Human Resources & Information Technology Committee - Regular Meeting

Good evening. I'd like to call tonight's meeting of the Human Resources and Information Technology Committee to order. Please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Roll call of membership. Let the record show that all members are present except Alder Jones who is absent and excused. We'll move on to our first item here, which is item 20 six-two 60, the minutes from our January 14 meeting. Do I have a motion to approve?

Motion to approve. Second.

Motion and a second. Are there any questions, comments, concerns? All right. There being none, all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. That motion passes four-zero. We have no public hearings or appearances so we'll move on to our action items. The first one is 20Six-two61, request the approval to change the police department table of organization. Do I have a motion?

Move to approve. Second.

Motion and a second. Director Rachman, you'd like to speak.

Great. So we two re orgs on tonight. I just wanted to mention to the committee, I did not ask department heads to attend just because these are really straightforward and they're cost neutral. And I'm very comfortable handling them. They would have been happy to be here should we had needed them. So back to the approval to change police officer table of organization. The change is pretty straightforward. We have a traffic safety unit at police. It has a lieutenant and two officers. Right now, that traffic safety unit reports to the Northernsouthern district captain.

And the change is to move that unit under the downtown district or downtown captain. So the chief would say it's just it's more efficient. It doesn't mean that they're only doing traffic in downtown when you look at the job description. It's anywhere traffic needs to be attended to or if there's complaints, etcetera. But just from an efficiency standpoint, that seems to make more sense for their operations.

The other thing is there's no financial impact. It is just simply sliding those positions under a different captain. And I just want to if I could mention, Chair, well, because I've been also asked this question of, like, why do we bring this forward to committee? Because it's so straightforward. You got to keep in mind, like, transparency, that the council approves a budget for departments. As part of that budget, that means table of organizations, number of positions, who they report to, also includes part time dollars for other positions that they want to staff. So from a transparency standpoint, if a department does want to make a change, it should come to this committee and then ultimately counsel to say we'd like to make a change to what that council approved for budgets.

Thank you. Any questions from anyone here on the committee? All right. There being none, all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. That motion passes, four to zero. We'll move then on to item 20 six-two 62, request the approval to change change the utilities table of organization. Do I have a motion?

Move to approve. Second.

Motion and a second. Director Rachman, do you have more on this one as well?

Sure. I'll just summarize it real quickly. We have a position that's called technical services manager. The position shares their time between being at wastewater and water. Today, they supervise the lab technicians as well as two positions that are called instrumentation and control systems technicians.

So what the department head would like to do is take the two instrumentation and control system technicians out from supervising or being supervised by that technical services manager and put one under each the wastewater and water operations supervisors. Just more efficiency. I think day to day, there's more interaction with the supervisors from those facilities. It also allows a little bit more focus of the technical services manager position. In fact, the department head would like to retitle that to a lab and regulatory compliance manager.

We did comp the positions out to make sure there was no changes with the supervision going away. There's not. The technical services manager is still a supervisor. There's still a high degree of technical experience that they need for the position. So it's a pretty small change and it is a cost neutral change.

Director Ashman, does the job description remain the same, just the title change essentially? So everything else just remains as is?

Everything will remain the same. Title will change. We will make sure that any reference to instrumentation is taken out and then put under the wastewater operations supervisor and the water operations supervisor. The utilities director and I also talked a little bit about a large part of that technical services manager, as it's called today, is compliance with the lab work they do. It's just making sure that that job title, that that's accurately reflected, which I do believe it is, but we'll be taking a closer look at that right away too.

But that is not in the action today. The only action is the change to the TO, correct?

That is correct.

Excellent. Any other questions from up here on the committee? All right. There being none, all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. That motion passes four to zero. We have two information items. The first one is 20 six-two 63, a lead policy change. So Director Raschmann, please.

So I want to shout out to Brian Margan who's our risk manager. Brian spent quite a bit of time on this policy. It's an important policy because there are exposures to our employees. So you really have two copies. One is the current copy, which we have 100% struck.

And then a new version, because it was easier to start over, that takes a policy that's very generic and makes it very specific. And what I mean by that, so for example, even if you go to page two of the updated policy, this updated policy has every single area where we've identified lead in the city. So lead pipes, indoor shooting range with employees, their their duty weapons, paint that's on the fire hydrants. And then if we identify other sources, we would also reflect that in the policy. But that's just the policy.

What what we do with that is probably the most important. This is where I think our risk manager does a great job. Risk manager worked with an outside organization, and this was through our funds, to hire a industrial hygienist who also did testing of each of those areas to see what the exposure was. And so if you go to page four of the policy, you'll be able to see each of those areas where lead is present, what the exposure is, and there is no significant exposure according to what OSHA would say as standards, as well as what the controls would be, so that an employee is not exposed. And so for example, like if they're working with lead water service pipes, how to cut those pipes, how to clean up after, etcetera.

So I think this is a significant update. There's a lot more meat to it. It's a good resource for supervisors, employees. It does have the training that goes with it. So it's more than just words on paper. So this is an information item only because it's not new. We're not changing the spirit of what we had before. It's just a better version.

It's too bad we didn't get to approve the strike and bold. We like to approve something that's just completely getting rid of the There you go. Thank you. Any questions from anybody up here?

Just that I agree with that sentiment.

All right, then we'll move on then to our recruitment status report. That's item 20Six-two64. Director Rashman, any highlights for us there?

Sure. Before I start out, I do want to go through one highlight. But wanted to start out by saying at the last meeting, I was asked about format. So I brought it back to staff, provided the feedback. We use this report in a lot of different ways. It's not just for committee. It's also used in our department. It's used to communicate with other departments on where hiring processes are at. So there's a lot of value. So what we did, if you start at the left side of the format, we lumped them by department versus by who's doing the hiring.

So if I jumped in and handled the hiring process, you might see DPW at the top and the bottom. We no longer have that. So I'm hoping that will help everyone kind of tune in quickly as to what's going on in each department. We talked about vacancy rate. Our vacancy rate as an organization is very low. So middle of the document, you can see that we listed vacancy rate percentage. So if there's other feedback, let us know. We're trying to take that feedback but also know that there's a lot of other uses for this report.

I'm grateful for these changes. These are I've noticed right away, was like, oh, this is a better grouping because it makes more sense. Am I looking at are we looking at there's a a problem at DPW where we need to fill in a lot of positions? Or where is it that we're having the most concerns? And the addition of the vacancy rate is very helpful. I remember asking that specifically. Anyone else have any other questions or comments? Alder Hayden.

Thank you, Chair. I was just wondering what the status of the finance director is. I see on here the mayor had one candidate on the twentieth. But I was wondering if there's anything additional because one candidate seems like it's pretty early

in the process. Is that accurate? So we advertised the position early January. We have received 22 applications, some more qualified than others. We've done nine screening interviews. So instead of waiting for all the candidates to come in, we've been talking with candidates as they've been applying. We've narrowed that down to five to bring in for a second round of screening interviews. And we're holding panel interviews. This is the bigger group with like our leadership team next week, March 3. So lots of progress.

Excellent. Anybody else up here? Any other questions? Questions? I did have one question, Director Ashman, about the Director of Parks and Rec. I see that that's on hold, and interim director has been named. I know that interim director at this point was our deputy director, Tom Flick. Is that just the status of this position at this point because you're trying to deal with one director at a time?

That is correct. Excellent. And we have a very qualified deputy director who is able to step up on an interim basis.

Anybody else? Any other questions? All right. There being none, I believe we are moving on to item number eight.

Move to adjourn. Second.

Motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. We are adjourned. Thank you.