Civil Service Commission Meeting.

That will generate another couple of million dollars, and of course we've talked publicly about the roll forward, as has the legislative auditor. Those things coming together give us a better picture headed into 2027 than we are right now. And given the fact that we know how many employees have worked so diligently through this, I mean, our unclassified and our classified staff, who of course aren't working, we want to try to relieve that burden where the revenues can meet the expenses. Thank you for that feedback. Thank you for that feedback. Commissioners, do we have any questions or comments at the time that would be really great, especially as Christmas is approaching, if employees could get some good news? Madam Chair, I think I've repeated the words inside that, you know, for Thanksgiving and Christmas and the holidays, it would be really nice to be able to do it before then. So I am sensitive to that as well, and to that reality. We've passed that along, and of course we just need to work with all of our partners to see what we can do, and people too, right? We need people to pay the sanitation fee. So it's an all hands on deck situation. That would be great news, if that's possible. Absolutely. Commissioners, no further ado? Thank you. Thank you. Well, thank you. Appreciate it. Commissioners, if you're okay with it, let's go ahead and move items one, two, and three to after the rule amendments, in the interest of everyone's time. We can do those housekeeping items after. We'll get to that. Okay. All right. As we move on to the rule amendment, Commissioner Monteverdi, we're going to move on to four. Yes. You wanted to say something for the record? Yeah, sure. Most of you are aware I'm the sole city employee that serves on the Civil Service Commission. Therefore, on basis of possible economic interest, I'll be recusing from item 4B within the upcoming items. This is under current interpretation of Louisiana Revised Statute 4211.12a, prohibiting public servants from participating in transactions in which they might have a personal substantial economic interest. I do that despite the fact that my economic interest in this bonus sick leave day is not different from any other employee's, but out of caution at this time. Thank you, Commissioner Monteverdi. Okay. Item number 4A under rule amendments is the introduction of proposed amendments to rule 8 sections 1.2 and 1.3 to eliminate bonus annual leave days awarded based on tenure. You may proceed. Thank you. I'm going to offer a brief overview to all the rules and then substantially turn it over to John who will do most of the explaining. Okay. Let me do this and I'll read them all for the record and then y'all can- Thanks, Amy. That'd be great. Okay. Thank you. So then item number 4B is introduction of a proposed amendment to rule 1 definitions 11 and 22 and rule 8 sections 2.2 and 2.3 to eliminate bonus sick leave days for awarded based on tenure. Item number 4C under rule amendments is introduction of proposed amendments to rule 8 sections 1.4B and C to reduce annual leave carried forward from 45 days to 30 days for new employees hired after December 31st, 2026. Item number 4D is introduction of proposed amendments to rule 8 section 2.4 to limit sick leave carried forward to 200 days for new employees hired after December 31st, 2026. Item number 4E is introduction of proposed amendments to rule 8 section 3.1C to limit the payout of terminal sick leave to 20% of the employee's daily rate of pay for new employees hired after December 31st, 2026. Item number 4F is introduction of proposed amendments to rule 8 sections 1.6, 2.6, and 3.1 relative to the election of conversion of leave to retirement credits. And item number 4G is introduction of a proposed amendment to rule 1 definitions 30 and 31, rule 8 section 10.2 emergency family medical leave and emergency sick leave related to the Families First Coronavirus Response Act. All right. So first I want to start by thanking so many of the people who are in this room because we've already begun discussions with them. We want to make sure that we have candid conversations with the people that we know this affects. And a lot of times having sat both on that dais and now here at this chair, I will tell you that you're confronted with people who are more interested in advocating for a point than reaching candid conversation and having robust discourse. So I want to just begin by thanking all the people who took the time to meet with John and me about this because we know it affects them personally. Number two, I will say I know there's a lot of people sitting behind me. My guess is the most controversial point that we're going to hear today is about the bonus days. We have heard that repeatedly from people and we are totally prepared not only to listen to the conversation, but as I told everybody privately, we have to start somewhere and then completely open to the dialogue continuing, at least for Ask Me, but certainly to other organizations that are represented here today. I asked with them if we could meet just to prepare to have this meeting and then wait again until after we present the budget. I'm tentatively scheduled to meet with Ask Me on September 23rd, the day after we present the budget to the council, and then of course willing to engage in robust conversation with anybody who wants to have it between now and the October meeting. So I want to be very clear that we do not view this as etched in stone and that we are completely unmalleable. We are, and we want to make sure that we're having a good conversation and candidly the fact that people are here shows that there is concern about this and we want to make sure that we're listening and appreciate all those concerns. I do want to say this though.

I think one of the things that was most interesting to me in the conversations is that, as you all know, the bonus days would be the only thing that is potentially applied retroactively, but that the sick leave and the annual leave are applied for new employees, so it would not affect current employees. And when we discussed that with the union folks, one of the people asked me a really great question, which was, well, this is about the future. Why are you doing this right now? In other words, you have this budget hole, so why do you care about something that's likely really not going to affect the future? And I thought it was a really great question. And so I'd answer it a couple of different ways. Number one, I don't think people believe that the purpose of annual or sick leave is for and taking almost more than your salary when you leave a position. And that is what we are seeing among certain people, depending on their different pay classes. The purpose of having annual and sick leave is to take sick leave where exactly appropriate in case you are sick, and then, of course, making sure you enjoy yourself on annual leave. I would not encourage any human being to work 365 days a year. It's not healthy. It's not good for you. It's not going to produce the best product. All of us need time away from whatever our job is, and I would argue, particularly from City Hall and from the jobs that people do in this building, it's incredibly important for people to walk away. The other important thing, in my view, about this is that one of the hardest things I've had to deal with as CAO is being the face of financial problems and the austerity that the city has to deal with. What I'm trying to think through is really three different things. One, what are the short-term impacts of what we're going to do? The furlough, albeit hard, is a short-term impact and is going to be less than a year or a year at most. It is not going to be something that continues forever. There are other short-term impacts that have to be accomplished. Then there are mid-term goals. What can we accomplish that happened right now? Then there are longer-term things, too. I think I wouldn't be doing my job if I wasn't thinking about the long-term implications for the city of New Orleans. While I have great sympathy for people who are used to a certain system of doing things in a certain way, the reality is, and I think John will show this, the facts show that New Orleans is more generous than other municipalities and other parts of the state in its leave policies and that not only are we trying to align, but we want to make sure that as employees come to the city of New Orleans and as we're being asked eventually to raise salaries and as we're being asked to give different benefits and as we're being asked to provide better places of work, that we can provide all of those things. With that, I'll turn it over to John and obviously happy to answer questions and we'll stay for the comments behind this. Thank you. Thank you, Joe, and thank you, Commissioners. What I'd like to do here today is just explain some of the background that went into these reforms and what precisely... Obviously, we're proposing as part of these rule changes. So as Joe talked about, sort of one of the initial issues when we started looking at the long-term cost trends of the city and working with the Louisiana Legislative Auditor on these things was understanding our very significant terminal leave liability, right? So we have close to $100 million in overall terminal leave liability. We spend about $6 million a year on it. It's very hard to budget for because it's very variable, but it is a significant ongoing cost to the city. When we started looking at other jurisdictions, and particularly I wanted to focus on state of Louisiana, Jefferson Parish, city of Shreveport, Baton Rouge, when available, those types of comparisons, certainly open to hearing additional and, you know, I do want to echo Joe's comments thanking AFSCME, FOP, Fire Local 632, really have been very engaged in providing us, you know, frank and honest feedback about this and what I have sort of told them when I'm talking to them is if you have other comparables that it makes sense for us to take a look at, present them to us, we'd be interested in taking a look at that. We really want to do something that puts New Orleans in line with regular compensatory packages across government in Louisiana, and we feel that, you know, our package will do that. So let me first talk about the bonus second annual leave days. As Joe mentioned, this is one of the only reforms that really impacts currently employed employees, and, you know, the long and short of it is when you reach 20 years, there's obviously graded limits here, but when you reach 20 years, you're talking about an additional 12 annual leave days, you're talking about seven bonus sick leave days, that's in addition to your accruals of 13 and 13, so you're talking about 25 annual leave days and 20 sick leave days annually for every year after your 20th year of service. There's also strong disincentives in the rule against using some of these leaves, right? So when you look at the bonus sick leave days, you don't accrue them if you use 30 days of sick leave in that year. So there's a sort of weird set of structures there. I really couldn't find a direct parallel to bonus leave days elsewhere. There are other ways that, you know, communities and jurisdictions try to reward seniority, but I can't find one that does it through the bonus leave structure.

One of the things that's sort of uniquely problematic about that structure is those days are awarded on the first of that new year, right? So, you know, when you come into work in January as an employee, you'll have your full complement of bonus days available to you throughout that immediately, right? So if you make a decision to retire, you know, two weeks into January, that's an additional 12 annual leave days and seven sick leave days for paying out as part of the terminal leave process, you know, which, depending upon how much you have banked up, will, you know, vary your payout. So we sort of looked around at those parallels and said the structure of these is sort of uniquely difficult to budget for because you're talking about a lump sum allotment starting at the beginning of the year, and they are overall leading to very significant sick and annual leave bonuses among, or leave accrual among employees, and so that was one of the things that we looked at and said we can't find this clear analog, you know, in other practices. So, you know, we recommended elimination, you know, again, this is something we've heard, you know, very clearly from all the unions we've talked to is, you know, their biggest pain point and their biggest concern with this proposal, so it's something that I think we are keeping the look at, sort of what best practices are in this field, but that was sort of how we got to the initial recommendation on the bonus leave days. With regards to annual leave caps, so, you know, I will say when it gets to annual and sick leave, there are a lot of different practices across the state. I don't think there's one standard that's used. Our current practice is to cap annual leave at 45 days. The proposal you have before you would reduce that cap for these future employees to 30 days. When you look at the caps that other jurisdictions have around the state, they're generally in that 30 to 40 leave day period. The other thing I think you should note is we have, generally speaking, a much more generous sick leave banking policy than others, so we did take annual leave down below where some other jurisdictions cap it out at, but we have much more generous sick leave policies in those jurisdictions, so this is something where, you know, I think reasonable minds could figure, you know, where the exact equilibrium is. I'm not presenting this as the only solution possible, but what it does do is provide additional constraint on the accrual of very significant leave balances. I'm sorry, Commissioner, did you want me to finish? On sick leave accrual, right, so in the past what has happened is there's really no cap on sick leave, and then you get paid out on a gradiated schedule. Once you hit 400 sick leave days, everything past that is paid out at 100%, and so, again, that provides, you know, and everything before it is on an increasing gradiation, so you get more, you get paid out at a greater percentage for leave day 305 than you do 205 or 105, et cetera. What we're saying here is rather than having that gradiated scale, let's cap the total amount of leave that you are able to be eligible for, and let's cap the payout, the buyout of that leave, right? So we use the number that's used for the first, I believe, 200 leave days under current policy, which is 20%, and then set a cap of 200 sick leave days that are carried over. So that's where that came from. I will say sick leave payout is not universal in Louisiana. There are jurisdictions that do not pay it out. There's others that pay it out in certain circumstances, and then there's some that pay it out, you know, roughly like we do. Jefferson Parish, for instance, they have a cap of 40 days sick leave payout, which when you look at 220%, that's right about where that is, right? So everybody does it a little bit differently, but where our previous sort of rule structure, I believe, leaves us as an outlier in Louisiana among those compensation packages. And then the last thing to sort of talk about here is to say there are also some amendments that are made in this that are specifically intended to clarify how employees use leave for retirement time. Those are not meant to institute new policy or constitute reforms in any way. That is meant to clarify things that we believe in existing rules are a little bit unclear at the moment, but represent existing policy. So I just want to be clear, that is not an actual reform proposal, those amendments. Those are more to clarify existing practices and confirm them under the rules. So our three primary proposals are the elimination of the leave days, of the bonus days, the changes on caps for annual leave day, and the change on caps and payout levels for sick leave days. So thank you for sharing that information. It's a lot of information for everyone to digest, but clearly I think what's probably the easiest thing so that we could start the dialogue, X needs to happen for X to happen. So what I'm trying to figure out, the proposal is going to solve what goal? What is our goal? This needs to happen for X to happen. If you guys could kind of address that first, and I may have some other questions or the commissioners may have some questions. Yeah, I think there's a couple of things, right? One is the year-to-year budgeting uncertainty. So this is needed to happen to create greater year-to-year certainty on budgeting for terminal leave, and particularly that bonus leave feature that I talked about where they're all awarded early in January, basically means that you have an extraordinary level of payout that's available through almost no accrual timeframe. The other thing I would say is when you look at the city's financial problems, certainly there is a short-term financial problem. No one's going to argue with that. There's a long-term financial problem, too. The city's revenues are not meeting its long-term expenses.

Over the last several years, there have been a lot of increases to employee pay, and the overall trend, I think, is one where our tax base has not grown to that same level. So I think on a long-term basis, you're looking at this as an important feature to set that cost curve correct over the long term. Thank you. I'm sorry. May I add one more? Yes, absolutely. John alluded to this. I should have added this as well. You know, as we were in our financial downfall before we were starting to pull out, a legislative auditor came in and reviewed the city's finances, and part of those were obviously what's happened in the past, but also has made a number of recommendations. One of those recommendations is rolling the millages forward. One of those recommendations has been the sanitation fee and all the analysis surrounding that. The other two recommendations involved merit pay and terminal leave, too. So it's not like we woke up one morning saying, this is exactly where we ought to be. This is the state legislative auditor who's looking at New Orleans' practices and saying New Orleans is not aligned with the rest of the state and that we really need to reexamine this. Thank you. Thank you for this question, and I think that would help with some clarity as well. We understand that the city must operate fiscally, right? The commission ourselves, we see a lot of appeals dealing with leave, right? And so I want to know how the proposed policy aligns with the messaging, come to work, but yet at the same time, the practice, like, you have time to take it, especially for our emergency response and our public service people, when we're saying come to work, but on the other side, the policy may appear to say, no, you need to take leave. If not, then it's going to result in X. So I think, Madam Chair, I think there's a couple of principles here. One is public safety is a little bit different, as I understand it, and I welcome Commissioner Monteverde to tell me that I'm wrong, but my understanding is part of what public safety really also has to do is balance its workforce. So even if you wanted to have 30 firefighters take off, just for example, on Christmas Day, you still need people to staff on a certain day. I mean, you just can't tell people you can all take off in public safety, and so public safety does wind up being a bit of an outlier when it comes to certain things because of the fact that there are holidays or there are other events you have to work through, Mardi Gras being another perfect example, right? We don't need certain employees to show up to work on the weekend before Mardi Gras, but we really need people who are first responders, sanitation, DPW, to be there for it. So it would be hard to implement that. I mean, I think there's another couple of points. Number two is we want people to take their PTO as they're supposed to. I mean, let me say this. I want people to take their PTO as they're supposed to as well. If there's managers who are not hewing to a rule, and that is part of the problem, then that's an issue. Are you pulling down your microphone to add something? Yeah, well, I just want to say when we talk about the hoarding of leave, I think one of the contributors to people having a lot of leave on the books is that our public safety entities have been chronically understaffed, and it makes it difficult, like you said, for people to take off because they're chronically understaffed, and that's through no fault of the employees, and it's not intentionally hoarding leave. It's that they can't take off because, like you said, 30 people want to take off the day before Christmas, and you don't have enough people to cover it. That statistic is managed at the department level. Just speaking of public safety, probably true of EMS and police as well. I can't speak to non-public safety staffing metrics in that respect. But yes, it's not possible to just have everybody do that. It's managed. And I'm pretty sure we're gonna hear from comments, and I think that's gonna help frame kinda like where the work needs to happen. And look, and had I not been elected before, the sheer volume of people may be intimidating. And I'm glad there's so many people here, because if there's things that we need to tweak, we're fine. Otherwise, we wanna do that, and we're here to listen to people. And again, I think it's worth stressing one more time, that the annual leave and the sick leave are prospective only. That is, it means it's for prospective only, it's for future employees. So it is not for people who are sitting in the audience, so it doesn't affect you. And as the city's population also goes, we have to make sure employees are matching what our population size is. And so we wanna make sure for the people who are behind us, and look, there is internal debate about whether or not that we should look at this as a prospective or retrospective measure, putting the legal effects of it aside. One of the things the administration just thought it was, because people have accrued this leave, it wasn't even worth coming to ask for this commission, to change it for current employees. So, go ahead. Can I ask one question? Yes. Have y'all done any research into whether, say, an employee who's been here 20 years and gets 12 annual leave days, whether that's vested, and they are entitled to that for the rest of their tenure? Because it is a condition that they have met, and the employer has promised a benefit, and under the Louisiana Wage Act, and the case is construing it, that it is now vested. And you can't take it away. And whether or not the commission would end up being a defendant in a lawsuit at CDC, and have to explain why we took away 12 leave days for an employee who worked here 20 years, so that they could accrue that time and use it for retirement credit and leave a year early and get off the books. Yeah, no, we consulted.

