Agenda - Council Work Session - 01/07/2014

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CC Work Session 2. 2. Meeting Date: 01/07/2014 Title: Discuss Modifying the Authority of City Administrator Information Purpose /Background: Purpose: The purpose of this case is to discuss the authority of the City Administrator. Discussion will include adding authority, which in turn will streamline Human Resources processes and result in less Committee meetings. This will complete two of the initiatives in the City's three -year Strategic Action Plan. Background: In the beginning of 2013, Council and staff held several strategic planning sessions, facilitated by Anita Duckor of Duckor & Associates. This case and discussion surrounds Strategic Imperative IV: An Effective Organization and is intended to: Maintain a highly functional staff, citizen volunteers, and elected officials and governance structure that meet the ever - changing, increasing needs of the organization. One of the strategic initiatives includes enhancing governance structure and lists the tactic as follows: To modify the authority of the City Administrator. The key outcomes of this initiative would be centered responsibility and accountability of the City's performance with one person; and achieved significant savings by reducing the number of Personnel Committee meetings and Council agenda items, as well as minute taking fees. Another strategic initiative is streamlining internal processes. The tactic - to determine Personnel Committee related work processes that need to be redesigned. The key outcomes of this initiative would be enhanced Human Resources processes, achieved time savings of Mayor /City Council and an achieved percentage of cost savings with regard to staff time and minute taking fees. Note: Discussion of eliminating the Personnel Committee and the Finance Committee will occur during the Council Organization work session topic. This case will address the following possible streamlined work processes: Recruitment With regard to filling vacant positions, the Personnel Policy language states: "For an existing position, the human resources manager may post a job opening when a position is vacated and then bring the information to the City Council at the next scheduled meeting." However, the actual course of action has been that staff brings a request to recruit for a position to the Personnel Committee and then City Council, which if approved, is followed by the staff recruitment process. Following that process, staff then brings the request to hire to the Personnel Committee and then Council to wrap up the hiring process. The resolution includes name, position, salary, etc. Staff is requesting Council to allow staff to return to the Personnel Policy language (in practice), thereby granting more authority back to the City Administrator as follows: Any position or position changes that are in the budget would not be required to go back to the City Council for authorization to recruit; again, staff would still bring a resolution containing all the hire information to the Council via the Consent Agenda. This process would eliminate two Personnel Committee meetings (request to recruit and request to hire) as well as one additional Council case (request to recruit). As stated above, a key outcome is that this not only eliminates meetings for Council, it also saves in staff time, and leaves a more understandable record trail of what was done and when.