I'd now like to call the meeting to order of our City Council. This is a special meeting and our first item and our only item is the Firefighter Civil Service. I'll turn it over to Mr. Trey-Jover to our City Manager. Thanks Mayor, members of the council. As we've talked about the budget and the civil service implications of the budget and how civil service Is implemented and various choices and alternatives that exist? I'm going to try to do the majority of this particularly that's that that's financially related If we get into some questions that are operational or Civil service oriented to chief or carry joke and come up and answer questions. But hopefully what we're going to try to do is add some clarity to some areas because I continue to hear confusion. Mr. Shepherd I think at our last meeting said can you can you strip this down and get us kind of bite-sized morsels and I'm going to I'm going to try to do that. So we're going to see if this is more helpful or not. I don't know. We'll see. I put three things at your place. You have a thing that is kind of really a placement. It's kind of got red and blue on the front. We're going to start there. Behind that, there are some compensation data for the fire department. And there then is some sick invocation leave policy data for firefighters that I think you all had asked about previously, just as resources. So I'm going to leave through, you use largely the placemat as kind of a structure to facilitate a discussion and see if it doesn't help you all in some of the decision making that you'll need to be as it relates to the budget and kind of where we go from there. So I'm going to talk first kind of just on that the front side that talks about roles and costs and just kind of going from left to right. Some of this is a little bit redundant but in the in the in the thoughts of just keeping it all together that's what I'm trying to do here. So mayor and council you all as the body as it relates to civil service implementation, have kind of four kind of core things. You're going to need to confirm the applicants for the commission and the department head. You have to determine the compensation and special pay funding, which will spend probably most of our time talking about that bullet as well as the bullet regarding determining sick and vacation leave policy. And in the future, we're going to need to talk about establishing our position classifications and FTEs. The same manager, as it relates to all this, appoints the commission members and department head and establishes personnel policies that are not addressed in chapter 143. You will hear that really referred to as local rules or you can think of it almost like personnel policies, although they're really not. As we work with 143 you'll have the statutes, you'll have local rules that are developed to fill in the statute and then anything that's still left to uncertainty will be the city's remaining personnel policy. Those three things kind of all work together. All in an ocean of AG opinions and case laws and all of that that I know you've heard plenty about. And then the Civil Service Commission has to appoint a director and establish rules as it relates to hiring disciplinary appeals, promotions, removal suspensions, and they also serve as a appealeele hearing for disciplines and promotional passovers. So just at a macro level, when you take a look at staff, council, commission, those are the kind of the larger buckets of kind of our duties as we roll forward and how we execute this. Anybody have any particular questions on that before I move on? I mean, this is really a connected conversation. So in many ways, I'm probably gonna get to some of your questions and then we'll just see how it plays out. On the right hand side of the last piece has a question. This may be sort of self-explanatory, but on the Civil Service Commission, they were a point director and our HR director so they appointed. Yes sir. Okay. That was one of our cost saving measures. I was to ask her to wear two hats. Mr. Parker. Thank you Mayor. Trey in determining the things that we have to do, what is our time frame for that? Would you please explain it please? So there's really I think two key time frames and Mr. Shepherd alluded this I think one of our previous discussions is that there's budgetary time frames where we need to appropriate resources to actually execute the budgeted items. And then there are things that are policy implementation type strategies, which will largely be some of the sick and vacation discussions. So you don't have to have that prior to an adopted budget. But I think Dr. Forer Myers brought up a point that, all of this is a little bit connected, not so much budgetarily, but the timeline of civil service implementation, is it's to be taking effect October the 30th. And so if people are making decisions regarding what they wanna do as a career firefighter in Arlington, and if they're gonna choose to separate or retire, they have to provide 30 days notice. And so if they provide 30 days notice, that makes it September 30th So the budget will be adopted on September 14th September 30th Those of course a couple of weeks later and then civil services implemented on October 30th So those are some of the key dates and kind of how they all flow together Yeah, Mr Over tonight that is a great point You know that I know that the firefighters want to know is That time so we would be looking at implementation October 31st. So backing that up they have between now and September 30th. And of course during that time we will be working through this process so that they will know what comes down as far as where we land here in the where civil service lands. Just one correction merit, because you know, the specificity is important. October 30th. October 30th is the date. October 30th. So essentially