Stutsman: We have Jerry Thompson from Lipovac and Associates with us this morning to talk about the salary survey that we are going to be discussing with department heads this afternoon. And Carol you had some handouts that you wanted to...
Peters: Earlier I had circulated a memo trying to make sure that we had exact counties in the state the majority of the Board wanted surveyed and also the employees of the various departments. Not individual departments, but the categories. That hadn't got back to my desk and that is a piece of information that Jerry was going to need to make sure that he gets the correct areas. The second item I passed out was Johnson County job titles. These are just as (inaudible) the job titles. Reverend Welsh has kindly pointed out that there are some with the Senior Dining that are not reflected accurately on here. What I've tried to do in preparing the job title sheet is I went back through our employee listing taking from that what department they were in and the job classification, i.e. field supervisor, cook, or whatever and so that's where employee listing, employee listing is where I got information for Johnson County job titles. I have not had an opportunity to visit with each and every department head yet. I have visited with some. On this job title you will see that some of the job titles are bolder than others and that reflects that we either have a job description for that title or we have what that department has been using to place ads to recruit employees, so that there is some sort of documentation that leads itself to that title.
Bolkcom: So does advertising specifically for a job indicate also there is a job description behind the add.
Peters: No.
Bolkcom: Not necessarily.
Peters: Not necessarily.
Jordahl: I think what she means is that that's what we might use as a job description, is what the ad is.
Peters: It's just that there is a basis to start on. That's all it says, it doesn't say anything more than that.
Bolkcom: OK, thank you.
Peters: Jerry does have these 2 documents as well as the employee listing which gives the name of the employee. Subsequent to doing this the numbers have changed. When we first started out we had I think, 175 employees and 40 some job classifications. By going over the numbers more thoroughly actually we come up with 208 employees and then there is about 80 different job classifications of which we have about 40. Notice I use the term about.
Bolkcom: So 80 different classifications.
Jordahl: I count 86 here I think.
Bolkcom: Yes, I counted 86.
Peters: OK. In that is included the elected officials and that, I don't know, do you want a job classification.
Lacina: I think that is established in the code. The description for elected officials and deputies follows a different procedure and I don't know that it's really meaningful or wise for us to spend taxpayers dollars to duplicate basically what the Compensation Board will do. So I would say those could be dropped.
Stutsman: Yes, I guess I'm rethinking too about the elected officials and wondered if, like you said if it's good use of taxpayers dollars to do that.
Jordahl: Well the thing not to necessarily argue for the inclusion of the elected officials for the sake of doing anything with the elected officials salaries, the point of the Compensation Board is well taken, but rather that the department heads and so forth exist in the context of the elected officials salaries. So there is some relevance in terms of what is the County salary structure to including a consideration not necessarily of what the elected officials should be paid, but rather what they are paid relative to the other department heads and so forth. There seems to be some sort of correlation there would be reasonable.
Bolkcom: Well the other issue here is the deputies that work under elected officials which we know, there is the State Code, what is it 80% of what the elected official makes and we know that there are people in some positions as deputies that just don't stay up because of the structure of things. I know the compensation Board does a really good job of trying to figure out what they should recommend but I would see this as an opportunity to provide them a very thorough analyses. I know they look at the University, and they look at ISAC information. They don't do nearly the thorough kind of job that this is going to do in terms of looking at comparables So I think there would be some value to it, to our own compensation Board as they make that decision. I think there would be value to it as it related to all of those deputies that work for elected officials that seem to be kind of frozen in place.
Lacina: But they are frozen in place and I think if we do this study and make it available to the Compensation Commission they can make their own determination of comparables. But again I think it's waste of tax dollars to do an evaluation of elected officials, it's set by Code and the Compensation Board. Again if there is a comparable lets make this study available to them and let them make the comparison.
Bolkcom: But if we throw out elected officials then we're not going to compare them to anybody.
Jordahl: Then we won't have it.
Bolkcom: We won't have them.
White: There are two separate questions here that you're mixing and your free to mix them or separate them. One is the question of job descriptions and the other is a question of the survey. It certainly is possible to survey for an elected officials without doing a job description for them. It's a little more difficult to survey deputies without having a job description but it's still doable. One of the things I'd recommend you do is raise those questions with Jerry. Part of what you're hiring is his expertise and see if he has any recommendations for you.
Jack A. Lipovac and Associates Senior Associates Jerry Thompson: Good morning everybody.
Stutsman: Good morning.
Thompson: Happy to be back. I was just going to interrupt Pat and offer the same observation. You do have 2 questions. Obviously the duties of the elected officials are clearly in the Code. You don't need to do a job description on those. It's not a big trick to gather additional salary information. I'm sure your Compensation Board already has all of that and they are probably are going to do it on a wider basis then what you've asked us to do here, with the 4 counties and 4 or 5 cities. The deputies however are a separate issue and I think you might want to consider looking at job descriptions for the deputies because they can have additionally assigned duties beyond what the Code requires. It might be helpful to have that. A couple of reasons, one, nobody really knows what their job is if they don't have a job description. That's the best way to get a meeting of the minds is what we expect of this employee in this particular job. It will also help then if we're going to go out and compare salaries to have a good job description and get salary data from these other folks. You can do it either way. We can certainly include or exclude, it's your decision to make. I think there are some pros and cons on both sides of the fence. The elected officials no problem, the deputies, either or both. Pat do you have anything to add to that?
White: No.
Thompson: OK.
Stutsman: What have other counties done, can you speak to that?
Thompson: Typically elected officials are totally excluded and I think I've seen it go both ways in terms of deputies. They're I guess more frequently included than excluded, but I couldn't tell you that's a firm rule.
Jordahl: When you say that elected officials are typically excluded to go back to my earlier point of the question of the relationship between an elected officials salary and a department heads salary, that the department head is functioning at some sort of a comparable administrative level although on a different basis. You've done these surveys, so does it enter into the question of what that department head's salary ought to be, to look at the elected officials salaries or not?
