2023-08-30 Merit Appeals Board Minutes

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Merit Appeals Board August 30, 2023 If the Board was comfortable proposing something as far as any potential increase for the director of human resources, that's totally up to you. Depending on how you want to go, I can prepare the letter just as it was done by the director back in 2019, and submit that to the salary commission with your guidance for what to include. CHR. CABANAS: Okay. Thank you, Mr. Patel. Does anyone have any questions? MS. DE SOTO: I do. I was wondering for Question number 6 regarding the overtime. I seem to recall—updates provided previously by Mr. Leopoldino that there are other situations where HR staff has needed overtime. So, could the response to that be updated? MR. PATEL: Yes, definitely. We actually had quite a bit of overtime within the last year -and -a - half or so—mainly due to the retroactive pay increases with the current round of collective bargaining increases. CHR. CABANAS: Anyone else has questions for Mr. Patel? MR. KUNZ: Maybe not for Mr. Patel, but for this Board—what—knowing and reading the submittal of this response, what are our guideposts to consider for a decrease, status quo, or increase? I mean, percentages—what is it that we use as a baseline to determine, like, an increase of 5 percent, 3 percent, 2 percent? I mean, I have my own opinion of what I want. But are we bound by anything or is there a trend of some sort or percentage or COLA or something that we're actually following or abide by or— J, that might be a question for you more but—or is it just—it's wide open within reason, I'm assuming. MR. YOSHIMOTO: Yeah. I'm not aware of any statute or rule that sets parameters as to what the Board can recommend. I would defer to Danny. MR. PATEL: Yeah, I might be able to provide some helpful background. So, to answer your question directly, Commissioner Kunz no, there's nothing that really sets what this Board recommends. On the salary commission's end, under the Charter they need to consider comparable salaries for comparable positions in the public and private sectors. And whatever they set the County's department heads at, needs to bear some rationale relationship to those salaries. So, that's ultimately what they're bound by. And just to, kind of, give you a history of how that's played out in the past is they, typically, look at what the collective bargaining for the included employees increases are in the prior years and at least try to match those. Withso, currently, and at the last salary commission meeting, they did discuss in their open meeting and it's going to come up again at their next scheduled meeting next week Thursday just as a starting point to sort of kick off the conversation for them— Page 8