Civil Service Commission

MINUTES OF THE CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSION MEETING November 9, 2016 - 8:00 A.M. Members Present: Chairman Jan Naso Commissioner Tom Kot Commissioner Christine Higham Non-Members Mayor Dave Kline Present: Dr. Don Cooper ______________________________________________________________________________ The November 9, 2016 Civil Service Commission meeting was called to order. Minutes of the October 12, 2016 and October 19, 2016 meeting were approved as published. Chairman Naso announced that Officer Jeremy McGee was promoted to Sergeant on October 31, 2016. The current Sergeant Eligibility List will terminate on December 2, 2016. Chairman Naso stated he had received an email from Chief Operating Officer Steve Wood wanting to know if a former employee wanted to be rehired into the same classification they were in when they left if they need to be on a Civil Service List? Under OAC 123:1-25-02, as long as that employee successfully completed their probationary period, they can be rehired without being on a list within one year of their resignation date. This information was forwarded to Mr. Wood. An exam for Part-Time Records Clerk is scheduled for November 30, 2016 at 6:00 p.m. at the Community Center; also an exam is scheduled for Part-Time Firefighter on January 24, 2017 at 6:00 p.m. at the Community Center. Discussion continued on Ordinance 177-2009 which authorizes and directs the Tallmadge Civil Service Commission to adopt rules and regulations that differ from those provided by general law for the promotion and hiring of Police Chief and Fire Chief. Chairman Naso: This iteration that you have was the one that was completed after our last meeting on October 12th. I do not have any questions about anything that was on the first page. Anybody else? Okay, on the second page we had a lengthy discussion on the definition of what appointments are. Dr. Cooper had brought that up. If you look in the October 12th minutes on page 3… I don’t recall how we ended up on that. We use the word appointment rather freely, but when a person is first hired, it’s technically a temporary appointment until they’ve completed their probationary period which it then becomes a permanent appointment. So do we need to be more specific about that in this ordinance? Page 2 November 9, 2016 Mrs. Higham: Isn’t appointment defined in ORC? Mr. Kot: I think it is. Mrs. Higham: I believe it’s defined there. Dr. Cooper: And the question came up because we use the word appointment here in two different ways. Before and after probation and so the question was, should we use a different term for one of those? Chairman Naso: Well, on page 2 of the ordinance, which you have in green down there, that’s talking about to be even eligible to be appointed, you have to have completed successfully your probationary period from your current position. Dr. Cooper: If that exists, yeah. Mrs. Higham: My understanding of the term appointment is date of hire. That’s my understanding of the definition of appointment. Where else is it that we’d say if appointment begins after the probationary period? Mr. Kot: It’s in the green on page 2. Chairman Naso: And then on page 4 it was there and crossed off and the paragraph above that it says the effective date of the appointment shall be within 45 days… Mr. Kot: Also on Other Police Chief, it talks about getting required certification within 6 months of appointment and does that mean 6 months after the probationary period? It’s certainly not meant to be that. We have to do something with that one… Chairman Naso: I mean do we need to have somewhere defined in all this that this is temporary appointment and then there’s the permanent appointment? It becomes permanent when you’ve completed your probationary period. Mayor Kline: That’s correct. After the 18 months or whatever. Dr. Cooper: So appointment is when they get the job the first day their hired, the hire date and then we call that permanent…what’s the term that would be used, cause that’s what I should probably use here instead of… Chairman Naso: When they’ve completed their probationary period, then they are not subject to immediate dismissal. They can only be dismissed for cause. Within the probationary period, they can be let go at any time without cause. Page 3 November 9, 2016 Mayor Kline: But they’re still originally appointed. The original appointment date…but part of that original appointment, there are provisions under probation that you can terminate after during a certain period of time. Mrs. Higham: That appointment date never changes, it’s just whether they complete satisfactorily complete their orientation or not or their probationary period. Chairman Naso: So do we need to change something in here or not? Mayor