To answer the statement, I would say we have consulted closely with city attorney's office through development of these reforms. We are confident they are legal. So, yes, I would say the answer is yes. Legal doesn't make it right, buddy. Be worth it, put it in. Yes, let's wait, wait, sir. Yes, sir, you have an opportunity to have comments. Just want to make sure that we're all respectful, so thanks. He's just smooth talking, that's all. He can sell oceanfront property, Joe can sell oceanfront property, and Adamson can sell oceanfront property. Let's be respectful, appreciate it. So here's an opportunity for us to have this dialogue. Let's make sure that as we enter into this interactive dialogue, that everyone has a place to share their concerns. I'm hoping that you guys listen, and at the same time, listen to what the administration is presenting, because that'll allow you to be informed on what's going to happen next. So I'm not sure if the city wants to continue to present, or we can turn it over. No, I've turned it over to public comment. I may not always turn like this, because I want to write notes. So I want people to know I am listening. Yeah, so Amy- I just had a couple of comments. In terms of the recommendations from the Louisiana Legislative Auditor, their recommendations regarding terminal leave were just- Can you speak a little louder on that? Were just that the city, in coordination with appropriate stakeholders, should periodically evaluate the terminal leave provisions contained in the civil service rules to assess their long-term fiscal impact. So it wasn't a mandate to reform the leave, it just said it should be periodically evaluated. And in that report, it looked at the 378 employees who had received terminal leave payments in 2025, and actually, out of those payments, two out of three of those payments received were for less than $5,000. Okay. So just want to make sure that, you know, that's good feedback based on those facts. Have we looked at how much savings are we- Are we actually- Have we done the numbers, or is this fact-finding at this point? I would not call it fact-finding. I would say, I don't know that I understand the argument that payouts are small, so therefore capping annual leave is tragic. Like, they're sort of separate- They're contradictory arguments. I would say the exact economic impact of this is probably incalculable because it involves a psychological evaluation of how much leave accrual impacts retirement decisions, which is a complex subject that I don't think you could get to a single monetary answer for. Didn't you, a few minutes ago, say there was an average number every year? You cited a figure. Yeah, approximately $6 million in terminal leave annually. Okay, so what's the psychology behind that? How much of that is diminished if you eliminate bonus leave days, that I do not know. It is almost certainly in the tens, if not hundreds of thousands, but I don't know the exact number. Okay, so we want to make sure we're going to open up- Sorry, just one other thing I wanted to say, too. It's problematic to say that we need to be right-sized so that we're in line with the rest of state government when there are other things that we aren't in alignment, like yearly pay increases, right? So, why do we need to be right-sized to win? So, it's something to also consider when we talk about employee morale, right? That is huge, how we show up to work, how do we incentivize our people when we talk about the future of city government, recruitment, retention. We want people to stay on the job, health insurance has gone up, cost of living has gone up. We talked about, we just heard, everything is about to go up, right? And so, I just want to make sure that we're addressing and hearing those conversations today as people come forward, that we just keep that, how we balance that as well. Commissioner? Yes, thank you guys. People who have been here a certain amount of time will remember a program put before this commission called, supposedly a forum agenda called Great Place to Work. Glad we're not calling anything that today. With respect to the CEO's optimism, which I appreciate on furloughs, the fact is we are still in the middle of furloughs, we're three days past Labor Day. And here we are in the middle of that considering this. And when the commission approved these furloughs, I noted there was no opposition behind you. And I believe, in fact I know, because I spoke to a lot of these folks who I represent, that that's because while they were unwelcome, they were accepted as a shared burden, right? You know that, we talked about that. City workers saw this as an opportunity to help get things moving in the right direction for themselves and the city at large. But honestly, to the people I represent, this reads very, very differently. This reads as simply insult to injury. It reads as extraction, nothing more. Not even a week ago, September 3rd, the city council took action to strengthen labor standards and hold accountable contractors who exploit workers. It's a good thing. But not even a week later, we are considering a proposal to weaken the quality of employment for city-employed career public servants. While the council, I remind you, is taking action to strengthen protections for contract workers, which they deserve. And I haven't forgotten that the whole notion of this came from the near scapegoating, in my opinion, of a long-serving employee. A fire chief retired with 45 years on the job, took out a $450,000 terminal leave payment. I'll admit, it's an exceptional amount of money. It's so exceptional that it falls so short of common. And the spin just stopped short of calling him a crook, I felt like. So it's a decent amount of money for a city worker, at least.

And it's exceptional because it reflects the career of a public servant who gave half a century to the city, almost never took vacation or sick time, which is harder and harder to take in some departments more than others. It's also exceptional, but it's not typical. And I don't think it should be used as an excuse to pull the rug out from under others. So we can compare that to another firefighter who's comparably situated, left last week with 41 years on the job, virtually the same thing. His terminal leave payout was about $25,000. As Mr. Pani just noted, even that's slightly higher than the average. Career civil servants didn't create this crisis, nor did this administration. But it is career civil servants who will often be the ones who stick around, hopefully, to carry out the long-term measures that city leaders and managers will hopefully envision to fix things for everybody. But at the same time, they're facing a loss of reasonable benefits, as well as a sense of professional mission. I'm a big evangelist for careers in public service. And honestly, at times, I'm finding it harder and harder to sell. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The floor is for the people behind us. Okay. So prospectively, I understand that that is what the administration is here to address. Yes. I think the concern also is the sick and the bonus, which would then be retro. Is that the plan? No, I think sick is prospective, too. It's only bonus. And again, I will say now for the third time, am I wrong about you shaking your head? All of bonus sick and annual leave days would be for existing employees who are already receiving those. They would not continue to receive those. That's what's being proposed. That's correct. Nothing is retrospective, but prospectively, current employees would be impacted by the bonus leave days. By the bonus leave. By bonus. Yes. By bonus. Yeah, I just want to make sure. Listen, if people are going to criticize, let's have the criticism. But let's make sure we're comparing apples to apples. I want to make sure we're clear on this before. Very clear. And also to just make sure that, you know, this is going to be hard because, again, we're talking about in the middle of furlough. So, you know, when would this take effect? I mean, listen, I'm going to come back to what Commissioner Monteverdi said. I would not ask for this to come to effect until furloughs are over. I mean, it's some of the same reason, candidly, we looked earlier this year about changing rules about insurance and other factors, and the feeling was, because we're already asking people to take on a burden, we can't ask people to take on all the burden at one time. So it would not be simultaneous. So when one burden ends, another one begins. So we're in the middle. I'm in the middle of my third furlough in 16 years, and now we're going to erode leave benefits. Say that again, Amy. How many furloughs? The third one in 16 years. Okay. Do we want to move on to comments at this time? Yes. Okay. So comments are going to be limited to three minutes, and there is no donation of time to other people. Three minutes, no donation of time. Okay. First comment, of course, from Aaron Mishler in opposition, representing New Orleans Firefighters. Aaron Mishler of Local 632, New Orleans Firefighters. I stand in opposition to any of these rule changes. For firefighters specifically, the word bonus, you know, infers that it's some type of gift or luxury that we get. And as we get further along in our careers, We often tend to get injured or the injuries don't heal as quickly as they used to when we were younger. So those extra sick days, you know, help us out where we have to take that extra day so we're not coming back to work still injured where we can lead to a further catastrophic injury or injury of someone we work with because we're not at 100%. So that goes to say that. But on this as a whole, I believe that this entire argument to the commission right now is really premature. We have Commissioner Monteverdi who can't rule on certain things with employees when it pertains to fire specifically. And we have two other commissioners. And next month we'll be seating a brand new commissioner who right now we don't know who that is and as a matter of fact they don't know who they are. And they're going to hear this room full of comments. Y'all are going to hear all the arguments against what's going on now. But this new commissioner is not going to get to hear any of this. And next month have to rule on this, have to vote on something that they don't have any input on or were able to hear any of these arguments. So I believe all this is premature. It's great to let everyone get out and speak but I think that this should go on a lot further than this month and next month and it should be a continued discussion. Thank you. Thank you. And I would say that's fine. Okay. All right. Okay. Our next speaker is Mike Glasser in opposition representing Pano. Good afternoon commissioners. I'll talk quickly because I didn't think I'd have only three minutes. My name is Mike Glasser. I'm the president of the Police Association of New Orleans. I represent the members of that organization. I am also a tenured member of the New Orleans Police Department with significant experience at the command staff level and that's the context from which I speak today. I'm kind of disappointed in a couple of things I've heard here. First of all, I appreciate the fact that the CAO has spoken to a number of individuals that have interest in this. He did not speak to the Police Association of New Orleans nor as I understand it, the black organization of police. I don't know who he spoke to but it wasn't us. We are encouraged the fact that that may be fixed going forward. I was kind of disappointed to hear the word hoarding when it comes with respect to sick leave accrual. This room is not full of prospective employees. It's full of current employees.

And that should give you some indication of how important this is. When we're looking at the loss of bonus days, Mr. Wisby pointed out that it would be for those employees at 20 years and over, a total of 19 paid days. That's 7 for sick leave and 12 for annual. That's in a year. And if you look at the way we're paid, we work 20 days a month, right, for 4 weeks, 5 days a week, that's 20 days. So it means every year we're going to lose 1 month of paid leave. For an employee that stays 12 years, that's a year's salary that's being forfeited for current employees. Every one of these people sitting in this room. Okay. We made a mistake some years ago. I came before this commission back then. It wasn't the same commission, but it was the Civil Service Commission. And I came before them because in 2016, excuse me, 2010, we had the same budget shortfall, if you remember. We had a furlough people for the last quarter of the year. We had a hiring freeze. And then I can tell you that senior tenured employees that were pension eligible were encouraged, strongly encouraged to retire. And they did. And the department shrank from 1,600 people to 1,400 to 1,200 to 1,000 to 900 to 800 just last month. And we've continued to shrink. It's taken us 16 years to reverse that process. We now have 57 recruits in the academy. First time that we're actually going to grow the department slightly. In order to get the 1,200 that the superintendent says she wants, we're going to have to go another three years. This plan will cripple that. Okay. This plan will keep officers from accruing and hoarding, if you will. I hated that term. They're not hoarding because they're encouraged to come to work. We want them to come to work. If they don't come to work and they use sick leave, we label them as sick leave abusers. Okay. So we want them to come to work, not when they're sick, but we want them to use it when they need to. And if they accrue it and they're good employees and they come every day and come to work, now we're going to punish them by taking those days away. So we punish them if they use them and we punish them if they keep them. That makes no sense to me. Okay. What you're going to do is you're encouraging officers to burn those sick days instead of losing them. If you're going to pay 200 days out at the rate of 40, no one's going to turn you down. Your time is up, sir. Give him, we'll, excuse me, sir, you have a three-minute limit, your time is up. Well, no, Stephanie, I'm going to give you 30 seconds. Go ahead and just wrap that up. Thank you. While we don't encourage it, they're going to burn those days one for one, okay, rather than turn them back in for one for five, they're going to burn them one for one. So the city's going to pay for it anyway. I promise you that'll happen, okay. It will happen. They will not give those days back and they will burn them anyway. So the city's not going to save any money. What it will do is it will cripple our retention and it will cripple our recruitment process. The thing we've worked 16 years to fix, I'm going to encourage you, do not make that mistake again. Okay. Council didn't listen then, I'm begging them to listen now because it's going to change everything and we don't have 1,600 to drop from, we only have 900. We can't afford it. The city can't afford it. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. And next is Kendrick Allen representing the Black Organization of Police in opposition. Good afternoon, commissioners. Good afternoon. I guess to pick up where Mike left off, it, I kept hearing that this, this doesn't affect those that were sitting behind other than the bonus days. I disagree with that. Recruitment, retention affects every single one of us city workers. I find it very funny that when we talked about capping the sick leave at 20%, the first one to 100 was paid at 20% and we decide to cap it at the lowest rate possible. I don't know if anybody else picked that up, but when we talk about this particular issue, we're also talking about competition for qualified employees for the city. We are in competition for qualified employees from other cities like Baton Rouge, Lafayette, and might I add that specifically to the police department, Baton Rouge now pays more. So we have to have things like these benefits to attract qualified, competent people to work for this city. If we want to be a top of the line city, we want to be top, have top of the line employees. I, I, I, I, I laugh at it because this is a slap in the face to employees of this city. 20 years of working for the city, with the bonus days, you got 25 days of annual. That drops down to 13. Ten years, you get 13. Five years, 13. Thirty years, 13. Under this new plan, how are we telling our folks, come to work, smile, be grateful when the city itself is stabbing you in the back? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, Claude Schlessinger, representative for the internal order of police and opposition. Good afternoon, commissioners. Good afternoon. So, thank you for CAO Jerusa. We look forward to the additional dialogue with the city. So, we, the FOP, a group of us, did have a dialogue last Friday, and we look forward to a continued dialogue. So, the prior administration introduced the Great Place to Work initiative, which you talked about. Well, it wasn't such a great place to work. It was awful. And I would note, the ripple effects are still ongoing. Police officers left by the hundreds then. So, we had about 1,200, 1,300, 1,400 at that time. We have 900 now. So, retention is stable. Recruitment is going up. Crime is going down. Why mess with this formula? Why mess with this now? Why change this? Because it seems to be working. But there's another issue that needs to be addressed first, and that is the pension issue.