what's critical for us to decide during this meeting due to the fact that we essentially have a gate in September 30 and then another event the first of November. What is the gate? September the 14th and one that is again arguably October 30th, but if employees are going to take actions correlated that day, you have to add the 30-day advance notice to that. So really the next month or so month or so. What is it today that we have to decide? Okay, that's what I'm trying to that. So really the next month or so month or month. Today that we have to decide okay that's what I'm trying to. Well there's technically speaking there's nothing you have to you have to decide today. It would be helpful for us to start getting some direction of kind of the pathways you want to proceed and I would say that primarily one of the easiest things to achieve today is the actual budgetary decisions that we need to adopt on the 5th and on the 14th, which is actually then on the red piece of this front-place map. So the costs, and you all have seen this in the discussion that we've talked about on civil service, having some that are fixed costs and some that are variable costs. The fixed cost being a couple of things. The academy hiring change where we will no longer bring folks in on a contract basis, but we now have to bring them on actually on payroll. There's a cost differential on that. That's what that number is. Then we have four positions which we've identified, the senior attorney, the civil service coordinator, the paralegal and HR assistant and then based on the way we're changing the hiring process we also have lost revenue because we don't have an application fee. So all of those things total down to $580, $580,000 of fixed cost. I also alluded at the last meeting that we had identified a double count that we had because we had some of these costs loaded in both the general fund and the liquidated damages fund. So we're gonna keep the costs that are in the liquidated damages fund. So it lowers the target that you saw previously, which was $750,000 in some change. That's what you see there. And then the variable cost is largely litigation type things, although I do believe there's probably some other elements as it relates to over time that might increase based on implementation of certain requirements of the civil service law as it relates to your absentee unscheduled leave. There's some things that might drive some of those policy changes, but that's undetermined at this point. And if I could, Mr. Glass, we just second, as the offsets on those two fixed and variable costs, we had identified in the proposed budget, the elimination of EMTIP, sick leave sellback and education pay, except for bachelor's degree. We've had a turnover factor in there, about $24,000, as well as swing pay, which are the identified offsets against the identified expenditures. On the variable cost, the offset was to defer one of our fire engine purchases, which is about $650,000. And if we find ourselves in excess of that, that we would look to the fire department, as far as reductions in the future to help reimburse our risk management fund, should it start to take on costs that are directly proportional to some of the activity that we might see? So Mr. Glass, if I take your question now, I wanted to make sure we had those identified. Just wanted to ask you about the policies that we eventually have to put in place. What time frame are we looking at to make sure we have those and then how what life stand up? Can we go back if we discover something's not quite right, make adjustments on them or we could much start with them for. I believe you'll be able to make choices or changes. If you make some, in other words, I don't think there's a fail safe deal where because you change something, you won't be able to change it in the future, at least from a legal perspective. There may be just a pragmatism perspective of having to go back and make any modification. Teresh, you want to correct me on that? No? OK. So nothing gets totally locked in stone. Every year, we'll always have discussion about paying benefits. And if we need to make certain policy changes to accommodate certain expense that are going on, just like we've done in the past with Insurance and things we see cost driving we have to make adjustments we see cost rising we make adjustments and we will always be able to kind of Do that And so again going back the key decision points. I think as we as we are here now September 14th is the date to make operating budget decisions and taking care of our roles, implementation of civil service. We have to complete our activity there by October 30th to implement civil service. Some employees as we pointed out would like to know a little bit earlier so that it affects decision making that they might want to choose But from a technical perspective the law is just going to require us to implement six months after the date That was identified which is going to be October the 30th If I may expand on that just in one area the October 30th deadline There is a publication requirement So October 22nd is actually the date by which we'd have to publish information. So that's kind of really your deadline for that October 30th date. Does that back to 30 days up to 9.22 or we still deal with 9.30? Okay, okay. Okay, so responding to Mr. Shepard's bite size morsels. I've kind of got you on the left hand side, rolls and responsibilities of the three kind of key parties and implementation of civil service. And then from an operating budget perspective, as the budget has been presented to you These are the identified cost and the identified offsets against that But we're about to go to the next bite-size porcelain. I want to make sure we're okay there Excuse me. I hate to keep the labor and it's back to our civil service commission