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HomeMy WebLinkAboutJuly 12, 2021 Council Special Meeting COMMON COUNCIL OF THE CITY JEFFERSONVILLE, INDIANA July 12,2021 Special Meeting Minutes The Common Council of the City of Jeffersonville, Indiana met for the Special Meeting in person in Council Chambers on July 12,2021. Council President Owen along with City Clerk Gill called the meeting to order at.6:01 p.m. ROLL CALL: The roll call was conducted by City Clerk Lisa Gill and those present were Councilperson White, Councilperson Burns,Councilperson Paris, Council President Owen, Councilperson Webb and Councilperson Hawkins. Councilperson Ellis arrived late to the meeting at 6:13 pm and Councilperson Croft arrived at 6:48 pm. Council Vice President Maples was absent from the meeting. NEW BUSINESS 1. Kim Calabro and Heather Metcalf Civilian Employees Benefit Packages—Mrs. Calabro stated the first ask is for a consideration of a 457 match up to 4%for civilian employees. A lot of our civilian employees don't work here for the 20 years of service it requires for retirement or-believe that the INPRS retirement check will sustain them and unfortunately that just is not the case. One of the things they are planning on doing internally is spending some more time on explaining what is needed for retirement and helping employees to understand that. What they are proposing is that after one year of employment the employee would receive and automatic 1%contribution from the City. Their hope is after the employees see how that grows they will begin contributing and then the City would match up to 4%. Controller Metcalf discussed the impact of this request to the budget stating that the 1%automatic contribution based off of current salaries would total$96,657.60. If 100%of employees participated at the 4% level the total cost based off of current salaries would be$386,713.60. Councilperson Burns noted that it would be very unlikely that they would see 100%participation at a 4%match. The second request for consideration was regarding vacation time. Currently civilian employees receive 5 days after one year of employment, 10 days on their hire anniversary on years 2-4, 15 days on their anniversary-on years 5-14, 20 days on their anniversary on years 15-24, and 25 days on their anniversary on year 25 and every year after that. It was discussed that in the current job market, people value their time off and it is difficult to recruit new hires with this current policy. Ms. Calabro discussed the current policy for police and fire and their vacation time accrual and proposed a new schedule for civilian employees that closer resembled their policy. The new proposed schedule was 5 days accrued after 90 days of employment,an additional 5 days on the one year anniversary of the employees hire date, 10 days accrued each anniversary date on years 2-4, 15 days accrued on each anniversary date on years 5-9, 20 days accrued on each anniversary date on years 10-14, 25 days accrued on each anniversary date on years 15-19,and 30 days accrued on each anniversary date starting on year 20 and each year after that. Councilperson White said he would like to see the schedule to match the police and fire policy. It was discussed that while this wouldn't have a direct amount associated with the budget, it could incur costs associated with overtime (or additional employees) needed to handle having employees with more paid time off. Mrs. Calabro will discuss with-department heads the resources that would be needed in order to make sure that staffing remained at the minimum requirement to get the job done for each department. Page 1 of 3 There was an additional discussion regarding Civil PTO. Currently those employees hired prior to 2006(39) receive 80 hours of PTO on January 1st of each year while the employees hired after that date receive 48 hours of PTO on January 1st Councilperson White said he would be in support of seeing a request for those who are earning 48 hours each year to move to earning 80 hours each year. The third request for consideration was to offer the civilian employees a cost shared or provided short term disability and long-term disability, or just a short-term disability insurance plan. Mrs.Calabro and Mrs. Metcalf provided the Council with a chart of different options for these plans and stated what they recommended would be the Principal Plan. Currently 72 employees pay for a short-term disability plan on their own so they feel this would be a welcomed contribution from the City. It was discussed that the rates provided are based on premiums for doing both the short-term and long-term package and if the City elected to just offer the short-term disability the price noted would likely increase. In order to get the rates presented there would have to be 100% participation so it was discussed that the City would need to provide that benefit. Councilperson Hawkins asked if Mrs. Calabro could get the rates for the plan if the City just elected to offer short term disability and Mrs.Calabro said she would get those rates for the Council. The fourth request for consideration was to look at the retiree heath insurance