 Meijer, Montemayer, Rindfleisch, Ryan, Sirich, Van Der Wiel is excused, Verhasselt, Wongamon excused. And Eric is excused as well. He called me last week. That's why I forgot about it. Quorum is president, Mr. Chairman. Very good. Then we'll continue on with the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Next item on the agenda is the approval of the minutes from the community to the whole meeting. I would entertain a motion to approve. And second, under discussion. Alderman Decker. Yes, under the housekeeping. I'm not sure what number it was exactly, but it was under the street assessments. We took the original vote to file it, and I was pretty sure that that got voted down, you know, unanimously. And then I thought when I came back up, I made it clear that I wanted it to be referred to the new committee the whole meeting. And does anybody, I was looking through the notes. I typed up the minutes from Alderman Hanna's notes and looking at his notes, what we thought we were called was it started with the motion to refer. And that that, and we had a discussion about would it be right for us to change the statute. And would that be fair to people who had been paying for years. And so then we thought what happened was that went down and then somebody motioned Marilyn actually, moved to file it. And Jim, you seconded it and that that passed, but we could have it backwards. I thought the discussion was around. We didn't need to refer it to the next committee the whole because one, we didn't think changing the statute was fair to 20 years worth of previous taxpayers. And two, we all know that the city's in dire straits and we want to do what we can for the people of Indiana and we've really already done that so that there was no need to pass it on. I thought that's the way it went down. So you want the ref to go look at the tapes? No, we certainly could. I wish I'd have thought of that when you're emailing out. Okay, because that affects Wednesday night's council meeting too because it has to be disposed of by then. So I don't know how quickly Channel 8 can get us a copy of the tape. Does anybody have any recollection of that vote? It's all in much mayor, please. Thank you, Chairman. Now, I don't remember all those details, but why do we have to have the information by Wednesday's meeting? Because Wednesday we can... Because it is on document 20... It's on a document that we're going to vote on to... No, to be forwarded to the next committee the whole in a document Wednesday night that we're going to tackle. So that document would be incorrect, but it could be amended on the floor. So if the body is okay with referring it anyway, we can still refer it. Steve McLean and Sue Richards, they'll figure out a way to handle it. Okay, so what do we want to do with regard to the minutes? Do we want to amend the minutes to reflect what Alderman Decker recalls? And apparently, Jim, I saw you nod in your head. You may recall it that way as well. That's my recollection. Okay, so Alderman Decker, do you want to move to amend the minutes to reflect that different vote? Go ahead. Here you go. Yes, I'd like to make a motion to amend the minutes to go to the new committee the whole meeting. So I would be changing the minutes. So instead of... I would transpose E and F. F would become E, E would become F, and the votes would... The motion to refer would pass, and the motion to file would fail. Is that... That's Alderman Decker's motion. Seconded. Okay, so on the motion to amend, all in favor? Aye. Opposed? No. Okay, one. And then that's on the amendment. Now on the motion to approve the minutes of last meeting. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay, motion passes. And I'll refer... I'll make that change, send it to Sue, and Sue will distribute it to you in the proper way. And then there will be no need to change the Wednesday Night Document 2548, I think it is. Okay, that brings us to item five. We have up until about 6.30 for Alderman Verhasselt to conduct a review of the non-rep pay plan. So with that, I will activate Bill's mic and... Oh, okay. In that case, I will... There you go. All right. Okay. Let me actually just take this out. That's all right. All right, as you know, we're going to be looking at the pay plan. And again, I'll be talking about what the goals of the discussion are here tonight, because this is a document that's approaching six months old, really, from its origin here back in last September, October. So I think it's important to put it back in that context as well, because a lot of things have happened since then. But what I'd like to do is discuss the details of the submitted plan. And by that, I mean the... It's the existing plan plus the changes, because I have used the existing plan that's been in place at, I believe, since the late 90s, is when it was originally enacted. So I've tried to use that as the base. Also take the opportunity tonight to educate a number of you in the room as to what some of the components are within the pay plan, because we're all pretty busy and it's a huge document to familiarize yourself with. But then probably most importantly is to just get a good dialogue going here as to what we think are positive components of a plan, a plan, not necessarily this plan, but any plan, and negative components of it. And then ultimately provide some direction as, you know, we've got a new HR director in store here, and this would be a great opportunity to provide that sort of feedback to her. The goals of the plan itself, as I'd mentioned, it was originally, I put it together back in September and October of last year and submitted it to the council, went through salary and grievance and so on. The idea, my idea at that point was to introduce it as maybe a leading step as to improving the pay plan. At that point, the pay plan was still intact, and there was a strong feeling, or at least there was a feeling within the group, the committee, especially to leave the existing pay plan in place. So the idea from my standpoint was to try to improve what we currently had rather than to toss it out. Again, the underlying ambitions of it, and again, is to change the culture of how we operate, how we issue pay raises, and how we provide performance incentives, or currently lack thereof in my opinion. I'd like to see the plan become performance oriented, entirely performance oriented. Currently the way it stands, our pay plan is set up. There's two major ways to raise within the city government as an employee, as a non-rep, and that's through the across-the-board, which is largely linked to the union pay raise that's been negotiated, and then there's the merit pay, merit performance incentive pay, each equaling roughly three, three and a half percent. They change on a yearly basis, but that's roughly what they are. The idea has again become performance oriented, and by that I mean rewarding the top