Under the current plan and under the proposed plan, the pension would be discounted or wouldn't be able to be had at all. So, the Louisiana legislature passed a statute years ago, 11-22-18, and they said in that, all unused, earned, annual, and sick leave which has been accrued and accumulated by employees shall be pensionable. So, what that did was, it said then, if you, the city of New Orleans, or any municipality wants to embrace this, you can irrevocably pass an ordinance to do that. And they did that with ordinance number 22-493. They irrevocably elected that coverage. And so, how this works now is supposed to work, and there's litigation going on which the city has not addressed, and it will not be addressed in this, is that if you have, for example, under this proposal for 200 days, they propose that you cash out 40 days. Under the legislation in the state and that the city adopted, the additional 160 are supposed to be pensionable. The city now says you lose that. I think that issue should be addressed first and resolved first before we go forward with any of these changes. And I would even ask that the commission or the city ask for a legal opinion from the Attorney General to clarify that. Get some guidance before it goes into litigation, because certainly there will be litigation about this. So, the question of a property right came up, a vested property right. We believe, and we had the discussion on Friday with the city attorney, that it is indeed a vested property right. The city disagrees with us. I can cite that now, but I think I'll run out of time in doing that, you know. And there is legal precedent for doing that and the standard for doing that. So, there's always been a trade-off in the city of New Orleans between what the city could pay presently and what they could pay in the future. And one of those things was the longevity. And if I could just have 30 seconds to finish, I'll do that too, please. So, back in the 1960s, police... I lost my microphone. You're there. The police were paid $350, and they had a 16-year pension. If they can't pay you now, we'll pay you in the future. So, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, or according to Google even today, the consumer price index in the last 10 years has gone up 38%. That's huge. We're all being affected by it. You're being affected by it. All city employees are being affected by it. So, we shouldn't be cut now. And the city, of course, is strained for that. Here, the city wants to reduce leave benefits. And it's a contention, of course, as we have pointed out. And we appreciate the city negotiating with us. And just as another aside... Did a Google search on leave benefits Austin, Texas unlimited sick leave accrual so Thank you Okay, next Jason Higginbotham sewage and waterboard employee in opposition Thank You Commission for giving me a chance to speak I'm a 32 year veteran of the sewage and waterboard in my capacity. I have worked in operations I have worked in emergency management and now I'm in security. I served there in 2005 during Hurricane Katrina I elect not to take a vacation between June and November because it costs money to book things, but I'm a civil servant So I have to stay because they never know when mother nature's gonna throw another Katrina our way and with this current proposal People aren't going to stay anymore. They're gonna take their vacation. They're gonna be here to operate the pumping stations They're gonna be able to serve and drain the city or provide water or provide police and fire protection This is another thing on the backs of the men and women of the sewage and waterboard in the city civil service system I applaud you help us Not to help don't do this to us Mayor Milano talked today about making sure employees are made whole at the same time her CEO sits in front of you And while people are talking he's on his damn cell phone not worried about what we saying, but that's okay You're our protector. You're our Union. I applaud you and as far as retention We're not gonna be able to retain anybody. I'm gonna be out there with buckets trying to drain the city and as far as Recruitment ain't no fool gonna come over here watching this administration every year you lose something come on It's just a crime shame to tell 32 year old veterans. Thanks for your service. Here's a slap in the back on you Thank you very much for your time I Wouldn't point us in opposition Good afternoon good afternoon. I still remember my salary in 2003 1948 I was told look past the low salary The city has great benefits That advice actually came from my mother who retired from the city in 2006 Proposals for a and for B are our great benefits that we all signed up for 23 years later. I'm still here like many dedicated city employees. I have shown up year after year Administration after administration believe in that our commitment and sacrifice would lead to something greater in the future By the way, just to let you know, this is my fourth rodeo I'm asking you to consider the employees who have dedicated many of many years and some decades of their lives to the city. I Am strongly opposed to the proposed amendments put before you today proposals a and I'm sorry for a and for B and F. I'm good with F as Long as we're taught we're not talking about not being able to put up our community accumulated leave days towards retirement and As and as we're just talking about a reform Please don't change the rules this late in the game After employees have spent years years and years Playing by them. Thank you Rebecca Goubert in opposition representing Pano Good afternoon, Rebecca Goubert.

I'm a captain with the Police Department and the vice president of Pano I'm just gonna say I feel it's a little disingenuous to say that the reforms about How you were accruing leave don't affect current employees because it's only going to affect future employees as a manager of young employees It most certainly will affect the employees that are here now We're creating a new class of employee if this reform were to pass Employees who are forced to use leave and they will use those sick days when it most benefits them And why wouldn't they in combination with holidays and days off? It will be impossible to schedule a diminishing workforce when we can't plan for that I need my employees not to use their leave and to hoard it That's just where we are. We're a smaller workforce, and that's not just the Police Department That's the hiring freeze that the other departments are experiencing right now I need everybody from EMD to come to work because that affects me if the cars aren't fixed I need the librarians come to work because that's where we send the kids after school to do things All of our city employees need to hoard their leave right now because we need the whole workforce, but we're not hiring people It's nonsensical to say that that doesn't affect current employees That affects us all To take away bonus days to 20-year employees to 10-year employees that they were expecting that they were promised Another broken promise, right? We promised them things like take-home cars a few years ago And as these cars are breaking and the budget doesn't allow for fixing and EMD is short-staffed That's a promise that we're gonna break soon if we haven't to send employees already it's these little things that add up taking away someone's bonus days that amount to a Almost a month of time for the most tenured employees Catastrophic to morale catastrophic We Need employees to come to work and hoard the time there's no way around that without that at least public service My district wouldn't function It's just consider that moving forward and it does affect all of the current employees just as much as it will future employees Nicholas Williams in opposition representing FOP Mr. Williams Amy move on Willie Jenkins in opposition representing FOP Good evening Willie Jenkins Labor Committee chairperson of the fraternal order of police across the city lives number two I only have a few things. I heard mr. Wisby say, you know, we're trying to get in line with comparable areas There's there's nothing that compares to New Orleans. There's no city in the state that compares to New Orleans There's no police department under state that compares to New Orleans I think the men and women who own this police department have shown time and time again how doing more with less Shows the rest of the world how great we are and to start telling them They'll be going to have to reduce the benefits that you're getting. I think it's a real slap in the face I think it's a stomp on the head if you ask me because we constantly asking people to do more with less But then you wanted to do more with lesser than less So if you don't get the benefits that you would get promised when you got here to tell a person with 30 years 20 years Or whatever that you're going to accrue the same amount of time with somebody as a one-year employee We're going to get the same amount of time. What benefit is it for me to continue to stay on with the police department? I don't I don't understand. I don't and then it was I was heard that the effect is not going to be Immediate well if we start having the lack of recruitment and retention goes down We're going to feel it all the time if We don't have the city the city is in a great time right now with public safety It just is and I think we get comfortable when we hear that So if the safety goes away and then people stop coming the revenue dries up and the revenue dries up We're gonna have to talk about other cuts somewhere else again, and I don't want to see that I don't think anyone in this room wants to see that so I'm asking that you guys, please Don't don't even consider these changes. I don't think we can we can survive it I don't think we I know we can't survive it because well as we always already spoke about We've already had a number of people that consistently dropped off and going to continuously have that to happen, so please again Don't consider It's true that there's a blackout or a moratorium on taking annual leaver vacation for police officers during Mardi Gras How long does that last Okay, thank you. I have a question for you, too. Yes, ma'am respectfully. What recommendations do you have? Like do you have anything that you could share that you think the city should look at instead or maybe focus? When it comes to like an alternate plan if fiscal responsibility is the approach I Believe that the city Should do what they're supposed to do at the beginning of something when don't let other people walk out with the money They're supposed to pay and then try to get it from us That's just my belief because you have some people who have contracts out and Other avenues that they're using to do things and they're not paying and then when they don't pay You know the money has to come from somewhere I just don't think it needs to come on the backs of the men and women and public safety or the city all together Thank you. Thank you Janique Lewis with EMS EMS Good afternoon captain Janique Lewis in New Orleans EMS. I've had the pleasure to serve the city of New Orleans for 18 years I'm currently the recruit Academy coordinator and I was the public information officer in both roles. It was my job to Convince folks that public safety was a career that they should take on It is hard to convince folks to do the work that we do here Knowing that our base pay is already below competitors.

It's harder It's harder to convince them to stay knowing that each year We don't get the same step increases in our base pay that you see at any other service And that's not just New Orleans EMS NOPD or New Orleans fire. We know our mechanics make less We know our clerical workers make less and that's a deal that they make they walk in knowing that Because at least on the back end you have the benefits such as our leave policy. You have the certainty of Their labor except now we have these furloughs So to take away from that is gonna hurt retention at 18 years now I could make a lot more going to Jefferson Parish I could make more going to Baton Rouge But I do want to stay here and one of the things that helps convince me is things like our bonus sick leave days To say that it's not gonna affect us. It's just gonna affect our new employees is short-sighted I can't take leave without employees who are gonna be able to take that shift for me I can't convince young folks to come into New Orleans EMS as a career If I'm already telling them they're being paid less, but now they're also not going to get the civil service benefits that we normally sell people on. And to talk about alternatives, that does make sense. I recognize that we have fiscal challenges. You all are already getting the city's labor at a discount. Every position is underpaid comparatively. If you want to find those alternatives, those alternatives aren't further taking that money out of our pockets. We have purchasing issues that lead us to pay extra. We have contracting issues where we don't get what we pay for. We have a disparity between pay at the top level of our employees and our division heads versus our frontline employees. There are many other places where we're losing dollars and failing to be fiscally responsible. But it's not the frontline workers who work for the city of New Orleans. Thank you. I keep hearing about comparable cities and we're too generous and this and that. What are some of the operational type changes that happen during things that happen in New Orleans that happen nowhere else? Like we just heard NOPD. There is a moratorium on taking vacation or annual leave during the Mardi Gras season. For us it's beyond Mardi Gras. Our frontline personnel work half of the weekends of every year as their base schedule. On top of any special event we cover. We do not have enough personnel to serve the city of New Orleans during special events. But yet we have a special event every weekend. So our personnel are getting minority of those weekends off. Specifically, Mardi Gras is a long time. It's like almost a month out of the calendar. Yeah, so we have the two weeks of uptown parades but every little parade before that. So starting in January we've got to cover. But we've got we just had our upstaff for decadence. We have our upstaff for essence. We have our upstaff for New Year's, for Halloween, for French Quarter Fest. Acadian runs Jazz Fest but we have extra people working that. We have blackout dates that spread the entire year. So even taking the leave that they get is difficult. But the biggest concern will be that eroding these benefits is going to make it hard for us to hire new people. We are barely hiring enough people to stay at the level that we are right now. We could actually be a profit generating division for the city of New Orleans. If we were properly staffed and not losing calls to Acadian. And acts like this will make it more difficult to be properly staffed. But I want to confirm that there are periods of time in which you are the staff of EMS and some other departments are not able to take vacation or annual leave, yeah? Yes, we have a calendar by the clock and machine that shows all those days. Gotcha. So there's a portion of the year where that's off the table. Some might call that hoarding. I don't know. But. Thank you. I would call that an earned benefit. CAO, you have a. All I was going to say is I want to note the commission raised pay for EMS and the council approved that. So I want to thank the commission for taking that step to make sure that it was right size. Thank you. Appreciate that. I'm going to start calling a couple people so we could expedite things. So right now we have Chris Bergeron and after that's Joshua Smith. Mr. Bergeron. Mr. Smith. Joshua Smith. He's going back to work. Okay. And Joshua Smith is representing AFSCME in opposition. State your name for the record, sir. Hi. Chris Bergeron. I'm a chief engineering at Sousa Water Board. Representing myself though. We're talking about everything in terms of money. So what we're talking about is a reduction in pay effectively. So it ranges if you're a 20-year employee, you're asked to take a 7.6% pay reduction. It scales down from there. But I was going to talk about some other things. But the most offensive thing to me was the framing that we're unique, that we give more time for people who work longer here. That was surprising to me. Did a quick search. State of Louisiana. Ranges up to 24 days. Jefferson Parish gives 23 days. Baton Rouge, 24 days. Lake Charles, 20 days. Slidell, 21 days. And Kenner, 24 days. And what is New Orleans? None of those jurisdictions have bonus days. So it's framed differently because, yes, they change their accrual rate as opposed to them. It's a very different concept to me, honestly. I don't believe most employees would oppose. And I can't speak for other people. But if you got the same accrual rate, it just went over the year instead of on January 1st. It might get rid of your abuse of someone retiring on January 3rd and getting an additional few days. But ultimately, we're accruing the same thing. I have a question about that, whether you've accrued that over the past year and it's being paid on January 1st. I don't think it's being paid on January 1st forward. I think that when you reach 20 years, the next January, you get the money. It's for the past year, not for the future year.

So I don't know that that's an abuse. I'm not saying it's an abuse either, but that's the way it's being framed. And that irritated me personally. Again, if that's the solution, I don't know how much pushback there would be. It's the same accrual rate. Just instead of day to day, it's over a year. But I'll cede my time. All right. And we said no Joshua Smith, right? Greg Doolittle. And then after that is Ben Quimby. Mr. Doolittle. Mr. Quimby. Hello, everyone. Thanks for recognizing me. My name is Greg Doolittle. I'm the vice president of AFSCME local 2349. I'm also the response section administrator at the Office of Coordination and Emergency Management. I would like to start by thanking Joe Jeruso and John Wispy for meeting with us. They've met with us twice already as a union executive board, shared their intentions with us. They intend to meet with us again on the 23rd. We appreciate their ongoing dialogue. During the course of that ongoing dialogue, we've shared that we don't love this idea, which might not be a surprise to anyone. It seems to me that the proposed changes are a bit of an overcorrection. I think that there have been some outliers that we've already mentioned in terms of people getting quite a significant amount of terminal leave. And it's the CAO's job as the city is looking out for the city's fiscal condition to sort of minimize big spikes like that. We understand that. But I do think that this is an overcorrection to address that problem. I also think, you know, in having these discussions outside of the CAO's office with some, you know, trusted colleagues, some of those large payouts were also a result of firefighters and other public safety officials being compensated for lawsuits decades ago. They were sort of compensated for winning settlements with leave payouts. I don't know if that's true or not, but that might be a factor in how some of these people got to some of these astronomical numbers. If the average employee is only getting 5,000 and somebody is getting 400,000, that does seem like something worth looking into. But like I say, I think this is an overcorrection. I think generally eliminating the entire program for some long tenured employees is not something that we would look to support. Understandable that it caught the attention of the legislative auditor. We've also got some really capable researchers on the AFSCME 2349 executive board. We've already, you know, some people here have been Googling comparisons. We're going to share those with Jonathan Wispy, you know, after this meeting. Some of this might be terminology, whether or not we characterize something as bonus leave here. It might be considered longevity pay in other places. It might be considered tenured leave. There's different ways of categorizing it. Effectively to the worker, it's the same thing. We don't want it to go away. It's kind of an important part of our compensation. I'd also caution against using the state government as a sort of model. The nature of my position, yeah. The nature of my position is such that I interact with a lot of different employees of state government. I wouldn't necessarily characterize them as happy in their work, nor would I characterize them as well compensated. So let's, you know, I'd encourage us to aim higher. Thank you. We have Ben Quimby representing AFSCME, and then after him is Jamel Otis, and then Russell Kelly. Good afternoon, Commissioners. Ben Quimby, Recording Secretary with AFSCME Local 2349. A lot of the points that I had wanted to make have already been made, so thank you to everyone behind me for many of the excellent points being made so far, and thank you in particular to Mr. Allen and Mr. Lewis and the points that they made about retention. I'll say that, you know, I work on an eight-person team. I've been with the city for three years and 11 months, and there were two people on that team that were still there from when I started, and 10 people have left that team since the time that I've started. So making that pitch to prospective employees, trying to recruit people to come in and join the city is a challenge, and it's something that the commission well knows. A couple additional points I want to make. I heard Mr. Wisby say that the city pays about $6 million in terminal leave every year, but it's difficult to measure exactly how much these proposed changes would impact the city's budget. And so I would like to learn more about that and how we can better get an estimate of some of those numbers, because it's before today, I don't have any information about an average terminal leave payout, a median terminal leave payout, longevity for city employees and how long different employees stay in the city service. I don't have information about the top 5% or 10% of terminal leave payouts and what those numbers are. And so I'm really trying to get a better understanding of how much money we might be saving and are we, you know, implementing changes that would affect all city employees, you know, because of a small number of outliers. And so additionally, like Mr. Doolittle said before me, we've, we've done some preliminary research and you know, whether you call it a bonus leave or vacation leave or longevity pay, you know, we do understand that, that the norm in other civil service systems around the state and around the country is that as employees increase their tenure, they get additional leave. So wanting to align that with best practices, we're trying to figure out we do think that additional study and additional information is needed. So, we appreciate the CAO and Mr. Wisby's openness to dialogue. We think that there is additional information that we need, and because these changes are not going to impact the city's immediate budget situation, that it's important that we take the time to get them right, and that we believe we have the time to do that.