Kline: I don’t think so. Chairman Naso: Okay. Mayor Kline: But we can concur… Mr. Kot: The language in green is…no person is eligible to be appointed who has not satisfactorily completed the required probationary period. Mrs. Higham: Of their current position, so if you’re a sergeant and you haven’t completed your...multiple voices…he can’t be appointed to chief, be considered for chief. Dr. Cooper: If he does complete it, then he would be eligible. Chairman Naso: So, he (inaudible) by the screening committee. Mrs. Higham: Correct. Mr. Kot: Would it clarify it if we put no person is eligible to be appointed to these positions whose has not satisfactorily…do we just add that language potentially? Or do you think that’s okay? Mayor Kline: I think the second sentence; no person is eligible to be appointed… Mrs. Higham: Yeah and this ordinance is solely about the Fire and Police Chief, so… Chairman Naso: Okay, page 3 under Assessment Center, I’ve talked with Mrs. Ramsey and she believes that she meets all this stuff. Selection – I’m waiting for a call back from the sales department of HireRight, that was the company you gave me. They have a lot of different background type checks; from what my brief conversation was, we would want to use the professional side they call it and there’s like a 150 different types of things they can do. So once I talk to somebody about that and get an idea on costs and things, we’ll bring that up. Page 4 November 9, 2016 Mr. Kot: You know you said in somewhere that you had sent us an email on that. I didn’t see any email on that. Did I miss that? Chairman Naso: It was a link to their website I think. I’ll send it again. It was really difficult to get to talk to somebody. Mr. Kot: Okay, the I’ll, we’ll let you handle it. Chairman Naso: I talked to them three days ago and I haven’t heard back from their sales department yet. Mrs. Higham: That’s unusual. Chairman Naso: Page 4, just other than that appointment stuff, there’s nothing there I don’t think we need to anything with. Page 5, at the bottom number 6, that was added which is a rehash of what we’ve already talked about. Attachment B will guide us on what points they get and then the bottom of each one, the normalized percentage points per awarded point. Once again, could you explain where that number comes from Dr. Cooper? Dr. Cooper: Yeah. It’s basically 1/12 of 100. That’s the simplest way I could put it. Chairman Naso: Even I can understand that. Page 7 Attachment C – where we had the discussion about accreditations for some of their secondary education and other things that they have. Dr. Cooper: So the Department of Education has a website, so this should make it really easy for you if we follow this other…I checked with a couple places and they basically do this. They just go to this website, its maintained by the Department of Education and if the degree they got is listed on this website, it means that it’s an accredited post-secondary institution of programs. Chairman Naso: So I can go to this website, I can plug your name in and see all your degrees? Dr. Cooper: No, the institution. You make sure it’s an accredited institution. So that’s what you put in, you put in Harvard University and by the way, not all the…like UCLA, huge university but not all of its colleges are listed or accredited. Some have been recently, actually UCLA is one where a school was unaccredited, discredited, whatever the word would be, they actually still listed there, but they mention a note that on this date it was…(inaudible). Mrs. Higham: So the degrees after that point, they know that it wasn’t accredited. Dr. Cooper: Correct, correct. Page 5 November 9, 2016 Chairman Naso: So we would know that the candidate went to that college, but we don’t know what his degree was. Dr. Cooper: Well I remember…there’ll be documentation that they submit you know even if it’s a certificate or whatever, and there’ll be contact information so you can contact somebody. They have to submit that. Chairman Naso: It’s still possible they can give us a fraudulent document. They went there for a little while so they’re going to show up on there, but don’t really, does not really have the degree. Dr. Cooper: If the place is accredited, yeah, that’s one thing you do and they’re claiming that they graduated from there, they will give you on this form contact information. Someone will contact them to confirm that they have the degree. And I would be careful about in what they put on here should be, you know, a general number for a school or a college, not just you know call Bill Smith… Chairman Naso: On Page 8, there was a, I like that and that gives us some guidance on how to do those things. The SQF Form that they’ll fill out for each item. I have no further questions. Mrs. Higham: And so just for clarification, I know that we talked about this, but Attachments A through D are not going to be legislated, correct, those are just our reference tools for us to do. The legislation is that so if we need to modify these, that’s not something we have to go back to Council for. Mayor Kline: The Attachment will be a part of the whole document. Mrs. Higham: Okay, alright. Mayor Kline: The Ordinance, the front page there that’s…I’ll sponsor the legislation to go forward and that this would be an attachment to the ordinance. Chairman Naso: So to change anything in the Attachments has to be re-legislated? Okay, so let’s say down the road we want to change the SQF Form or something, any change to that form would have to be legislated. Mrs. Higham: See, that’s what I’m concerned about cause, you know, I don’t know that they need our working documents as part of legislation. These are things that we’re utilizing for our kind of our framework of how we can find these things. Page 6 November 9, 2016 Mayor Kline: In the legislation, we could put in there that the Attachments may be modified by the Civil Service. I think I have to legislate it though. Do we want it to be a part of the attachment? Mrs. Higham: Especially because these are going to documents we’re going to use for the first time we do this and we may find that there’s some things that we have to take all the way back through legislation for something that really, I mean, the framework’s not changing about doing… Chairman Naso: The way some of those ordinances are written that there’s wording in there that allows us to change the rules without having to do that. Mayor Kline: We have Section II that Civil Service is further authorizes to adopt… Chairman Naso: Right. So under Section II, we should be able to make the changes, but you can confirm that with… Mayor Kline: Well that’s exactly what it is. Section II covers the attachment. Mrs. Higham: Okay, alright. Chairman Naso: But that doesn’t allow us to change the base. Mrs. Higham: The base, yeah, and that’s fine. I definitely would want to go back to Council on anything like that, but it’s just the working documents to help us, you know, we may find that one of those definitions that we used back here on Attachment C isn’t clear enough and we need to update and make it a little more clarification for future… Dr. Cooper: What you may want to do is validate this further by actually giving it to cops and firefighters and asking them to fill it out and do they have questions because you don’t want that to occur during test, so… Chairman Naso: Right. Dr. Cooper: Do you have some kind of way to do that? Chairman Naso: I’ll just send it to Chief Williams. Ask him to have… Mayor Kline: That’s what we could…to have Passarelli and Williams… Page 7 November 9, 2016 Chairman Naso: Captain DiMenna or this new Sergeant, you know kind of fill one out, see how it works. Dr. Cooper: Yea and get their comments afterwards Chairman Naso: We have to put that, is that a fillable document? Dr. Cooper: No, not right now, it’s just a Word document. Chairman Naso: Okay. So do we want them to just hand write stuff or do want it to be fillable? Dr. Cooper: I would say just hand write it. The fillable part is a separate issue. Yea, we want to make sure like in their instructions good because these seem like (inaudible) the instructions, you know, it’s already questioned you have above anything on here. That’s the kind of questions I’d want to ask. Mrs. Higham: We can look at them and say that we’re evaluating them…more information… Dr. Cooper: So what we learned then we can bring back to you and… Mayor Kline: If Civil Service is ready, we’re ready to legislation on this. Chairman Naso: I’d wait because there’s going to be some more stuff. I want to do the same thing with like our rules for eligibility lists and things like that. So that’ll be the next item we start working on. I think I have some stuff already typed up I’ll get to you guys and go through the same process. And then once we’ve done all those major things, we’ll lump it all together and pass… Mayor Kline: That’ll be a separate ordinance. Chairman Naso: Yes. Mayor Kline: So we can go down. So it wouldn’t be just those require public hearings, so it’ll just be two separate public hearings that night, totally independent. (inaudible) We only have one meeting left of the year, after tomorrow night. Page 8 November 9, 2016 Chairman Naso: I’ll just wait till next year. Because we want to get some input on what Dr. Cooper just said about that form. Mayor Kline: So the first of the year, we’ll… Meeting adjourned at 8:20 a.m. An audio file of this meeting is available in the Civil Service office. Jan T Naso, Chairman Civil Service Commission TALLMADGE OHIO JTN:asi