So they would be actually responsible for putting together the I hate to keep the labor that's back to our Civil Service Commission. So they would actually are responsible for putting together the operating rules and regulations. What if any influence, input do we have? That is a role of the commission if any you have informal influence, but is their role to implement those rules that apply specifically to what the civil service statute asks for? To the degree that there's even more activity, that's the city manager's role, to then elaborate broader on city personnel policy. So there's kind of this layering statute, service, local rules, city personnel policies, kind of the, the orio from the inside out. Trey, I'm having a kind of an issue here, as it pertains to the removal of any benefit that is established after October 30th. I legally, I think that we need a consultation on that. Okay, and I think it would. We can answer that question, and there are probably gonna be several others that come up that are maybe kind of some legal perspective that you all want to ask attorneys about, maybe at the end of this, after we've worked through, maybe we've answered some of that, or if not at least we've narrowed kind of what we need for executive session kind of thank you. Okay so if you can turn the placemat over we're gonna go the next set of bite-sized morsels and as I've referred to a little bit now we're starting to get into the weeds just a little bit but we're still kind of at the top level. There's plenty more weeds and tentacles that go out from even this. But if you will, let me kind of go from the center out, the red box, the red box, firefighter base pay. So we're kind of starting at the bottom and then kind of working up or out however you want to look at that So our adopted policy or our practice for firefighter base pay is to target a market average plus 5% So we've been working on that you know last year and this year and again next year as relates to the fire department This proposed budget does include 1.1 As relates to the fire department, this proposed budget does include $1.12 million or an average of 5% raise to fulfill that second year amount. That is part of what we've decided we want to do. It is not legally required. You have a choice as it relates to that. The other thing that this budget includes that I'd like to refer to you is what's really the seniority step plan and this kind of the second packet that I have at your place. You all have seen this before in previous years. So if you would, it's the package that says firefighter step plan compensation. If you you would just look at page two with me, addressing kind of firefighter base pay. So one of the things that we have historically done and many other departments have historically done, although not all departments, it's not a legal requirement. It is clearly a kind of a market practice. But in the firefighter side, you can see at the top of page two the base pay this past fiscal year was 56 316. With the new compensation plan should it stay as proposed that base pay will jump up for entry level firefighters to 59 301. What most people don't follow then is if as you're an entry level firefighter during your career at certain pre-scheduled marks you get what are called step adjustments. So as you can see on there 12 months, 24 months, 36 months, 48 months, 60, so on and so forth. So those are built into the budget and they are they are there as part of our historic practice and you see that for firefighters it's multiple, multiple levels but then as you get into the other ranks for apparatus operator lieutenant captain of battalion chief it really is what you're hired at and then what you end at that's kind of how it works. So that's a little bit about the step piece in this proposed budget we have funded our historical past step program. It has $448,721 to cover the step program that is what we've elected to do to compete with the market. And you'll see that on page three of that package. And you see it not only us, but you see it against all the other folks that we benchmark against in the region. So Alan, Carol, and Dallas, Fort Worth Frisco, Grand Prairie, et cetera. And so you can see across there, all of these departments offer step adjustments kind of across the grid. And then you can kind of see how our recommended pay increase has taken us on entry level as we sit here today. Just above the yellow line, you see the 2007 ranking for Arlington Fire is number eight against our competitive set. As we move this, 5.3%, it'll move to four. have been ranking for Arlington Fire is number eight against our competitive set. As we move this, 5.3%, it'll move to four, but what we don't know is what everybody else is doing, so it likely won't move to four, it might move to six as we slot against other people. So, but, so that is what I would consider part of the base pay package that is certainly council discretionary but market comparable. So that goes to the third point in the red box is that the step plan and market movements are choices that we've made and are in the budget but they are not legally required obligations. One that is legally required that's part of the base pay is Fair Labor Standards Act required overtime. And what that works as just at a high level, we all know that firefighters generally work 24 hour shifts. And so in a typical week, they might have two days or gonna work, which means almost by definition, they are working 48 hours. So almost by definition there's eight hours of overtime that is earned in just a base pay approach. If you work your two, you know, your 48 hours a week in general. So our FLSA required overtime that is in the budget and loaded is 718,298. And on top of that, you know that there's discretionary overtime that we've been trying to manage down, and we have about