The Human Resources and Information Technology Committee met 02/08/2023. In addition to the reorganization of the Legal Services department the committee voted on table of organization changes for the Police Department and the Public Health Department. Both of these changes were approved unanimously by the committee.
I’ve prepared a transcript of the discussion for download.
The Police Department changes were very straightforward. Human Resources Director Jay Ratchman explained that they wanted to change who the Operations Coordinator reported to. The Operations Coordinator was in charge of things such as operations planning, special events planning, scheduling, staffing, and program management. Currently, they report to a captain, but they wanted to have that position report to a lieutenant under the Community Resources Unit. The change would not result in any sort of financial impact.
The committee approved the request unanimously without any further discussion or questions.
They spent a little more time discussing the requested change to the Public Health Department’s table of organization.
The Health Department currently had an open Public Health Nurse position that at .9 FTE was just shy of being a 100% Full Time Equivalent position. Deputy Director Sonja Jensen had held the nurse supervisor role prior to being made Deputy Director and she was still performing the duties of the intake public health nurse 1-2 days per week. Moving some of those duties to this position and Increasing the hours of the position so that it became a 1.0 FTE would allow Deputy Director Jensen to focus on her administrative duties and also improve the recruitment prospects for the open position.
The cost of the additional salary and fringe benefits was estimated to cost the city an additional $10,000. Alderperson Sheri Hartzheim (District 13) commented that the position seemed very highly paid.
Director Ratchman said that they picked the midpoint of the pay grade scale for a public health nurse because they believed they would be able to hire someone who had the skills and experience commiserate with that level. He also noted that when they estimated the cost of fringe benefits they did it with the assumption that the employee would be taking family health insurance and family dental insurance. It was essentially the worst case scenario in terms of potential cost.
Additionally, it was noted that for the next 5 years, the increased cost to the city of the change would be covered by grant funding. The city would still be paying the costs associated with the original .9 FTE position but the salary and fringe benefits that came with the additional .1 FTE would be covered by a grant and would not come out of the city’s general fund budget.
The committee voted unanimously to approve the change.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1079551&GUID=2C435609-980C-4D9D-80BF-FF631772F093
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