Development Committee - Regular Meeting

Yes. Remember to turn on your mic. All good to go? Well, yep. Great. Alright. I'll bring the meeting to order, May 4, 5PM. First, I want to welcome our newest board member, Julie Frazier, Ward 5. Welcome to the team. And today, we have four of our board members out, so hopefully they rest up and get healthy for next month.

One thing that I also want to just quickly mention and give a welcome to is to my students who are here. Hello, all. Thanks for coming. And also to thank the fire chief for coming today and giving his presentation, we're gonna bump you up to the top here and kick it off, right after public comment. So do we have anybody in the queue?

Great. Alright. Go for

Board member Sandoval?

Present. Thank you.

Board member Fraser Matthews?

Present. Thank

you. Board member Van

Benson? Present.

Thank you. Vice chair Lee?

Present. Thank

you. Chair doctor. Attaway?

Present. Thank

you. We have a

quorum, and

no callers.

Perfect. Thank you. So then we will start off with fire chief Steve McInster's presentation. Good evening.

Chair Attaway, honorable members of the HR Board, city staff, thank you for having myself here. My name is Steve McKenster. I'm the fire chief, and I'll be reviewing the fire department with you this evening. The mission of the fire department is obviously to protect protect life and property and environment by providing exceptional and progressive all hazard emergency services and community risk reduction programs. A lot of discussion about the fire department recently.

We're a busy organization running over 47,000 incidents a year, gonna be upwards of 50 this year. A 129 incidents per day, and about that's one call every eleven minutes. Just a overview of the organizational chart here, pretty standard for an organization like the fire department. One thing we have changed recently with help with the HR group is moving all of our finance into one column underneath the new admin services manager. But everything has been the same from the previous year as well.

Workforce demographics, you can see workforce by age and then just the demographics and then the male to female ratio, which is in the upper end of the national average. Obviously it's a unique service, but something that we've been working on with our HR director, Renee, and her team. We're trying to find different pathways into the organization. Currently we just go to the open market and in the open market it's just who comes. But one thing we don't have is a pathway or a pipeline that's the fire department training people to come into organization.

So this demographic piece and kind of the age in the male female, it makes it difficult because we are just waiting for the open market piece, something that I hope in the future we can obtain a budget for and really focus in on our direct community and bring people in differently than the way we do now. The current and projected employment, when this was done, we only had three vacancies now, so we are doing far better. I know we have had issues in the past during COVID, bringing people in, but that's improved and we are actually bringing people into backgrounds in preparation for retirements or people who are leaving. So we are doing really well on that front. Active recruitments here that we have our new accounts or admin services manager here with us tonight and the EMS coordinator has been hired and we only have one vacancy at the admin level, which is the account technician.

But other than the new recruitments, we're doing very well, promotional testing, lot of interest internally. So I think morale is up and we're really filling our vacancies and our spots really well. So it's been exciting. Employee turnover rate, here is our separations for 2025. I need to go back and look to see if this is kind of normal for us.

I was surprised with the five other, which I would be curious to know and then the retirements. And then this year coming up, we're looking at I think upwards of 25 people that could retire, so there could be a lot of people leaving the organization. But we're preparing for that now. This is another front that the department has really worked hard on to refresh and update. We have a new recruitment group or a committee and we put somebody in charge of it that is just highly energetic and involved with the Ben Clark Training Center.

But they are out in the community really looking at in different areas at the fire academies, at the fire training center or when they do the tests for the fire department. We have people there recruiting the fire department or I guess highlighting our organization. And then we are really trying to get out to the community events and just really showcase the organization to get interest. But again, I think that pipeline is going to be critical for the future for us so that when we are out at the community events, we actually have a pathway for people in the community to our organization. And again, now we don't.

Just a high level overview of the budget. This is again last year, so this year we will go up a little bit more. I think we are right about 79,000,000 in the new budget. But here is just a highlight of where that is allocated to. And then training and development.

The organization has done, obviously we do a lot, one hundred and thirty five thousand hours. I mean, the profession is based on, it's high risk, so we do a lot of training. We have had four new hire academies, 21 probationary people that have come onto the organization, and then everything that is predicated on moving up within the organization is all certification tracks, so a lot of work in the training department there. Three promotional exams. Multi company drills are drills where we bring different parts of the organization that don normally get to train together, put them together and have these exercises.