We ask the commission to study this more, to make sure we're doing right by city employees. Jamel Otis. Good afternoon, Commissioner. I want to say thank you to CAO Julio. My name is Jamel Otis. I'm with AFSCME Council 17, who represents city government employees under Local 2349. I keep hearing bonus, bonus, bonus leave. The terminology is wrong. It's longevity, and workers stay and work hard and diligently so that they can receive this longevity payout. So, I urge the commission, and I won't say much because everyone has said what I know needs to be done, to not move forward. And we can have some more dialogue on this. Thank you. Can I say one thing? I want us to also think about, and I love the way that you're framing it about longevity, as we start to think about and have the dialogue. I know we're saying what other cities do, but let New Orleans be the model. Let us be the model of what the best place to work looks like. Meaning, are we the top employer, right? Do our public service want to come to work? So, let's think about how we could be fiscally sound, which I think it sounds like you're doing. But I also want to hear, and I love that, do we give longevity? Do we have the best benefits? Are our people healthy? Are they happy? Are they showing up? Because I know if there's a flood and sewage and water board is not there, we're in trouble. If we remember what Ida, nobody took out the trash, we're in trouble, right? We know that if we don't have police during Mardi Gras, we're in trouble. So, I'm hearing, and I'm seeing, and I understand we need to figure out how the two can marry. So, with that being said, in other cities, in other parishes, it is longevity. It's not bonus. Thanks for pointing that out. Thank you. Next, we have Russell Kelly. And then after that, David Richards and Liliana Varela. I'm Russell Kelly, representing Russell Kelly. Like my trademark t-shirt, only in New Orleans. Only in New Orleans, you have a former city councilman who sit on Joe Jerusalem, who sit on the council for four or eight years while we went down this rabbit hole. But yet, the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer. Now, they're cutting your benefits. Joe Jerusalem makes $325,581, which is $106,796 more than the previous person. His deputy chief administrator, Stephen Nelson, makes $266,894, which is $73,666, more than the previous person. Brandy DeLarge, whose name has been mentioned several times, who is his director of budget and his director of internal audit, makes $141,642. Jeffrey Schwartz went from $150,719 to $200,564, a $49,000 raise. Jonathan Wisby, I think sitting right here, went from $122,026 to $166,464, which is a $44,000 raise. Keith Ferguson went with the position from $156,442 to $221,520, a $65,000 raise. Another person was added to the mayor's office that makes $181,509. Between his office and the mayor's office, they're talking about cutting benefits, but they have a total increase in pay during furloughs, during layoffs, during forced retirements, $678,040. And for the record, I've been here since 1.30. Y'all talking about discrimination. Ask the CAO, did he tell somebody? The city eliminated Russell Kelly's position because he filed a previous EEOC complaint because nobody wanted him in their department because they think he may do it to them as well. That's my civil rights to do. I'm familiar with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title VII, discrimination. I'm familiar with retaliation. You cannot discipline somebody, lay somebody off, fire somebody because they exercised their right to file an EEOC complaint. I initiated, he's talking about cuts. I initiated two investigations at property management that they refused, he refused to give me the, and give me my 30 seconds, he refused to give me the investigative reports. Whereas an unlicensed contractor was paid over $400,000, he left for licensed contractors, paid over $400,000, he left for work for the city of New York. That's $400,000. Civics, the same job, $150,000 an hour, $150,000 an hour, $155,000 an hour, $185,000 an hour to do the same work I was doing. From January 1st, 2026 through March 31st, 2026, he paid Civics $1,020,000 for staff augmentation. Next is David Richards, New Orleans EMS. Thank you all for the opportunity to speak. My name is David Richards. I'm a paramedic for New Orleans EMS. When you sign up for this profession, you understand that you'll miss every other weekend with your family for the rest of your career. You are not sitting at a desk or working remotely. You work 12-hour shifts on incredibly bumpy trucks. You're lifting heavy gear or in people's entire body weight, and you expose your own health to individuals who are incredibly sick, many with illnesses that are contagious and easily infect responders. In addition, you understand that you're responsible for staffing every citywide event. In 2026 alone, and this is the current number per our scheduling app, is 35 days, not including Mardi Gras, are all staff activations with time off restrictions. If these days fall on your scheduled off day, you are no longer off. As if this schedule didn't sound hard enough on the body, add in the unpredictability of pandemics, hurricanes, or terrorist attacks, all of which I have personally worked through in my short career at 27 years old. In any other profession, these stressors would be unimaginable. For any of the victims we treat, we wouldn't rush them back to work or tell them to brush it off. But for the medics and fellow first responders, that's exactly what's expected. This proposal not only tells us that we don't deserve to take care of ourselves, but also removes the safety net for when the stress, injury, and illness finally catch up. Last year, I broke my shoulder on the ambulance and struggled to pay bills off of the workman's comp pay. The only thing that helped me was my ability to supplement the two-thirds pay with my accrued sick time.

I believe that we all understand the budgetary constraints, and we have all been working to reduce overtime waste. But if you believe that after everything you've heard, medics deserve fewer days to decompress and recover, I invite you to work a 12-hour shift on the streets. Come lift people's full body weight and carry them downstairs. Come interact with the sickest of our population and tell me you're comfortable pushing our underpaid and overworked medics that much harder. I'm incredibly grateful for your time and look forward to further dialogue on the proposed amendments. How long have you been, you're 27, how long have you been on the job? So I started in 2022 and had to take a break after my shoulder injury on the ambulance. Thank you for your service. Sorry, you said, tell me again, there's a number of days off you mentioned with restrictions on taking time off. How many was that? So currently in our schedule is 35, what we call all staff activations, which means that I can't put in any bid for time off. Right, correct. And then if there's any additional, so Mardi Gras was not totally in our schedule, so that is an estimated additional two weeks to that 35 days in the schedule. Okay, but it would be accurate to say greater than a month, people in your department cannot use the time off. Exactly. Careful with that hoarding. So I guess my point, maybe a point that I'm just thinking, even if you were to reduce their time, if they have blackout dates and they can't take the time off, you're still going to have the same problem. So I'm, well, again, that's, that's why we're here. Okay. Is, and I'm pretty sure I'm just, again, to level set. The second thing I said was, this is not etched in stone. And part of this is, is look, I understand there's a lot of passion behind me and that means people care and that's what we want. So we want to get to a good spot. And again, we didn't come in guns blazing saying we're not changing a thing. This is unacceptable. So we want to listen and make sure that we're doing it the right way. And, you know, listening to this, I am going to want to inquire more with the particular EMS, but please fire to make sure we understand these things as we move forward. So we welcome the continued dialogue today. And as we move forward, whenever this is hashed out again. Okay. Thank you. Hey, Liliana Varela, New Orleans EMS. And after that we have Leroy Chauvin, Ricky Adams Jr. and Donald Case. How many more? We have, um, Amy, I don't want, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Can I just say this? I am going to stay for all of the comments that people have verbally here today. I understand there's about 10 more. I do have to go to the mayor's budget community meetings tonight. So I won't stay for the online comments. Obviously, we know those are part of the record. We accept all of those. So I want to make sure that I'm not. Okay. We're going to be respectful. Well, and that's the purpose of being here is that I do want to listen. And look, as I said before, this dialogue, this didn't start today. It's not going to end today. And certainly we're happy. We're going to, not only are we happy, we've committed to it. You've heard people behind me who are opposed to this say that we've said that we're going to continue to have this dialogue. So again, I'm going to respect the roughly 10 people who are here, but then I do have a commitment at six o'clock that I need to attend. Okay. And we're still here. We're listening. So I want everybody to know that everybody will be heard today. Good evening. My name is Liliana Varela and I work at New Orleans EMS. I come today in opposition to the proposed changes to the annual and sick leave under item four. EMS provider, we work 365 days a year. That is missed holidays, birthdays, my nephew's soccer games, or even my niece's cheer events. I've been an employee for the city of New Orleans for 10 years. Missing life events comes with the nature of the job. Yes, it is what we signed up for. However, the days we get as a reward, for lack of a better term, for a tenure affords us the opportunity to show up for those moments. Taking that away from us feels as if a statement is being made, that our personal lives don't matter. I implore that you reconsider taking more time away from those of us who spend more time serving the city than we do in our own homes. Thank you. Thank you. Neroi Chauvin III, Sewerage and Waterboard. Good afternoon, everyone. I'll try to keep this as short as possible. Several people have already laid out everything that I kind of wanted to say. There is something I specifically want to point out, though. When I first came in here and I sat down and listened to these two gentlemen, put my phones in my pockets, gave them complete, undivided attention. Mr. Jason pointed out the gentleman here sat down on his phone the whole time that he was talking. He said, it's OK. I don't think it's OK. I think it's a slap in our face. Quite frankly, you can shake your head, buddy. It's cool. No problem. I've been taking notes for everybody who's been, and I want to continue to listen. So I'm here to listen to you right now. The mayor said specifically that none of these things were going to affect sewage and water board. There's been a great concern amongst myself and my staff. I am a deputy manager for the machine shop for facilities maintenance. We are so understaffed, overworked, and shorthanded that at times I have to take the boss man shirt off and put the regular guy shirt on, get in the stations barehanded, elbows deep in sewer, pulling wrenches to get jobs done. I came to work here almost 15 years ago. And I sat down in front of a man that was been here for 30 years and said, these are the things that's going to benefit you in the end. The pay is not that great here, but all of these things are what you have to look forward to. It's concreted. It is never going anywhere. We are here to do a job. We are here to serve the people.

We have a mission that I personally believe in. I am dedicated. I'm here 12, 13 hours a day, sometimes six days a week, only because we are now capped at not being able to work seven days. I would like to have my time off. I believe it's abhorrent to think that people are hoarding time just so they could cash it in on the backside. After it's been expressed that some of this time, it gets cut. You get the one for five, the one for four, et cetera, et cetera. It's just not right. I implore you all to oppose the 4A and 4B. There's a lot more I would like to say, but I'm going to reserve that for a later time. Thank you all. Have a nice day. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Ricky Adams, Jr., Sewage and Water Board. Unfortunately, Ricky Adams had to leave. My name's Donald Case, Sewage and Water Board, Facility Maintenance. I work with Mr. Chauvin. I'm the manager of the department. One thing I'd like to say, people talking about hoarding time, one thing that hasn't been mentioned, a lot of people at Sewage and Water Board, we consider each other family. I'm sure the fire department and police department, they do as well. When you have a scenario where you do not have time to cover an illness or injury, we donate some of that time. We take our own time and donate it to our co-worker to get them by. So we're not just hoarding it for ourselves. It's for our team, for our family. Something else? Something else I want to mention, there's a lot of comparison to other municipalities. And I'm glad you brought up that we should be a beacon of light and an inspiration to other municipalities. But unfortunately, we also compete with private industry. In private industry, they definitely pay more. We'll never compete on that end. The only selling point I have for new employees is the benefits package. And when you start taking away from the benefits, I can't get employees. It's very difficult. And this, in my opinion, is the very beginning of taking these benefits. I'm sure there's other provisions that somebody that's trying to meet a budget line item is going to try and cut at a later date. We see it coming. People are starting to abandon ship. I've had people leave and go work at the LNG plant down in Belchase. We can't afford to lose good employees. What you end up with, your good employees leave, and you're left with what's left. That's all I have. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Information only. Good afternoon. Thank you for this opportunity to speak. The proposed changes regarding sick and annual leave are raising significant concerns among SWBNO employees. They have strongly expressed their concerns with leadership. Maintaining strong benefits is critical to our workforce. Any reduction in benefits could have an impact on retention. There is also concern that the proposed changes could impact our ability to attract future employees. We ask that you carefully consider the effects of the proposed changes could have on the utility's employees and operations as you move forward in your decision making process. Thank you. OK. Next, we have Allison Lee. And after that, Moby McBool. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen of the commission. I am Allison Lee. I will not be before you long because everyone has said and expressed opposition to what is being proposed. I am definitely in opposition of the proposed amendment A, B, and F. And I am a tenured city employee, and I do not hoard time. OK. That is a benefit that we have to take into account. OK. That is a benefit that we have because our salaries are low. So the benefits outweigh our salaries in the long run. And I am just in opposition of this being taken away from dedicated public servants that are here for the city of New Orleans. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon, commission. First of all, Mr. George Russo, very sorry, nothing personal. You were in the city council budget committee for eight years. How all of a sudden, it's a surprise that we have a budget shortfall. So were you sleeping for eight years, or you just woke up just now? And sure, live by the example. Unfortunately, ma'am, I used to be a federal prosecutor where I fried a lot of politicians. And I'm going to ask you, live by example. Cut the budget of second floor and your salary, too, before you touch our benefits for which we work very hard. If it wasn't for these civil servant boots on the ground, this city would have never rebounded back as quick as it did after Katrina. And making it safer and safer every day. These policemen, these uniformed firefighters are fighting the fight every single day. These are the little benefits which we earn getting less paid. I'm going to give you an example. One of the unclassified person was a classified. One day later, after she was making as a classified $38,000, the second day her salary jumped to $84,000. So please, drop off the salaries of these unclassified political cronies before you touch our civil servants. Because we work very hard for little money, and New Orleans is not a cheap city to live in. And you keep throwing Jefferson Parish, Jefferson Parish, Jefferson Parish. Just now you increased the sanitation fees, doubled it. Jefferson Parish picked up garbage twice a week for $26.60 a month. So don't cite us wrong example, and don't lie. Don't lie, because lies won't take you too far. Chop the budget of the second floor before you touch our benefits, which we duly earn after serving dedicatedly. I'm just close. I was offered a salary, double the salary. Yet because of my loyalty and dedication to the Susan Water Board, I chose to stay. I am the flood mitigation manager. I have already delivered close to $2 billion worth of project single-handedly from Susan Water Board. And my counterpart, US Army Corps of Engineers, have up to 70 people managing the same project, which I have single-handedly delivered successfully.