Thompson: In some cases people have asked us to look at that and others they've said that's really separate.
Jordahl: A separate question.
Thompson: With that point we'll look at the deputies pay in relation to other deputies of comparable worth within that organization as well as comparability outside. There are the 2 factors, the internal relationship and the external and we're going to provide you information on both of those. So you don't necessarily have to have a relationship between the deputy and the elected official, you could, but you don't have to.
Stutsman: Charlie do you want to include the elected officials?
Duffy: Well we did as Steve has said, really I think that's State's business and every year we get how the elected officials in Johnson County compare to other counties. I don't know just, I don't see how we could really do our own thing with something like that. That's State's I think.
Stutsman: Taking a straw poll, Steve, do you want elected officials in it?
Lacina: Well, I think leave elected out, but if there is some merit to doing the deputies as far as job description, and I'm not saying salary surveys because each deputy position can be unique for each different county, depending upon how it's set up and how that elected official adjusts the workload in relation to the work force in the office. What do you think on the deputies as far as job description. Again, I think compensation for elected and deputies is a separate issue. But the job description I had never really thought about it like that. That would help us understand better what their function is.
Stutsman: Yes, I guess I would say no on the elected officials and yes on the job descriptions for the deputies. Jonathan? Well I guess there's 3 votes to leave out or... Straw poll.
Jordahl: I still would like to talk though.
Stutsman: Yes. I know you would.
Jordahl: It would be interesting to see what the results of a survey of the elected officials salaries would be, but I'm not sure that interesting is sufficient justification to spend the money to do it.
Stutsman: Yes, interest and money are...
Jordahl: So I guess I would agree with the idea of keeping the elected officials out of the consideration, but which of course a free vote here, but I do agree with the principle. I'm still curious about the notion of how this relates to department head salaries, but we could do that...
Bolkcom: I think if we weren't elected, there would be no question that we'd have our main, our top management in the County involved in this survey. I think that's the difference. People are uncomfortable having us, our positions evaluated. I don't know, I mean it would be great to have job descriptions for deputies, but if there's no relationship between that job description and what we're going to pay them, maybe it's just academic.
Stutsman: I'm not uncomfortable with having my salary evaluated, that's not where I'm coming from, I'm coming from the duplication. The Compensation Board I think does a pretty fair job of assessing salaries across the State and I just don't think that we could really add to that.
Bolkcom: So with the... I don't know what time frame we'll have this done, the Compensation Board meets when, late in December?
Stutsman: December, uh-huh.
Bolkcom: Well that's probably pushing it to get this thing done. It would be nice if we were done, they could have the benefit of this effort. There's all this history in place about how we've gotten to where we are too. We've got the Recorder and the Treasurer, and the Auditor all make the same amount of money and they probably have pretty different responsibilities and levels of responsibility. But that's something that this kind of thing could evaluate. But in terms of the deputies, if there's no relationship between the money, maybe we shouldn't spend money to do job descriptions for them.
Lacina: Well we may do an analysis and decide that we have a need for additional deputies, or a need to reduce. By looking at what they do or a re-assignment of responsibilities.
Bolkcom: But that's not our call.
Jordahl: I think... It's a department head.
Lacina: Well during the budgeting process it may be our call. I think it has some real validity in looking at job descriptions for the deputies. Now the Compensation Board, it's up to them whether... We can generate this and they can say thank you and throw it away. They're in power to do that.
Stutsman: So there's a majority to leave out the elected officials. How are we doing on the deputies? Jonathan how did you feel?
Jordahl: Well I have 2 minds about this. I think it's on the one hand, the deputies are the business of the department head and if they want to have the deputies redefine their duties, I view that as their prerogative. Again, in the same way that I was suggesting that it would be useful to relate the department head salaries to elected officials salaries, not that they should be proportional in terms of percentages or something, but it's informative. In the same way, it would be informative in looking at other salaries for middle management people to look at what the description of the duties of a deputy is and the salary that deputy is at, whether it's given the salary is set through the process of being keyed to the elected officials salary. Still, that's part of the overall picture of County employees. So I think it would be useful to have those job descriptions.
Stutsman: OK. Joe, did you have any more comments?
Bolkcom: No more comment.
Stutsman: So we will do the job description then for the deputies.
Peters: Just so I understand so... When you're talking about the job descriptions, OK, the elected officials, no job descriptions, the deputies yes. Going back to the salary, I'm not sure I got this right. The salary survey, the elected officials no, the deputies...
Stutsman: No.
Peters: No, OK, thank you.
White: I think you need to be clear, as clear as you can be on your use of the term deputy. There are deputies and then there are deputies, and then there are deputies.
Lacina: Under the Code, that would be linked to elected officials.
White: OK.
Stutsman: OK.
Lacina: Would have job descriptions but not compensation.
White: Deputy Auditor's wouldn't want descriptions for them, but the...
Lacina: We would want job descriptions, but not...
White: But not salary...
Lacina: We wouldn't want salary survey. The Sheriff's Deputies...
Stutsman: I think basically we're saying just leave out the Sheriff Deputies aren't we?
White: Well that's part of why I raised the point. The chief deputy would be what I would characterize as a political policy making position, as would the Deputy Auditor's, Deputy Treasurer's, Deputy Recorder's. There aren't any Assistant County Attorney's in that category at the moment, but that's part of what I mean by you need to be as clear as we can be on what you want done for different types of positions. You have people who have the title Deputy, but are line employees, such as Deputy Sheriffs and Assistant County Attorneys. You have people who have the title Deputy who are what I think the law would characterize as political or policymaking and who have the statutory caps. Like Deputy Auditor, Deputy Recorder. The Sheriff gets even more complicated because there are some caps even for the line officials. Then you have non-elected department heads with assistants and deputies, where I assume that you want both descriptions and a salary survey.
Bolkcom: Sure.
Lacina: Correct.
Stutsman: Uh-huh.
Lacina: So it they're tied to the Compensation Board or that package, that would be a definition of a break in a Deputy Director in the Ambulance Department that we would want compensation and job description versus a deputy that is under the 80% rule for an elected official policy setting. Is that...