And then we work directly with HR on the accident investigation review board, something we need to update for the organization because it doesn't follow some of our Firefighter Bill of Rights pieces, but we are going to need to review that together. And then a lot of interagency training as well, so other operational area, CAL FIRE, Corona and Marietta that we will train with to make sure that we are keeping up to the current standards. And then accomplishments. The organization has been really busy this last year. Master plan has been completed.

This was a fourteen month in-depth study of the organization from A to Z. Really highlighted the deficiencies of the organization. I presented that June 13 showing that we need firefighters and new stations because a lot of our infrastructure is quite old. So that will be a big push for the future and if there were 84 people coming, we would obviously have to really work on our recruitment piece. Implemented tablet command and this was identified in the after action of Hwarden.

We could not see where other resources were, including our own, which makes that very difficult in a fast moving fire, but now each unit is tracked and we can see that and an incident commander can watch and direct through these tablets. So an amazing upgrade there. And then the pump pod, which was an interesting project with the three water departments and the fire department, and it is just a big tank at our water training or our training center that we flow water into and circulate it. So we are really doing our part to save our natural resources. And then we have maintained our insurance service office and centers for public safety excellence, which I will get into a little bit more here.

So our strategic initiatives,

we

will be moving towards at least for the next year to two years, is to obviously implement the master plan, which I am going to safety, wellness in youth, I think it's May 20, to present phase one of the two phases, to rewrite our strategic plan, which we have almost completed 99 items in three years, so we have really done a great job at progressing. And then maintaining ISO and Centers for Public Safety Excellence. So it's kind of a prestigious mark that we are one in four within the state that have these levels of, I guess, it is administrative readiness and policy procedure. But I think it is important that I highlight that although the department meets these national standards and is ISO accredited, it doesn't really get into the details of the operational component of the fire department, which the master plan does. And then, of course, the vision of our fire department is to continue to be a world class leader, providing exceptional professional fire rescue service and life safety services to our community.

So thank you for the opportunity to come, just give a high level overview of the organization and any questions that you may have.

Awesome. Thank you for that. I appreciate it. Very thorough. First off, I just want say congratulations on your year and a half. I know you're Yeah. A relatively new fire chief, so I hope that's going well for you. And with the fast facts and some of the stuff that you've been, continuing to accomplish, it shows. So Yeah. Thank the fire department's doing a great job. And also, just want to acknowledge that being on the list with Burbank, Pasadena, Torrance, Culver City, and Anaheim is great. Yeah. And and definitely keep that up.

Yeah. It's definitely something to be proud of for the Absolutely.

Yep. Awesome.

Thank you.

I do have a few questions. So going to hiring, selection and hiring. So, you know, as you acknowledged, there's not a ton of diversity in the workforce for Where do you think that primary pain point is? Is it just being in the open market, or is there something happening at, the interviewing stage or later on when the offer is being given, competitiveness with other departments, things like that?

No, that's a great question. We don't turn people away. So especially in the paramedic rank, we take the people that come. So that's I think our, it's going to be our problem in the future is how are we going to have a different pipeline that's going to allow the organization to bring people in differently. So right now you have to have college courses, you have to have a fire academy, you have to go through EMT school.

I think that although those standards are great, I do not have a way to take people and put them into training. And we looked at this through paramedics that we now have with AMR that are within the fire stations and there is people who are interested. They may have a paramedic, which is a certificate that we desperately need, but they don't have a fire academy. And so I have turnouts. I have the ability to put people into an academy because we get spots from the academy.

I just don't have a way to employ them and pay them to get them there because it's not a full time position. If I'm explaining that well, okay. So that is something that we've talked about because there's a gap there. We're missing that piece there and qualified people for the organization.

Got it. What are other cities doing?

Well, I kind of wanted to chime in. Also see it as an accessibility issue. I think not everyone can just not work and go through the academy or school, essentially. So this would allow others weve identified some fantastic candidates that actually are working for AMR now that want to be part of our team, but they can't stop working and go to school essentially. So for me, I envision it that way as an accessibility issue as well.

So Chief Mckinster has done a fantastic job kind of looking at other models and what agencies are doing and we've had some really great meetings with other agencies to talk about how they've made it happen, including looking at their job specs and things. So we're primed and ready, we think, to get it done. Now it comes down to a budgetary issue as well, so we have to have funding for those positions as well. Police does something similar with their academy folks in that the city pays them to go through the academy. So we would like to duplicate that with fire and we know based on those models that it can be done.

