2025-08-26 Merit Appeal Board Minutes

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Merit Appeals Board August 26, 2025 MS. SAKAMOTO: But I’m only one person. CHR. CABANAS: It’s teamwork. MS. SAKAMOTO: So, I’m doing my best. CHR. CABANAS: Yeah, you are. You are. And I want to just—want to thank all of you for the exemplary job you’re doing. This is wonderful. I have one question. How—for the tuition program, I think I know the answer, but how did the money increase to about half-a-million dollars? MS. SAKAMOTO: Okay, so if you are not familiar—the program used to only be funded through—forget they called it—forfeitures from our Flexible Spending Account. So, for those that participate, and they don’t use all the money that they put into their account, all of that money comes to us, and we use that to fund County tuitions. So, I think it used to only be $15,000.00 every year. So, we couldn’t even give everybody all of the money that they had requested. We could, kind of, divey it up so it was fair. So, not a whole lot of people used to even know about the program or utilize it. And then, I think because of, like, recruitment efforts and trying to get more people interested in coming to work for the County, they wanted to use that as one of the incentives. And so, they increased the budget to about half-a-million dollars more than what we were normally getting, and so, now we have a lot more money to offer our employees. So, we did a campaign when we first changed all of the criteria. And we did informational sessions throughout one whole month, and people could just log in and listen to what we were— what the changes were to the program. And I think we got some people on board with that—and then, I think we did another round this year because we were seeing that the interest was dwindling, so we wanted to, again, bring it to everyone’s attention. I’ve also added it to New Hire Orientation as an incentive for them to stay with the County for, at least, a year—and you can benefit from that. So, I don’t know how they came up with that dollar amount—maybe Sommer knows—but that was something that happened maybe, like, two years now. MS. TOKIHIRO: Yeah, I think it’s been in the budget for a couple of years at that level. And, really, it’s—when we’re creating a career in government service, we need to provide opportunities for our employees to go through that professional development. So, for the Tuition Reimbursement Program someone needs to be enrolled in school and be completing all their course work on their own time. But they are—they can get reimbursed for tuition, books, certain supplies—and so, it’s a great opportunity for people interested in pursuing education to take advantage. Page 13