Ordinance & License Committee - Regular Meeting

K. Call the HR meeting for May 20 to order. All members are here except for Alderman Wuteska. We have a quorum. Can we get approval of the minutes from our last meeting?

I'll make a motion to approve the minutes from last meeting as submitted in the packet.

Is there a second? I'll second it.

Wells, aye.

Matthews, aye.

The motion passes unanimously. Alright. Our first order of business is to review the and have possible action on revised e two vehicle collision control and accident reporting policy.

K. Thank you. Both of the policies that we are reviewing today are being brought before you because the city was awarded a federal grant for the design of two pedestrian bridges over the Waukesha Bypass. And federal grants have certain requirements that we have to follow. So the first policy, the e two policy, the most significant change was the addition of the prohibited conduct and distracted unsafe driving language.

That was the standard requirement that we needed to add. Plus we added some additional information to ensure our staff make sure they are driving safely and attentively. And then at the bottom or the last section, we removed reference to preventable and non preventable accidents because that determination is no longer going to be made by regular employees. Those will be made by police staff if a ticket is is given or and things like that. So, those are the most significant changes for this policy. Are there any questions? Questions?

Alderman Christine then Alderman Wells. Oh, everybody. Matthews.

Thank you, Requise. Is this grant specifically for the city's discretion to use that or is it going to 100% go towards the pedestrian bridges?

I can't speak to that part of I just was told, hey. We need to update our policies. So I I don't have

I I like grants, but I also like grants when we have control over them.

Right. I can't answer that, unfortunately.

Councilman Wells?

Can you remind me does do HR policies affect police and fire as well? Would they be included in that role? Because I know they've got their own set of rules and

Right. For the most part, they do. The only time that they typically don't is if there's a caveat that says, with the exception of bargain, you know, staff or whatever or let's say the CBA supersedes anything in the policy. But for the most part, yes.

Because I know that police and fire vehicles squads especially tend to have a lot of hardware with screens.

Right. Right.

And functionally, don't know if there's a huge difference between a cell phone texting and your dispatch orders and your

Exactly. And even with a situation like that, of course, that's not we wouldn't consider that distracted driving. That's literally part of your job. You literally have to have that to do your job. So Okay. We wouldn't consider that as as distracted.

Do we feel like we need to specify that? Because I I would imagine PRF might have their own dispatch software. They might say, you know, we could have policies that say, don't use that. But where do you draw the lines as far as, like, this is part of your job. This is also part of your job, but you can't do it while you're driving or have the vehicle in motion.

That you as a committee can tell me what you wanna do. If that's what the committee wants me to do, I can add that language. I don't have a problem.

Yeah. And I guess I wouldn't be prepared to make an edit without staff kind of giving us options or direction. Because I I don't know all the duties that unless we just do a straight carve out for police and fire, but I don't know that I wanna completely exempt police and fire from this policy.

So what would you like to do?

Would it be something you guys could look into and if we need to further revise this policy

and Let me let me tell you this. So this policy will be revised. Anyway, made pages and pages of revisions and we even changed the policy name. So when I sent this out, they were like, didn't we just make a bunch of changes to this last year? And I was like, oh yeah.

So right now for the purposes of this, we have to have that language about distracted driving related to Well, and again, this does not It specifically says text messaging, emailing, or manual data entry. And even in the police car, I would assume your partner might be doing the manual data entry if there is any. This is watching video streaming content or viewing visual media. Again, from this perspective, it's related to social media and non police cars and so if we wanna put a simple caveat for now, that's fine because this is going to be presented again probably in July once we finish the other items. I did wanna get this in front of you so we're not

Yeah. I'm comfortable with it as presented. I think that's just a good maybe next step forward to have that as an open question of do we need to add more? We may not. Sure. But I'm comfortable with it as

it's Okay. Thank you.

Alder Messes?

So this language is required in order for us to receive the grant not forfeit the grant that we haven't decided if we're gonna take or not yet. It's my understanding yet. I know that was discussion a few meetings ago whether we do surveys in the pedestrian bridge. My question is, is there an additional cost to this? Is this just language being rewritten? Or is this going to go through and is there a premium increase or is there a financial impact for us adding this?