Awesome. Is there an estimated time horizon on that? A couple years? Early stages talk. Yeah. Early stage. Got it. Early stages.

Okay. Yeah.

Got it. Thank you. I wanna touch on use you're getting a call every eleven minutes. That's a lot. We're a big city. It from your perspective, do you feel like that's sustainable and that employees are sort of maybe being over utilized? Really want to get into maybe the potential for impact on well-being, burnout, things like that. Yeah.

Yeah. No, think that's a good question. We are getting busier and busier. And so we have less fire stations that you can kind of transfer out to to get a break per se. But no, it's something that is kind of on the front of our minds as we have stations that are multiple stations that are approaching over 4,000 calls a day, or 4,000 a year.

But with those 4,000, then there is the training that needs to go along with it and then there's the prevention inspections that they do within the district. So that's why we commissioned or I commissioned the study, so that we could present a consultant report, not mine, because you know it internally just by being a subject matter expert. The study clearly shows that as we build housing that's high density housing, it's increasing. Like we have one facility that's, that we go to. It's new.

It's high density housing. But it generates two to 300 calls a year. That's already in a station area that is busy. Our downtown fire station is over 10,000 calls. That's as much as some cities in our county run. So it's busy. Yeah. So no, it is a concern. It's something that the department has worked on. We do have we have a robust peer group that is there. We also regularly discuss EAP the programs that are out there with Counseling Team International, which are being used, but will be used more frequently in the future for sure.

Gotcha. Cool. Yeah, that was my next question on utilization. Thank And then one other question. Training and development, you're doing an awesome job, so keep that up. But is there I don't see anything in there in terms of training for future captains. I know you said that you filled a handful of the roles since this was prepared. Was one of those that vacant captain role?

Yeah, we fill them quickly. It's also another gap, actually we've addressed with Julie, in our organization and it's what is the, we're really good at training a new firefighter and we're really good at training the next step to be an engineer, but we really need to look at our long term supervisory management leadership training in that component and how can we deliver it. It's hard for us because HR has kind of, I would say, programs with Sandy are really good but were a shift. So then how do we pull people off shift and then do they go on their own and then if they go on their own, do we, there then becomes the pay issue. So we really need to find a program or some type of model that we can deliver to these folks and really prepare them because that's a gap for us right now.

Got it.

I appreciate that. Thank you. I'll pass it to Board Member Van Vieckten.

Yes, thank you for your service, Chief. Thank you, sir. And your department. I have one couple of questions. You get all these calls going every day. What is the response time for once a call comes in? Is it and does it vary between the the wards?

So if everybody's in place, our average response time is seven minutes and thirty seven seconds. So that was what I presented from 2024. But we notice as we get busier, that time is going up. So in 2025, was, don't quote me, think it's seven minutes and it was like forty eight seconds. So it's slowly going to gradually go up, more people, more call volume.

So my other question is, I noticed on your workforce demographics, you have some people that are in the 60s, 69 years old. What is is there an age limit as to how long you've worked for the

So that that workforce encompasses administrative and sworn staff. Alright. Yes. Yes,

sir. And then my last question is, measure Z that's coming up on the ballot in just a couple of weeks here. Yes. If it doesn't pass, how is it going to affect all of this stuff?

So the master plan, that's going to be up to counsel, not up to me. I presented my part and that's going to be up to the elected to figure out how

to move forward. Yep, you bet.

Any other comments or questions from board? Great. Thank you so much for your presentation. Thank you for your service. And honestly, I'm excited to see what you do with that strategic plan after the study. So it was a great implementation.

Alright. Thank you.

Appreciate it. Have a good evening. Thank you.

Alright. We'll move on to agenda item number two, presented by Michelle.

Good evening, members of the board. The policy I have before you this evening is the temporary seasonal employee benefit policy five dash 14, which was last revised in July 2006. As As part of the HR department practice of regularly reviewing and updating policies and procedures, this policy was reviewed and refined. The temporary seasonal employee benefits policy has been revised to maintain compliance with applicable federal and state laws. Key updates clarify the policy language related to deferred compensation in CalPERS membership for temporary and seasonal employees.

While the underlying policy requirements have not changed, the wording has been refined to better reflect current processes. In addition, new language has been added regarding the withdrawal of contribution options for this employee group consistent with IRS and CalPERS regulations. And that's all I have for you.

Let's see.