That's why you don't have reparative floods wherever the CELA was constructed. So please, do your job. You are the highest-paid CEO in the entire country. You don't have any shame to tell us that chop our benefits. Do your job. Chop your own. Sacrifice your own salary, and cut the budget of the second floor first. Yes. Yes. Yes. OK. We have Linda Bermuda, then Tyler Russell, and then I can't read the handwriting, Russ Kent after that. Hi. Good afternoon. I'm Linda Bermuda. I work at Susan Water Board. I work in the Department of Facility Maintenance. It's where a couple of managers already spoke. It's the department that fixes absolutely everything that's running in the Susan Water Board. What is the definition of an antique? Is anything that's over 50 years old? Susan Water Board is an antique. It's extremely dangerous. People get injured all the time. And these are not insignificant injuries. That has to be taken into consideration when you're talking about bonus days, and sick leave, and annual leave. Because it all gets mixed in to try and make people healthy and whole again to come back and work. One of the things I was charged with when I was hired in 2019 was to try and expand the number of employees in our department. This has been extremely difficult. The one salable moment I can have with anybody I talk to when we're talking about hiring is that, yes, we don't pay market wages, but our benefits are great, and you're going to have job security. Yes, you can make a lot more money if you go work in the oil and gas industry, but you might get laid off depending on their downturn. That doesn't happen here. But when you start chopping the things out, and it goes out in the media, which it's going to now, I'm going to have an even harder time convincing people to join the board. It is already a rigmarole run to get people through the application process, through civil service, through our internal tests, to an actual paid position on the board. And this is not going to help at all. One other thing I want to mention is institutional knowledge. One of the... How badly our organization is staffed is that we've had a long... long-term labor contract, and it's only grown over the years. It's about 30%, 35% of our labor force right now. This is something that we need to pull back on. We need people to be board members long-term until they retire, so they can teach their trade and the tricks of each individual station to the next person, and not have them leave, not have them be a contract, because that's what we've had happen a lot, where we've had senior employees who didn't have board members under them having to run teams half-staffed with contractors, and then the contractors leave. They retire after they teach what they need to teach, and then soon after the senior employee retires, the contractor finds a better job, and then what have we lost? We've lost incalculable amounts of information about how to fix certain problems in certain stations the simplest and easiest ways. These individuals know that. We need to not hamper our organization with these changes that you're putting forth. I can only say that my job has been made much more difficult by these proposals, and I fear for the future of the sewage and water board, what you're pushing us to. I implore you to please don't pass any of this. It's all a mess. Thank you. Tyler Russell. Tyler Russell. Russ, I can't read the first name. Kent is the last name. Ken is the last name. Todd Ecker and then Casey Gathers. Tom Ecker. Tom Ecker. Todd. Todd. Tom's my twin. OK. Tom. I won't be long. I also agree that calling it a bonus is a mislabel of it. We've earned it with our time. Show me a company where you put 20 years in, 25 years in, and you get 13 days vacation. Good luck. But that said, if we're really hurting for money, there is another possibility. Why don't we charge commercial property tax rates to short-term residential properties? Those short-term residential rentals, which have driven out people who live in this city and driven up the cost of living for this city, they should pay hotel rates if they want a hotel so bad. I don't know how much that would help the city's bottom line, but it certainly can't hurt. Thank you. OK, we have Casey Gathers. Casey. I'm sorry. Hi, good evening. I'm Casey Gathers. Thank you all for your time. After 17 years, one month, and 19 days of service, 40 years, if you count the time I've spent walking these halls, after years of providing exemplary service, years of providing valuable input and solutions, I'm being asked to give more. This administration has continuously pointed towards a budget crisis, a deficit, while simultaneously handing out raises that the gentleman a few persons ago so kindly provided figures for. This administration has furloughed, laid off, and denied basic employee needs while raising fees left and right. I fell out of my office chair the other day. And when I asked for another chair when I thought it was going to break, they told me it wasn't in the budget. I could have died. There is an old adage, don't piss in my face and tell me it's raining. The Bureau of the Treasury touches almost every red cent the city receives. I can see the money coming in. I was here in January from 6 AM until 9 PM taking property tax payments. We have one cashier. I'm cosplaying as a cashier. I'm also a tax collection specialist. And I perform many duties. And I'm the only person who does it for the entire parish. I also have to answer the phone, see customers, answer emails, and field anyone who comes onto the first floor. And I have to do it with a smile while I'm being asked to give seven pounds of flesh, while I'm being fussed at because we blocked off the front street so that taxpayers can conveniently drop off their payments. And we're told, oh, you have to leave parking spaces. Do we need the money or no? I can see the money coming in.

Where is it going? I can see the deductions on my meager little check. Where is the money going? How is the city cutting my annual leave and sick leave going to benefit the city? How is reducing bonus days and the amount of days employees can carry over going to encourage new hires to come and serve our city? Y'all tried this a couple of years ago when Stacey Head did it. How did that work out? When I transferred to the Bureau of Treasury, there were 35 employees. There are now 23. We lost two just in the past year because they saw this train wreck coming and left. One moved to Mississippi, and one is in Plaquemine Parish. She's trying to get me to meet her there. We're being asked to do more with less, and it's tiring. Do you have any idea what I go through on a daily basis? Do you have any idea the abuse, the harassment, the accusations? I work hard every day. I earn my benefits. You have a 30. I'm sorry. I work hard every day. I've earned my benefits, and I am on the front line. Because of where I work, I bear the brunt of all the constituents' complaints while you all sit behind desks, behind locked doors, safe and comfortable. We're talking about one month blackouts. We get blacked out for three months during peak season with threats of reprimands and everything else because you can't take off. Poor human resources management is not my fault. We have a young lady with an autoimmune disease. When she gets inflamed, she can't come to work, and they try to fire her. OK? You guys sit safe and comfortable behind desks and behind locked doors while I am laid bare before the world, unprotected, underpaid, and apparently unappreciated. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Amy, is that the last comment? That's the last in-person comment. So we have online comments? We have online comments to read next. OK. Do you have to? How is your time? I'm good for about 15 more minutes, but I really do need to leave. I mean, I haven't checked any of my city hall emails, so I do want to, I mean, I need to tend to things for the city, too, but I want to listen and be attentive this morning. OK, Amy. You read fast. Thank you. OK. Let's see, we have a comment from Jordan Senegal. Dear members of the commission board, I'm writing to register my strong opposition to the proposed amendments to Rule 8. Taken together, these changes represent a severe erosion of the compensation and benefits package required to attract, retain, and reward a dedicated workforce. While we understand the desire for administrative efficiency or fiscal management, these proposals actively undermine employee morale, disadvantage new hires, and compromise the long-term stability of our organization. At a time when workforce retention and recruitment are paramount, the amendments will damage morale among current staff and make it significantly harder to recruit top talent in the future. We respectfully request that the commission reject these proposed amendments and instead engage in a collective dialogue with employee representatives to find equitable solutions that do not compromise employee benefits. Thank you for your time, consideration, and continued service to our workforce. Next one is Anne-Marie Maltese-Teseda. People in opposition, people work hard to earn annual leave and sick days. They provide people with a better work-life balance. Also, many who get terminally ill, have family emergencies, need surgeries that require them off for a period of time, really need their income to remain the same, so they depend on the sick and leave hours they acquire. This seems like a punishment to people who have worked loyally for a long time as a civil servant for the city. Chris Doss, in opposed, I strongly oppose these proposed cuts to leave and terminally benefits. City employees did not create the financial problems the city is facing and we should not be in the ones expected to fix them by giving up our benefits. The current mayor and CEO both sat on the council during many of the years when the decisions that helped put the city in this position were made. Now the solution is to come back to the employees and get us to give something up. I don't think that's right. The city already has a hard time competing with other public employers when it comes to pay, retirement, and benefits. Cutting annual leave, getting rid of leave conversions, capping sick leave, and taking bonuses away from employees only makes that worse. We also need to think about the standard the city is setting as one of the largest employers in the region. When a major public employer starts cutting benefits, it lowers the bar. Instead of putting pressure on other employers to offer better jobs and better benefits to compete for workers, we risk starting a race to the bottom where everyone is expected to accept less. New Orleans should be trying to raise a standard for what a good job looks like, not helping lower it. Leave is compensation. There are real benefits that employees have worked for, planned around, and in many cases spent years building. City employees should not be made the scapegoat for years of bad financial decisions that we had no part in making. I'm asking this commission to draw a line here. Do not balance the city's financial position on the backs of its employees. Do not make employment with the city less competitive and do not take existing benefits away from long-time employees. Reject these cuts. Next is Alexander Jones. I've been with the city for 15 years and I oppose the amendment to reduce our benefits. I suggest the new rules only apply to new hires. Luis Herrida, I strongly oppose the item four rule changes. City employees do not receive annual pay increases. So the stability of our leave benefits is a primary incentive to stay a civil servant long-term. Cutting bonus annual leave, sick leave, and future payouts penalizes loyal staff, hurts morale, and ruins recruitment.

Please reject these changes and protect the workforce. Marlon Cario, the city council's proposed changes outlined in agenda four are wrong. The civil service employees work day in and day out for the city of New Orleans. Do not remove our benefits to help offset budget restraints created by the city council's mismanagement. Shame on this council for bringing this to debate. Todd Seamans, in opposition, I oppose all rule amendments under item four in their entirety. Even grandfathering current staff is unacceptable. Reducing compensation structures directly undermines workforce stability. Civil service and sewage and water board have already struggled with recruitment and retention, unable to compete effectively with the private industry for talent. Eliminating longevity incentives removes the primary mechanism for retaining experienced personnel while degrading the overall benefits package permanently cripples hiring efforts. I urge the commission to reject these changes to safeguard city infrastructure. Aaron Bennett, in opposition, as both a public servant and a resident of New Orleans, I'm opposed to the reduction of benefits for civil servants proposed by the commission. Now more than ever, the city of New Orleans is in need of qualified professionals to help solve the many problems facing the city. By reducing benefits for city. employees and rescinding benefits which were already afforded to active employees under contract. We risk crippling the city's ability to attract new talent and alienating our most dedicated employees. I do not believe the minimal savings recouped by this policy can justify these costs. Robert Young opposed the longevity-based sick days are very important to each member of this department. We face risk of long-term illness and long-term injury based on the nature of the career. There is no guarantee that we will not need the hours, but in the event that we do and with the policies being as strict as they are, this is a form of insurance for when we really need to have that time to recover. I as well as every other member of the fire department can testify for that and I'm sure that they would all be opposed for changing how our sick time will be modified and distributed. Edgar Barron, in opposition, I'm Edgar Barron, a classified fire department employee, a member of Local 632. I oppose the proposed elimination of longevity-based bonus sick leave. Under agenda item 4B, and I support Local 632's request for investigation under agenda items 9, 10, 11, commission should not reduce sick leave protections before completing its investigation into how NOPD applies its illness, injury, medical documentation, and leave without pay procedures. Under the existing rules, an employee placed on leave without pay may lose ordinary sick leave accrual and 30 or more days of leave without pay may also eliminate the employee's bonus sick accrual for the entire year. An erroneous or unresolved leave without pay designation can therefore produce cascading losses of pay, insurance, ordinary leave, accrual, and longevity-based leave. David Watkins, opposed. This is unjust destruction in benefits without any compensation. David Hingle, opposed. As a citizen of New Orleans, I do not believe that removing benefits from city employees is a productive mechanism to improve the city. Changes to be made by agenda item 4 will cause a reduction in employee morale and will further decrease the ability to employ and keep desirable employees within the organization. Taxpayer savings related to agenda item 4 will be minimal as employees are currently only capable of rolling over 45 annual leave days and the majority of saved sick leave goes towards pension accrual. Thomas Moore, in opposition. Please explain how the removal of these benefits, a form of employee compensation, helps NOPD, the Fire Department, Sewage and Water Board, and the City of New Orleans as organizations. NOPD and Sewage and Water Board leadership in hiring and retaining employees is an ongoing obstacle. How does reducing employee benefits help solve this very real issue? Why was there a request for an ethics opinion concerning recusal of the employee representative for this vote if the seat exists so employees have representation? Who requested the ethics opinion? Adam Salino, opposed. Good afternoon, Commissioners. I'm an employee of the Sewage and Water Board. I'm here to express my strong opposition to the proposed rule amendments in agenda item 4. Sewage and Water Board employees are already facing extraordinary uncertainty. As of August 1st, the City Council gained broad authority over our agency, including oversight of budgets, projects, contracts, and major leadership decisions. The Council has ordered an audit, called for review of employee pay, and raised questions about the agency's leadership structure. Whatever anyone's opinion of these governance changes may be, the employees who keep the system operating did not create decades of aging infrastructure, deferred investment, or structural problems. We report to work every day to maintain water, sewer, drainage, and power systems that the entire city depends on. This is the worst possible time to weaken employee benefits. Agenda item 4 would eliminate tenure-based bonus annual and sick leave, reduce annual leave carryover for future employees, cap their accumulated sick leave, and drastically reduce the value of terminal sick leave payouts. It also proposes changes involving conversion of leave into retirement credits. Tenure-based benefits recognize loyalty, experience, and the physical and personal sacrifices employees make over long careers. Eliminating them tells employees that years of service are no longer valued. Creating reduced benefits for employees hired after December 31st, 2026, would also create a two-tier workforce.

