2024-07-31 Salary Commission Minutes

Home

Salary Commission July 31, 2024 MS. MORRISON: then that's something that we could go out and find some capacity to help—whether that's training, whether that's looking at some pilot projects for them I'm definitely open to that. I just want to be transparent, too, that I think our Administration and our Cabinet is super collaborative. And so, some of those relationships that we've built already—we're already having some of those discussions. And I think it moves with the speed of trust when it comes to those relationships and having department heads that are comfortable, coming forward and saying, "Hey, this is something that I want to pursue. How can you support that effort?" MS. GREENBAUM: Okay. Thank you. MS. MORRISON: Thank you. MS. NAMAHOE: Hi, Commissioner Namahoe. So, I want to thank you for approaching us and clarifying how to build a plane that you're currently flying and the importance of the wings to you and the engines to you. I confess, by reading it first, I didn't know that it was much a grant writing arm. That was always an assumption I had more about R&D or that within the larger departments that they had grant writing expertise on their staff or that—and I'm thinking of the Fire Department where a lot of the white shirts also wrote grants to buy some of their industrial equipment. And now, realizing not all of our departments have that size. So, what I'm asking to clarify is that, when at the end of the day when you look at where you're going, is that what you envision OSCER will be, in spite of its lofty name? You don't necessarilyI'm assuming, and correct me if I'm wrong that you don't see yourself having environmental management expertise on -staff and somebody's out there keeping the ruler, measuring the erosion and the sea level rising, and the temperature—although that might be on the dashboard you see—creating a dashboard and then chasing funding—kind of, right away to make sure that you still have gas in the areas you continue to fly the plane. But that we still don't—at the end of the day, it's 90% going to be grant writing. MS. MORRISON: I wouldn't say 90%, if we look at sort of the core functions around community engagement and outreach policy work, grant writing, and our database coordinator so, those are sort of the functions that we're doing. I just want to highlight because, I guess, that's probably the biggest amount of work that we've put in so far besides all the administrative tasks to set up an office, has been to go out and bring in these funds that are sitting there because it's really important, in order to make progress, in these areas of sustainability and climate change. The departments various departments, like you mentioned Fire they do go after their very specific mission grants that are for that. Our office would not play a role in that. Our office is Page 18