another $450,000, $500,000 on top of that. The total overtime budget this year, I think, is around $1.1 million. So that overtime is always required, but it can be managed to a degree, but the FLSA component really, to a large degree, cannot be. There are things that we do that are more flexible than others, and I think we talked about that a few weeks ago. We were talking about it as a whole. So for example, the law only says that you have to pay in excess of the time that you've worked over 40 hours. Well if you've taken vacation that we have you worked legally the answers no you've not worked. So you work 40 hours and then eight hours is overtime. Operationally and in our practice we consider that time worked and so the eight hours is paid overtime So there is a choice that can be made there to lower some costs Based on our previous discussion. We've not elected to go that choice because it is a choice that is applied to all employees And we can hit every every departmental unit that has any type of overtime pay So that's kind of parts that I think of that are really base. It's the market salary, it's the set plan, and it's FLSA required overtime. Does that kind of make sense in a bite size to lay the foundation? Okay, so then in the broader rectangle, the two boxes to the red and the one gray box to the right. Then you get into what are some of the other pays, some that are optional and some that are required. I think Mr. Shepherd asked the question last time, help us understand what's required, what's optional. So to the left of the red box, the things that are required by state and federal policy are gonna be things, let's just, overtime pay, acting pay for being out of class. You're working as a lieutenant even though you're an apparatus operator. That's a requirement that you get paid for the level of what you're working. And longevity pay. The law requires us to pay four dollars per month, four times of service, and that is a requirement. In the city side it's certainly a policy change that we can make but for all practical purposes it's really required for us to kind of conduct business language pay we have in at $12,000 and cell phone allowances for people to be accessible during times like what we're dealing with right now with the Hurricane Harvey item. So of the other types of pays beyond the base pay, those are the ones that we would really consider required that are really not discretionary. So Mr. Parker, a little bit to some of your question about some of the special pays over on the right hand side and the grey box are what we would call optional pays. There's nothing that I'm aware of that would require us to make any of these payments. Other than our competitive set, our practice to want to be a place where people want to come to work, et cetera. But in answer to the question, the left-hand column there from 401k match to stability to paramedic pay to hazmat pay on down the list all of those are choices that we will make when we talk about some of the pays that we're going to have to set in the budget ordinance these are the types of things that we'll have to define what we're going to do and what the calculation is. And that totals $1.35 million that has not been offset out of the budget. These are all in the budget. These are in the proposed budget. What has been removed out of the budget is the right hand side of that. They reduced items for civil service expenses. EMTIP, sick leave sell back, education pay that's not a bachelor's, turnover factor and swing pay. So, bite size piece number one, base pay items, then other pays, some of which are required, some of which are optional. And this kind of, I tried to identify those, what's in the budget, what's out of the budget, and what the dollar value of those items are that are loaded into the budget. Or not. Just help me a little bit, because over here it has, on the optional, it says language pay, 12,000, and over here it says required language, 12,000. You know, here it says required language, 12,000. Is that, I don't understand, what's the difference? You've made a good catch there. I mean, we've got it in both categories. It's technically optional. We can change it by our city policy. In practice, given the diverse community that we have, I need to compensate people for being able to speak other languages. So we've called it required because I think it's just critically important. Mr. Parker. What does it say, Trey, in part 143 concerning all these optional pays? Is there a phrase in 143 that states that these optional pays no longer apply because are no longer applied because they are a previous award under a different local governance cook. I'll ask for anybody to correct me if I'm wrong but I think you're to answer to specific answer your question is that really little to none of these are really articulated in the statute. They're not specifically called out. But what it says is if you're going to offer those kinds of pays that the governing body needs to adopt via an ordinance, what they're going to be and how it's going to be calculated. So is that right? Okay. So essentially, if I may. So essentially, these pays that we see on the gray box are above and beyond what the people have asked us to do at the ballot box. Is that correct? These pays are not specifically listed in the statute that was voted on, chapter 143. They are not specifically listed in that. Thank you, appreciate. Miss Talon. Trayon, my question is under optional pays in the left hand column position pays what is that exactly? So we have several staff positions that are typically 8 to 5 type jobs where we've taken a firefighter off the 24-7 and they've gone into an 8 to 5 role and they've performed to do a different type of administrative function like a public information officer. Okay. do a different type of administrative