2006-11-20 Cost of Government Commission Minutes

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way. Ms. Crawford agreed. In hindsight, she should not have been as aggressive in how quickly they brought on the modules. This is the first new computer system in over 20 years for the County. She has been involved with other computer conversions and has never seen a new system result in fewer employees, as there is more information to process. The County is trying to catch up now and get on line. The Chair asked whether the supervisory personnel were given the option on whether to do the time sheets daily, and whether it would help her Department to do it daily. Ms. Crawford said each department is unique, and for a division such as Highway Division, with laborers working on highways, it may work better if clerks enter the time daily. She did not feel it would help her Department to have it daily, because they do each department individually and do not run the process until the end of the pay period, when everything is entered. The Chair commented that this was crunching in the last three days, and Ms. Crawford said they try to give the departments latitude on when they put the time in. She believes the Public Works Department, for example, does it weekly rather than at the end of the pay period. The Chair asked whether a one -week or ultimately two -week lag would help the County, and Ms. Crawford said she would have to talk to the payroll people to see what they say, although it is obvious that if paychecks are not handed out until five days later, you have five days of time to input and process the information. They are trying to shorten the processing end to give the departments another day on data entering. It is a rigorous schedule to get time sheets in, especially when pay periods are short or have holidays. The payroll staff has been working overtime, and a lag would provide more time to get everything out. Mr. Joseph asked how much time is spent going back and making corrections of all the mistakes done on the payroll. Ms. Crawford said she did not know, but that corrections would not usually be for mistakes but for adjustments, since assumptions were made about what hours an employee works before the employee actually works them. Mr. Joseph asked how much time was spent making adjustments, and Ms. Crawford said she could not answer and did not know if payroll staff could say. Some pay adjustments are a part of normal processing. Mr. Joseph said that one of the biggest arguments for a payroll lag was due to the high level of adjustments that needed to be made, and five extra days would give time to have a more accurate payroll. Ms. Crawford said the main time that employees are overpaid and the County needs to get the money back is when they are paid a regular salary, have no more leave time, and don't come to work in the last few days of the pay period. These employees will get a paycheck that pays them more than they are entitled, which means the County has to get union approval to get paid back by the employee. She does not know how common this is, as she does not usually watch payroll processing. Mr. Joseph asked what the total number of paychecks is, and Ms. Crawford said about 2,300 in any given pay period. This is the total number of County positions, though not all are filled. Mr. Joseph asked how many salary, versus hourly, employees there are, and Ms. Crawford said almost all employees are on salary. Parks and Recreation has some part-time, M