performers, but also identifying those areas or individuals that are in need of improvement. Furthermore, eliminating some of the mechanisms that I think currently are in the pay plan that are not directly tied to performance. There are stipulations and phrases within there that provide pay increases for really, and again, this isn't my opinion, but for no practical reason that you can't trace back two performance to say that they've improved their department or improved the city service in any facet or form. Another underlying goal of the plan is to foster employee involvement. Currently the way the plan is set up, it's kind of, in my opinion, administered downwards with very little back and forth dialogue between the employee and the supervisor. And I think what I'm proposing here does that. Also, by doing that, you're fostering involvement or ownership by that employee, both in the department and within the city. And ultimately, if we do all those two properly and correctly, we would ultimately drive departmental efficiency. If we've got everybody working towards the chief's goal or the department head's goal, we should make for a more efficient department. Just to preview, the major changes to the plan, and again, it's a 30-some page document, and you'll have plenty of time to look at it here going forward. But what I would recommend is eliminating the across-the-board pay increase function built into the current pay plan. I would put more emphasis in turn on the merit pay program component. This went, again, this document went through committee. I had suggested to reduce the compression pay at least by half. I could see eliminating compression pay. I have a challenge with that, but the committee did choose to remove that component of it. So as this document stands, the committee has recommended to leave compression pay in place. And simply point, the compression pay is basically if you hire somebody that's close to your salary. They always need to be a 10% variance between your next subordinate that you always need to be as a supervisor earning 10% more than your subordinate. So again, not really tied to performance. And then again, probably as important as anything as what I'm going to present here tonight is establishing a true performance metrics, one that can be objectively measured by supervisors, the HR director, and so on. So with that, I'd ask everybody to pick up their packet here. They've got this beautiful document here on the desk. And I'll just any questions before we proceed? All the person kill some, please. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. May I ask now this is this the current pay plan that we have and you've just taken the pay plan and made some corrections to it. Correct? Exactly. Okay. Just wanted to have that made clear. Thank you. And all the person. All the person for hassle. Was there any discussion either in salary and grievance or in the work you've put together about separating the department heads from this pay plan? Right now you have department heads who get the same raise and same scales here as the subordinates. Frankly, I think it's kind of crazy to have always thought it was kind of crazy to keep those two combined or separated. Do you have any thoughts on that? I guess I could ask Ulliman Montemara, chair of the salary and grievance to comment to that. But I believe there was some light comment to that effect, but it does not actually, it's not demonstrated within this document. Marilyn, do you want to? We at salary and grievance did discuss it. We made no movement on that, but it was discussed. And a number of the department heads, I don't remember which one is in particular, but more than one, thought that idea was a good idea to separate it. I think it's an excellent idea. Follow up person? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And then may I ask, Dan, were these, did you consult with anybody on these? Is this your idea, your opinion? Did you, can you tell me the background on this? And it's been, like I said, it's been over six months, so it's been a myriad of people, including our existing HR director, the former interim HR director has had discussions. We've had discussions at the committee level at a pretty good length. I have talked to other cities as well in general, not divulging the exact details of our proposal, but just asking for their opinion. So, yeah, I think it's been fairly broad. We'll just run over the phrases here real quick so everybody knows what we're talking about because you'll see these references as we go through. Some are pretty straightforward, but as I mentioned, there's two ways to get a raise. There are two large ways of getting a raise within the current pay plan or the former pay plan or other. And that one of them is the across-the-board increase. And again, it's largely tied to the union negotiated annual rate. However, it is technically supposed to be an average of the consumer price index. The reasonably anticipated across-the-board increases for other represented groups within the city and for those around cities, non-represented groups around and other cities around the state of Wisconsin. And you'll see those specific cities outlined within the document. Department head for all purposes defined under this program includes the following officers and you can see it's laid out there specifically. Department head advisory committee. It's comprised of non-elected appointed department heads of the employer as defined by above and the city attorney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That's the specific phrase in which I felt that having department heads on a separate paid plan would make sense. Not that we have wonderful department heads, but human nature is what it is. They're going to make a recommendation that directly reflects them and I don't think it's fair to put them in that position either. So that's the phrase from our old thing that I think sparked that whole question. The department head advisory committee. Again, I think that's a valid point and should be addressed in future paid plans. Employees that are represented in this plan, any active permanent, full-time or permanent part-time, non-probationary, non-elected, non-rep-employed, not including seasonal. So again, the seasonal temporary and the extra help are all excluded from this paid plan. Employer being the city of Sheboygan. The market survey, again, you'll see the details of the cities listed here, but the gathering analysis of market information every three years by the HR director in order to determine the salary ranges for each pay grade. So this is an exercise that has been being done by former HR directors, presumably as the pay plan indicates every three years, to determine that our pay grades are set properly against those of comparable cities around the state. And then pay grade, a group of one or more classifications which