function, like a public information officer. Okay, that's in it. For a instructor, I think is one of them. There's a handful of positions. They're given a 5% premium for essentially, the cost differential between their 24-7 paycheck and this eight to five paycheck. It kind of is an effort to equalize that. But there's, I don't know, half a dozen or so positions that fit that administrative pay area like a PIO and an instructor type type. Okay. And then in the right hand column, turnover factor, 24,449, what is that? So as people leave positions, particularly civilian type positions. You hold them vacant for a period of time so that you can get some savings and roll it to the bottom line. In this particular case, what we've done is we're doing some math on a projected turnover factor of people who've stated they're intent to retire. You go from the top of that step ladder to backfilling with a frontline fresh officer who's at the bottom of that list. So there's a difference in tenure to new person and then you capture that and you apply it towards this. You'll eventually over multi years work your way back up to that amount. But for this exercise, it's a capture of today dollars to fund a today Cost-offs set right so operationally having and going from having a very experienced tenured firefighter Professional in that position to having it you know a newer person less tenured Have we looked at how that's going to impact the organization overall like Safety wise or risk? That's probably a fire chief question to talk a little bit about that. Councilmember Thalman, I'm Donne Brownston, fire chief. To answer your question I think that's the nature of the business. Turnover in an organization is how it works. Senior members leave, junior members come on board. It's responsibility of management and ensure that the new members are sufficiently trained and ready to take over. So it's the natural process of an organization. So I don't think it's a threat to safety. I think it's just the way things work for us. Thanks. Okay. Okay. So any other questions on the optional pays or required optional pays? Is this working for you? Is it okay? We're building blocks to that kind of flow and logic? Okay. Before I hit the second vacation, let me move over to the far left. And I want to make sure that we've tried to identify some of what are not only new requirements that the law of 143 is being applied to, but also other statutory requirements that might exist. So things that we'll be dealing with as we implement, restricted personnel, file content, peer substitution at full pay, meaning that the person can be off and while someone else works for them, but they still get paid their wage. There's not a lost revenue there for the employee who's asking to be off. Workplace injury coverage is now one year, instead of 90 days. There will be some expedited hiring rights, some advanced employment protections, which we heard a lot about that during the election. There's also, if there is any kind of reduction in force, it's done by seniority, and there's a waiting list that's maintained for three years. So if we have any callbacks, people come back based on seniority. There is up to 90 days sick pay. I'll talk a little bit about that in more detail, but you get up to 90 days sick pay if you separate for any reason, not just retirement, which is our current policy. There's also a provision to reinstate disability retirement as opposed to re-application, which is our current policy. There's a provision which was also talked about a lot, about military leave accounts at full pay. And we have to offer the same number of vacation, and holidays offered to other city employees. And for this purpose for a firefighter, the definition, a holiday is a 12-day pay period, which is really time and a half, eight hours plus four. So it gets you that same time and a half type calculation, which is why it's 12 hours. So those are some of those things that no matter what you look at, statutorily. I didn't go into a bunch of other, you know, EEOC type things and all that. There's plenty of other requirements. I'm trying to get to the ones that are kind of more specific to fire. And as we continue to kind of build this model and kind of elaborate on this, it's really almost at this point on kind of an open source document for us to work it together to get it to explain to the public and to you all down the road as these things implemented kind of how it all works. So then on the two areas of second vacation pay, there's a couple of elements that we've put in here. So next bite size piece, vacation pay. And I've got a little bit up here on the board, but I'm going to be talking off the placement. So our current practice is a graduated scale, zero to nine years, which is 15 days or 180 hours. Ten to 14 years is a sliding scale up to 240 hours or 20 days. Our current policy allows you to carry over your balance. You can maximally achieve 480 hours, and it is paid at separation regardless of the reason you leave. If you retire, if you make a different employment choice, if you're terminated, any of that kind of stuff, separation is paid on vacation pay regardless as we sit here today. Required by law is that firefighters must receive the same number of days as other employees and that those number of days for firefighters must be a 10-day minimum or 15-day minimum so if for some reason we offered 10 firefighters would still get 15 and your general class employees would still get 10 but we all started 15 I believe so Headspending around a lot of this so then we get into the the kind of shaded box And so there's some oh shepard. Okay. Got a question. I trade, this is one of the things that has continued to confuse me. So for firefighters, a day is 12 hours. Yes. So they get 15, 12 hour days, which equals 180 hours. Yes. Other employees in