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10.

Brentwood City Commission Agenda

Meeting Date:	06/28/2021
Resolution 2021-77 - Proposed Personnel Rules & Regulations Revisions
Submitted by:	Mike Worsham, Human Resource
Department:	Human Resource

Information

Subject

Resolution 2021-77 - Proposed Personnel Rules & Regulations Revisions

Background

As you know, the City of Brentwood Personnel Rules and Regulations manual serves as the employee handbook as well as a general operating policy manual.

Periodically, the entire manual is reviewed and updated to reflect changes more accurately in practices and benefit plans that have evolved since the last major revision. The last major revisions to the manual were approved by the Board of Commissioners in July 2019

Occasionally, changes are necessary in between more comprehensive updates to address situations that arise in the normal course of operations. The last minor revision was approved in December 2020.

Two relatively minor issues have developed that requires approval of an amendment to the Rules and Regulations Manual.

1. EDUCATIONAL PAY SUPPLEMENT PROGRAM: The Chief of Police has requested that Public Safety Dispatchers of the Emergency Communications District be included in the Educational Pay Supplement Program.

The purpose of the Educational Pay Supplement Program is to reward full-time, non-supervisory, sworn personnel of the Fire and Police departments who have obtained more college-level education than is required for their respective position at the time of hire, and to support and encourage employees to further develop their abilities for future promotional consideration through additional education and training, and to provide greater flexibility of service to the City from such employees through improved written and verbal communication skills. Eligibility for this program is currently limited to only full-time, non-supervisory, sworn members of the Fire and Rescue and Police Departments.

Staff believes that including Public Safety Dispatchers in this program will provide incentive to these employees to continue their college-level education and as a result, will improve the service they provide to the public as well as other employees that interact with them. Upon approval of this recommendation, future Public Safety Dispatchers will be required to have a minimum of two years of college credit to be hired.

The Educational Pay Supplement program provides $600 additional pay annually for completion of the third year of college credit (usually 90 semester hours). Attainment of a bachelor’s degree will be required to receive an additional $600 annually. The maximum benefit authorized by this program is $1,200 annually.

2. TEMPORARY PROMOTIONAL APPOINTMENT: The second recommendation relates to the temporary promotion of employees. This occurs when employees are asked to temporarily fill a higher-level position which is vacant due to an incumbent employee being unavailable for duty for an extended but temporary period. Examples include: FMLA, military leave, and other leaves of absence that require an employee to be away from work for a temporary period of time generally up to six months. This could include a Fire Department Engineer filling in for a Fire Lieutenant who is away on FMLA.

The current Temporary Promotion Policy does not allow a temporarily promoted employee’s pay to exceed that of other employees already assigned to the same position and pay group. Because the pay group ranges overlap, we have experienced situations where a long tenured employee is asked to temporarily fill a position in a higher pay group and their pay is already above that of other employees in the job in which they are temporarily promoted. Using the example above, we have had a long-service Fire Engineer whose pay was already above that of the lowest paid Lieutenant when they are asked to fill this temporary assignment. Obviously, we wouldn’t ask an employee to take a pay cut to fill a temporary promotional position and likewise we wouldn’t expect them take the additional responsibility without additional compensation.

This recommendation simply removes the language in the current policy that “the pay of employees selected for a temporary assignment cannot be above other employees in the same position.”

Attached is a marked-up copy of both policies showing the current language and recommended revisions.

Staff Recommendation

Staff recommends approval of the proposed revision to the City’s Educational Pay Supplement Program and the Appointment Policy related to temporary promotions.

Fiscal Impact

Attachments
Resolution 2021-77
Attachment A
Signed Resolution