2026-03-20 Merit Appeals Board Minutes

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Merit Appeals Board March 20, 2026 CHR. CABANAS: Okay, any other? Niel, you have something to ask? MR. THOMAS: Well, I think I would like to know a little bit more about Classification and Pay Division. I’m impressed with how many of these audits and other kinds of reviews go on. Is there a backlog in that department? You mentioned that some of the ones that need to be looked at are pretty old, and I wonder how many people are in that division, and what sort of skillsets do you look for—for people who can do that kind of work efficiently but accurately? MS. TOKIHIRO: So, right now, we just added a position. So, it’s a division of three. MR. THOMAS: I saw that. MS. TOKIHIRO: Yeah. And so, we’re happy to—it was an internal promotional opportunity for one of our current employees in HR. So, Kirsten Chong, from Recruitment and Examination, took advantage of that promotional opportunity and joined Classification and Pay. So, the qualifications—in addition to the qualifications for the position, it’s really important to have someone who, kind of, likes to do the—a little bit of the investigative work to compare and to explore—look at different options, look at classes of work in other jurisdictions. Sometimes we’re creating completely new classes of work. So, really being attentive to details and communicating effectively both through talking with employees in their positions, but also in a way that they describe work task being done, and having to do so, like in this written prospect. As far as the background, the Division, because it was so small and because it supports the entire County—I wouldn’t necessarily say there’s a “backlog”, but I would say that the Division didn’t have the opportunity to be as proactive as I would like to see the Division be, as far as reviewing the class specs. So, as I’ve mentioned, a lot of the amendments are initiated or were initiated in the past by departments. And so, what we’re transitioning to is having the internal review— regular review process within HR where we would be reaching out to departments and after having reviewed class specs. and make recommendations or—for language changes, or ask them—work with them and say, “Is this still accurate”—get their feedback, et cetera. So, position audits do take time, and it depends on if it’s, like, part of a re-org., there may be multiple positions that we would have to audit, there may be new classes of work that result from that. Sometimes if it’s just a single position, that can get completed faster—but they are tasked with a lot of work. So, having this additional person on their staff is going to be very, very helpful for them. Page 15