the organization also get 15 days, but that's only eight hour days. Somebody else? This is where the wheel starts spinning and I get off in the ditch and- Kerry Zika, Director of Human Resources and Civil Service. On new employees in the zero to five year range they start with 10 eight hour days so they don't catch up until later on on the grid so they don't start equally right now. Okay all right thank you. I stand corrected on that one just why we've got our two for the price of one lady to help, right? So in the shaded box as it relates to how the council might want to think about vacation pay there You might you might notice that the bullets have kind of become numbers and the numbers in these areas kind of really start to represent options But they're really kind of along a continuum. There are many ways we can change these But I think these kind of represent some things I've heard you know from you all about Over the last number of weeks You can change the payout Payout when someone separates. What do they get paid for vacation? You could amend our existing practice to align to chapter 143. That would mean there is no balance carryover and there is no payout of vacation at separation. You could also retain our current policy, which is pay-at-separation and carry-over is allowed. Or you could also think about amending our current policy and defining pay-out eligibility and determine a future pay-over policy, which is really much more flexible depending on what we'd like to do. So the law says that the governing body gets to determine what these are. And so, thematically, those are some tracks you can go down. Before we kind of problem this area though, I want to say a couple of things on the other parts of that shaded box. Balances is another area. So you have payout, what do people get paid? But then today, as they sit here, not when they've left, but today as they still are a current employee, they have a balance. So, what do we do with the balance? So, you could start at a new tenure balance, starting at the date that civil service is implemented, which takes us back over to a certain number of hours that are required to be awarded. Or we could allow employees to retain up to 480 hours or up to the amount that they currently have, whether they've got 50, 150, 250, 350, whatever, but up to the maximum of 480. And then there's a question of people who might have a surplus accrual and what you do with that. And so there are simple choices there of eliminating the liability, meaning it's not authorized, so that amount disappears. You can freeze the balance and pay it out at separation or at retirement if we'd like to. You can freeze the balance and allow certain kinds of FMLA access, because I've heard a little bit of that about people still wanting access to hours that they've accrued if they have a life event or some kind of chronic situation. Or you could allow them to donate it to the military leave poll per chapter 143. So as we deal with vacation pay, there's a current policy, there's things that are required by law, and then those things largely fall into questions about how we handle payout, how we handle balances, and how we handle surplus of cruells, and we get to decide that's how the process works. So there's some benchmarks here that are the law and existing policy and anything that we might work out in between that we think is fair and reasonable. So does anybody want to talk at all about vacation pay before we talk more about sick pay? Any questions or comments on Ms. Salman? Just to clarify a question. On the surplus accrual, current policy says that we can accrue a maximum of 480 hours. The surplus are we talking about just up to that 480? Or are we talking about surplus if we were to reduce the number of hours? So anything between- If the number of hours were to be reduced- The reduction of the per- Okay, got it. Thank you. Okay. All right. I'm moving. Okay. All right. Okay. So a similar format for sick pay. Our current practice at the city is you can carry over balances. You can accrue a maximum of 1,800 hours. But when you retire, you can only pay out 1440 hours and it's all paid at the current pay rate. I'll get to that here in a second. Required by law though is that you must provide 180 hours a year. You must provide unlimited accrual. You must have an unlimited ability to donate to military account. You must pay 10, 80 hours at separation if it's been accrued. I mean, someone who's got 500 hours doesn't get bumped up, but if you've accrued that amount, you must pay at that amount. The payout rate is adjusted under the law, meaning it's based on total compensation. It's based on all that I put up there as far as base pay and optional pay and overtime pay. It's a different calculation than just your base salary pay. So it has an inflationary factor on it with the new law. And the law also requires you to have in certain circumstances pure substitution. So, for example, if you have a workplace injury or something like that and you're out and you don't have leave, others can work for you and you still get paid. That's what that provides for. So, some of the options to think about in the sick pay area. Okay, correct me. Come on, speak up. Speak up. Sorry. Just want to make a quick clarification. The peer substitution is not on workplace injury, but any other illness or injury you can work for your peers. So in the darker blue area, pay out under sick. We could handle through offering the 143 maximum of 1080 or retaining city policy of 1440 at retirement only, not if you separate for any other reason. There should be a couple of choices or really anywhere in between. Then under balances you could reduce to the chapter 143 maximum cell of of 1080. You can reduce to the city current policy maximum of 1440. Or you could maintain the current city practice of 