Thank you so much. Just for am I looking at the right one here? Sorry. Looking at the wrong one. For my curiosity, I see that you moved the, procedure section. Was that moved to another policy or another area for employees to know how to, make these requests, or is there an updated procedure,

or is

this just an updated format? I know this hasn't been updated since 2006.

Yeah. I'm not too sure on that one.

I can take it. Good evening, Laura. So the procedure portion of each policy has been removed from each policy because it's outdated, so we've been incorporating it into the actual policy as we rewrite them.

Got it. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Aside from that, any comments or questions from the Board?

Thank you. I also wanted to touch base on the 2006 review. At first, when I was reading this, I like to pay attention to a lot of detail. In my thirty years of experience, I worked on a lot of admin codes, policies and procedures. So I'm really, really happy when I got this, and there was a lot of blue lines and red lines. It really excited me. I know, that's kind of weird and nerdy, but I love it. That's one of my go tos. In order for me to, like, kind of understand more and be the newest one here to this Board, is there a time line for maintaining the policies that could be shared with the Board?

Yes. We review policies and the entire policy and procedures manual periodically, and we do have schedule. I can have Michelle Stevens send that out to you so you can take a review. We are almost done reviewing the entire manual, so we are happy to report that. There are still a few outstanding policies, but we will definitely get you the schedule.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Board Member Lee.

Thank you very much. Okay. Now I think it's on. Thanks very much. Looks lovely. I think you did a really nice job of updating it, especially given that it's been a little while since it was last So really, really nice job. I just had one little question.

And

I'm not sure if it I this is, I think, a comment for the next time around because I understand the you know, you're at the end of this review process. It's in Section three, the withdrawal of contributions. In Section A, the second sentence says that employees may only withdraw funds in the event of separation or death. And I was wondering if perhaps the next time around it could be modified to say something like, funds may only be withdrawn in the event of the employee's separation or death, to make a little bit clearer that the employee themselves is not going to be in a position to do the withdrawing at that point in time. And I know it's a little quibble, but like my colleague, I spent decades writing policy and I miss it so, and that's So I focus it on those little details.

But otherwise, I think a really nice job. Looks great. Thank you.

Thank you. Great. Thank you. Any other comments or questions from board? I'll entertain a motion to accept the policy as is.

I'll make a motion.

Motion. Second? Do we have a second? A second? Great. Move to vote. The policy is approved. Thank you. Of course. Thank you so much. Alright. Next up, we'll move to the policy on reasonable accommodations. Adriana. Oh, not Adriana.

Good evening. Alex. Hi, Alex. Hello, Alex. Hi, Alex. Good evening, honorable Board. My name is Alexander Gutierrez. I'm part of the employee relations team, and I'm presenting in Adriana's place.

Got it.

The reasonable accommodations for qualified applicants and employees with disabilities policy was last revised in November 2012, so also a little bit away. As part of the HR department's practice of regularly reviewing and updating policies and procedures, this policy was reviewed and refined. The reasonable accommodations for qualified applicants and employees with disabilities policy three-seven has been updated to ensure that equitable, consistent, and timely decisions are made to provide reasonable accommodations to qualified applicants and employees with disabilities. Key revisions include streamlining the policy language by ensuring clarity and conciseness. Additionally, there is added language to indicate that all employees and applicants are protected from retaliation for requesting an accommodation, participating in the interactive process, or otherwise exercising their right under the corresponding laws by ADA and FEHA.

The reasonable accommodation request form, which is enclosed in the policy, was also amended by adding an acknowledgment section for employeesapplicants to acknowledge the following: The city will engage in an interactive process to evaluate my request. Additional medical documentation may be required if the disability or need for accommodation is not obvious. Approval of accommodation depends on the essential functions of my physician and whether the accommodation would create an undue hardship. Approved accommodation may be temporary and subject to periodic review. Medical information will be kept confidential in accordance with state and federal law.

A City of Riverside representative may contact you to request additional information necessary to assess and or verify your request for reasonable accommodation. The request form was also amended by adding if the requesting party is an employee or applicant. We added supervisor name and contact information and added a work location if they're an employee. Further additions to the request form include a medical documentation section to inform the requester that the city may require medical documentation when the disability is not obvious. And were there any questions?

Thank you, Alex. This is great. This is nice and streamlined. I think it fleshes out fleshes out quite a bit. I'm curious about what the policy and procedure is if it's denied and the employee wants to appeal that.