White: Uh-huh.
Thompson: Is that the right way to define it, Pat? To say that anybody who's pay is recommended by the Compensation Board we will not include?
White: Well no, because that's only the elected officials. We...
Thompson: They don't make recommendations on the deputies?
White: No. Their recommendation and the Board of Supervisors action on it imprints the other deputies where they are capped. That's most of our people, but the elected Auditor still has the discretion to set up hierarchy or tiering of salaries.
Lacina: Not all of his people are paid the 80%.
White: Right, yes.
Jordahl: I don't, just a matter of passing here I don't see a Deputy Director of Ambulance as one of the positions to be described.
Lacina: It isn't. It was just an example I pulled out of the air. Just...
Jordahl: OK.
Stutsman: So are we clear on that, then?
Thompson: I thought I was but now I'm not.
Stutsman: I'm with you Jerry.
Bolkcom: Maybe Carol can provide a list of the actual...
Stutsman: Maybe that would be the best way to do it.
Lacina: Jonathan, Assistant Director of Ambulance is on the list.
Jordahl: Yes, it was the term Deputy that is not on there.
White: Again, that's part of my saying you need to be clear because there are quote, unquote, deputies who don't have that title.
Jordahl: OK, tell me...
Stutsman: Can you, is that...
White: Some departments, the 2nd in command is a deputy and some it's assistant director.
Thompson: OK, but we're talking about deputies who are the deputy to an elected official.
Bolkcom: Right.
Thompson: With the exception of the Sheriff's Department because the term Deputy is something different. Is that...
Jordahl: Except the Chief Deputy in the Sheriff's Department which is...
Thompson: Yes, I understand that...
Duffy: Good thing you brought that up, Pat.
White: But, I apologize for confusing us, but I want to go back to one of the things that Jerry mentioned. It isn't going to be much work for him to give you a salary survey on those people. It's a very small increment of effort to give you a salary survey for the elected officials and their deputies.
Lacina: Well it's done by ISAC.
White: Well, for counties, but the proposal is that you survey Iowa City, University of Iowa, Cedar Rapids, Marion, Ames, Davenport, and I was actually going to recommend it to... One that you ask Jerry for any recommendations he has for tinkering with the survey entities, but one of mine would be given that you're surveying Dubuque County, you might want to add in the City of Dubuque so that you've got the same database for all 4 of those counties. Dubuque County would be the only one where you don't have the city included.
Lacina: Well and under that, under cities, we have Iowa City/The University of Iowa. I think that it should include Johnson County because if you look at some of the firms, Centro and the Oakdale Research Park and some of the spinoff's locating up at North Liberty, or in Coralville, I think that's really relevant for our job worker pool as well.
Stutsman: Let's finish up whether to put in the deputies. Are we finished with that? Carol you put a list together of who we consider as deputies, so that we're clear on... OK.
Jordahl: There's been a piece of the discussion here that's still dangling. I meant to ask if we could return to the question of the elected officials salaries. Just in historical information here. Why was it that we included those in this proposal back in January or February, whenever we were talking about this initially?
Stutsman: Well...
Lacina: I didn't support it.
Stutsman: Yes, and I guess I thought until I saw the numbers, then I thought...
Duffy: Good question.
Stutsman: We're just...
Jordahl: Pat has just... Go ahead.
Stutsman: The numbers just grew and I thought is it really necessary to look at elected officials in view of that.
Jordahl: Pat has just suggested that the increment of cost to the County to do the survey of elected officials would be minor and I guess I want to direct that to you, Jerry. What you're going to these places anyway. The cost differential as we were talking about in terms of your proposal when we approved hiring your firm to do this was keyed to the position descriptions that would be necessary to generate. The additional increment would be $65, or $130...I can't remember what the number was...
Thompson: $165.
Jordahl:...for each position description that was generated. But if the position description was not generated, you didn't have to go through that process, then there was a basic fee for the survey itself. Was that basic fee calculated on the number of positions you have had to survey? Where some component of that fee represented the cost of doing the elected officials? Or is that some sort of a general fee kind of regardless of the number?
Thompson: No, it's a combination of the number of job titles that we'll be dealing with. Not necessarily the bench marks, because that can vary a little bit. We assume that responsibility. It's done on the numbers of job titles which we started out with 47, and the total number of people because we're going to have to talk to people to make sure that their job description is accurate. Get an understanding of the organization chart. All of that. When that doubled from 47 to 80, that adds some work to it.
Jordahl: Made some difference...
Thompson: That's one of the things I think we need to talk about. Gathering data on 4 or 5 more job titles, elected officials, that's not a problem, we can go to ISAC just as easy. In fact, I'd probably be embarrassed to go to another county and say, well what do you pay your County Auditor? We'll look in the ISAC book. That's not a big part of it. The numbers are our primary concern.
Jordahl: Well what I'm really leading around to here is we're adjusting the price of this contract.
Thompson: That's why we're here today...
Jordahl: That's why we're here. So really to get to the point of taking the elected officials out of this is are we going to save money by taking the elected officials out of this?
Thompson: No.
Jordahl: And if the answer to that is no, why not include it and get the information.
Duffy: We already got it and that's State business.
Jordahl: As part of the...
Thompson: We could include it without a problem.
Stutsman: If you can include it with...
Jordahl: If we can...
Stutsman: And Steve you stay...
Lacina: Leave it out. I think the perception by the public is not going to be good as well, oh their trying to pump up their salaries... I think just leave it with the Compensation Board and look at what we're trying to look at, which is the employees to make sure we're paying our work force... I just think we're walking on a very fine line.
Stutsman: I guess I would say leave them out too, just because the Compensation Board is already doing this and...
Jordahl: I guess the real question is how much are we looking at here.
Lacina: Well let's move on...
Bolkcom: It isn't about money, it's about perception.
Jordahl: I understand, that's about perception.
