2025-06-24 Merit Appeals Board Minutes

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Merit Appeals Board June 24, 2025 meetings related to development, since the development is basically done, and then the shift will go to testing. But that’s a big—big project. I think that that’s all I would specifically note for the Board, but I’m happy to answer any questions. CHR. CABANAS: Ms. Bond, any questions for Sommer? MS. BOND: No. I just think that that’s probably wise to have people in the same room, ‘cause I know when I’m on a meeting without people in the room, then I can tend to wander off myself. So—and especially, this is such an important project to get off the ground that you really need to make sure they know what they’re doing. So, good job. MS. TOKIHIRO: And they all seem to really enjoy it. I mean, I think that there was initial resistance but even for us to be able to all be in the room when the developers were here between even Finance staff, and then HR staff, and they really enjoyed it—and it is good to foster and build those connections. And I hope—I actually saw some of our newer employees in our Finance Department just become more confident—confident in themselves, confident in asking questions because they feel like that—then you’re provided peer support. And so—and that was great to see—and so that is—and that’s something that’s carried forward. And so, I think that there’s—yeah, a lot of good benefits to it. CHR. CABANAS: Mr. Thomas, any questions for any of the areas? MR. THOMAS: I’m good and no questions. But I agree with what’s been said already about the Zoom meetings. It’s like you have somebody siloed in their office or something and their screen goes dark—did they not like what you said or do they have to go shishi. No, it’s—that’s a good move to have everybody together. CHR. CABANAS: Mm-hmm. And I agree, also. It just allows for the bouncing of questions— and sometimes one person will think of something that another person didn’t—and then, they learn that way. And, especially, when you’re implementing a new system, you want to try to always be ahead and think of what you really need, but it’s not perfect because once you implement it, then you’re going to see other things come up and then you have to deal with that. So, the more thought given ahead of time, hopefully, will minimize that later once you go live. Yeah, so that’s good. So, did I hear you right—they have laptops? MS. TOKIHIRO: Yeah. So, our staff—after COVID we actually were able to purchase a certain number of laptops for our staff. CHR. CABANAS: Oh, wonderful. MS. TOKIHIRO: Yeah. So, it’s handy. But, yeah, it’s nice that they can—it helps that they’re all in the room with their laptop, as much as we can project this information onto the big screen Page 13