Generally, for the an accommodation, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, Adriana. If it's denied, we go through the interactive process. So generally, we'll get an accommodation request from an employee. Let's say they have some medical condition that requires something and it's not feasible by the department. It's not an automatic, like, deny. We're not just going to not do it. We then bring the department and the employee in together into what we call the interactive process meeting, and we try to come to an agreement or some sort of middle ground for what can be done. We do make an effort to ensure that we can accommodate an employee to the best of our ability, what's reasonable for the city, what's reasonable for the employee. So there is a whole dialogue that goes along with that process if we're not able to unilaterally agree with their accommodation. Got it.

And is that happening before or during or at well, before or after whether or not the accommodation is then signed off by HR at the bottom of the form? Because I see that they're submitting documentation, filling all of this out. Is that interactive process happening as a step between the submission and the decision or after?

It would be in the middle of it. So they'd submit it. Okay. We ask the department first when we get it. It's, again, we have a dialogue with them. We don't make a unilateral decision for the departments. Sure. Depending on what they say, then from there we'll either have they'll say yes and then we'll just communicate with the employee that they are able to accommodate. Or if they're unable to, as it stands, we schedule an interactive process meeting. Got it. And then it will be either approved or denied after that.

Got you. Okay. I understand. Thank you. Any questions or comments?

Yeah. Well, I'll ask you a question just because I'm interested in the process. I think you did a nice job of updating the policy. This is more for my understanding of the process within the city. So I'm curious about, you know, sometimes departments, if they haven't had a lot of experience dealing with the interactive process or with requests, sometimes their initial response is to not quite understand all of the options that are available to them and to say no.

And so I'm kind of curious from the HR department's perspective, what strategies you have to get to something that will work for everyone. And also organizationally, are there any funds available or programs available to assist departments in making an accommodation that they might not otherwise be able to make?

I can answer the first part of the question. So we do try to be like you said, the ADA and interactive process isn't a very common process for departments or anyone to deal with. It's probably quite rare. So we do act as mediators on the HR side. We all try to explain our position for why, you know, they should consider other options to accommodate an employee.

We try to do our own little training with them, like have a dialogue conversation with them to make them understand that, yes, while maybe this initial accommodation request is seem unreasonable on the surface, there's a duty to the city and to the employee that we should try to, you know, interact with one another interact and work with one another to try to make it work. Mhmm. And then as far as the funding

As far as the funding's concerned, that would be really up to the department and their budget. We don't have a fund set aside unless, you know, we go through the workers' compensation process, and it's due to a job related injury.

Okay, great. Thanks very much.

Thank you, Board Member Sandoval.

Hello, thank you. To begin with, I just wanted to add a comment that I appreciate the added clarity and the inclusion of the anti retaliation language towards the end. My question is a little bit similar in terms of is there thoughts into the fact that the interactive, process may unintentionally discourage employees from, wanting to seek reasonable accommodations?

Can you repeat the question?

No worries. I know it's a little bit long winded. Just the engaging in an interactive process, is there any way that may unintentionally discourage employees from wanting to go through that process?

It can. I can understand where, again, because employees or supervisors, they don't deal with the interactive process often or at all. So we try to ease it into it. If they have questions, they're always willing they're always able to reach out to HR. I would say that our ER team is very amicable, very friendly.

So if they're not sure, we always reach out and say, Hey, you know, if you have any questions, reach out to us, because some people do reach out and say, What is this? Why am I being invited to this? Am I in trouble? They'll say, No, we're having this meeting to set up a neutral area to discuss what accommodations might work for you, what the department can do for you, just so we can come to an accord for how to get you to work or back to work and be able to do your position effectively. So there are considerations for that, but I think that's just human nature to be apprehensive about certain things, so we try our best to mediate that as best as we can.

Some people might not take us up on it because of that fear, but we try to do our best to keep an open dialogue to ensure that more people take advantage of the resources that are available to them.

All right. Perfect. Thank you.

Any other questions or comment from board? Great. I'll entertain a motion to accept the policy as is. Do I hear a second?

I'll second. Great.

Thank you so much. Move to a vote. The policy is approved. Thank you so much, Alex. Appreciate it. And the HR team is very amicable, by the way. The most in the city. Don't let Parks and Rec. Yeah. Alright.

Next up, we got due process and the role of human resources board. Ruth Ann. This is for our education, because we have due process coming up.

Good evening, everyone. Thank you for having me. For those of you who have I have not had the pleasure of working with before, my name is Ruth Ann Solara. I'm a senior deputy city attorney from the city attorney's office. My one of my roles is to serve this board and all of its legal needs.