Bolkcom: I think that we're managing the County, we ought... Just as we're defending trying to make sure we're paying our managers adequately, we should, I don't think we should be bashful about this, we know our County Sheriff is not being... In Iowa City, the Police Chief makes about 20 grand more than the Sheriff, does that make sense? I don't know. I mean this would be a way to say...
Lacina: Then let's go to the Compensation Board and present that to them.
Duffy: Yes and tell them...
Lacina: If we really believe that, let's make a real effort to get his wages up there.
Bolkcom: Anyway, I'm not sure...
Stutsman: But they don't...
Bolkcom: I just think it puts... It has us in a leadership role saying we want to take care of our people, we want to make sure we do that in adequate ways and this is a way to just do that and provide some assistance to the Compensation Board that they would probably love to have.
Duffy: Well that's easy to do. Instead of taking...
Bolkcom: Anyway, that's my last word on that.
Duffy: Elected Officials together, then you can Compensation Board, take them individually like they do in a lot of the other counties. That's easy to take care of that.
Stutsman: OK, we will leave them out. Let's go back to the other 2 sections, the Counties and the Cities. Is there anybody that we want to add to that or take out? Counties we said Linn, Scott, Dubuque, and Story.
Jordahl: I like Steve's point about Johnson. I mean we're not comparing ourselves to ourselves, but in terms of industry and who's hiring whom away from us, I guess Johnson is more likely to hire more folks away from us than anybody else.
Stutsman: OK.
Lacina: Other than that, I think it's a good list.
Stutsman: All right.
White: That's going to make it more difficult. I wanted to jump in before Jerry had to react to that and we should invite his reaction, but putting private sector survey points in is more time consuming than the public sector where he's able to access public records, but as soon as you incorporate the private sector surveying you've complicated his task. They're not as readily available.
Stutsman: Oh.
Lacina: But see the problem, your attorneys are being recruited heavily by the private sector.
White: I don't disagree.
Lacina: Our Informational Services guy that was offered a $10,000 increase was being recruited by the private sector. If we want to compare with other governments, we're going to look high, simply because...
Bolkcom: Other governments?
White: I don't think so.
Lacina: Cedar County, if you go to the surrounding Counties and look at those and what they're paying, we are going to look high because of our standard of living and our level of work that we do in this County.
White: But what you try to do with a survey like this is find the most relevant points of reference and by and large, those are public sector points. I happen to be one who believes particularly that County government undervalues itself and as a result underpays itself. It's much to modest. I think you overcome some of that by incorporating City survey points. Jerry should speak to private sector.
Thompson: Thank you. There's a couple of reasons that you want to think about getting data from private sector. One is it's very difficult to get that data. A lot of people will simply not give it to you. You will have them come in and recruit individual classifications of people. That's kind of an individual thing. If I walk in the door and say what do you pay your programmers for example, they're probably not going to tell me. They may give me some very broad ranges, but that information is going to be questionable. I think when we talked here last time I kind of highlighted the concern that you may want to think that through in terms of your collective bargaining contracts. Once you start comparing any county employee pay to the private sector, you may well have more pressure from the unions that want to use those comparative figures as well. Pretty much in Iowa now, arbitrator's have said private sector data is irrelevant to the public sector; we're not going to compare the carpenters for the County to the carpenters in the private sector, etc. But if you open that up, you may cause some concern there. I think we mentioned before that we wanted to have whoever represents you in collective bargaining kind of think this one through before we get... The most relevant information is other public sector information.
Lacina: I hear your point, but if you have 2 carpenters... Is it fair for us to put blinders on and say well we're going to ignore a contractor that's paying $12 an hour and we're going to continue paying ours $9. Now 3 areas that you can get the information, the State does salary surveys and publishes for the County which is germane. The HR people like for Proctor and Gamble, Oral B and those do constant surveys among themselves because P and G's mission was to be the toppayer in related job descriptions. So by going to their HR people it's available. Plus the Chamber. When they go for their CIBA grants and those types of things, they've got the numbers for industry. So you've got 3 resources that I agree, you don't want to be going in, going door to door saying what's your pay, but you can get a pretty quick snapshot of what's out there. They are the people that are pulling our people away from us. Now...
Bolkcom: Do we know what the job description... Those general ranges, being able to compare a County job description to salary data in a range. Do we... Is that going to be correlated well enough?
Lacina: I think you'll find similarities that are going to be close enough for our purposes. The other problem is that if you put too many blinders on, you're going to warp this thing to where it's not relevant. Then don't do it. If you're going to say we're only going to look at county government, well then it's really skewed when you're sitting there and you've got everybody else recruiting against you. Likewise you can go the other extreme and say we're going to survey everybody up and down the street, it's too expensive. So somewhere in the middle, you try to figure out if we're going to lose employees, who's after them? Then comparable job to comparable job, we should have comparable pay.
Bolkcom: Yes, I don't think we're ever going to be in that position. I think the first question you raised about are we going to be able... We're always going to lose employees to the private sector. That's just the nature of... That happens at the State level, the Federal level, the local level. I don't know how having that information is going to prevent that unless we're talking about raising everybody's salary. Because that's really what we're going to have to do to prevent that kind of thing from happening. In terms of the survey itself, we are comparing ourselves to other counties and we're comparing ourselves to other cities. I think that's probably adequate.
Lacina: Well then going back to your first question, why are we doing this survey. If we're going to ignore this private sector and we're just going to throw up our hands and say, well we're going to lose them, then why are we doing this in the first place, because we're limiting ourselves to the real work force.
Bolkcom: There is that.
Jordahl: You raised the question, both of you about the unions and carpenters and we originally were talking about this pool of money where we were... How do we equitably distribute increments to adjust perceived and actual problems with middle management, that was our term, salaries. Now we're talking about carpenters and unions and we do have some unions in administrative job classifications, but I think this is getting a little blurred. We're not necessarily going to do every job description that the County's got to offer. We're doing this middle management survey, right?
Lacina: Bad example, carpenters would fall under the bargaining unit so yes, my mistake. Take the carpenters out.