have been assigned the same pay range for compensation purposes. All jobs in a pay grade have the same range, minimum, midpoint, and maximum rates. And then, I think this is the last one here, wow. Performance incentive adjustment. It's a base adjusting salary increase tied to annual performance evaluations. Again, we have the across the board, and then we have the performance incentive adjustment. The form that you have in front of you is a free sheet. This is going to drive that aspect of the pay plan. So you see, this is an evaluation form that department heads would be evaluating their employees on. And again, any raise that's driven from that document is applied to the midpoint of the current salary range. And Dan, one of the things that makes it so difficult is that the phrase base adjusting salary increase, right? Because then it compounds and compounds and compounds. It's not paid out like a one-time bonus like in the business world where this year you get it, but we don't tack it into your base salary. You have to earn it again the next year. So that might be a significant place where we could, I know you want to drive us toward a more merit-based system, making it so that that bonus or that performance incentive adjustment doesn't affect the base, could be a big step toward that. Deliver it in the form of a bonus. Right. That's another option as well or at least a portion of that. Then that removes its compounding feature which costs an awful lot of money after four or five years of all that. And then makes them on the hook every year to merit that. Right. Good point. Let's see here. Performance Appraisal Review Probation Period. For six months of continuous service as a non-rep employee, continuous employment is defined as a minimum of 130 days of active employment. And again, salary range, the pay range is assigned to a specific pay grade. So every job has a pay grade assigned to it and there's a range assigned to that pay grade of which an employee cannot exceed that pay range unless they they would have to be moved to another pay grade, but they cannot exceed that. All right. Now getting to the changes that I have suggested here, if we go down to, and again, there's a number of changes, but my goal here working on the document was not to try to totally recreate the wheel, it was more matter to buff it up a little in areas that I thought were probably the source points in my estimation. So there are other areas in here that you'll find that you probably disagree with as well, but I'd like to concentrate on the major areas and the first one being page 13. All right. Again, this addresses the section of the pay plan that deals with across the board pay increases and will be my suggestion that we abolish this portion of the pay plan. And by this, by no means does it say that we're handing along smaller pay increases, but what I'd like to do is redirect the pay increase through the merit performance area rather than through this section. So as it stands here, historically, or at least in recent history, the combination of the across the board and the merit pay would probably garner the average employee 6 to 7 percent between the two of them on an annual basis. Okay. So under my plan, we would be similar pay raise potential, but again, it would have to be a merit pay program that would have defined objective measurable goals put in place. Any questions on this section? I don't want to read through this. It's fairly straightforward. Again, it's an average of these three items here right now, which is across the board for non reps in surveyed cities, the consumer price index, and the city's union groups. Any questions? Concerns? All right. The next major change would then be going to page 14. And I'm very curious, again, I'd like to hear dialogue as we move along here by all means, but on the area of compression adjustments, again, it's not my cup of tea, but my suggestion originally was to cut them in half. They originally were 10 percent and 8 percent. I've cut them in half from 5 percent to 4 percent. Again, and what it's saying is that, I guess I could read through this, but should an instance of compression arise on rep, and his or her highest paid representative immediate subordinate, the affected employees department head shall discuss the matter with the HR director. In the case of an exempt supervisor position, compression is said to exist where the base salary is less than 5 percent higher. Again, this had read 10 percent, less than 10 percent higher than the regular base gross bi-weekly salary, excluding over time, or less than 4 percent, formerly 8 percent, than the regular base gross bi-weekly salary. Thoughts on this? I'll insert. Yeah, just a little background on compression issue. One of the issues that we ran over, and people know I was a former HR director, was particularly in the department head area where you say police and fire, or even DPW, where you have a very high percentage of overtime, particularly in DPW and police. And what has happened in the past is that even with the compression issue there being addressed, he had some employees that were, say, on the hourly basis and because of the overtime would not accept a promotion to a department head because they actually would take a pay cut. So, I understand what you're saying, but you've got to keep in mind that is an issue. And some way to address it would be to, I think, again, look at that compression issue again. But as I said, the experience we had there was that he had people that said, you know, I don't want to take a pay cut. And now it's probably because as an exempt employee, the department head, but they're not at the pay. So, I'll point that out. All in the month of May. Thank you, Chairman. And I agree with Alderman Sir because I think it isn't just DPW. It's the fire department. I think it's maybe all the departments that do have some employees that are earning so much with overtime that to take, to get out of the union and take a supervisory position is less money in all the departments. And not every time, but sometimes. And I certainly recognize that. I remember having those discussions back in committee at the time. I guess my issue with it is that in theory, we are providing at least the potential for a pay increase to an individual as the result of one of their subordinates being a high achiever. So if I have somebody working under me who's just performing gangbusters, putting in 80 hours a week, and works their way up the salary structure, they're going to hire and pay for no other reason than that they were a hard worker. I don't know if that's the way to go about it. I guess that my opinion wouldn't be no. Alderman Gischa. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If you're going to a performance-based system, compression has to either, I mean, if you're going to truly go to that, the compression really does in some way have to go away. You can't have both because it's just what you're saying. We have a very mature workforce here. I think we have new department heads in place now that are going to be in line for substantial raises if we had compression in place. I mean, big-time numbers. Because of our, I think, our pay has gotten out of hand over the years and not real balanced, but you can't have a performance-based system and compression at the same time. It just defeats the whole purpose. I've worked in jobs where I've had people working for me who've made more than me, but they were above and beyond and overachieving. The company I work for, I think probably right now, you have some mortgage lenders for the last year or so, or the last six months, making more than the CEO of our company because they're overachieving. But that doesn't mean the CEO should get a bump on top of it just because of some arbitrary calculation number. So it's tough to have performance and compression. I've never understood the compression thing. If you're here for a career or you're here for the money, you know, and if it's a career advancement to take a supervisory position, then great. If you want it, you're gonna just take it for the money, then you're taking it, and we got the wrong person on the job. Chairman Bell, could I ask Alderman Cerk and he looks like he's hitting his mic. I'm curious, if you want to add it. Let's address the problem of, you know, some comments that city employees overpaid. And over the years, we've addressed that issue quite heavily. We had Carlson Deppman who's a consulting firm that deals with a lot of public sector areas and comparing city shabuagan employees and that represent employees salaries to other, and we're somewhere in the middle. I mean, there is no exaggeration to salary for the people that work here. So we did, we had a remuneration committee several years ago. He's pounding on it, too. And the same results were. I mean, there were a couple positions of the 56 or so we looked at. There were three that were on the high side, but all in all, they were pretty much in the middle. Rebuttal. Alderman Guesha. And note that Alderman Cerk kept saying salaries. You add in benefits, which is a percentage component of salary with the Wisconsin Retirement Fund and our healthcare program. And Alderman Cerk, that would not be true then, correct? Are we talking salaries and, because we don't just pay salaries. Are we talking about public sector or talking about private sector? Private sector, which is what the remuneration committee was. Yeah. Well, yes, there was a factor there, but, you know, I worked in private sector for about 35 years, and we got merit increases in which we're compounding under our salary. We also got bonuses, you know, and little benefits here and there, and city employees they get straight pay and benefits. I'll give it up for their benefit package. All those. And I think a lot of people would. There isn't what, and I don't mean to be bashing on city employees, because it's not their fault. It's our fault by establishing unsustainable expectations. When we pay 42 or 44 cents in addition to every dollar we pay a city employee to go toward benefits, you can't sustain that. You just can't. You implode. And that's what we're doing. That's why we're employing. We can't sustain those salary, those benefit levels. And then you get a 6% or 15% increase on your healthcare portion of that piece. Now we've got the state of Wisconsin saying that part of the pension plan was wiped out because of the economy and they come back to us to refeed that. So they get the benefit, but they don't take the risk. And that's the difference. The taxpayers are filling that in. I don't know about anybody else, but you look at your 401k or retirement city. I'm not coming to the city and speaking to have the city kick mine in. It's a system that is just unsustainable for non-growth cities. It just doesn't have, it's imploding upon itself. And if you add benefits, and I remember that Renumeration Committee, if you add benefits to the pay, I believe they said 30% over what the general market would pay in the private sector. Please. I mean, in the private sector your benefit costs are saved for 40% to 45%. The city is probably around 50%. So yeah, there is a difference, but that is monumental difference as we talk about. I think it's larger. And we went through this as a body back when we were talking about this pay plan. It came up in the finance committee. We had a lot of city employees show up. It was quite a night. And one of the things that we kept saying was that it's not the city employees fault. It's been a decade or more of us setting unrealistic expectations. You can't have eight or nine or 10% compounding every year after every year after every year and have that be sustainable. It's just not. And that's not the city employees fault. The other thing is Alderman Gysha mentioned risk. There's no risk. Once you codify something like this, the employees of Kohler, the employees of out of the companies in Sheboygan, there's a lot of risk because the company can say, sorry, we're having a rough go of it. There are no increases. There are no cost of living adjustments. There are no merit pay. There is no bonus pay. And when you codify something like this, you don't have that option. And so by going to a merit-based formula or system, you reduce that entitlement mentality and give them a little more skin in the game for performance. Alderman Ryan. I agree with you a hundred percent, Mr. Chairman. And on top of that, what we're looking at here is, especially from the higher echelons of our workforce, they pretty much have something called job security, which you don't find in the private sector. You know, I mean, when there's layoffs involved, layoffs don't happen in the higher-paid echelons of departments. They happen, it's last in first out. And, you know, that doesn't happen in the private sector. In the private sector, when people are being laid off, generally it's the people making most the most in salaries that are being laid off. So, I mean, they have, you know, our city employees have job security that are affected by this, much more so than the private sector. And we have to remember that also, even though they may not have big bonuses, their benefit package is very generous. Their salary is very low. And, you know, there's a lot of people in the private sector and they do have relative job security. So, we have to take all that into consideration when we're looking at this. It's going to be quite a year. And, for those of us that will return to this body, we've got contracts up for negotiation. We've got this non-rep pay plan, difficult economy, and we've got all these feelings that were persons to city employees because we want them to know that they're valued and that they perform an important valuable service. And when a company