Employees working side-by-side, responding to the same emergencies, and maintaining the same dangerous infrastructure would receive different benefits solely based on their data That will produce resentment, weaken teamwork, and damage morale. These amendments will also deepen employees' lack of trust. We are being asked to accept a new governance structure while facing the possibility that our earned workplace protections will be the next target. Employees are reasonably worried about what benefits will be reduced next. Recruitment and retention are already serious challenges in specialized utility work. Susan Water Board needs experienced operators, technicians, mechanics, engineers, electricians, and other skilled employees. Reduced leave and retirement-related benefits will make it harder to compete for these workers. Current employees will leave for more stable employment, while prospective employees may decide that a career here is not worth the uncertainty. That means more vacancies, heavier workloads, burnout, lost institutional knowledge, and greater risk to critical services that we as citizens rely on. Accountability and reform should not come at the expense of the employees who keep New Orleans running. I respectfully urge the Commission to reject these amendments and work with employees on solutions that strengthen public service rather than diminish it. Jamie Rowe, in opposition, the proposed amendments reduce longstanding benefits that recognize employee service and provide important recruitment and retention incentives. They reduce compensation, weaken employee morale, make public employment less competitive, and are unlikely to generate significant cost savings relative to their impact on the workforce. For these reasons, I urge the Commission to reject the proposed amendments and instead pursue solutions that preserve employee benefits while addressing fiscal concerns in a manner that supports workforce stability and public service excellence. Grace Vogel, in opposition, while I understand that reducing the ability of leave time allowable to payout can improve cash flow stability, I do not understand reducing overall leave accrual or carryover amounts. I hope there will be a clear explanation in Layman's term with situational examples for the entire civil service employee pool so as not to decrease morale. Civil service benefits are the biggest advertisement tool in recruiting employees when our positions are compared to private sector equivalents. It's well known that reducing employee benefits do not improve productivity nor retention. I'm just going to stop Amy for one second to say I want to thank everybody's time. I'm sorry. I'm a little bit further away from the microphone. I just wanted to say thank you for everybody's time today. Obviously we came in and we said that we were going to be open to change. Some of the things that we heard today were obviously things that we expected to hear, so that doesn't come as a surprise. I think the value of being here is the things that we didn't anticipate or we didn't know about. I leaned over to John once or twice to talk about those. Madam Chair, I think in particular how you work around with the blackout dates look like is something particularly of note that we want to focus on and we want to make sure that we're working with everybody. Also, because of the challenge, I do know the legislative auditor wants to be here for the final hearing so he can offer his own testimony about the disparity in the payouts as well because that was challenged earlier. All right? Thank you. Just to be clear for the public, thank you, CAO. This is just an introduction, right, and so no decision is made today by the Commissioner, but we wanted to thank you for bringing it before so that everyone can have their input and as you guys go back and kind of think of whatever y'all need to do, we will expect y'all to come back to the Commission. Absolutely, and I know Mr. Mishler raised the point earlier. I'm not fixated on an October date. I want to get this as right as possible. Understanding that there's unlikely to have unanimity, I'd like to make as much consensus as possible and time generally allows for a little bit more of that. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Thank you for your time. Appreciate it. Thanks again. Sure. Okay. Bethany English. Let's see. This is not about that topic. Okay. Okay. Mary Lou Augustin opposed. I oppose elimination of bonus annual leave days and sick days unless we plan to get more days. Currently, we get 13 vacation days and 13 paid sick days per year. The 13 vacation days is already in violation of Louisiana Revised Statute 33214, which states that municipal police employees, after one year of service, are entitled to 15 days of paid annual vacation each calendar year. Every officer the first five years of their employment has been cheated out of two vacation days, 10 total for five years. The current system does not benefit 12-hour employees, which are all patrol officers, the ones who respond to 911 calls. One day of vacation for an 8.35-hour employee is 8.35 hours. A 12-hour employee uses one day of vacation and has to use 12.21 hours of leave, giving them 11.69 leave days a year. In order to keep morale high, recruit and retain officers, we need to have better benefits than every other department in the state. I recommend giving us 2.5 days of vacation a month, 30 a year, not to exceed 60 days or use it or lose. At retirement, you take your remaining leave until your retirement date. The goal is to take leave, not save it for a retirement check. The city pays out $0 a vacation to the employee at retirement. The military uses this method. The system protects officers' earned benefits while stopping unlimited growth in the city's future leave liability.

We love working for NOPD in the city, but we work harder than every police department in Louisiana, so instead of eliminating benefits, let's make them better without financially hurting the city. Taking away our bonus days without giving us more days will hurt morale, recruitment, and retention. If you want to really find out, take a survey. Felicia Bergeron, in opposition, reducing earned leave based on years of service and retirement credits will directly impact Sewage and Water Board employees and potentially cause a mass exodus of retirement of eligible employees. For 30% of our operations managers and almost 20% of our operations workforce, please do not punish the workers providing essential services day in and day out. Please do not approve these changes. Martin Brody, in opposition, good afternoon, members of the commission. Maintaining the current firefighter sick leave accrual policy is critical to preserving a stable, healthy workforce. Because firefighters work unique 24-hour shifts, standard eight-hour structures simply do not apply. A single illness does not just cost a firefighter a standard workday, it costs them 24 consecutive hours of leave. The current accrual policy directly accounts for this operational reality, ensuring these first responders have a fair and proportional safety net. These longevity bonus days allow firefighters to recover effectively rather than worsening an injury, which would ultimately require extended leave or worse, result in permanently disabling condition. Altering this policy undermines a core mission of the commission in a distinct way, erosion of workforce retention. A comprehensive benefits package is the single most powerful tool to retain veteran highly skilled personnel. Changing this policy breaks a long-standing commitment to these employees. If these benefits are reduced, you're actively incentivizing lateral transfers to neighboring departments that will happily welcome these highly trained personnel. When a veteran firefighter leaves, they take decades of institutional knowledge, leadership, and specialized training with them, leaving the city of New Orleans with the costly revolving door of recruitment and training expenses, compounding the inherent dangers of the profession and most likely leading to even more injuries. Current policy aligns perfectly with the foundational principles of the civil service in providing appropriate proportional sick leave that accounts for extremely hazardous duties and unique occupational risk. I respectfully urge the commission to maintain the existing rules and protect the stability of our public safety workforce. Khadijah Bryant in opposition, I think that all incoming and current city employees need to have more time allocated to them. Gerald Foster in opposition, please accept this written testimony to be read into the official record at the upcoming meeting. My name is Gerald Foster and I served proudly as a member of NOFD for over 33 years. During my over three decades on the line, the hazards of this job took a massive toll on my body. I have battled lung cancer. I've had knee replacements, a hip replacement, a severe back injury. Every single one of these health battles was a direct result of my time on the job. I know from personal experience that 365 days of ODI leave is simply not enough to get a firefighter through a full career. In 2015 my injuries completely tapped me out of ODI time. If I hadn't saved up decades of personal sick leave and bonus days my time would have run out completely and I would have been left with nothing. Please keep in mind that our newer employees are now expected to do this physically punishing job for 40 years. They work through the freezing cold of winter and the dying heat of summer. These men and women protect the people of New Orleans with immense pride. In return they deserve the full support of the city, the administration, and everyone in civil service. Firefighters should not have to drain their own personal sick time to heal from injuries they suffered while protecting our citizens. Please keep my experience and the future of our active workforce in mind when you cast your vote on this critical issue. Thank you for your time. Next is Antonius Greyer, opposed. I'm tired of benefits being taken away from the fire department. I'm beginning to feel like we don't matter to the city of New Orleans. We're always being picked only the city and our own superintendent, on by the city and our own superintendent. If we weren't doing our job I could understand but instead we get punished. My question is why? Anthony Jean-Marie III in opposition. What what do the proposed rule changes do? Ends bonus sick leave based on years of service. Ends sick leave annual leave based on years of service. Employees hired after 2026 cuts annual leave carried forward for new employees from 45 days to 30. Employees hired after 2026 limits sick leave carried forward to 200 days. Employees hired after 2026 cuts terminal leave payout for new employees 20% of their daily rate and 4F limits how employees can convert unused leave into credit reducing benefits. Adam Laureano opposed. Members of the New Orleans Civil Service Commission I'm writing in strong opposition to any proposed proposal under agenda item 4B that would eliminate or reduce longevity based bonus sick leave for New Orleans firefighters. I've served as an active New Orleans firefighter for 10 years. The proposal affects me directly but my concern extends far beyond my own benefits. The decision made today could affect the health morale recruitment and retention of this department for the next 30 years. Firefighting is a cumulative risk profession with every year service comes additional exposure to smoke, carcinogens, infectious disease, extreme heat, physical pain, interrupted sleep, and injury. A firefighter with 20 or 30 years of service has not simply accumulated years of employment.

That firefighter has accumulated decades of occupational exposure and physical wear. Louisiana law itself recognizes this reality. Louisiana revised statute 33-2011 recognizes certain cancers suffered by classified firefighters as occupational diseases and establishes a presumption for qualifying firefighters after 10 years or more of service. As a firefighter who has now reached that 10-year mark I find the contradiction difficult to ignore. The state of Louisiana recognizes through law that years of firefighting exposure matter, yet we are considering reducing a health-related benefit specifically designed to increase with those same years of service. That is short-sighted policy. These sick days are not simply a bonus. They recognize that the longer firefighters serve the city, the greater their accumulated occupational risk and the greater the possibility that they will eventually need that leave. We repeatedly hear that recruitment and retention matter, experienced firefighters matter, but we cannot encourage firefighters to build 20 and 30-year careers while steadily reducing the benefits that make those careers sustainable. I urge the commission to look beyond any perceived short-term savings and consider the department we are creating 10, 20, and 30 years from now. Louisiana law recognizes that occupational consequences of firefighting increase with years of service. Our civil service policy should recognize that reality as well. For those reasons I strongly urge the commission to leave the existing longevity-based sick leave policy intact and reject any proposal to reduce or eliminate this benefit. Next is Logan Smith in opposition. I, Logan Smith, medic for New Orleans EMS, am opposed to agenda item 4A through G. I understand we need to find money for the budget, but this is not how we need to do it. Taking time off for families, taking time from possible retirees, swindling money from sick time are all ways to make a short staff agency even shorter. People normally want a city job for good benefit, normally want a city job for good benefits, but this is taking away that. Don't change our benefits to pay for raises or someone else's previous mistakes. Brittany Liscomb in opposition. First and foremost, it's extremely disappointing that voting on these amendments was not, was going to take place without the general city employees knowledge. It feels intentional due to the obvious lack of support such amendments would receive. All removals of tenure-based leave incentives not only increase potential hire disinterest due to EMS being typically standard for most employers, it displays lack of gratitude for employees and commitment to the city of New Orleans. Care over limits already don't make sense given it's the employees earned time. However, instilling this for sick time is atrocious. People save that in case they fall extremely ill. God forbid an employee fall chronically ill and be restricted to a certain amount of sick leave when they've remained dedicated and healthy to avoid this, healthy, to avoid the situation and retain sick leave or such a situation. I understand the city is in a budget crisis and I also understand that technically this would affect morale, affect me to the extent that we would, a new employer, I can't read that, the answer is not to disregard the dedication sacrifice of city of New Orleans employees, especially New Orleans EMS employees who are faced with directly witnessing death and suffering every day, especially when we're already underpaid, overworked, under-resourced and understaffed. It would send a message we don't care, those who serve our city don't deserve that. Next is Ivy Molloy, opposed. Hello, my name is Ivy Molloy and I'm a field paramedic proudly working for New Orleans EMS. I'm writing today to express my opposition for agenda item 4 in its entirety. I recognize that some of these provisions do not yet apply to current employees but I see them as a threat to civil servants nonetheless. My opposition for these amendments centers around the misinterpretation of accrued leave as a gift rather than earned benefits owed to civil servants. EMS workers invite illness into close proximity on many calls for service. We are trained to gauge personal risk based on presenting illness, environmental hazards, but we are limited by the emergent nature of the job. It's easy to imagine falling ill as a result of workplace exposure that goes undeclared. Daniel Rokos, opposed. My name is Daniel Rokos. I'm an EMT for New Orleans EMS. I would have been there to speak in person but at the moment I'm on an ambulance responding to emergencies around the city. I've served New Orleans for the past five years and I fully intend to continue to serve well into the future. I understand the sacrifice that employees of the city assume. We know what we are taking on and we continue to show up every day for the city but these changes feel like betrayal. We show up for the city but the city is not showing up for us. Ashley Sanchez, opposed. I'm complete opposition to this proposal due to my witnessing of medics EMTs being constantly exposed to illnesses regularly. I feel as though their sick leave is greatly needed also because we commit a lot of time working especially due to Mardi Gras and other events. Sick leave is well deserved. Also as a new hire I don't believe it's fair to my colleagues and I to suffer for something we do not cause. A lot of employees, myself included, have health. We're not taking anymore. Deserve to know that the city are back in the event that we fall in. I'm a type 1 diabetic. If I get or suffer episodes I should be able to trust that I can still feed my family despite my illness. Holly Sherman, good evening. My name is Holly Sherman, opposed. I have worked for New Orleans EMS for 16 years. Deeply concerned about the proposed changes to employee leave benefits particularly for future employees.

On paper these changes may look relatively small. Fewer longevity leave days, limits on accrued sick leave, reduced terminal leave payouts and changes to the way we leave can be converted to retirement credit. But I want to ask the people making these decisions to look at what these changes mean collectively. New Orleans EMS already has a recruitment and retention problem. The city has acknowledged that problem itself. The city has previously identified EMS as a critical difficult to fill public safety workforce but has implemented no recruitment and retention incentives as with NOPD. So why at the same time are we making the overall compensation package less attractive? We are asking people to become paramedics, work nights, weekends, holidays, major events, hurricanes, disasters and some of the most difficult calls imaginable. But then we tell them that the longer they stay with the city the fewer benefits future city employees will receive for that service. That is not a recruitment strategy. That is not a retention strategy. And it certainly isn't how you build a world-class public safety system. New Orleans EMS answers more than 70,000 calls a year and provides care to more than 50,000 patients. We are not an optional service that is nice to have when the budget allows. Ashley Simmons opposed to take away our hard-earned extra sick time and leave is a slap in the face. We are always activated for the city. The least you can do is leave our sick time and annual leave time alone. How would you like it if we took away your time? Emily Ramirez Hernandez opposed. I write today in opposition to these rule changes. While it appears these amendments are up for introduction versus adoption today and the red line language on the proposed amendments has not yet been provided for review, proposed changes are exceptionally concerning and represent significant reductions in compensation and workplace benefits for city employees. The cumulative impact that these proposed changes would have on city employees is extremely disturbing. We have already experienced furloughs and the virtual elimination of work-from-home opportunities. Now we are considering additional reductions to annual leave, sick leave, carry forward limits, terminal leave benefits, etc. At some point we have to recognize a cumulative effect of repeatedly chipping away at the benefits associated with city employment. What is particularly troubling is the employees did not create the city's budget shortfall. We came to work, performed our jobs, and earned the leave and benefits we were provided under the city's established rules. We should not be the ones repeatedly asked to bear the consequences of financial problems that resulted from decisions made at the leadership and management levels. While I hesitated to call the proposals, hesitate to call the proposals an attack on employees, I do think that realistically this is how many employees will perceive it. It also goes without saying that employees and the public may be able to review the actual redline amendments prior to the commission action as the agenda item only describes the proposed changes at a high level. Commissioners, I urge you to consider not only the individual proposals before you today but their cumulative impact on the city's workforce. Reducing benefits may produce savings on paper but also affects morale, retention, performance, and the city's ability to attract and retain experienced hard-working employees. The employees who are being asked to make these sacrifices should not be treated as though they are responsible for the financial circumstances that led to them. Sarah King, in opposition, I strongly oppose any changes to the civil service rule amendments proposed for today's meeting. There has been little to no information provided to City Hall staff in advance of this meeting. In the last year, our staff has felt the effects of furloughs and budget cuts as a result of poor financial management by previous leadership. I ask that these proposed changes are not approved in lieu of ongoing financial constraints. Lack of notice on these issues. and low morale. These benefits are greatly influential for how people support and plan around their livelihoods and are essential to family planning and future career goals. Please do not approve these changes. Sabine Labue, in opposition, I'm concerned about the city taking away bonus annual leave and bonus sick leave from its existing employees' benefits. There are other ways for the city to save money than chipping away at our very few benefits. We do not receive yearly cost of living adjustments. We have seen our pay cut reduced by 10% with furloughs. Our insurance plans and retirement benefits have been emaciated through the years. This is enough. Maria Seguir, in opposition, I respectfully urge the commission to reject all proposed amendments that would reduce or eliminate earned employee benefits. I've proudly served as a civil service employee for 16 years. Throughout my career, I've remained committed to serving the citizens of the city with the understanding that dedication, longevity, and experience would be recognized through benefits earned over years of service. I'm concerned that employees are being asked to absorb reductions in benefits due to financial challenges that were not created by the workforce. Civil service employees have continued to serve through budget constraints, staffing shortages, emergencies, and increasing workloads. Many of us have worked hard to reach the 10-year milestones required to earn these benefits. Eliminating them without a meaningful replacement is unfair and dismissive of the dedication and sacrifice that employees have made throughout their careers. Maria Simonow, opposed, I'm strongly against the proposal to eliminate the additional annual leave that employees receive based on their number of years of service and urge the commission to reconsider.