Jordahl: No, but there are bargaining units that do administrative things, are there not? Pat help me out here.
White: No, this list of job titles to be surveyed is much broader than that initial middle management discussion. It is a middle management, it is proposed to be a middle management survey, but it's also proposed to be a middle management on down survey in those departments that are not covered by a collective bargaining agreement. That's why you see for example all these cooks, take Congregate Meals.
Jordahl: Yes, I was wondering who some...
White: This proposal is to survey the entire department.
Jordahl: And maybe I wasn't involved, did we decide to do that at some point where I just didn't notice it?
White: Well I don't know if you noticed or not, but we had a couple of discussions, or you had a couple of discussions that both Carol and I were involved in and that was the decision that was made. Consensus reached would be a more accurate description.
Peters: It started out as a small project and continued to be expanded in this discussion.
Lacina: The 3 presentations that we received were based upon those things so mid-management is a separate issue and the money that we set aside for that. But...
Bolkcom: So I guess the private sector stuff I want to know what the cost would be and I assume if we're going to do that it's going to take more time and whether it's worth it or not, I'm not sure it's worth it comparing jobs to job titles across government would be enough work.
Lacina: Jerry, do you think the 3 or 4 topics that I gave you would be meaningful data for us to use in the private sector? Would it be expensive to get?
Thompson: As you point out, it's not real difficult to come by in those general categories. It would be very difficult to come by on an individual basis.
Lacina: I agree.
Thompson: Part of the jobs, I understand there are some jobs that exist in the private sector that are interchangeable with the public, but there are a lot of public sector jobs that you're not going to find anything very comparable in the private sector. In looking at the list, cooks, certainly you're going to find there. Some administrative assistants you'd be able to find, deputy sheriff, nothing in the Sheriff's Department would be comparable. I doubt that you'd find anything of the naturalist, park ranger, there's just not a lot of duplication in this particular list.
Jordahl: The computer stuff is where a particular concern exists.
Thompson: Well let me talk about that. I'm well aware that public agencies have good people stolen away for more money in the private sector. My suggestion would be that you look at each of those on an individual basis. Make that a separate consideration outside of this study. Simply because that's going to complicate the heck out this. But if you have attorneys, for example, who are being stolen by law firms address that, look at it, find out what you want to do about it. If you have computer people who are being stolen away. Several years ago nurses were being pirated, nurses were in great shortage and computer operators were. You have to do some things individually to address those problems, not necessarily as a big study like this. I'm not saying we couldn't do it, but I think that will complicate what I understand you want to do here.
Lacina: It kind of goes back to what Jonathan said originally that was the problem. We had an employee with Ambulance that would not move up into a management position because he could make more money in the bargaining. So that is, yes right, that's what got us started going this way. So while I can understand what you're saying, I guess part of my motivation was to address that here and now. Because all of a sudden we're going back out for another study based upon a number of people. Where do you draw the line? 5 yes, number 6 no.
White: You're right, it's broadened a lot, but you're getting an awful lot for the money that's proposed here.
Jordahl: Do we know what the money is proposed?
Lacina: 6, well...
White: The final amount depends on how many job descriptions you end up asking him to write and that is, that will be your call as it goes along. He'll probably tell you how many he finds he needs to write, but I'm assuming he's prepared to give you a number on the survey this morning if we can get to closure on what it is he has to survey.
Stutsman: Well let's, how do we want to handle the private sector, or Johnson County?
Jordahl: I want to jump on that severability of the question idea. I think we've got 2 things going on here. One of them is the problem of our people being stolen away by private industry and the other one is the internal consistency, our positions equitable. So if we're going to do salary enhancements, cross-County positions, then we ought to have a cross County look at our own operation and what's fair. I think he raises, Mr. Lipovac raises, or not Mr. Thompson, yes... Raises a good idea here that we've got 2 concerns. One of them is internal equitability and the other one is losing people to the private sector and maybe we could...
Stutsman: Jonathan, we're going to have to make a decision about whether we want to go with Johnson County or not.
Jordahl: Well I'm speaking to that. I think that we should go to Johnson County only for these positions where we're having this hemorrhage of staff or likely to.
Stutsman: Joe, how do you feel about including Johnson County in this?
Bolkcom: You mean private sector?
Stutsman: Right.
Bolkcom: I don't think it's necessary.
Stutsman: Charlie, how do you feel including the private sector? Yes or no? So we can get a consensus and move on.
Duffy: Well, I see Steve's point about private sector, but it's going to take more time, more work and when you're really comparing apples to apples, I don't know. I suppose just go with what we've got.
Stutsman: OK, I would say no too, to the private sector. At this point.
Duffy: But I see his point.
Stutsman: Yes, I agree. Maybe that's something we need to take up at a later time.
Lacina: So for clarification then, you will do a survey of Linn County Government, Scott County Government, Dubuque and Story County Governments, and then the City Government employees of Iowa City, University of Iowa, the City employees of Cedar Rapids, Marion, Ames, and Davenport.
Stutsman: And Dubuque?
White: And Dubuque I think.
Bolkcom: Let's add Dubuque.
Lacina: OK, so we're excluding everybody else?
Thompson: Excluding, yes.
Bolkcom: Yes.
Stutsman: Yes.
Jordahl: I tell you, this differs from what I understood we were setting out to do a number of months ago that I thought we were...
Stutsman: Well that's why we're having this meeting so we can clarify this and...
Jordahl: Yes, well I want to clarify that point. I think that when we originally set out, we were talking about the relationship of our salaries to salaries in the area and I don't mean ours the Board of Supervisors, I mean what we're paying in County government, in large measure. In part because we wanted to do a fair distribution of funds from the enhancements in middle management to avoid the problem of people wanting to back up into lower classifications to make more money, and in part because we wanted people to not necessarily leave the County to make more money. That leaving the County is a question of the private sector and I thought that's what we were going to be looking at.
Lacina: Me too.