No. Not right now. And like I said, because we're making such significant changes to the the the policy, that may be an impact because that policy talks about points and ticket. It's it's like a a five or six page policy. This in particular, this particular language, no. Not at this time.

Okay. And this is no way indicative of us by doing this, we're accepting the grant and agreeing to do these capital improvement projects for the pedestrian bridges. No.

Not at all.

Just a requirement that if we decide to move forward. Thank you.

And we needed to update it anyway. So some of these policies are more than twenty years old.

Alderman Christine.

Thank you. To me, it specifically says the raise grant for two pedestrian bridges. I talked to Alex last night about this, and they're going to most likely do one of the bridges and not the other ones. And every opportunity I have, I will say I'm against these bridges and will stop them at all costs.

K. Thank you.

So if we can separate this, I'm fine with the policy and everything Alderman Wells said. It needs to get updated as far as departments working with the departments and the technology use. That is a great idea. I don't want to waylay this, but I have to stay consistent with the pedestrian bridges. I'm fine with updating the policy, and I guess I could use alderman have mentioned that the whole idea of basically already answered that second part of that question. So I'll listen to what Alderman Wells has to say.

Yeah. I think it's just important note that the agenda item is to update this policy regardless of what triggered it. And really this requirement is a is a requirement of accept accept accepting federal money. And so if not for this project, something further down the road, we're gonna need to take federal money at some point for some project. And as far as the policy itself, like these are pretty standard, no distract driving, stay off your cell phone. Last date it's the law.

We've Yep.

Personally with I coordinate a lot of safety stuff for in my role. And really, this is kind of boilerplate. Don't open your phone. Put your cell phone down. We take a lot of calls over teams or over conference calls, and we've got the same or very similar policies here.

And also, I mean, if we're taking the grant out, these like you said, these these changes needed to be made. The grants just pushed me to get the changes in front of you sooner.

So acceptance of the grant. In order to accept the grant, we have to make these changes. But if we make these changes, that doesn't mean we have to accept the grant?

Correct. 100%.

Okay. And I just have a couple questions myself to just curiosity. It says an excellent driving record will be maintained. What does excellent mean?

That was a question that came up. So and that's why the the Fuller policy has

It's all been addressed.

It has, like I said, points what's considered excellent. All and again, I I do apologize for bringing you a partial partially updated policy. But my focus at the moment was to get that distracted driving language.

Okay. And then just and again, maybe this is addressing the larger policy, but the if I do happen to lose my license or deem my driving record not acceptable, Are there positions that require me to have a license? And if so, if I lose my license, am I able to work in a different position or do I just lose my job?

That's a great question. There are positions that require CDL garage and PRF in certain areas requires a CDL. And if a person even even with fire, you you know, you have to have a license to, you know. So if we find out that a person's license have been suspended or revoked or whatever the case may be, no, you can't do that function. Now if your entire job or the majority of your job requires you to drive, then yeah, it's possible.

You could lose your job. We have never since I've been here faced that scenario. Okay. A person lost their driver's license for maybe a month. So we did not have that individual doing portion of their job and once they got their license back.

So there was some mechanism. Correct. Okay. And then my final question is the section six, the vehicle inspection. Vehicle inspection it says all vehicles will be inspected prior to use and throughout this policy it differentiates between personal vehicles and city owned vehicles and the way it's written to me is all vehicles whether it's my personal vehicle or city owned vehicle shall be inspected prior to use and all vehicles need to be in repair and reported to. It just I I don't know if that matters but it just

We could definitely pay attention because that language that you're referring to, we didn't touch it this time. That's been there since '19 since 2004. So we haven't touched that part but

Just down the road it says, you know, any driver was in the right away when operating a city owned vehicle. So it specifies city owned vehicles in parts of the policy, but not consistently throughout it.

Right. We will definitely make make be aware of that with the updated term.

Alderman Crissy.

Thank you. One of my employers is the state of Wisconsin Department of Transportation, particularly motor carry enforcement in CDL. It is federally mandated that whether you're off duty or on duty. If I get a equipment violation on my car, any type of infraction, have to report that to my employer. So hopefully that on your class a and your class b, you know, even the fire department as much as they don't like it, is a commercial vehicle.

