period, that in between day, we have to call back to the station and tell them that we will be returning to work.

It's pretty unique to Manitowoc fire, but it's something that we do. So that's something that we would probably most likely change. You would call in sick for your first twenty four hour and you would be presumed coming in for your second twenty four hour shift unless you called in again and said I'm still sick. The mandations, Eric, you're fully aware of the mandations. I can tell you right now that recall that we came up with is working tremendously.

We've used the recall person at least a dozen times this year. We've had two mandates. So we would keep that standby recall in effect. And if we did have to mandate, we would use the off going crew like we currently do for that seven to ten split, 10 to seven split. And if we had to, we would still send it out that second 24 to 48 if we knew they're going to be gone for it for voluntary pickup.

But if not, then it would the oncoming crew that would get mandated for it. And then there are kinda lays it out for you. So, like, if the mandation happened at b, then a crew would be it would be C crew who would be responsible for that second mandate. And the big question, what happens if we run all night that first twenty four? Well, there's a little unilateral, you know, if one station gets their teeth kicked in all night running calls, you know, the battalion chief has the ability to say, hey.

You guys take it easy for a couple hours, get a little rest, and then let's get to work. It's only forty eight hours. And like I said, that short term fatigue is really quick to recover from over the long term fatigue. Here's our references.

Okay.

Any questions for me?

Thank you.

I just dumped a whole bunch of information on your labs.

Well, the good news is it we was we had it ahead of time. So we were able to review it, go through it. And like I said in my email back, today was just gonna be a presentation. I wanna take some time to digest and get with the chief, get with the city staff, and just, you know, see what their recommendation is. Cause I think it it falls under it's not a bargaining issue. I think it's more of a right management of scheduling. So Correct. Wanna make sure, you know, before we weigh in that they've had an opportunity to weigh in as well.

Perfect. Okay. Well thank you for your time gentlemen.

All right. Thank you.

Thank you.

That concludes our presentations. We'll move on to the consent agenda. Is there any item from the consent agenda that any member of the committee wants to have removed?

I'll move to approve the consent agenda.

The motion to approve the consent agenda. Is there a second? Second. The motion is second. There is no discussion. So all those in favor?

Aye.

Aye. And opposed? Alright. That passes. Then we will move on to our discussion and action items. And the first one up is looking for approval of a revised job description for community development planner business and housing development to deputy city planner. That's a handle.

Partially why we'd like to change it because it's exhausting same housing and business planner. If you are not aware, Kate in our office is leaving. Her husband took another job, so, unfortunately, she's relocating out of the area. Since we're going through that transition, we took the time, we, being myself, HR director Jesse, and the mayor to kinda go through the current job description and see if there was a desire to kinda pivot a little bit. For those of you who haven't been here as long, there was a time where, really, the original job description was more of a deputy type planner position.

Over some time, it kind of morphed and changed into be a bit more of a technical, almost like a project manager planner as well. What we have found is that can be extremely difficult to fill. We got lucky, quite honestly, with our current employee, And there's also some concern with the ability to plan for transitions and future retirements within the department if the positions aren't aligned. So based on all those kind of discussions, I was asked to go back through and make some recommendations. So, again, worked with Jesse and the mayor on that.

And our recommendation is to go bring it kinda back to more of a traditional planner position. A mid level type of planner, we're not looking to hire someone directly out of college, for example. Those are the type that tend to be here for about two years and then leave. As much as I love training people, I don't wanna be training the future planners of America if I can avoid it. So the goal would be hopefully that if and when the current city planning work to move on that disposition would ideally be able to slot up again helping us have some continuity and then backfill the lower position.

So that's Thank

you. Any questions from the committee? I'll just yeah,

being new to these, a lot of red on this document. Is it is it similar to other roles you've seen in other cities? Is that really what you're matching it back to? Is it historical position you're as you as you stated?

Yeah. More so current positions. I'm not gonna lie. I utilize AI and the Internet we'll then business. That. To

And And

And And to priced, so I don't have pricing for it. I anticipate we likely will change this to a nonexempt position. Right now, it's exempt. And and then it probably will it probably will be a little bit lower on the pay scale. I'm not sure what yet. I'm waiting to hear back

from Okay.

Consultants right now. But that's our request tonight. If I have it in time for counsel, I will make sure that I include it.

