2025-08-26 Merit Appeal Board Minutes

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Merit Appeals Board August 26, 2025 departments within the County and they provide us with feedback on the type of programs that they feel might help us engage more of our employees. And so, one of the things that they want to pursue is more networking opportunities because they really feel like networking helps bring people together, it helps us to reach across to other departments and make connections where we might not have already been able to do that. So, they’re helping us come up with different activities that we can try and promote to bring more of our County workers together. So, that’s kind of in a nutshell a lot of the programs that we’re working on. So, it’s not just “training”—we’ve kind of expanded it, and part of it is to, also, look at how we can keep people here. Sorry—I forgot one more program. An important one is our County Tuition Reimbursement Program. So, that one was recently expanded within the last couple of years, it used to be a really small budget. But now, we have over half-a-million dollars that we’re responsible for. Nawai has that program. She works with our committee, she preps. all of the applications that come in, and we’ve helped a lot of people either pursue degrees or even go get their professional certifications or even—I think we had a Toastmaster’s person who wanted to just improve their public speaking and so forth. So, we’re trying to get the word out more, so more people will apply for the program and be eligible—but that’s another part of the retention side ‘cause they have to work so many year—at one year before they’re eligible and stay, so that we can benefit from that education they got. So, I think that’s pretty much majority of the programs that we do. I don’t know—do you guys have any questions or— CHR. CABANAS: Thank you, Jenny. I’ll open it up to the Board. Suzi, any comments or questions? MS. BOND: So, the tuition thing—that doesn’t help with, like, student loans or anything—that’s just going forward, not going back? MS. SAKAMOTO: Right. So, they had to have been working for at least a year and then, from there, any classes that they’re taking may be eligible, but we have all this eligibility that it has to go through. MS. TOKIHIRO: But working for the County, there are some Federal—like student loan forgiveness criteria that people can check into. So, if you work for the County, I believe it’s for about 10 years—I’m not sure of all the criteria but that will—that can benefit people that have existing student loans. MS. BOND: If they still have them in 10 years, the interest has gotten out of control. Page 8