doesn't do that, when a company doesn't live up to that expectation, people leave that company. People have options. And so, that's something else as well. We need to put this, we need to put these numbers in line for what's right for the city. And if employees choose to leave this city because they can get a better deal elsewhere, God bless them, that's good for them. We need to do what's right for them. There's nowhere is it written that they're entitled to 7% a year or 9% a year on top of 9% a year. That's not written anywhere. Or we're going to unwrite it, I suspect. And so, you need to do what's right for your family and if that takes you out of city employment because you can get a better deal elsewhere, God bless you. Go with God and succeed wherever you go. Alderman Verhansel, just to manage your expectations, we're about halfway through this show. Sure, sure, sure. I was struck here at a meeting. I think it was a joint meeting with City and County and the question came up not necessarily on this subject matter, but in the subject of employment and the question was just thrown out to the galley as far as how many city employees have been with the city more than 20 years. And there was just of those attending almost every single one raised their hand. So I mean that to me tell me that we've got a pretty good package here in place to have that sort of longevity. So again, this was a few years ago but I was a real memorable moment for me that we've got a good system in place or at least we've had a pretty comfortable system in place. Again, not looking to denigrate any employees. It's not their fault. It's a program that we've put in place with their feedback. Alderman Born. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just to build on what you were saying, Dan, I saw there was an article in the USA Today about a year ago that the average college student getting out of college before they retire is going to change jobs about nine times. Now, if we hire and this is historically, if we hire somebody right out of college that works for the city, I venture to say with this pay plan that they've had and the benefit package, that's going to be an exception to the rule that they're not going to change jobs nine times in their career. But in the private sector, that's what's happening now. You get a little bit better. You get a little bit, somebody working at Kohler Company is recruiting the company a little bit more on the 401k plan or a little more salary. They're gone and that's going to happen eight or nine times in their career. But in the public sector, that does not happen. When they hire on for the most part, they're here for the duration. And that's a huge difference between the private and the public sector. On the subject of compression, you know, to Alderman Gish's point, it would be my personal opinion that we get rid of the compression pay as a part of the package. Again, back in the context of the times that this was presented, it was an attempt to try to make something palatable to the employee group that we have in place. Not throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to say. So to try to make some improvements in there, but still keep it palatable to the employee base that we had so we could get some approval. So one of these, another stipulation that I added here was to increase the rating prior to this or prior to this document. One only needed to achieve a three on a scale of one to 10 to qualify for a compression adjustment. And again, we're not talking baseball here. Typically speaking, three out of 10 in the work sector would be subpar performance in my estimation, and it is by our own measurement. It would be qualified as below expectations, yet under the old pay plan, a three would qualify you for a compression pay increase of up to 10%. So there's just some of those nuances in there that I think need to be corrected. David. Okay. I'll answer it. Let's, we're comparing apples and oranges. When you talk about public sector versus private sector, keep in mind that over half the city employees are either police or fire. You're not going to have a police officer leaving Sheboygan and going to falls or going to cold very often because they stay in that job. Same with firefighters. Did we have turnover in the apartment heads? What do we think? Realist left? Tom Houghton left? Bill bulky left? Trudger legious left? I left? Rich Gephart left? We do have turnover and it's in more in the nonreposition. And I know that Rich is doing very well. Tom Houghton is doing very well and both are in the private sector right now. And so is the city. The city is doing very well since they left as well. We've got great new replacements. We've got Bill Bittner. We've got Angela. We've got Terry. And that's the way it works. You get some old blood moves on to its new opportunities and you get new blood in it. Opportunity for that new blood. That's a healthy system that doesn't get too comfortable. Alderman Guesha. I agree with my good friend and fellow First District Alderman Ed Suric. Except comparing apples to oranges I do completely disagree on. You're right. When it comes to you can't compare a fireman to a clerk. But we're not talking about fireman. This is the nonrep pay plan. Policemen are covered under mediation and have their own union. But from a nonrep situation a let's just say a clerk type position in the city you can certainly compare to three dozen different jobs in this community. I can't I'm trying to think of some specific nonrep jobs non-department head nonrep jobs that can't be comparable to those same positions out in the rest of the world beyond this building. They're very similar jobs moving paperwork in the court system filing papers working a counter taking dog licenses all that kind I mean that's real that's real comparable work we can do comparisons don't you think apples to apples to those types of positions in the nonrep side again. All of us are going to eventually say that most of the say clerk positions in the city for example in the city clerk's office you can't most of the positions in the city the clerical middle non-exempt positions are positions that at first it comes in they're trained the assessor's office what do you learn to become an assessor or assessor assistant in a private sector you can't you can't so in terms of turnover issue and in terms of most of the jobs are on the job training and it can't be duplicated it's the way it is out there too you can't change you can't have someone come from a private sector position and walk right into the assessor's office without many years of training no but the person who walked right into that assessor's office the first time had to be trained too and we need to watch the clock I know I don't want to make but those assessors guess what Gish's employer has hundreds of assessors that don't do municipal assessment but they look