Okay. Mayor, did you have anything since you were part of this process?

First question. Yeah.

Okay. Well, then I would look for a motion to approve as presented with the caveat that we get the pricing either in a memo or ready for council. So Second. Motion and second discussion? Seeing none. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. And opposed? Okay. I'll put that on consent if there's no objection.

I just recommend if you have another one like this, send it in a unbread line version. It's kinda hard to read.

Oh, okay.

Yeah. Sure.

As well. Yeah.

And both of them is fine, but there's a lot trying to find certain words that weren't crossed out or

added. Thank

you, Jonathan.

Thank you. Next up is 25Dash0488. Request to create a zoo team lead position and revise current zoo positions. Dan.

Hi. Yes. So we had one of our zookeepers is resigning, and I believe her last day is Friday or Friday of next week. Okay.

This Friday. Anyway,

it it gave us the opportunity. This is something we've been talking about, for a while, and it's it's a model that we've implemented in every other division in my department. Just to this point, it it we didn't feel, that it warranted implementation at the zoo previously because we only had had two staff there up until a few years ago. Now we've got a third. And also the two people that were there had equal skill sets and equal tenures here.

So we just thought, well, it didn't really make sense. Well, now it gives us the opportunity to do that. And the team position really helps us out in management because they're kind of the point person. They do a lot of administrative duties. They do a lot of customer service roles, much take over the day to day running of it. It also assist us with succession planning and gives the staff kind of a stepping stone, if you will, something to strive for. So it's, like I said, been a win win in every other division of the department, and it just this is a great opportunity to implement it here as well.

Okay. Jesse, do you have anything to add?

I will add that this is a slight restructure. We're getting rid of the entry level zookeeper position if if we move forward with this, and then just renew with other two, and then re revising their their job description slightly.

Do you anticipate any repricing with these positions?

No. Except for the team lead. We'll move up one Naturally. That's it.

Okay. Any questions from committee?

I don't have a question. I just noticed that on your I don't know if it matters. On your outline, you called education and event zookeeper, but that's not what the job description is. I don't know if the one document is a public you know, how it works, but the titles just weren't aligned.

Oh, yeah. The the original like, the outline was sort of a draft idea.

Gotcha. Okay.

So the the job descriptions went under.

Yeah.

Perfect.

Thank you.

I'll be fine. Thank you.

Alright. Then I will look for a motion to approve as presented. So moved. Second. Motion and a second. Discussion? Alright. All in favor?

Aye. Aye.

And opposed? Alright. That passes.

Thank you.

Help with that, our consent as well. If there's no objection. Next up is 25Dash0486 is a request to approve seasonal pay rates for 2026.

This is an item that we look to bring annually if there are changes that are being recommended on the seasonal pay rates. There are a couple this year, and, we like to get those approved at this point so that they're ready for the budget when we start that in a month or so.

Any questions from the committee? If not, will look for a motion to approve as presented.

So moved.

Second. The motion and a second. Discussion? All those in favor? Aye. And opposed? Okay, that pass as well. Those are not practice that just so people can turn aware. Our last item is for closed session. So notice hereby given that the above governmental body may adjourn in a closed session during the meeting as authorized by section 19.851 c of Wisconsin statutes, which authorize the governmental body to convene in a closed session for the purpose of considering employment, promotion, compensation, or performance evaluation data of any public employee for which the governmental body has jurisdiction or exercises responsibility.

The specific subject matter that may be considered in closed session is twenty five dash zero four eight nine unpaid leave of absence request from transit employee. The motion to convene in a closed session was made by I'll make the motion. Norell, second by Beeman. Aye. Norell? Aye. Beeman? Aye. Alright. Everybody else is MIA. All right. We are in closed session.

Recording stopped. Recording in progress.

One more over. One more over.

I got the Now you've done it. I got the

pie chair. I don't know. Okay. We are back from closed session, and the only agenda item we have is the unpaid leave absence request for transit employee, Sarah Ole Miss. So I would look for a motion to approve up to a thirty day extension. So moved. Second. There's a motion and a second discussion. Seeing none. All those in favor.

Aye.

Aye. And opposed. Okay. That passes. That does exhaust our agenda this evening. So I look for a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. We are adjourned.