Right, and that's actually how we I wouldn't be saying this in open session. Well, I'm not giving a name, but that is actually how we found out that one person had lost their license because we run a check through a system called powers. And they were like, oh, I didn't know whatever whatever. But, yeah, we we we do find out not necessarily from people telling us.

Yeah. They need CDLs even though they'll say they don't, but they do. But that's not part of this. But I just wanna make sure that's written in there as well and I'm glad you pointed that out. Thank you.

We have a question from Alderman Trieste.

Thank you, chair.

Some If you get your license revoked, they they do offer the ability to pursue to work and from work. And within within that limitation with that individual that's employed by the city of Waukesha also have the ability to use city Waukesha vehicles in their employment. They got revoked, they sought through the court a permit, driving permit so they could get to work and from work but within that timeframe when they're here working, would they have to have any kind of special privileges or something in I

can't speak to because we haven't experienced it. If something like that were to come up, we would definitely have to look into it and find out what those stipulations are and go by those guidelines.

I can actually answer that. I do work for the Department transportation. If the license is not valid for that person unless they specify the hours. So they could drive during the workday, but they would have to use part of their sixty hours a week as an entire eight hour day

Okay.

In order to legally drive during that time.

Alright. Thank you.

So it'd be up to them to choose their hours as part of their probation or occupational license.

I'll make a motion to approve as written.

Is there a second?

Second.

Fantastic. Motion passes three to one. Alright. Our next item is review and possible action and revise HR policy g seven drug and alcohol free workplace.

For this one, again, similar situation where we wanted to use language specific from the Drug Free Workplace Act. So literally taking that language and also adding language about alcohol because there was no reference to alcohol usage in the workplace. So those are the primary changes to this policy and updating the resources because this policy hadn't been updated since 1999. And some of the resources listed, either the phone numbers have changed or there is a different method for contacting them. So that's what's been updated.

Any questions? Alderman Christine.

This went through Brian's department time. Sure I just wanna make sure that They

both did.

Okay. Thank you. Mhmm.

Alder Matthews?

Under the city personnel policies that does outline what the disciplinary actions are and up to termination and that that's specified in there?

Yes.

Okay. Thank you.

And I guess I just have a question based on what you just said. Why mention specific resources at all in the policy if they they are open to change instead of resources are available, contact your supervisor

or whatever. Right.

I mean, right. The upside to listing the resources is they're there. The downside to not listing them or their supervisor may say, well, I'm not sure, do some research. This list is not all inclusive of course,

but

for the most part they're the same. Like I said, different processes have since 1999 of course, but I I I it was there. I didn't I didn't have an issue with keeping some resources there.

Because I've just out of here. Mean, how many times has it changed between now and 1999 that what was in the original policy was irrelevant or obsolete for eight years?

But in the original policy, that's actually how I found it updated information. So it it although it might have changed, it still directed me

Okay.

To the appropriate tool.

Yes. Two comments. I think that it's great to have this kind of information in the policy. If you're someone who has an issue, you may not feel comfortable bringing something personal like this to your supervisor. These are accessible to all employees. I think it's great to have that information in there that you can get that without having to ask for it. It's there. I also think that we should probably be looking at these policies more often than every twenty five years. And honestly So if they do change.

You're right. And for the most part we have touched the majority of them at least once in the seven years I've been here. Some we've touched two or three times. These two, I don't know why because we've touched them but never brought them before the committees. And I can't honestly say why because they are important. Just

Why I'm noting that the the phone number isn't struck through. So I'm guessing the phone number didn't change or else we would have on the red line copy? That 26

That's 2 correct.

Yep. 52479

Yes.

So the organization is has changed its name but the phone number still.

Correct. So that's what I mean. This the information in here led me to whatever updates were made. So yes.

So I'll make a motion to approve as written.

I'll see. Christine will second.

Matthew Zai.

Motion passes unanimously, four zero. And that's all we have. Any objection to adjourning? No. Thanks. We're adjourned. This

is your first