2023-08-30 Merit Appeals Board Minutes

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Merit Appeals Board August 30, 2023 CHR. CABANAS : I agree with you, Ms. De Soto, and Mr. Kunz to give a number is, to me, not appropriate for us. But I really would like to see our director position salary to be equitable and maybe even a little bit more than Kauai and Maui because of the size of our island. There are a lot of challenges that are faced with HR—and not only for travel, but to implement programs on a large island such as ours. And the employees really do so much with so little over the years that, to me, it's—and this is not the fault of any of them—it's—give them adequate tools and equipment. Pay the director an adequate salary so that you have the leadership there. You have the recruitment and the retention for the director factored into with the salary and that the department gets a better budget because I tell you there's so many things that the employees would have wanted to do, but their hands always tied—couldn't claim overtime, couldn't do this, didn't have money for that, keep the status quo. Why? They're Central HR from them it helps all the other departments and agencies. So, yes, boost the directors salary. I'll leave it up to the salary commission that's their kuleana to do but beef up that dollar amount so that it's not less than Kauai and it's not less than Maui. We have 2,000—about 800-2,800 employees on a large island. I'll leave it at that. MR. KUNZ: Okay. I was doing some math, `cause that was my weakest suit in college. But I got to tell you—and even if we threw something out like this -2018, you said was the last— what astwhat is that like—counting 2018—five years. Yeah, that's what good mathematicians do—and I already used my toes earlier. So, I am going to throw this out and you guys can think about it, that we actually do recommend a 20 percent increase and it would bring this 128,628 to 154,353. CHR. CABANAS: 154 MR. KUNZ: 353. Not higher than—we're higher than Mauiwe're, obviously, higher than Kauai. And they still, we may not even get 20 percent—that's a kind of large ask for five years—divide that by five years, per year increment. So, I just want to throw that out there. If we have to come up with a number and we want to move forward and not postpone this—and I don't know how much more information we think we need to ascertain, but with what we have in front of us, which is pretty raw—it's something for, I think, the Board to consider. And, again, twenty minutes ago, I would have thought that would have been unreasonable but, somehow, I almost think it's actually pretty fair. MS. MATHEWS: I have a question. Are the benefit packages the same on all of the counties or do they differ? Page 17