A lot of times, you don't see me because I'm working in the background. You guys operate rather seamlessly on your own without me, but there is parts of your roles where I come in and provide training and a little more guidance, and that's where we are tonight. I'm doing a discussion item for you to kind of refresh everyone on employee discipline appear hearing appeal hearings, and due process. Alright so the duties of the Human Resources Board are largely what you're familiar with, what your day to day is, you review our policies and all that but one of the important roles you also have is that you are to hear grievances and appeals submitted by any person in the classified service and make findings and recommendations which shall be advisory only. So these are unrepresented employees if they end up in a grievance procedure subjected to discipline, they have a right to a hearing before this body and you act as finders of fact and make recommendations and findings which then go to the city manager to act upon.

So kind of a big picture of how this makes it to you, there is a long process that happens before it comes to you that is involved with the HR to process and that culminates in a written notice of discipline and a scaly hearing and then if the employee elects to take it further it comes to you for an evidentiary hearing. So the procedures for the hearing itself are set out in a set of adopted rules of the hearing procedures they are at the back of your standing rules but I've attached a copy of just the hearing procedures to your agenda tonight so you can take a look at them. These operate specifically just for these types of appeal hearings. First and foremost is that they operate a little differently than you were used to. The default is that this happens in closed session which means it's a private hearing that the public doesn't get to attend and this includes witnesses and and also your deliberations.

The employee has the ability to waive the closed session for portions of it but that is up to the employees so, very often we will be

in closed session for this.

The procedures and the timing, how evidence presented is presented and how witnesses are presented is all, laid out in there, and we don't have to get into the details of every single piece of it, because the board chair is largely responsible for, presiding over the proceedings, and, and additionally, I will be here, to help all that run smoothly. The hearing rules also establish a burden of proof which is the city's burden to establish for you. Burden of proof is what we call in the legal world a preponderance of the evidence. It means a little more likely than not. And the evidenceary standards as far as what types of materials and witness testimony can come to you is not nearly as formal as what you would see in a court of law, but there is a standard in the rules.

It has to be related to the issue at hand, so it's not just any possible evidence, but it is related to what took place during the proceedings. And then finally, the last part of it is, once the evidence concludes this board has the opportunity you would deliberate in closed session without anyone other than my usually myself and your secretary and you can make findings and recommendations which are then forwarded to the city manager. So some general principles on due process. So due process is really the important piece here for for you all because the employee has a right to due process in these proceedings and the key function of due process is fairness and impartiality. So they have a right to a fair hearing and an impartial hearing, so it's very important throughout this process that you remain open minded, that you are impartial, and that you apply your deliberations only to the evidence that's received here and rather than any something you might hear external or, things like that.

It's really contained to what's here in front of us. Again, strict rules of evidence don't apply, but we have a standard of evidence and the chair presides over, issues regarding evidence. And then finally, it's really important that you, always keep in mind your decisions will be based on the evidence you hear during these proceedings and nothing external. Right? And then some practical considerations as we move through this process.

Again, keep an open mind while you're listening to this. Remain impartial. Consider all the evidence that's properly placed before you. You can take notes through this and you'll receive copies of documents but don't share amongst yourselves between board members until you reach your deliberations phase while the witness and the testimony is going on it's important that you focus on that rather than sharing together and don't share it externally from the proceedings, especially while they're ongoing, and closed session comes with a layer of confidentiality that exists beyond these proceedings. So even when they conclude, anything that takes place during closed session is confidential.

And then finally that's really the main gist overview of what will happen and so if you have questions I'm available after any public comment to answer questions on the process.

Thank you so much for that and if I have the information correct, we had one, employee grievance that we did about two years ago. That was the first one in seven years. Is that right? And so we have another one coming up, which is why we're getting this education. Any questions or comments from the board? Yeah. Board member Van Becten. Yeah.

I have one question on the first page or page two of your presentation. It starts out with c. Is there an a and a b that's missing? Or

Yes. I'm sorry. I only took out the relevant duties of the board for my presentation, but there is a there's a longer list, and it goes beyond c of all the duties of the human resources board. I don't know them off the top of my head, they relate to the policies that you review and all that, but item c in the list is the grievances procedures.

Okay. One other question for my not having the knowledge. What is a Skelly?