Bolkcom: Well I think we have specific areas, attorneys and computer people that from now until eternity, we're going to have that issue. I think we know that and we have already addressed it in the process and Pat's been working in his own office, trying to do that. I think it's just the way the system is and we're not going to solve that by taking a look at it, go yes, that's right, they make $20,000 more in a private law firm than we're paying. We're not going to suddenly pay $20,000 more. That's just the way it is.
Lacina: But we may find, and I'm trying to think of groups that wouldn't compare. OK, yes some examples of Sheriff's and yes they can go to work for Iowa City, but our engineers can go to work for DOT or a private sector, there are security firms. I really think there are some comparables, but again I'll go with what the...
Bolkcom: Yes, in the highly skilled areas we're always going to have that problem. I don't think we've got a huge problem with people leaving employment with us. We're a good employer. We don't have mass exodus.
Stutsman: OK. Carol, what else do we need to decide?
Lacina: Cost.
Stutsman: Or clarify?
Peters: One of the things that I'd like to make clear and was visiting with Jerry before. As we go through this, you're working with the document that's going to be ever changing, so whatever numbers we talk about today, they may not, they'll be close, but they won't be the same numbers we'll be talking about tomorrow. Simply because I haven't had time to get back to the department head.
Stutsman: You mean as far as job classifications?
Peters: Yes.
Lacina: Yes.
Stutsman: OK.
Peters: I just want you to be aware of that.
Bolkcom: So will we be encouraging our department heads to try and get some job descriptions organized here in the short run so that we can have some things going so we don't rely on Jerry for 50 job descriptions or something?
Peters: That part I have concluded. I've gotten as many job descriptions from the department heads.
Bolkcom: So are people on notice that we want job descriptions for all of these positions and their...
Peters: And Jerry does have a copy of this book with the job descriptions that we do have.
Bolkcom: OK.
White: This is a repetition of one of the points I made a couple weeks ago, for the price that he's quoted per description, have him do as many as need to be done. That would be a far better use of time and money than having department heads try to create job descriptions when we don't have a central personnel function to guide them.
Stutsman: Good point.
Lacina: I agree.
Peters: The other point too, is that when you have your human resource administrator in place this is going to be one function that will be completed. It will need to be updated on an ongoing basis, but it will be a step up on (inaudible) that gets in place.
Stutsman: So are there any changes then in the contract amount that we're talking about?
Bolkcom: Yes. Let's get to that.
Thompson: Back to the original, our initial bid was $6,800. It included our oversight of a review of your job descriptions to make sure they were up to date and current. I have a concern to take some of these ads, these advertisements and try and do an accurate salary comparison based on a very brief ad as opposed to a whole job description. I just highlight that, I'll do whatever you want us to do... My recommendation would be that either you internally develop new update, current, accurate job description or you have us do it. On each of these, it's going to be included. Now there's roughly 80 job titles here excluding the elected officials. Just by eyeballing it, Carol and I have come to about 35 would need to be re-constituted somehow, either in-house or through us. As I mentioned to Carol earlier, the $165 was with the understanding that maybe a handful would have to be done. Now it's more expensive to do just a couple, because you still have to get a feel for the organization, talk to people, and get that. If we're going to do 30 of them, then we can reduce that price. But we kind of need to have a feel... Do you want us to do all 30, or do you want to try and get those done yourselves?
Lacina: So you're looking at around $5,700 to do the 30?
Stutsman: And Pat just suggested that we'd be better just to go ahead and have Jerry do them and have it taken care of and then...
White: Then trying to bring on Human Resource Administrator. It's a terrific use of funds that really are available because you're budgeted for the year for the position anyway, although low.
Peters: The other thing, it's a good idea if you can do it at once rather than stringing it out over several years.
White: It would also be good experience for the department heads to deal with someone who's got Jerry's level of expertise in personnel matters and we'll see how he approaches the job descriptions and my assumption is he'll have the ability to pick up the formats that we've been trying to use and give them to us as close as possible to the same format to our other ones that already exist. I just think it's a good use of funds.
Jordahl: I know there's some resistance out there to doing this. How are we going to deal with that?
Peters: Well... There are some department heads who are not quote unquote on board at this point. Basically what they were saying is they wanted to hear Jerry's presentation and how this study would be conducted before they committed.
Jordahl: So it's elected officials in particular, I assume we could direct our own department heads to do this, but elected officials might choose not to participate.
Peters: And that's between you folks and elected officials.
Lacina: I would assume procedurally while you'll use our format, you will work with the department heads, partly to get some of the work load off of you to help draft and then you would review and make recommendations on those job descriptions, as opposed to sitting down and just writing it? Or am I correct?
Thompson: Well let me show you. We have a lengthy questionnaire that we would ask each of those people in those job titles to complete for us. I apologize, I grabbed the wrong one, I've got the short form instead of the long form. You're going to need to use the long form. Most of this as you can, I hope you can see, is just a matter of reading which one applies to my job and putting a check mark. It's fairly easily completed, but the part that isn't here is the hard part and that's where we actually ask them to write out their job tasks. 8 or 10 or 12 really key tasks that their job exists for. That's something they have to kind of generate. That takes a little imagination and creativity. The best way to do that is to give them a job description you think is maybe close, say here, scratch out the stuff that doesn't apply and write in the stuff that is not listed here. From this we would do a draft, give that back to the employee and the supervisor. We would ask the employee to read it over and say, yes, this is good, this is me, this is my job. Or no, you missed it here, you missed it there and then have the supervisor do the same thing. Then we'd do a final draft and supposedly that's it. If we were doing all these County-wide, what we would do is say we'll have one meeting with each of those employees that disagrees with the final draft. If they're still disagreeing with us we'll say hey, we'll sit down and discuss it with you. If we still disagree then you're going to have to come back to the Board and let the Board decide. We'll tell you why we did it the way we did and they can tell you what 's wrong with it, then they'll decide. We just don't want to get in that family feud forever. We'll try and do it. In all the years I've been doing this, I think there's only one time that I can recall where an employee strenuously objected after the final draft, so that's very rare. Usually either they convince us that we were wrong or we convince them that they were wrong. That's what I would suggest going...
