2025-02-25 Merit Appeals Board Minutes

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Merit Appeals Board February 25, 2025 The position still needs to be allocated by our Classification and Pay Division. And so, a position doesn't really exist until it's allocated. So, there could be fiscal years —we go back several fiscal years where there were positions that were approved in the budget that still have not yet been allocated. But this year, so far, year-to-date, we've allocated 57 new positions. In 2024, we allocated a total of 101; 2023, there were 66. So, you can see from the numbers that are the number of positions that the County has continues to grow. And so, vacancies have also continued to grow —although they did decrease between 2023 and 2024. And 2024, we had 620 vacant positions as of June 30''. That number is currently 684. The asterisks on below says that we're currently recruiting to fill 194 vacancies. So just because a vacancy exist in a department, doesn't mean the department is recruiting to fill for it — and that could be for a variety of reasons. Sometimes departments may be going through some kind of re-org. and they may elect not to fill positions until they complete that re -organization process; sometimes needs change and they decide that they're not going to fill a position —maybe they originally came to County Council and got approval for an Accountant. And then, by reassessing their operational need, they're like, "Hmm, we don't need that as an Account. We need it as something else" —so they may leave the position vacant to pursue whatever reallocation action. So, it's really at the departments discretion which positions they're going to fill and we're only recruiting for those positions that they come and tell us, "We're ready to fill this vacancy." So; out of all these positions —out of all the vacancies that we have, we're only actually attempting to fill about 200 of them. MS. BOND: So, is there any way to purge all of those ones that are no longerI don't know what the word is"wanted" necessarily? MS. TOKIHIRO: Yeah, so MS. BOND: Yeah, all these inactive ones that are, really, are never going to be filled. That wayI mean, to —it would change —certainly change the numbers. MS. TOKIHIRO: It would. And so, part of —we have an HR Task Force. The Mayor has created a HR Task Force to look at HR issues —and that was part of the discussion at our last meeting was evaluating all the vacancies that we do have and reassessing, from an operational need perspective, are they all needed and what alternatives might be there. So, departments will need to be looking at that. MS. BOND: I have another question that's not on this direct topic —but OSHA, the person in charge is planning on —canning OSHA as a department altogether. Does that, that which to me, just seems (inaudible) whatever. Page 18