at documents they look at comparables they make judgments and they're invested with that's absolutely comparable I mean these jobs just because you can't learn municipal assessment anyway but working for municipality doesn't mean that the fundamental work isn't comparable on the outside Marilyn do you have one more point to make just one day yes and no some are comparable and some aren't the fire commanders are not the municipal development are not but there are some so it's it's half and half there are both okay then all the person claims thank you I think one factor two in terms of management in the government sector is you're a public figure and you stand out there what you make what mistake you make goes in the newspaper the next day whatever mistakes you make or poor judgment you're a public figure and I think you want to have quality people there who want to be there and are motivated so I do think there's there's a real shade of difference if I make a mistake at work nobody knows about it except my employees but you know the shaboggan press might find out about it if one of the department heads here makes a mistake or it's just not liked they can be brought through the press a number of times just for preference sake somebody likes somebody doesn't like them so I think it's a risk they take and somehow they take on more responsibility what are we saying that how are we going to honor their responsibility and the loyalty or whatever it is that we have to them because they are our employees a risk premium that there ought to be a premium built into that risk fundamental okay real quick real quick thank you and I would agree with Alderman and we lost department heads and we do want department heads and they are going to want to be paid as well we need to we want to attract the best people that we can and we are going to we need to pay them properly as well yes and our recruiting efforts seem to be paying up please thank you Mr. Chair and again I think to take away from this whole discussion for me is that there needs to be a balance we need to be as an HR director and as a council seeking information that helps us with the position in city in the private sector but we need to make that effort constantly alright here is I guess the potatoes of it as I see it it involves the performance and sound adjustment based on the evaluations and I'll just read through this real quickly but the incentive adjustments are granted to employees to encourage efficiency into reward performance when the city's economic conditions permit us our time on a job performance and sound adjustments are based upon his or her supervisors appraisal of the employees performance in relation to the performance standards and goals set therefore and again it needs to be based on a performance level that's been consistently demonstrated over a period of 12 months with a minimum of 6 months the establishment of the performance and sound adjustment this is an area that I'm curious to get some feedback on as well the existing formula to establish the across the board to establish a maximum payout on the performance instead of so what we've got here is to what I'm suggesting here again I'm curious to hear the feedback is that to determine the percent payout that we would be willing to pay up to we would be determining it by these three factors and again it goes back to the state and in this discussion has also taken on a point of should we just be staying within the state of Wisconsin should we be looking in Ohio Illinois for similar comparable cities are we boxing ourselves in a little bit I think there's a ton of merit to that as well again second factor part of the equation is the CPI and then lastly the city's union groups typically speaking again if we look at history we're looking at a number of somewhere around 4% to 4% we calculated this out historically speaking so this would say based on my suggestion here though we would allow the council the city would be willing to pay out performance incentive adjustments up to 4% let's say it's not a guarantee of 4% it's going to be based on their their criteria that's set forth with their supervisor but they can't earn as much as 4% now I believe it's the next page here's 17 I did put a caveat in here and I I really would be open to a little more room on this as well but in the second paragraph the employees fire exceeding the goals and standards set by his or her supervisor are to receive an additional 2% annual performance incentive adjustment above 4% that I just mentioned a few minutes ago and honestly I would be if we could set up objective very good quality measurable goals I would be open to putting this making a you know capability of up to 8% but again it comes down to having really definable measurable goals and it's something we currently don't have in place in my opinion that previous section the bottom of the previous page is that you were saying keep make that adjustment or strike that keep that okay because use that as a formula that doesn't seem that doesn't seem like performance to me though how does that tie to performance when it's non reps in comparable cities CPI and union raises how does that incent them incent a non-rep based on performance what this formula does is it does not directly guarantee anybody anything under this plan you could still come out with a 0% pay increase okay what this is doing is just setting up a number to work off of you know so that would decide the aggregated size of the pot of money that then could be distributed based on there exactly that make more sense exactly so we're saying in this given year based on these three circumstances we compute the formula this year we can earn up to 5% based on what else is going on in the world maybe this year it's 1% or 0.81% but does that make sense yes that helps so again under this plan you could be 0 or you could be 4% again with this additional caveat I put in there upwards of 6% pay increase you know we've got some very good a lot of non-rep very good employees here that I would think could qualify for the 6% or would have qualified over the last few years you know another alternative Dan would be to come up with what the city can afford from a pot of money for true merit pay and then give it to the department heads and say it's yours go figure out who deserves it you can give your rock stars $10,000 more a year if that's what they take and give everybody else nothing that would require our department heads to identify who the true rock stars are and I remember at the time in that difficult finance committee meeting there were members saying employees saying I've had a great year and I don't feel very valued right now you're telling me I'm not entitled to anything and we said it was too late but the idea came up hey why don't we just give a pot of money department heads lock themselves in a room and they don't walk out and tell