Removing these days will not affect the current budget problems in a meaningful way, but will hurt employees in a long-term permanent way and signify an indifference to our quality of life. City employees are already underpaid, as reported to the Civil Service Commission in June of 2025 when they received the results of a wage study that recommended an immediate raise in predictable stepped yearly raises. City departments are often understaffed and employees are left to pick up the slack, especially during the ongoing hiring freeze. We've been under for over a year. Offering increased pay leave is one of the few incentives we have to build our careers with the city and removing them would be insulting and short-sighted. In an already underpaid and understaffed workforce, it seems unwise to remove the few benefits keeping the passionate, hardworking, and qualified individuals from leaving their roles in the private sector jobs. Commissioners, we have a stack of the same comments, so I'm going to read it once and then just read the names on that. So, this is opposed, as a New Orleans, this is Jasmine Smith, as a New Orleans EMS employee, I would like to state my full and complete opposition to the proposed changes to annual and sick leave as detailed in agenda item four. The proposed changes do nothing to address current and forthcoming budgetary shortfalls and inflict lasting and permanent damage to an already underpaid and demoralized workforce. I stand in opposition. And employees with that same comment are Vanessa Sheffield, Scott Schlumbercht, sorry Scott, Clint Sanders, Rendell Reed, James Parker, Nathan Mummy, Zachary Goldworm, Nicole Luna, Joshua Lawless, Rochelle Lewis, Perry Liu, Matthew Happel, Shaina Goldfine, Jemana Gonem, Tabitha Gallador, Tyler Incalde, Darielle Ellis, Kyle Doering, Malcolm Cross, Titus Carrier, Alan Camron, Jason Boudreau, O. Abdul Aziz, Stephen Ware, Antonio Weish, Stanley Woods, and Esther Swan. And I believe that's all the comments that we have. Thank you. Amy. Are you all going to accept additional in-person comments? Okay, you all submitted online comments. Was it read online? It wasn't read. Okay, okay. How many are we talking about? Two. Two? No, no. I'm sorry, three? I'd be okay with that. I'm okay. Just make sure we stick to our limits. Give me time to uncross my eye. Yeah. Thank you, commissioners, for the opportunity to speak today. I want to highlight the operational impact to several of the proposed rule changes, specifically items 4A through 4F will have across all city departments, including emergency medical services. These proposals eliminate tenure-based annual and sick leave bonuses, reduce leave carry forward limits, restrict terminal leave payouts, and change how leave can be converted to retirement credits. These long-term benefits matter to every city employee. For many of our workforce, they are the reason people choose public service over private sector employment that often provide higher pay. EMS is a clear example of this dynamic. Our personnel accept significantly lower salaries than private sector medics because the cities that leave in retirement structure makes public service viable. The same is true for many other departments, public works, park and parkways, libraries, code enforcement, police, fire, and others, where employees stay not because of competing pay, but because of the benefits provided stability with difficult demand and work. Reducing these benefits without increasing compensation creates direct risk to retention, recruitment, and operational readiness citywide. In EMS, it will mean fewer medics, longer response times, more overtime, and greater burnout. In other departments, it will lead to increased vacancies, loss of experienced staff, slower service delivery, and higher operational strain. These proposals don't just affect a single department. They reshape the long-term compensation foundation for the entire city workforce. I respectfully ask the commission to consider how these changes will impact every employee who keeps the city functioning, how to recognize the unique risk of EMS and other critical public safety and public roles if long-term benefits are reduced without corresponding adjustments to salary. Thank you for your time and consideration. Thanks, Chief Ramagos. Could I ask you a point? I see this all the time, and good to see you. In terms of, like, retention, I feel like I run in, when I do my day job, I feel like I'm seeing more Acadian ambulances on the streets when they're responding to the same calls as me than I see New Orleans EMS ambulances at this point. It's not to throw shade at Acadian. Y'all are doing what you need to do, but would you agree that that's symptomatic of the inability of New Orleans EMS to attract or retain paramedics at this stage? It's part of the problem. It's a lot more involved. Sure. But it's not helpful to take away things that would drive people into service. No. Thanks. Thank you. Evening. Good evening, commissioners, and thank you, Director Trepagny, for allowing us to speak. We did submit comments last night to the civil service website. We were waiting for our turn to talk all day, and then we were told we would have the chance to when the comment cards were read, and when that didn't happen, I felt like we should try to interject, so thank you for allowing us to speak this afternoon. I had a long speech planned, but really, everything that I had in that speech has been covered by all the civil service classified employees here today. So really, what I want to say is, Jonathan, you and I have worked in the past, years ago, when we were trying to figure out a way to make EMS work without an overtime schedule, and it's really impossible. And I know that we have a really big hill to climb as far as getting out of this budget deficit, but let's talk about what's negotiable and what should be non-negotiable.

You know, what should be negotiable and on the table that, sure, that's for future employees and about benefits and limiting benefits, but what's non-negotiable is what that we've put in our entire career for and worked for, and we've worked under the guise that we were going to get these bonus hours, and we've been receiving these, and again, bonus, that's not really a great word. I do agree with a previous commenter who said longevity. That's really what it is. You know, we've sacrificed a lot for this city. I've served loyally here and honorably here for the past 24 years. I'm proud to say I just reached rule of 80 a few months ago, and now with another real vague part of the rule about the credit of utilization of leave time towards retirement. I don't know. That's so vague. How's that going to impact me as somebody who's now rule of 80? Can I still buy my way to 30 and start the drop early? You know, I don't know. There's a lot that's unsaid and unclarified, and I'm glad to know that nothing's etched in stone as CAO Girusso made very clear earlier, but I found out about this meeting yesterday. There was no negotiations or anything that I've been aware of. You know, I'm kind of a unicorn here. I'm not allowed to be in a union because I hire and conduct discipline and are part of the termination processes, and I'm also not an unclassified employer, and I will employ the mayor. So I'm kind of in a weird position, and I'm not here to represent myself. I'm here to speak on behalf of the hard-working men and women of New Orleans EMS because they are what matters to me here, as well as all the other classified employees who showed up to support or really oppose this proposition. So I hope that we can really get to a better dialogue and really work out what's negotiable and what's not, but what should not be negotiable is the benefits that are already, that we've already earned and worked to gain in our entire careers through our loyalty and service to the city of New Orleans. So with that, I appreciate your time and your consideration, and I thank all of you for giving us a moment to speak. Thank you. Absolutely. I have a question for you. So when you talk about retention and recruitment, like even the impact of the proposed, how do you feel like it will impact your ability to recruit and retain? Is Mike? Yeah. Any cut to the benefits, you know, that's a big selling point that we have. It's well known that the private sector pays more than the public sector, right? And Acadian medics can make what our supervisors are making that have been here for 10, 15 years as a one-year medic coming in to work on a contract on a truck. And it's a very, it's unequal, right? So it's, we rely on those benefits. So, you know, when I'm in an interview with prospective candidates to hire, I go over all of the benefits of working through the city. And if I go back and we take those away, I feel like, number one, I haven't been forward, and we're not delivering on our end of the bargain when people made that decision to come here. So I think it will impact. I think I feel better about something that we can negotiate for future employees after December, you know, 31st, 2026, because that way it's on the table, and it's already out there. And we're telling them exactly what they're going to get. We're not taking away what we've already promised from them. Thank you. I can't tell you how often I see someone in a New Orleans EMS uniform one week, and the next week, they're in an Acadian uniform. It's without exaggeration. exaggeration constant matter of attrition for them and you know, we appreciate that the City Council and the Civil Service Commission and the CAO's office has recognized that EMS is a Revenue generating agency for the city and we hope that we can continue to get the support that we need To fill these vacant positions so we can fully staff and see New Orleans EMS respond to 100% of the 911 calls that are generated in Orleans Parish. That's our goal and that's my mission Thank you We have one more comment, okay Hello, I'm Brittany. I actually worked down the hallway in retirement. So I just wanted to quickly When I read this this morning because I didn't see it until this morning The City of New Orleans has 200 employees in drop, which means they're partially retired. So if we were gonna make these Changes already all going into it knowing that This is a huge self-factor for rehiring people. What specifically is the plan to replace those people? That just doesn't make a single lick of sense to me We got 200 people on the way with one foot out the door and no idea how we're gonna get people in when we already consistently struggle to get people in To speak to what you said sir with the blue eyes there. I don't I Work in retirement, like I said when I'm doing refunds every month I do see a bunch of people from EMS on the way out, right? And I noticed them because I only just put them in the system and now they're here they go gone So what was the other note that I made What specifically would be the plan also for when people go over 200 days what happens to those days They just get paid out for that because I don't feel like you get that much pushback if they're basically getting a yearly bonus and Not to be snarky, but there is quite a bit of correlation between how much Leave people are hoarding And that the average employee only gets about 5,000 when they leave Thank you because it does speak to the fact that the majority of the people are using their leave Why should we all be getting punished because there are outliers who are sitting on a whole bunch. That's silly Because that also never mind but My last thing would be if are you going to do a cost of benefit cost benefit analysis for this and at what point would That be public for us to see it because it sort of seems like We're burning a bridge today so we can save five dollars on the maintenance for the bridge tomorrow.

It don't make any sense Thank you, thank you y'all have a good one That concludes this discussion for that item for this item. Thank you. Thank you So again, this is just a proposal I appreciate everyone's comments and Contributions to the discussion. I hope that this Discussion continues the Commission is not making a decision on this at this point today Thank you. Thanks Okay commissioners. Let's return back to item agenda agenda item number one and those are the minutes for July 10th 2026 and July 21st Do we have a motion moved I did not attend the July 10th, so I can't I can't Okay, so we'll put those on a phone a future meeting, okay, because we can't do president voting right, okay Supreme Court, so he wasn't here All right. Yeah, okay. Yeah, so the 10th will put on a future. Okay, so can we get approval on July 21st? Yeah What about July 21st, yeah, I can I'll move to approve the July 20th, okay, we got a stamp from the chief You second second. Okay all in favor, please say aye aye motion carries Hey, thank you commissioners item Number two is the election of chair and vice chair of the Civil Service Commission in accordance with rule two section 1.6 All right, I would I would nominate Commissioner Richardson to continue as the chair this year 20 a second I can second. Okay. We have a second. Well, thank you. I appreciate the nomination second. I and the second That's you agree with that. That's a firm firm agreements So all in favor, please say aye aye and Just to echo that sentiment and it's not quit pro quo. I would like to Nominate We read nominate Commissioner corn for vice chair. I can second that as well second as well. Okay Yeah, I guess it's already my motion. So all in favor, please say aye. Aye The motion carries Thank You commissioners and congratulations. Thank you Seems like it's like every two months we do that So y'all got us we have any public comments Okay Item number three is the ratification of Public Integrity Bureau extension requests Okay, and can we just go ahead and approve this in an entirety? Do we have any? Common cards or anything that's out like so commissioners. Do we have a motion? Yeah, okay, so we have a motion Yeah move to approve. Do I have a second second? Okay, all in favor, please say aye aye motion carries Thank You commissioners Item number five under a classification and compensation matters Item number five a is a request in the library to increase the pay grade for librarian one Roberts can be very brief in his descriptions. Hi Robert. We did read Good afternoon This is to address a internal equity issue at the library where because of the interaction with the power professional library associate series in the librarian series There was some Incompatibility this grade change in essence correct corrects that it's just a two grade adjustment It would be a five percent increase for the current four librarian ones Yes Move to approve Okay, thank you commissioners item number 5b is a request to change the title of police accounting section manager to contract section This title change would support this the centralization of the contract management function which previously existed in Different departments and this would consolidate that function to achieve administrative office. This is not a pay increase It's simply a title change so this is in there was a transfer you guys approved the transfer of a functional unit where the Contracting function the city is centralized under CAO One of the job titles that was moved there was a police job title And so this takes off the police piece so because it's going to be generic for all the departments Sorry gentleman out there. I'm not sure what you're signaling to me. I see you trying to make a public comment Okay, hold on we got a process do you have a card Amy? Identify yourself My name is Earl Roche There are two totally different positions one deals with grants and one deals with contracts nothing with an accounting section manager nothing in the job description is Contracts if you look at the policies and procedures for NO PD Contracts falls under accounts payable The function of accounts payable in that unit it does not fall under Grants, so if you I I have in my bag I can show a job description of a contracts accounting manager or section manager and then show one for The The police accounting section manager one deals with grants and one deals with contracts totally different So when I got transferred To to the office my job description is nowhere close. There's not one thing on it. That's the same and What should have happened is there is a contract unit within NO PD and that Employees should have been transferred over and I should have been left Not saying I want to be back there now after all the stuff that happened But that was some shady stuff that went on. I mean at the end of the day That person does it and they tried to make it seem like It That's I dealt and did Contracts and I didn't I mean if you look at the revenue For the short time I had NO PD's grants it increased by 383 percent I generated almost nine million dollars in In the positive for the grant unit in 2025 you can add up the previous six years of Revenue that before me and it don't even touch it But I'm the one that gets moved over and everybody saw the model citizens grant and how That's 300 million and we ran out of time I have emails where I'm bringing it to their attention back in February But they wanted me to give because they wanted to keep their person and I'm opposed to the change because the change is the loophole. How do you get me to move? over here is having my title my previous title as contracts Essentially So the language in the kind of work That's presented here is the exact same language that was on the police accounting section manager job Specification with the exception of that.