Lacina: But (inaudible) excuse me, but even with the adjusted increase you're still about half of the next closest bidder. We are getting a very good deal for the...
Bolkcom: Do you have the number for us, a range too?
Thompson: I wasn't real sure when we came in here exactly where we were going to end up. I told Carol earlier we will reduce the price, if we're going to do all 35 of these we'll reduce that down to $120 per, as opposed to $165. Whenever that comes out, I don't know if there will be 30 or 35, but about that. Then because we've added so many more jobs to the whole thing, we thought we should up our 68 to 88. Wherever that figures out, you know it's $8,800 for...
Bolkcom: Plus the job descriptions.
Thompson: Plus the job descriptions and out of pocket travel expenses. Mileage back and forth, long distance phone calls to various places. I would guess I'd spend 2 or 3 nights here, so there would be a lodging bill for, I don't know $60 a night, something like that.
Lacina: So around $12,600.
Thompson: So, I'd say you're in the 12 to 14 bracket.
White: I was going to say by the time you add in expenses, you might be 15 to 18. One of the reasons for my projection being a little high is I think these projects always end up taking more time than you would like and one of the things, not to forget. This is... You are breaking new ground here. That always takes a little longer too. The first time you plow a field, it takes a lot longer than the 2nd time you do it and you may need to make a couple more trips than he's used to making.
Lacina: But it's going to be less touchy for an outside agency to come in and do it than for our HR person to start right off and all of a sudden there's a potential disagreement. Acceptability is going to be easier.
Bolkcom: Send the heat over this way.
Thompson: This sounds a little self serving, but I think you're right on point, it's much better on these kinds of things to have somebody from outside. Number 1, we come in and get it done. This person would have to do it in among a lot of other duties and responsibilities it would stretch out. As I told you I think before, I have never had one of these where everybody was happy. Somebody's going to be unhappy and they might as well be mad at me as opposed to your new HR person. Because I won't be here, I'll be back in Des Moines.
Bolkcom: So what do we need to do to change the contract?
Lacina: Yes, Pat, procedurally what do we do?
White: We need to have the Board approve and the Chair sign and then Jerry and or whoever signs on behalf of Lipovac sign a contract. They submitted a proposal that needs to be modified and I don't know if Jerry and Carol had time to talk about the logistics of that, whether he's going to re-mail one to us or...
Lacina: Or can we do an addendum and just say we are going to have an additional x amount, would that be easier just to...
Stutsman: We haven't decided the contract through, have we?
Bolkcom: No, Jerry has...
Thompson: A suggestion...
White: You bet.
Thompson: If we wrote a letter to you. Outlining the changes we made in our initial response and incorporated our initial response with the changes in the letter, would that... My concern is...
White: The Board could accept that.
Thompson: That we have a good meeting of minds and what you expect from us and what we expect from you because I don't want you to be disappointed when we're all done, that wouldn't make anybody happy. So if we've got that and I think we do after talking today. I think we can put that in letter form and have everybody sign that, does that work?
White: Works fine.
Lacina: And that would address my concern of the RFP of having some other company come in going wait a minute, you changed the rules. In fact we have increased some additional expense at our decision after we reviewed the initial proposals. We're saying we want you to do more. That is somewhat separate.
Bolkcom: Given the new scope of the work, I would assume everybody's cost would have increased as well. Everybody bid on the same thing, so...
Thompson: Yes, I'm sure when they saw this go from 47 to 80, that would have gone up substantially.
Bolkcom: Sure.
Stutsman: Anything else that we need to...
Thompson: Excuse me, time wise I would normally be able to get back to you this week with this, but I've got commitments the rest of this week, I'm not going to be back in the office until next Monday so it's going to be next Tuesday or Wednesday before I can get something faxed over for your review and we'll get it finalized if the timing is OK. One other thing. Initially we were talking 10 to 12 weeks, we've added a little bit more here. We're not going to hit your January 1 deadline date I don't believe. We'll do the best we can, but the time frame, we've already lost a month here and we've added some so it's going to take a little longer.
Stutsman: What's reasonable?
Thompson: I really would rather not answer that right now. Let me sit down and kind of do another timeline and I'll put that in the letter that I send to Pat if that's acceptable.
Jordahl: There's a nuance of what you're going to run into from what I've heard from departments that there is this idea that if you define a job that people are going to say well that's not my job and I won't do it. A solution to that needs to reside and I assume you've run into this thing before in allowing for that flexibility where they may cover one job one time, another job another time, be reassigned variously. Somehow in there is a piece of an answer to getting cooperation from elected officials who may not have immediate eagerness.
Thompson: You will occasionally run into somebody, that I call from the 1930's labor movement, that that's not my job. Most of us have progressed beyond that now. We do put a clause in that this is a typical general description of duties. It's not all inclusive. Other duties may be assigned as required. That's in there. I will recommend to you that you have each employee sign a copy of their job description, at least the ones that we're going to do. What you do with the others I don't know. We always have everybody sign off agreeing at least at this point in time, we agree this was my job. Now it may change 6 months from now but at least as of this date we've got everybody committed to yes, this is pretty good. We understand there will be other duties. Does that...
Jordahl: Well I've seen that in jobs that I've had, that phrase. I'm suggesting that maybe some expansion of that concept to indicate specifically in the job description that this job may encompass this job, this job, and this job as necessary for the needs of the department.
Thompson: OK.
Stutsman: Carol did you have some things that...
Peters: One other thing that I'd like for you to discuss. One of the things that Jerry has recommended in the past is in the job description add your ADA requirements. I don't know if you want that included. Do you want the old ones redesigned so we can put that in?
Stutsman: Pat?
Bolkcom: Why not.
White: I think that's a different day's project is my opinion, but...
Peters: OK.
White: Again I'd defer to Jerry's judgment on that. My own feeling is that's one of the tasks that we ought to ask the new Human Resources Administrator to do. But it's a potentially massive effort and potentially over a lot of time. I don't have any doubt that Jerry could do it, but I think that would...