them where the money's going and then the mayor I guess or somebody would be accountable for doing that for the department heads as well but the department heads would decide where you know it wouldn't be I'm entitled to it because I got a 7 or an 8 it'd be hey if we want to really keep our best best people all the merit money goes to them you don't get merit money for 3, 4, 5 what the heck is that you don't get merit money for showing up every day how do we make it truly merit based Alderman Ryan did you have a comment Mr. Chairman that's a great idea to put it in the hands of department heads because that's who the employees are working for provided that this is indeed bonuses and not something that is going to be a crude in salary from year to year to year to come and that's that's a great idea you have there and that's more in the private sector where you have you are paid for your performance and that that is done in a bonus fashion rather than a a step P increase or something of a sort that's a great idea on this also if you go to page it's towards the end of the year last I think it's is that what it is page 24 page 23 in your packet it's the performance incentive adjustment schedule this gives you an idea again of the culture that exists or what's been perpetuated but on the far left you'll see the rating description below meets expectations exceeds expectation there's a number of numerical value attached to it in the middle and then an incentive adjustment applied to it from 1 to 10 we've got individuals who theoretically could earn a two two and a half and still get a percent increase on their wage granted it's a small percent increase but it's sending the wrong message in my opinion we're talking a two out of a ten in a lot of companies that would be triggering a performance improvement meeting with your supervisor if you're regularly scoring numbers like that so it would be my recommendation it's not in this document but to strike that far right column two left columns they're the left in the middle so that we have employees need to understand what the rating system means as far as meeting and exceeding expectations but striking this implied incentive adjustment on the far right now here the last component of it is the performance matrix which starts with a but it's a title exhibit number four I believe it's about the fifth last page in your set of documents and how I would set it up I would recommend and again my expectations tonight would be for this committee to forward this on to the new HR director for her consideration as she develops the new pay plan here in 2009 but this is my opinion going forward we would have a scoring metric similar to what you see here as keep the zero to ten you can see the definition here four to five is meeting the slightly exceeding standards for his or her job satisfactory work obviously a zero is currently far below ten as far is performing in excess now within that so that's the criteria one to ten ten being good I would set up two different categories here we've got general performance then we've got personal performance and under general performance it's going to mimic to some degree the performance evaluation criteria that you see here on the single sheet what I've taken out of the five categories which I think maybe you're the most meaningful because in my opinion there's a lot of here in the terminology here as far as cooperation versus you know aptitude ability to learn there's some duplication there so what I've done is let's take the top five and I've chosen quantity of work quality of work employee initiative cooperation and attitude now these are going to be fairly vanilla categories but I think there's something they need to be part of a scoring metrics and an employee evaluation for instance under quantity of work do they completely routinely complete their workload does employee utilize all the resources around them do they regularly require regular encouragement to finish tasks those types of questions that can be asked and my vision for this document would be that come December or January of a given year that a given department head would sit down with their respective employees whoever they have that qualified on the non-rep plan and we could use Chief Listosky sit down with his direct reports and they would negotiate what they think are suitable criteria going forward and agree to that come back to it mid-year see that they're not entirely off course and then the final the final examination would be the following December or January again the first five categories would fall under general performance criteria and then the next which I think is the most meaningful and it's the one that I'm probably most familiar with which by the way I would recommend giving something like this a 40% weight between the two I've been part of programs where it starts out at 50-50 and as your experience grows it diminishes those top categories maybe fall to 10% weight because it becomes expected of you as you gain experience that those are given criteria and more of the performance then becomes weighted in personal performance evaluation criteria and I gave some examples here again using the same scoring metrics of one to ten if we used the 9-11 response or the ambulance service for instance again this is a sample theoretical but if if Chief Listosky and one of his employees were to sit down and one of the criteria could be for one of his direct reports to identify potential inefficiencies within the emergency response system and reduce response time by 15 seconds per call I don't know if that's practical they would be the two that negotiate that out and determine that but again looking at tangible measurable objective criteria that they can agree upon and the bottom line would be to improve the performance of the department if we looked at tourism an example could be increasing room tax revenue by 5% in a given year or the number of events that are held within the city in a given year again that would be a category that would get 60% of the weight I would say minimum if we looked at finance for instance a possible performance criteria could be works with department heads to hold departmental cost within the approved 2009 budget and then they're obviously evaluated on that that criteria and then lastly an area in planning develop and begin to implement a Taylor Heights revitalization plan and something that Paul I could lay out to it could be Chad for instance one of his objectives in a given year whoever she may assign that task to that he begin or develop and begin a revitalization plan in the Taylor Heights area so things like that I would recommend at least three category three performance criteria personal performance criteria in addition to the 5 up above and again using the weighted instance the person and this category would have a good score 435 if you combine that with the