04/18/2006 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Council Minutes of 4/18/2006 would allow the office of those elected to influence public employee hiring, promotion, ~,, discipline, assignment according to their political agendas rather than insuring the most highly qualified candidates are employed for the services of this community. Last November, voters realized that potential in Charter amendment and soundly defeated it. The Charter amendment would allow current the administration to by-pass these protections. The City of North Olmsted is renowned for providing high quality, professional services for its residents, businesses and visitors. Level of services is directly attributed to the quality. of employees, all of whom who aze hired and promoted under the current existing Civil Service law. The current system is effective and elected officials proposing the change have not made a clear argument illustrating a legitimate benefit to be gained by discarding these rules. Our current system of government is working as intended. Changes to Civil Service represents anill-coz~eved plan rather than an effort to maintain a high standard of public employees that the residents of this city have become accustomed to. If the administration is concerned about specific issues and Civil Service provisions and the efficiency and administration of the city operations, there is a mechanism in place: the collective bazgaining agreement. This is not been done because the current Civil Service rules are adequate and there is no need for change. Law Director Dubelko said he respected everything that Mr. Holm had stated. He understands his concerns and those of the FOP. It is important for everybody to understand what this proposal would and wouldn't do. This does not change anything in Article VI, Section 3. That is the section that establishes the classified ~sitions in the city. Also it doesn't change anything else that's already in the Charter. The Charter already provides, contrary to state law, that in promotional examinations, the highest candidate receives the promotion. That is different than state law. All Issue 31 does is addresses an housekeeping detail-Section 4 of Article VI which presently states that in all matters not in conflict with this Charter, the Civil Service Commission conducts its affairs in accordance with the provision of general law. All that's changing is indicating that it doesn't have to conduct its affairs in accordance with general law, which means state law, but can have local rules and regulations on haw it conducts its general affairs. It is a small change in Section 4 to enable us to have some local authority to conduct business for the Civil Service Commission differently than state law. It doesn't change Section 3 which establishes the classification scheme, including Police and Fire Chief positions. It doesn't change the Charter with respect to the continued requirement that in promotional examinations, the top candidate get the job. This is not an effort at all by elected officials to by-pass Civil Service. Our Civil Service Commission still has to conduct its affairs; it still has to do its classification duties in a Civil Service system. The essence of Civil Service is that, if a position is within classified service and the position can be tested, it must be tested. If the proposal is passed, he believes it should give our local Civil Service Commission that authority to do things in a local way with respect to conducting its affairs, nothing will change with respect to which positions are classified in city government, which is different than state law. We have our own classification scheme. Nothing will change with respect to the requirement that positions that are testable be tested. Nothing will change with respect to the top clndidate in promotional examinations getting the promotion. 16 ,~~~~ ~.