A Skelly is a type of hearing. It's much more informal. This happens at the human resources department level, and this is an employee's, ability to kind of confront the evidence that's been reviewed and the investigation that's done and kind of plead their case, but last chance to plead their case before a final decision is made and before they have the ability to come here to you.

Okay. Thank you.

And Skelly is based on the case law name, if you're curious and want a a Jeopardy fun fact. That is that's where the name Skelly comes from.

Any other questions or comments from the board? Okay. Thank you, Ruth Ann. Appreciate it. And we have to have this hearing by, June 13. Do I have that right? So the goal is to have the first session of it at our next meeting, or do we have to schedule another special?

Yes. That's the plan. We would like to have it at our next first meeting, and I would I would like to avoid, the special meetings. I anticipate that it will not take as as long, but I don't wanna jinx us either.

Great. Yeah. Our last one took a year, and we didn't get to any policy for a year, just so you know.

I'm already working closely with Michelle on scheduling, and we are doing everything we can in the background to make sure that this goes as smoothly as possible for you and for the employee.

Perfect. Thank you so much, Ruthann.

Appreciate it.

Alright. Next, we'll move on to minutes. Any questions, notes, amendments, updates to the minutes? Otherwise, I would if not, I would approve a yeah. Yeah. Board member.

I have a quick question. Mhmm. My recollection, and it could be faulty.

Mhmm.

So let me preface it with that was that at the very end of the minutes, when we talk about future meetings, I thought that we had had a discussion about having a presentation about the employee engagement activities that were going on, and so I think that should be reflected in the minutes.

I do recall that conversation as well. Yeah. Thank you for catching that.

We that's yes, we can add it. So that's a correction to the minutes, and then

Can we move to an approval with that correction?

Yes.

Okay. Great. So I would entertain an approval of the minutes with that correction added.

So moved.

Do I hear a second? Second. Great. Thank you. Alright. And now

Sorry, doctor.

Had wait

to interrupt you. Can did everybody vote? I'm sorry. Oh. Oh. I'm so sorry.

Great. Approved. Thank you so much. Alright. Now we'll move on to, miss Scott Jones excused absence, for the prior month, I would entertain a motion, to approve or for this or, note for discussion. Do I hear a second?

I'll second. Okay.

Thank you so much. Move to vote. Alright. Approved. Thank you so much. And the highlight of every night, our HR director updates by Renee.

So I do have have some updates for you, this evening, so I'm gonna jump right into it. For a recruitment, we do have some high level executive recruitments. I think I reported out we were in various stages on these last go around. Those are still in the works, including city attorney, finance director, and our new inspector general position. I'm very excited about, that position. And I also wanted to let you know that we will be attending the Riverside Works job fair. That is on '5, '28, and that's from four to 07:30 at the Galleria at Tyler. I know sometimes folks on the board like to attend those, and we would love to have you join us. That's one of our biggest job fairs that we have. I really enjoy I like to go work that one myself as well.

You said the twenty eighth, right?

Yeah, the May 28, from four to 07:30. So we, I think Michelle may have sent something out. Did you send a list of them? Job fairs?

Yes, we have sent a list out. Yeah. I can send that email out again.

Yeah, we can send a new one out for you. There may be some updates to that. We've been very active on the job fair front. And then on the benefits and wellness menu, we have last time I let you know about some benefits we have Blue Zones, we are working on coordinating some new things, were really fun, it's been going really well, we talked about how we have our downshift space that we added, so we have been kind of adding some more of that space where we can in City Hall and we're looking to see what we can do at other locations, working next to certify our corporation yard, so that will be great. So we have some more areas, we want to make sure that we're equitable, not everybody that works for the city works in City Hall, so we want to make sure that we are expanding our efforts.

Let's see, our Wellness and Safety Fair will be held June 3 from 10AM to 1PM here in the City Hall Breezeway. It's also a fantastic event every year. We work really hard to outdo ourselves from the year prior, with, goodies for employees. This year we have invited, the Commission of the Deaf and Deaf Riverside will be joining us, so they are really excited to come to the table and try to educate folks on what the Deaf Commission has to offer, so you are also welcome to come and join and take a walk around, it's a fun event and our staff really look forward to it and every year it gets larger and larger, so, and we find that combining the efforts of wellness and safety has worked really well for us, we used to have a separate safety fair and it wasn't as well received I guess. So combining them has been really great, so we look forward to doing that and from the equitable point of that, we do make sure that we hold back some of the goody bags and gifts that we give employees for folks at the other location.