Peters: Well that would be a deviation from the format that they're using (inaudible).
White: Right, it's also going to be yet an additional task to what we've just been talking about.
Thompson: Well I'll tell you what we might do here. In the interest of following your existing format, keeping that uniform, we'll get most of the ADA data on the questionnaire from the drops that we're doing now. I can make that available and leave that with your new human resource person. They'll have that information to use in a more timely fashion.
White: We would always have the ability to come back and hire more consultation or yet another project.
Stutsman: Right, that might be the best way to handle that. Carol, did you have...
Peters: No, I guess the only other question I have for you before you go to the department head meeting, just so that Jerry gets his presentation... Jerry and the Board's all on the same page. Are there any other questions?
Jordahl: Is it possible to insert a simple standard paragraph to deal with ADA as sort of a stop-gap basis until the HR person could come along and maybe re-craft the job description to be specific to the needs of that job? Or is that unsatisfactory?
Thompson: My feeling is that it doesn't mean anything if it isn't specific. General ADA stuff, (inaudible) so what. The only advantage really to having those kinds of things in the job description is that you've got a written record of the employer requiring those types of physical, mental demands on people prior to any issue coming up. Somebody comes in and applies for a job, right now all you've got is a little paragraph that says you're looking for a clerk-typist. You don't have any of those other ADA considerations in there. Then it's your word against theirs is when this need was created. If you've got it in a written job description that you did a year ago, obviously it was before this person became involved. It just helps. It's not a guarantee, I'm sure Pat understands that.
White: Part of what I meant by a massive project is I think there is a tendency to overstate physical requirements. In the initial survey you'll get people saying well I have to lift this, and I have to walk up these stairs. But if you did it in the context of saying well couldn't we do it another way you'll get less in your job description, which is the ultimate goal, is to make your positions accessible to people with disabilities. But I think it takes a lot of time and discussion literally position by position.
Jordahl: I was thinking less, excuse me...
Bolkcom: Go ahead.
Jordahl: I was thinking less in terms of the requirements of the job and protecting ourselves against sued is more in terms of the sensitivity to the needs of the public that the person might be serving so I guess I was looking at half of the question and not what's the more important half. It would be differentiated to the requirements of the position.
Stutsman: Is there anything else that we need to clarify before...
Bolkcom: Carol's last question was are we in the same mindset with Jerry about proceeding ahead and specifically this afternoon if department head or other elected officials don't want to do, be involved with this, what's the Board's response to that? Are we prepared now to say their elected officials, they can do whatever they want?
Stutsman: Well there's one elected official that has raised a lot of concerns to me and I guess I understand his concerns and I feel it's his choice.
Bolkcom: OK.
Lacina: I don't think it's his choice.
Stutsman: Well department heads, we decide, but on elected officials... I think he had some pretty good reasons. I guess I don't want him if he's not sold on it, if he's not in agreement this, then I just assume he not be a part of it than have somebody kicking and screaming and...
Lacina: So we're excluding one entire department, just because they don't want to go along, but everybody else is going to be encouraged to do it.
Jordahl: We could... Couldn't we survey those positions and correlate the data and so forth to comparable positions in other counties and then the department would have the option of whether to implement any changes or not? Or would we want to completely stay out of it.
Bolkcom: It takes cooperation to do that.
Peters: The basis of the survey are the job descriptions and we don't have job descriptions.
Jordahl: From that department.
Bolkcom: Right.
Stutsman: I hear what you're saying, Steve, but I don't know how else to handle it.
Lacina: Well the only thing I can think of is we make it available to everyone. Now if they totally decide that they're going to direct their people not to, then we just do it, but I don't think we go in there and say well let's do a survey of how many of you want to. If one raises their hand, you're probably going to see other ones. I think we just say it will be available to everybody.
Stutsman: Carol, has there been only one department that has shown reservations on this? OK. It may be that once they get in with the group and everybody wants it.
White: Is this the Sheriff? There's a new development that will have an impact. I have a letter from the union saying that they've got signatures and...
Stutsman: They want a union and that was his main concern.
White: Yes.
Lacina: OK.
Duffy: I say...
Bolkcom: From the Sheriff?
White: Sheriff's Department.
Bolkcom: Wants a union?
Duffy: Sally.
White: The Painters have, I'll bring you copies this afternoon.
Bolkcom: OK.
White: Saying that they are ready for an election and to start bargaining.
Bolkcom: Wow. They'd be taken care of under...
White: If that's the case, I'll consult with Jerry on that too, but it would probably be my recommendation that we break them out if we're going to be entering collective bargaining.
Stutsman: Well...
Peters: We do have another department that had indicated an interest early on. But it's the County Assessor. Their tax authority is different than yours. Before he went on vacation he did not get back to say yes whether...
White: We could do an addendum to this agreement, but it would have to be approved by the County Conference Board, rather than by the Board of Supervisors.
Peters: He hasn't had a meeting or anything to be able to visit with him so that may be an expansion.
White: But it would sure, if we're going to do an addendum, it will save time and money to do it before he starts his survey.
Stutsman: But wouldn't that come out of their budget?
Peters: Yes.
Stutsman: Good.
Lacina: Are you comfortable as far as knowing where we're at?
Thompson: Yes.
Stutsman: OK, it's getting late. I think...
Bolkcom: We're doing it County-wide, it's not, we're saying want everybody involved, it's more than available, we're doing it and somebody's going to have to squawk like crazy to get out of it.
Stutsman: Right, and Jerry's going to tell us how to do it.
Duffy: One thing I'd like to bring up...
Stutsman: What Charlie?
Duffy: I think the less we say, the better off we are about Jerry and (inaudible).
Stutsman: Oh, sure.
Lacina: Just grab a hold of them by the throat and say, you know what...
Stutsman: OK, we are recessed until 2:00 this afternoon.
Recessed at 12:20 p.m.; reconvened as a Department Head Meeting at 2:03 p.m.