1800. Anywhere along there. And then handling surplus accruals, you could take an approach that reduces the liability that we have which not really a necessarily a budgetary item but it is a fiscal item from 1440 to 1080. You could also in theory reduce that to any other number that you would like to do, but our suggestions at $10.80, that's going to be the max payout anyway, so it kind of makes sense as a number. You could add any surplus of cruells into a catastrophic leave pool to let employees still tap that. Should they have a need? Which we would need to define rules around how that would work. You could freeze it at the current base rate pay and allow employee access for family medical leave. You could freeze it at the current base pay route and allow to occur at separation, not just retirement. And you could allow them to donate it to military leave account, consistent with 143. So I think from just a foundational perspective and maybe as an ongoing kind of flash card, and again, I'd say open source, and based on a couple of the questions you've asked, we'll tweak this up to clarify some of it. So as we have future conversations with it, and of course I gave a copy to some of our labor representatives before we started and if they have some Modifications to it the goal really is to have just a good reference document here so everybody understands it And includes things and if everybody can say yeah, that's how the system works and Then we can debate about how we want to apply it, right and what the cost implications are So hopefully that provides some foundation for us to discuss. Mr. Parker. Thank you Mayor. I'm getting just a little confused at tray concerning what the requirements are for Sikpe when it comes to separation. Up in the upper left hand corner box, you have up to a 90 day sick pay for any separation reason whatsoever. Okay. And what's that equate to hours wise? 1080. 1080. And then we could not, we don't get that the did you say that we do not only when we're retired do we get ten eighty and we don't get the ten eighty if we separate for any other reason I don't I don't understand it in the future as one forty three as applied if you've earned ten eighty you will get ten eighty for any reason, before it takes place, get up to 14, 40, for retirement only. Got you. Thank you. Now, I've got some legal questions. And then I heard Mr. Parker say he had one. Can we go into executive session to get those answers? Mr. Mayor, we could do that. If you all desire to do that, we could go into an executive to talk about the civil service. Legal issues related to civil service. Before we do that, I do have one other thing that I want to make sure that you all know we're considering that is I think important for us how we're going to manage. It's going to be something that will show up in a future budgetary discussion. It's not financial related, but it is position authority related. And going back over to the role piece where we say, Mary and Council, the fourth bullet. One of the things that you're gonna have to do is take action to establish position classifications and full-time equivalents. And you all know we've been talking about the change that is occurring in how we're doing our academy classes and that there's a kind of a financial impact to that. What we haven't accommodated for in the proposed budget is the personnel account for that. There's cash loaded in, but not bodies loaded in for that. So we're going to suggest to you that we add to the schedule when it comes forward 24 firefighters with no additional cost, but with the position authority, because as this is implemented, there's a couple of things that you're gonna learn. As ranks go, you can only fill the number of positions that you have on that list. And you have to fill them within a certain period of time. So there's no salary savings at the ranks, So there's no salary savings at the ranks, and there's no overages at the ranks unless specifically authorized back here. At the firefighter level, you cannot hire more than it's on the schedule. You can hire less, so you can actually save money by not hiring more firefighters, but by not hiring more firefighters, you're driving the body need for increased overtime expense. So instead of having the contract labor that we've had as we've onboarded to the academy and we've got to create the positions to come in to that academy, I think that will give us the flexibility that we need to not only put them into real positions, but also as we manage the budget up and down in the firefighter class, that position authority I think will provide the council and managers more flexibility as it relates to the implementation of that. We'll have a ceiling that we can't go over but as we onboard through Academy classes we've compensated them for the positional authority that's going to be required. So that's something that we did not include. Chief didn't have that identified in his deal or maybe you didn't. We missed it, but money and bodies associated with that change of process. So I want to make sure that was out there because we'll need to talk about that as the budget comes forward and we reconcile some of the decisions you've been making or not making in the next couple of meetings. I'm going to put that up there for your consideration that's different than we started on August the 8th. Okay. So I think that covers kind of the briefing that we wanted to have for you and then to whatever degree we can help you as far as legal stuff. I'll leave that up to Tarrerson folks to help you. Okay. All right. I'll leave that up to terrorists and folks to help you. Okay. All right, well the city council will now go into close session at 5.50 p.m. on August 31st, 2017 in accordance with the following sections of VTCA government code chapter five 51.071 consultation with attorney.