score above the general performance they would have an overall rating of 727 and using the scale that we have that would be qualified for a very good personal performance rating and would qualify them for probably if you know if we're going back to that 4% ceiling or 6% say 4% theoretically this person would be in that 3% category room for slack between the department head and the employee to negotiate this out but again it allows the employee to take ownership in their job rather than talking about things only things like quantity of work quality of work cooperation attitude those are I just think those are far too subjective thoughts from the committee on this performance matrix I have a question perhaps for Angela as an HR professional are we as a city are we big enough our department's big enough that doing a forced distribution would make sense and forcing department heads to say to put their employees in a curve where they can't everybody can't be an 8 or a 9 or 70% of them can't be 8s or 9s are we big enough that a 4th sort might make sense or what are some of the risks of that do you want to I'm sorry step up to a micro you can use Jody's just right there okay thank you to answer your first question however I would really like to defer all questions and answers to the new administration so that I can provide so that they can provide me with additional leadership as we go forward exceptionally politically correctly can my question is not about I'm not committing you to anything I'm simply asking the question does force sort what are the benefits and risks what are the upsides and downsides of forced distribution but again to answer your first question yes we are large enough to do that okay all right thank you I didn't mean to put you on the spot I thought it was innocuous Alderperson Gisha see Alderman Sarek she has no experience in in the in the public sector yet she answered that question like a real politician so you can come right out and into city hall at work Alderman has I guess that concludes my presentation you know I'm curious as to the feedback because I think this is a critical part in Angel I have talked about these components and I think we're in agreement generally that we need to drive more performance more of a performance aspect within to the into the pay plans so okay Alderman Mottamaya Alderperson Mottamaya thank you Alderman Val thank you Dan for doing this and Bernie Romer is preparing an RFP to send to different companies to prepare pay plans for us so your information will help so I thank you for that okay Alderman Ryan thank you Mr. Chairman yeah I'd like to thank Dan for this presentation I was actually looking at tonight as a waste of time considering that it was the end of basically the end of this council and Alderman Verhassel has decided not to join us again next council year but it's been very informative and I would like to thank him for making a great presentation this evening thank you and Alderperson Clayanis thank you I just a question for Ed Surick from his experience do you find that department heads do a good job of evaluating people on a with a system like this because it can be a joke or it can be very well done how do you see you know how do you see department heads handling instruments like this in your experience well I brought out that we've always had a merit portion to the day plan and that the evaluation we're looking at today is a few years in the years and they must say that they spent we forced each department head to do the evaluation by July of each year kind of for the budget I would say they did a pretty good job yeah so they were serious and as good as I've seen in the private sector so in terms of management style I'd say that the public sector managing people do a good a job as as you see in the private sector and Alderman Zurich brings up a great point these are all human systems any benefit system is subject to the human foibles this one I remember back when we were tackling this the first time in the finance committee the research showed that 80% of city of the non reps got a very good or above and again that's just and all it reveals is that department heads are being held to account is that 80% of my people are very good or above that's unrealistic because Alderman Ryan and I think that goes back to what you suggested Mr. Chairman putting the increases in the hands of the department heads if the department head has X amount of cool for bonuses for merit paid I think that you will not find everybody scoring the 80 to 90 percent thank you Alderman Boren thank you Mr. Chairman I would make a motion to refer Alderman Verhassell's draft proposal to the Salary and grievance committee of the new council I'll just leave it at that and then hopefully that'll be referred then to our new HR director as that she can use perhaps use some of this draft proposal and what she comes up with for the non rep pay plan but I would make that motion to refer to salary and grievance committee of the new council second motion and second to refer to the salary and grievance committee of the new council under discussion Alderman Boren thank you I do think that this particular document and and Dan Verhassell's presentation tonight will be given to Bernie Romer before we meet as a new salary and grievance after the new mayor is elected I would think he will get this perhaps tomorrow or the next day Alderman Guesha just a question is that a budgeted item is what a budgeted item are you sending out an RFP to to solicit companies to do a study yes really okay someone correct me I didn't think it was Alderperson Kittleson with more information thank you I'm wondering is that not an RFI request for information I think so I don't think it was an RFI that right okay from my you know attending the last I thought that maybe was it but maybe we need to double check on that Alderman Guesha and I'm just thinking great if he's going to go through all that work it has to be somewhat established in the budget the line item in the budget that if he does that and to pick one then you have to pay for it I don't think that's currently budgeted in the in the HR department just give a heads up so somebody doesn't do a lot of work and there's no money okay so motion second discussion on the motion to forward to refer okay then we will take a voice vote just so we can Warren I Bob I'll abstain Decker I Guesha I Hannah Heidemann I Kittleson I Clioness I Meyer I Montemayer I Ryan Eric Brian Hassel All eyes motion carries motion carries thank you very good so that concludes item number five under adjournment I entertain a motion to adjourn signed by and under discussion want to wish both mayoral candidates that are in the room good luck tomorrow and the Aldermanic candidates as well good luck tomorrow's big day if you're watching us any other comments under the adjournment all in favor aye opposed we stand adjourned