Civil Service Commission

MINUTES OF THE CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSION MEETING June 17, 2020 – 8:00 A.M. Members Present: Chairman Jan Naso Commissioner Christine Higham Commissioner Tom Kot Non-Members Mayor Dave Kline Present: Chief Ron Williams Director of Finance Mollie Gilbride Director of Law Megan Raber Director of Administration Dr Don Cooper ______________________________________________________________________________ The June 17, 2020 Civil Service Commission meeting was called to order. Minutes of the May 27, 2020 meeting were approved as published. The Commission met today to review and approve Ordinance 43-2020. Chairman Naso gave the floor to Mrs. Raber. She stated that the Ordinance is doing two things. It is changing the classified status of Utility Billing Technician under Finance and when that position was classified, it was actually under the Service Department for some time. This is the Water Utility Billing essentially. That person is going to retire at the end of the year, actually the beginning of 2021, but will stop working at the end of this year. We are looking to bring her into the unclassified status which everyone else in the Finance Department is. What this is also doing is reaffirming that we are a charter entity and we do have the ability to adopt rules that differ from the general law. When you look at the general law, that is under 124.11. It does provide a certain number of classified positions for each elected official and then their appointing fiduciary. Arguably, the Assistant Finance Director would have four appointments in addition to the Finance Director. The number is not necessarily out of whack, but typically in our municipality, we haven’t really exercised that. There is that, and what we, though we would do is, while we are going through this that there could be other positions like that, that over time, morphed from one position to the next. There are no other changes on this grid which have been authorized by Council previously, but we, though it would be prudent to just recognize that there could be potentially other positions that differ from the exact count that’s provided under 124.11. So we wanted to kind of reiterate that this is the approved classified status. I went through and audited these, and I really do not think that we have any glaring issues. I actually went through and came up with on the grid the number of…where that would fall and how that would fall. You do get into the Service Department for example, you get into somewhere in order to technically justify it by the ORC Code, you probably would have to use some of the Mayor’s appointments and the Mayor’s appointments would be the Assistant Administrative appointments and it just gets a little muddy, and instead of doing that we just want to reaffirm it and clean it up, moving forward. Tthat’s the rationale. Page 2 June 17, 2020 Mr. Naso: So, under Finance, Molly can appoint four people. She appoints an assistant and that assistant can appoint four people. Is that what you are saying? Mrs. Raber: That is arguably the interpretation of the section… Mr. Naso: 124.11 section 8 talks about the four… Mrs. Raber: Deputies under 28, it talks about the deputies and assistants for the elected principle officers are authorized to act in place of that and then you use that in conjunction with A8 which says four clerical and administrative support employees for elected offices and each of the principle appointed officers. So again you could make that’s the (inaudible) Mr. Naso: Who is our Assistant Finance Director? Mrs. Raber: Carissa Burns. Mr. Naso: Ok. Mrs. Raber: But again, instead of doing that, since we are a Charter Community, it can just be the Finance Director’s appointment. This kind of cleans it up. We do not have to…we are allowed to differ from this. We just want to make sure that it is clear. And it is not just that one. We just thought it might be a good idea to reiterate all of these. Mr. Naso: So, under the new Ordinance, how many can each elected official appoint, unclassified? Mrs. Raber: What we would be doing is adopting it as it is. So, it would be reaffirming what has already kind of…where we are with everything as it was laid out in the grid. It is reaffirming that, and basically saying we know that if there’s differentiation, like if somebody goes back and counts and says there is one extra unclassified person than you should have, or how would you get there? We’re saying this is the proof. So moving forward, what I would anticipate is if there is. Like for example, in my department, we may not need to go through these steps where we have Civil Service because I have two people. So let’s say I hired a new person, I wouldn’t need to necessarily come back, but for the most part I think we’ll probably do it like this moving forward where Civil Service is looking at the grid for any change in status at all. We are creating new positions. And over the years, when you look after the history of the legislative action, often times they would do that and so that’s where you get some of these differentiations like at the Rec Center. For example, when they were creating those and you look through the legislation, it looks like they were creating that having go through as non-classified and being approved at that time to bring us to this. This is consolidating it all in one place. I guess is the issue. Mr. Naso: So, using your example, if you put a third person in your department, per 124.11, you can just appoint them. But what you are saying is we are going to do it this way. Mrs. Raber: I think it’s the best way and that way, there’s not an issue with that moving forward and everybody knows, ok it’s went through Civil Service and it went through City Council and so we’re exercising our authority. Page 3 June 17, 2020 Mr. Naso asked if there were any questions from the Commissioners. Mrs. Higham and Mr. Kot answered no. Mr. Naso: Ok, I will move to make a motion to approve Ordinance 43-2020 as written. (Mr. Kot had a question about the letters E and N in the FLSA column. Mrs. Raber answered, exempt and nonexempt. So that’s overtime issues.) Motion was seconded and passed 3-0. Mayor Kline stated that he is working with the Police Chief concerning the position of Property Evidence Room and will be working with Finance about the timing of requesting the test. He also stated that the person filling that position elected to move on in January. Chairman Naso stated that there is no longer a list for that position, so we would have to retest. Mr. Naso asked if the Law Department had any recommendations on how we would proceed the next time we give a written test. Mrs. Raber’s response was “nope” haven’t analyzed that one yet. I would assume that what you would do is you would request people to come, wear a mask, have hand sanitizer available, make sure they are socially distanced in a big room. So if you use the Community Center, there should be sufficient space. Since you know ahead of time how many people are taking a test, you should be able to plan accordingly. Have them bring their own pens or whatever, have a few that you can just wipe off. I think you could probably do it and still meet the guidelines. Mr. Naso stated that most likely the test we will give will be for that position unless something else comes up. I don’t think there will be a lot of candidates for that position, so I don’t see much problem. But if we get into one where we have 40, 50 people apply, it’s a different story. With the whole Community Center, I think we could do it. Mrs. Raber agreed and stated that if it were above 10, using social distancing, that’s perfectly permissible. Mrs. Higham wanted to know if there were any updates about COVID-19 and the City’s response and employees coming back and part-timers. The Mayor stated that your clerk, Allison, came back this week. Pretty much everybody’s back on board. Clerk of Council is back on board. The Mayor stated that our goal is to open up limited access to the City Hall on July 1. We’ll have a receptionist probably in the lobby receiving everyone, talking to them, stopping and keeping them there and making a phone call to the appropriate office to come meet that person either in here. Finance might do income tax stuff in here or the department head may elect to take them to their unit. The prep will be keeping everybody within the lobby. Mr. Naso questioned whether the public would be coming through the same front doors as usual. The Mayor said he guessed so and that they were going to do it inside here but Mrs. Raber brought up the fact that we use this as a our little meeting room and to have the public stand back there while we’re trying run a Civil Service meeting, it’s a public meeting, but it doesn’t matter. We do bring in some clients into this room so we can sit like this and talk. Meeting adjourned at 8:11 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