2019-04-24 Merit Appeals Board Minutes

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Merit Appeals Board April 24, 2019 So, the request is for this person to assist with that as well as assist with opening new cases, taking phone calls. Every day we have to go and collect the mail for that division because that’s how our billing statements come in from a majority of healthcare providers. And we only have a set period of time to time to process those bills and get the payments out 30 days. So, the mail in that division is tremendously important, so every day somebody has to go through the mail— collect—get the mail, go through the mail, set it aside. Are these bills? Are these just regular correspondences—and the like. So, this clerical person would help assist with that, and it’s much needed. And we’re hoping that the administration and the council agrees to the creation of this new position. The second position I requested is, as I mentioned earlier, I took the HR assistant who was doing part-time work for workers comp, and health and safety. So, I took that position and I made it 100% work comp. So, I want to backfill that position—again, with that clerical position—where that clerical person will be able to come in and they’ll help the safety—health and safety division, so that they have the recordkeeping of all the training. One of the things the safety office does is they do the annual contractual agreements for safety equipment whether it be safety boots or safety—respirators or the like—that’s all handled within our office. And then, they also ensure that all the annual trainings are being logged, monitored, and being provided so that clerical staff would be responsible for inputting all that information. So, that’s the second position we requested from council. And then, the third position is a clerical position for our HR staff here. As you know, administration submitted a request for the creation of 72 new positions. It’s very simple for each department to say, “Yeah, I need ten”—“I need 20”—“I need 30”—but our department is responsible for doing all those recruitments, for doing all those on-boarding, providing all the new hiring orientations—and all that type of stuffs. So, I submitted a—my third request is a clerical person to help us here—my HR side of the world—here with processing all those, again, clerical—documenting, inputting information, and the like. So, that’s my third request for that position. The total amount of salaries associated with that was—it’s going to be approximately $68,000 and—for all three of those positions. So, again, that’s my request to council. I got positive feedback. Again, I was—my presentation was well received. I took my entire management staff to the presentation. I introduced all of them to the council members as part of my presentation. And I just briefly described their areas of responsibility because we have so much new council members, and I think they appreciated that. And one of the things I really—I feel strongly about is continued open dialogue, communication between us and council because as—so much of what I feel ends up being problems is because of the failure to properly communicate and just ask questions. Page 10