2026-05-12 Merit Appeals Board Minutes

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Merit Appeals Board May 12, 2026 MR. THOMAS: So, I think I hear you saying there is a confidential line to you—what do you do to encourage that sort of thing—I would think it would be useful to you. MS. TOKIHIRO: So, I always try and make myself available to anybody who’s reaching out—return all my voicemails the same business day and make sure that I’m always communicating with people. And so, I encourage that kind of communication. In our Cabinet meetings, always encouraging people to reach out. And this Cabinet group, we got off to a great start in the beginning of the Mayor’s term as far as sitting down with all the department heads and working together to have these conversations. I have regular meetings with or standing meetings with the Director of Research and Development, talk to the Finance Director multiple times a week, and so we have a good group. But with my staff, also, is meeting with departments. I like to attend those meetings so that I can remain informed and, again, always just encourage people to reach out and talk to us, because it’s really a team effort. MR. THOMAS: Last question. Are there any areas in this kind of conversation we’ve had here where you see—where you would hope for improvement? MS. TOKOHIRO: I think that there’s always room for improvement in that collaboration effort. I mean, I think that there’s always more opportunities to share more information and provide more of those learning opportunities, as you mentioned—giving us the opportunity to explain. Last week we had a meeting with the Fire Department—specific to these Temporary Safer Grant fire fighter positions that we have, because those positions are temporary there’re going to be some action for those employees that are going to be a little bit different. And so, sitting down with them even before they hire the first person to go over all of the things that we need to be mindful of and to say, “Hey, when we’re addressing these 12 positions, we really need to take a step back before we just proceed with any action— take a step back, recollect ourselves, remind ourselves that the status of these employees is different, so that we can really be mindful of how we’re handling all the personnel actions.” And so, I think that the—there is room for improvement in communication on the front end with departments before something is even happening. Sometimes the first time that we’ll hear about something is when it’s before Council for approval—for the funding. And we really would like to be involved with departments long before they may come to Council for some type of approval, so that we can help them to understand, “This was— this is what would be involved, this is what we’re seeing—whether or not it’s an existing Page 8