benefits. Mrs. Calabro outlined the current benefits for health insurance for retirees. The police and fire retirees pay the rate that they paid while they were still employed however civilian employees have a large increase in the cost for health insurance after retirement. The fifth request is for consideration to offer a paid maternity leave. That could look differently depending on the requests of the Council. There could be a stipulation that it would not be offered until an employee had worked at the City for a predetermined amount of time. Council President Owen discussed he would be in support of both maternity leave and paternity leave being offered. He suggested a starting point for discussion being 4 weeks paid maternity leave and 2 weeks paid paternity leave. He stated he would be in favor of a stipulation being put in place that the employee had to be employed by the City for a certain amount of time before the benefit would be offered. The sixth request for consideration is that part time employees get some sort of holiday pay or vacation accrual. Mrs. Calabro stated we have many part time employees that work 28-32 hours a week and have regularly scheduled shifts and it would be great to see them get some sort of benefits as well. She proposed that for holidays it would only be given to those employees who were scheduled to work the shift that fell on the holiday and only for the scheduled number of hours. Council President Owen stated another thought was to bring back longevity pay. He stated he is not in support of this however he wanted to make sure all requests were discussed. ;Councilperson White said this thought came about during negotiations and he feels it would equalize the playing field. Councilperson Hawkins advised that he is not against any of these for consideration however he would not be in support of longevity pay returning. To him,that is like a retroactive pay and they would be paying people a higher wage than they agreed to work for at the time. Councilperson Burns and Council President Owen both agreed they would not be in support of longevity pay returning either. ATTORNEY COMMENT: Corporate Counsel, Les Merkley—Not present Council Attorney, Larry Wilder—Not present DEPARTMENT HEAD COMMENT: Mrs. Calabro—Mrs. Calabro thanked the Council for their consideration of this and she appreciates all of their work. Mr. Metcalf—No comment Page 2 of 3 Mr.Ashack—Mr.Ashack thanked the Council for their consideration of these requests and he appreciates anything that they can do to give incentives to stay employed at the City would be great. PUBLIC.COMMENT: Garry Gillespie—1107 Birchwood Dr.Jeffersonville, IN—Mr.Gillespie stated he currently works in Wastewater. He wanted to discuss how the Council touched on days off and how they weren't as interested in discussing the Personal days with the Vacation days but they were willing to give maternity leave. There are a group of people getting 10 days and a group of people getting 6 days. He doesn't understand why a person's who has been here longer personal needs are more important than someone who was hired after that specific year. There are a lot of young families who may need personal time for sick kids. It would be great to even the playing field instead of going by when someone was hired. COUNCIL COMMENTS: • Councilperson White—He is very happy they had this meeting. He is excited about putting some of these benefits,as much as they are able to afford, into place. We are moving in the right direction by doing this. • Councilperson Burns—He agrees with what Councilperson White said. We need to retain our employees. • Councilperson Paris—He thinks this was a great meeting and they are on the right track here. He wants to digest some of this and is sure he will have some questions. • Council Vice President Maples—Not present. • Councilperson Croft—He is glad they had this meeting and is sure they will get through this process. Last night in the MLB draft Jeffersonville's Gabe Bierman was chosen so congratulations to him. • Councilperson Webb—He thanked Mrs.Calabro and Mrs. Metcalf for their presentations,they made him aware of a lot of things that he was not aware of at all. • Councilperson Hawkins—He stated he agreed with Councilperson Webb,they did a great job of presenting this information. He would like to see what the short term disability cost would be without the added long term disability. • Councilperson Ellis—No comment • Council President Owen—He thanked everyone who came, he appreciates the interest. Council President Owen also thanked Mrs. Calabro and Mrs. Metcalf for putting all of this information together.-It is a lot of work and something they have talked about for a long time without actually having the meeting. He understands the frustration around PTO days being offered differently based off of the hire date, he's not sure what the thought was in 2006 when they made that decision: He thinks moving the rate of accrual on vacation will help offset that difference. ADJOURNMENT: - Councilperson Hawkins made the motion to ADJOURN the meeting at 8:00 p.m. APROVED BY: Matt Owen, President ATTEST: Li a Gill, Clerk. Page3of3