So they'll get to run around and hand some of those things out. So I will not share the surprise of what we're giving out this year, but our staff always looks forward to it. One of the other things we've done that has been Colleen's brainchild, our safety team, we're really proud to announce that they've completed an AED map for all our city employees, so it's all of the city staff locations and where the AEDs are located. So the announcements started going out today, it gives employees all the information on the location of each AED machine in the city for safety.

And that will be accessible through their employee portal? Correct.

Yeah, it's accessible through the employee portal for employees only, so each location with an AED map, it's mapped through GIS.

Oh, cool.

It's really

cool. So, citywide communication went out today, via our exchange server and it was really a group effort. So with Colleen, Colleen oversees the safety team which is run by our interim which is Ms. Brenda Brooks, I think you guys have met Brenda before and in collaboration with our own HRIS team and city IT, so we are very excited about that. We have had incidents at various city locations that involve either employees or constituents, so we think that this could really be a life saving measure

for us.

So we are excited to present that and then we have a lot going on, on training organizational development. So we received the results from our engagement poll survey and all of the KPIs and the scores were seeing some improvement. Employees are excited about getting a seat at the table and being invited to have those discussions and when we look at it overall versus last year, we are seeing some raising scores, so we are very excited about that. We are also just started recruiting for our next Emerging Leaders Academy which will be our cohort six and it's going to start in August, so we going have some fresh curriculum, fresh thought leaders coming to the table to have those discussions. I recently found out that one of my own employees who was a city attorney employee, she told me I applied for HR because of the presentation that you gave at ELA.

So, that is one of the great things about ELA is it connects employees that may not have ever met, if not for that program. You kind of get siloed in your own department. In HR, we have the pleasure to work with all different departments, but say you are an employee that's working in clerical in city attorney's office or you work in a position at the courtyard, you may never meet, those two employees may never meet each other if not for this program. So, we also use some of their projects for their final project, we have been able to implement those citywide. One of the questions you asked earlier which was about wellness and public safety that we have launched a whole new wellness program in 2025 at the RPD and that was a result of a program from an ELA graduate.

Yeah, awesome.

That's cool.

Yeah, so it's pretty exciting, we are excited to start again and then our grant team is fully staffed now in HR and we are actively recruiting 30 new interns for our internship cohort. It used to be called the Californians Fellows for All, so we have a new name and a new cohort and we're redesigning those programs so that we ensure all of our student fellows get the most out of their time here. We want them, there obviously also needs to be a learning component and we can make those connections with different departments. We've had some real success, we've even had, we had an employee that was in another department and they called and they were like, she really wants HR, we love her, she has a fantastic fellowship but we think she belongs in your department and she came over to us that way. So we have hired some of the fellows for our own department and other departments and we have had a lot of success with interns.

I think I have someone, were you an

intern? When did those applications?

Yeah. Oh cool.

Tucker was an intern and she is now a senior analyst in our employee relations division and she started with the city as an intern. So weire

excited about it.

I have two questions on that. Sure. When do the applications open for those?

It is opening soon. Donit have the exact date written down but I will find out for you because I just had a discussion with Sandy Kramer about it. So could you little note on that

one too.

And is it 30 open positions or do you have them

sort know, be there some that are spoken for, but we do have some that are still available.

In terms of like how they're distributed amongst departments?

You know what, departments have the opportunity to reach out to us and let us know that they need them.

Got it.

There's also some departments that fund them through their budget, so there are various ways that we can get interns. We are not limited to just these 30, but these are the ones that are going to be funded through this grant.

Got it.

So we in the past, we have taken an FTE position and divided it that we could utilize it for intern help as well.

Awesome. That's great.

Yeah. Cool, thank you. And then last week we held a graduation for our latest Foundations of Supervision cohort, so that's always exciting. I think we had over 30 graduates of that program. And one of the questions you asked earlier about some of the training for the interactive process and then there was something that you asked Chief McKinster, was

The thinking about leadership for like the captains Correct,

and chief chief That's something that could come out of a program like that

Yeah. As Absolutely. That sounds And

that's all I have for you today.

Awesome. Thank you so Thank much, you. Any questions or comments for Renee? No. Thank you all. So our last item, any items for future consideration that anybody would like to bring up at the moment? Great. Well, then with that, I would accept a motion to close our meeting? Motion. And a second?

I'll second. Alright.

Then, 554 concludes our meeting. Thank you so much.