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HomeMy WebLinkAboutFEBRUARY 29, 2016COMMON COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF JEFFERSONVILLE, INDIANA WORKSHOP FEBRUARY 29, 2016 The Common Council of the City of Jeffersonville met in a workshop on Monday, February 29, 2016. Council President Owen called the meeting to order at 5:58 PM. MEBERS PRESENT: Council President Owen, Council Vice -President White, Councilperson Jahn, Councilperson Maples, Councilperson Gill, Councilperson Hawkins, Councilperson Samuel. Absent: Councilperson Webb, Councilperson Zastawny I. Kim Calabro — Human Resources Ms. Calabro introduced Liz Gross from ParkLand HR Services, LLC. Council President Owen requested the Ms. Calabro bring Ms. Gross in to go over the current competitive market for employment. The priority today is to put before the council the recommended pay grade changes (seasonal pay grades as well as entry level for the outlying employees). Liz has been working with the City since 2009. Got involved because the mayor was interested in performance management which would allow a more structured evaluation of employees that would in turn allow the City to pay employees based on their performance. In order to do that a few things had to happen, we came up with new job descriptions for all employees and also identified a need to do a compensation market survey because performance management cannot be done if you don't know how the people are paid. Prior to the pay grade system, employees were just paid based on the ordinance. Initially this was set up to be reevaluated every 2 years to keep the compensation market survey current, recently there was a decision made to defer the every two years to as needed so since 2012 there has not been a change in your pay grade and ranges from a market standpoint. As a result there is difficulty with internal compression and hiring. The other part that has not been addressed in the compensation market survey were outliers as well as the entry level positions. Moving forward the recommendations are to adopt and utilize a Seasonal Workers Pay Grid. The change you will see is that the base pay rate is at $8.50 an hour as opposed to $7.25 which is the current federal minimum way. The concern is there has been a big push for minimum way to be increased and local communities have passed ordinances to increase their minimum wages and there is a need to be competitive. What was called the part time pay grade was renamed to the entry level pay grade. What these positions consist of is all of the outliers. They don't fit nicely into a specific category or seasonal work. We have found that something needed to be done with this category. We did not want to label this as part time because you could in theory hire someone full time for a position that would fall into this category. 1 Council President Owen asked about the entry level positions and if those are increased per year that would fall into the ranges that increase 3% based on performance? We would hope that these would be evaluated annually and increased as determined appropriate. Referring to these as entry level A and entry level B pay grades. Pay starts at $8.50 an hour. Council President Owen asked if by doing this, we would have returning 5th year lifeguards being paid the maximum amount. Lifeguards are paid differently because there is a qualification behind the job. Do we have a number of lifeguards that will increasingly dramatically based off of what they were being paid last year, or was there already an increase due to being a return employee. Returning employees were being paid at an increased rate because they were returning. This pay grid also already takes into account the returning rates for this year. Councilperson Hawkins asked if anyone would be paid less as they made last year due to moving to this pay grid. The way the City has done that in the past, that employee would not make less they just would not get the same increases as other employees. Council President Owen asked what the impact this change would have on the budget. This is an estimate, based on the previous numbers we have had 232,000 if we use the $7.25 and 298,000 to move to the $8.50 base pay rate. For the Shallow Water Pool, instead of hiring a full lifeguard for that we will have a Shallow Water Guard who will be paid Tess (which will save a substantial amount of money). All new lifeguards will be hired in as Shallow Water Lifeguards so nobody will take a pay cut due to that. They will have to start in this position before they can move to a full lifeguard position. A number of the current employees are already in this pay grade, so really it will just affect new employees. Councilperson Samuel asked if there are four guards that watch the small pool and if not how many. Mr. Northam answered that at any one time there are three attendants to the Shallow Water Pool. By having different position watching over that area it would take the center from one large rotation of guards to two smaller rotations of guards, one for the big pool/slides, and then a rotation for the Shallow Water area. Councilperson Samuel asked how large the Shallow Water area was and if there was a policy that parents cannot drop their kids off or how do we handle that? Councilperson Samuel stated normally you would think that the parents would watch their children. Ms. Calabro stated they have talked about fencing off the Shallow Water area and putting signage up that you are swimming at your own risk. Council Attorney Lewis asked to make sure there was a minimum age for children to get in unattended by an adult. Mr. Northam said in the rules it states that the child has to be a certain age before they can be unaccompanied by an adult. Councilperson Jahn asked about the specific pay range and if people not in that range would be brought up. Ms. Gross stated anyone who was below the entry level of $8.50 2 would be brought up to that and anyone above would stay at their current wage until the performance evaluation was conducted. Councilperson Jahn asked if the increase was accounted for in the numbers provided or if they would hold off for a year before conducting those. When the Council approves raises, they are considered alongside of the full time employees. It is recommended to approve and utilize "up -aged" compensation pay ranges for current pay grades. Social Security Cost of Living Index is what was used to do this. With the "Up -Aging" the estimated impact to bring into the new pay grade range is $22,704. In the past there has been a concern because there has been a cap on pay. It has effected a few employees however by "Up -Aging" it would eliminate all of the people who fall into that category with the exception of two (meaning only two City Employees would be capped out in their pay grade — these employees are unordinary circumstances being on is a 37 year employee and one is a 25-27 year employee in the same jobs. The City may need to focus on compression (those who lower than mid -grade). We have looked at our external market, but we should also look our internal market for people who are working in the same pay grades. Ms. Gross is not saying that there is a problem in the City, we just may want to look at some of the individual employees to determine if it is a performance issue or a situational issue. Councilperson White asked if there was this inequality in pay, there should be a paper trail of performance evaluations that are not up to expectation to back those up. Councilperson Samuel asked if there was a recommendation to address the employees that are capped out. Ms. Gross stated if employees are capped out they can always move positions to be compensated more. If you continue to move the paygrade eventually the capped out employees will no longer be capped out. There are also other options, offering more PTO, a onetime bonus, etc. Council President Owen stated in 2012 there was a Targe number of changes to bring those who were below the paygrade up to their paygrade. We spent a large amount money doing that. By revisiting this every 2 years or so we could prevent those large gaps from occurring again. Ms. Gross recommended doing this every 2 years. Councilperson Samuel stated one reason that this hasn't been revisited every two years is when we post a position we seem to get flooded with applicants so it doesn't seem that we have a problem getting them in the door. Ms. Calabro would like to submit this Ordinance to the Clerk's office for the next Council Meeting. Ms. Gross stated her estimates are on the high side. The 'up -aging' estimate is using the current numbers of employees and is pretty exact. 3 MINUTES Minutes from the Regular Council Workshop February 29, 2016 Councilperson White — the Chili Cook -off, in the past the Council has sponsored a table, thoughts about that? It's $400 for nine tickets. Councilperson Gill made a motion to sponsor the table with Councilperson Maples seconding, PASSING on a vote, 7-0. Councilperson Maples made a motion to ADJORN at 7:01. PM with Councilperson Jahn seconding. APPROVED BY: AUF,STED: i.z,_L Vicki Conlin 4