It's now in the centralized contract management's office This is the same job spec that he's operating under under the police department with that one exception And again, this was part of a for a functional unit that was publicly vetted at a public meeting by the commission and approved. I can show you the standard procedure. The branch is separate from the hydroponics. I know I doubled the branch. I still have my name on the DOJ dealing with just the branch. I know what it is. You can word it any way you want to word it. I understand that. All I'm saying is that branch are different than hydroponics. I really hear you and I appreciate you sharing your concern. I don't know if this commission could do anything. At this point right now, that's not what's before us. I don't know what you're asking. I'm saying this creates a potential loophole. Say how I want it down the line to raise the issue of hydroponics, if we're going to have a position that is already medicated and you know what we did for contract management, why do you need to change this? Is your main concern your job security? I don't know what you're asking. If you go 383% increase in revenue and you generate that much, but you ultimately get what happened here because it wasn't grants that got moved by the order on or approval on June 12th. It was specifically contracts. Totally two different things. And that also affects, say something happens, we hear all day about how we're losing money, losing employees. If I had to go look for a job, say a year from now, taking me from what I have, I don't know, 12, 15 years of experience in grants and then put me in something I have hardly any years of experience, what kind of salary can I command? Are you facing a salary change at this time? No. And if you're building a career in grants, if that's where you want to be, and you got tossed to a left field, I mean, there is some. Well, it's not out of left field. We had the introduction and the commission considered and voted on a functional unit transfer. But they didn't vote on grants. We didn't hear any of this comment at the time. That's the problem, I guess I was saying. This was up for consideration. I was just saying that- The job spec is as you were operating at NEPD, it's the exact same job spec with the one change that it's under the centralized- Is the salary changing? No. It's just- And not to cut you off, but if it was the same, there wouldn't be two. We have a grant centralized unit and I think the CAO's off, I mean, I'm still new to this building, but there's a grant centralized. If they were the same thing, contracts and grants, then there would be no need in the CAO to have a grant one and a contract one. I hear what you're saying. However, if you say one of your worries is job security, your job is secure. I mean, they can't just go ahead and unilaterally lay you off. We're here to make sure those kind of things don't happen. It doesn't sound like that's on the table. In fact, your job has been moved, but I mean, to the chairwoman's point, this was considered and voted on already and it had the opportunity for comment before. That has kind of been done. I get that. All I'm stating is the order was for June 12th. Somebody with that status or similar job duties got transferred. That wasn't the case. But I mean, that is neither here nor there. I was only making the reference of why does that title need to be changed? Because you're no longer in the police department and the title says it's police accounting. So keeping accounting take police off. Well, that's not the decision that's not part of our... I want to thank you at this point. I think we're kind of at a moot point. Yeah, I understand. So I will thank you again and you had the opportunity to share. I'm not sure if there's anything... We would need you just to approve the change in title. Okay. So a change in title. All right. So commissioners, do we have a motion or any questions? Nobody asked my question. Okay. Nobody answered your question? No, no. I said I asked them. Oh, okay. All right. So do we have a motion at this time? I'll move to. Do we have a motion to approve? Do we have a second? Second. Okay. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Okay. Okay. Thank you, commissioners. Item number 5C is a request from the Sewage and Water Board for a new special rate of pay for Networks Master Maintenance Techs 1 and 2 who possessed wastewater collections and water distribution licensing. The idea here is to incentivize the Networks Master Maintenance... Networks Master Technicians 1 and 2 to obtain this licensing and this will prepare them for higher level positions in the Networks Division of the Sewage and Water Board. And it ranges from, like, if you get the one certification, that would be two and a half percent. For each level, basically, it's a two and a half percent adjustment, and it would be the highest level, which is the four, would be a ten percent premium. Okay. Commissioners, do we have any questions on this? Are we ready for a motion? I'll entertain one. I'll move to approve. I'll move to approve. I'll move to approve. I need for y'all to come to this last hall. We almost... Okay. Energy backup. Second. We have a motion. Do I have a second? Second. Okay. Motion. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you, commissioners. Item number 5D is a request from the Fire Department to amend the Fire Dual Assignment Special Rate of Pay. The idea here is to reduce the threshold to be hourly. Right now, in effect, it requires you to take on 12 hours before being eligible for a dual assignment pay. This would reduce that threshold to one hour. Staff is also asking that this be approved and be effective at the date of your approval, which is today, September the 9th. All right. So, I have economic interest in this. I act as a district chief. Therefore, I would be economically benefited by a reduction in the 12-hour to one.

The only thing that would be impacted is a fire captain who acts in a capacity of a fire district chief. That's what he's saying. He does. Yeah. Yeah, I'm a captain. I act as a chief. Yeah, you could possibly be impacted. I would be. In other words, I'm going to be forced to recuse from this item. Okay. Okay. Duly noticed. So, I don't think we can vote on this. Right. We need to defer that. We got to defer that one. All right. Item number 5E is a request from the fire department for a new special rate of pay when performing the work of a higher classification. These two new special rates of pay would be for people, in effect, who would not qualify, in particular firefighters and fire apparatus operators who don't yet qualify for fire apparatus operator or fire captain. It's not a dual assignment. It's a special rate of pay because they do not yet meet the minimum qualifications. Staff is also asking for the approval of this to be September 9th, which is today. Okay. Okay. Do we have a motion to? Hold on. Is that? That's just the operator? That's just firefighter to operator? Yeah. Just firefighter. A firefighter could be possibly a fire apparatus operator, or they could act as a captain. An apparatus operator would act as a captain. So, you can't vote on this? But they don't yet qualify, so it would be a partial special rate of pay. It wouldn't be the fullness as if they were promoted. So, he would not be recused because they're acting in his capacity or lower capacity. No, I don't have to recuse from this one. I'm not impacted by that personally. Okay. Aaron, you have? We are currently in litigation over active dual assignments for people who do not meet the minimum qualifications. As we stated, we are 100% against anyone who does not meet minimum qualifications. We believe that is the civil service rule as it reads, that they cannot be scheduled to work in a dual assignment unless they complete and obtain all minimum requirements to hold that dual assignment. That's what we're in litigation. That court date is set for Monday, September 14th, right across the hall in civil district court in Judge Shepard's case. But if anyone is forced to work in that capacity by this administration, we believe that they should be paid the full amount of anyone else who does that job certification. So, partial payment seems ridiculous if you're going to be doing that job to begin with. It's not only the job duties, it's the full responsibility and liability that comes with those jobs. It's the same job. It's the same responsibilities, the same duties, but they're asking to consider a lesser rate of pay for doing the exact same thing. Will, are you going to speak on this on behalf of the city at all? Yeah, yes. It's a special rate of pay, isn't it? Okay. Good evening. William Goforth, Chief Deputy City Attorney. This proposal came about as part of an ongoing discussion between the Firefighters Union and Civil Service and the city administration where the parties all recognized that there was a gap here in the fact that employees who did not qualify for dual assignment pay did not have any avenue to earn any additional amount for working in the capacity of an operator. Now, I don't think it's appropriate to get into the contentions between the parties with respect to the requirement that firefighters act as operators, although it is the city's contention that that is part of their job description. The city, and I think I can speak for the fire department here, where they are fully in support of compensating firefighters for the time that they spend working, doing the work that an operator would normally do. This is the proposal that was proposed by civil service based on what they determined was the appropriate method of compensation. The city doesn't have any dispute with that. And my only addition to that would be that it certainly seems better to compensate them to some degree even if other parties might want to see that compensation be higher, that doesn't seem to be a reason to not go ahead and pass this and increase and give those firefighters some increase in the special rate of pay for when they work in the class of an operator. Thanks. Could I ask Aaron and Will a question? Do either of you anticipate that the commission taking action on this study one way or the other plays into the litigation somehow? I don't necessarily see it being an issue. The city's position in litigation does not change. And frankly, the city was expecting this to pass so our position wouldn't change. Okay, thanks. So my outlook on this as a commissioner and as a firefighter is these are actually different job careers. The idea that this is part of a firefighter's job duties isn't totally accurate. It is a best practice that everybody be capable of doing the other jobs globally because on an occasional basis you may be called on to do that and I have a really good example that just happened to me almost two weeks ago. I was at a fire on Frenchman Street and my hand got burned and I had to go home. My hand went into a deep fryer in a kitchen fire. And at that time I placed, because I was gonna leave the scene in an EMS unit, I placed my firefighter in charge of my company at that time. He remained in charge for about two hours. The fire department backfilled him with somebody who is qualified and dually assigned eligible to fill that role. That's the perfect example of when something like this is appropriate. When somebody on the scene can't do their job anymore. Call it a battlefield promotion or what you will. What it is not is meant to be a staffing model. Now for example, these are different career tracks. No one is required to obtain the minimum qualifications of operator or captain. These aren't career requirements. It's best that you understand them for circumstances like the one I just described. And to show you that no one's required, I'm a captain. I supervise operators and firefighters.

If I get promoted to chief one day, I'll supervise captains, operators, and firefighters. I'm not a qualified operator. I never had to be. It was of no career interest to me. So with that said, the idea that you would ask somebody to do those other jobs and exercise the discretion, the responsibility, and pay them anything less than equal to somebody who is fully qualified, who wants that career, is, I think that's morally unfair. So at this point, are we, do we have a motion? Are we approving? Are we, how do you feel about this particular proposal? I don't know. I mean, I don't think it's fair to ask people to do that. I think if we codify this, then what are we doing in terms of, does Erin or Will want to offer some more? I will say that it is consistent with our current practice that when we ask employees to perform in higher level classifications due to the extended absence or the termination of a person, that if the person doesn't meet all of the minimum qualifications, we do not compensate them at the full rate for that higher level job. That might bear, deserve some scrutiny itself. Then you get into where it's a total circumvention of the classification. Well, I hear you on that too, but the problem I have is this, anybody who assumes this dual assignment for no pay or partial pay is still gonna be subject to the full amount of discipline. I don't know, I don't see how I tell somebody, go ahead and act out of class as a captain and operator and if the result is something happens, they get suspended, what's the extra 60, $70 for that shift work worth? I think the contention is not with the compensation then, it's with whether or not the person's being forced to do it or do it of their own free will. I guess that would be my only addition is that I don't think this special rate of pay goes to the issue of whether someone can be required to do the job or not. Even if it was a purely voluntary basis, this would still just provide the people who volunteered but don't meet the requirements for dual assignment pay would receive that extra compensation. So I don't think there's any, I don't think this special rate of pay affects the issue of whether someone can be required to do that extra work. Well, I agree, I think those are two separate questions. That would be my only point is that passing this doesn't really do anything but provide extra pay for people who do the work. No, but it, I agree with you, number one, they're two separate issues, they are. But by passing this, I have a concern that it endorses the practice while these people who take on these assignments, whether forced or ultimately by volunteerism, aren't being compensated fairly. So I make a motion we defer, I make the motion we just defer this. My thought was if the commission passes it and then you feel compelled to try to pull the plug before the council passes it. You know what I mean? Like that buys you time. But also, if you want to forward, fine by me too. I'd like to hear some more from employees about this who are affected. I mean, I know a lot already, but you know. So I think, I could second the motion to defer. Okay, fine. All in favor, everybody, who would that? Aye. Aye. Okay, thank you commissioners. Item number 6A is under recruitment and selection matters is the approval of examination announcements 11.562 to 11.630. And it's a lot of them because we are off in August since two months of recruitments, fruits of recruitments. And all, everything is approved by civil service, correct? Okay. Commissioners, we have a motion. To approve. A motion to accept. Do we have a second? Second. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you commissioners. And item number seven, we've covered. Item number eight is a request from former police sergeant, Stephanie Talion regarding the payment of accrued sick and annual leave. Yesterday, NOPD indicated that they will make the payment to former sergeant Talion. Of course, her representative reserves the right to appear before y'all if that's not done by our October meeting. So there's no action required. Okay. The next item, items nine through 12 from the fire union, we defer in those due to recusal? Yeah, yeah. Okay, so we're gonna defer items nine through 12 due to recusal. Item 13 is a request from police accounting section manager, Earl Roche for retro application of civil service, rule four, section 2.7. Mr. Roche, this is your item. So come up here before the commission and present please. Thank you. No, you can come before. Oh. Yeah, come. This is my house? Yeah. Come up to the table there. Yeah, you can. Oh, just give us one sec while they're. All right. Take your time. All right, Mr. Roche. Your name for the record? My name is Earl Roche, but I go by Trey. I don't like my first name, but yeah. Okay, so here's your opportunity. Tell us what. So there was a recent, sort of recent case precedent within here. Case number, well, it would be the commission, 9691. 9691 and the fourth circuit, 2025. It's, I don't know how you say the person's name, MAQBOOL versus the civil service commission. The court ruled that if there is intent by the hiring department to provide a permit to pay extraordinary qualifications, if you have documents at that time, or in that case, if you have some type of evidence and affidavit of some sorts to prove that the employer intended on requesting the extraordinary qualifications to hire qualifications, I have an email in the record from before I was officially starting my position where I was told they attempted, another word for attempt is intended, but because I selected willing to accept the position at the minimum, well, I later find out that that is not a civil service rule, that is not a barring factor, and I have six people that received extraordinary pay that selected willing to accept the position at the minimum. Not to mention there were two former police accounting section managers that my qualifications blew away.

What they couldn't do in that position with collecting and getting grant money, I far exceeded them. My qualifications, I mean, I have them, and in the email, I relied on them, their word that they were going to attempt. There was nothing barring me getting extraordinary qualifications at that time. I could accept if at that time there was, they tried, their word to me was and they tried but there was some underlining issue that prevented them from doing it and there was none. There was no issue whatsoever and my, they intended on, they say it in the email. HR and the chief at the time, Ms. Williams, it says, regrettably we basically intended on giving you pay above but due to, not due to that I didn't have extraordinary qualifications but due to I checked willing to accept the position at the minimum on the application that was the only reason that they stated in the email that I wouldn't get it. But they gave it to six, I didn't even go through all the people, I mean, I know, there's way more that they have given it to that have selected it, I can show you the people and I can show you that email that that was the only reason that they stated. And I think it's unfair that if they gave it to six, a minimum six other people that selected that and NOPD has a moral conduct, they have to be truthful in their statements. If they didn't want to give it to me, they should have said they don't want to give it to me. Intent, civil service rule one point, one point, I think it's like 60, I have to look through here, it states intent, notice, they put on their job bulletin which is a public notice that they were willing to give anyone that had extraordinary qualifications. I did. I mean, and I brought in more money, I believe I deserve it. And I just think it's one thing I think everybody should be treated equally. If you compare my qualifications to Heidi Green that received extraordinary pay, mine double hers and she got the midpoint. I mean, I think it's only fair. And case precedent shows that I will win. I mean, I got, I mean, stuff, I can tell you many different ways that it satisfies the requirement and there's no law that states or rule that would have prevented me. And there's nothing in the record that shows that they didn't want to give it to me. So, personnel director, did you review, because we're considering all of his information I want to see here. Sure. So, one of the substantial fact differences between his situation and Mr. Magbul's situation which he cites is that Mr. Magbul indicated on his application that he was unwilling to accept the position at the posted minimum. In 2018, we added a question to our applications. We already had the existing question that says, are you willing to accept this position at the posted minimum rate of pay, yes or no. In 2018, we had a policy change where we added a question that said, I understand that if I selected yes to the question above, that I will not be eligible for hiring rate above the minimum rate of pay for this position. Check yes to show that you understand the statement. As you'll see on the screen, Mr. Roche indicated on his 2024 application that he was willing to accept the position at the posted minimum rate of pay and that he understood that selecting yes, that indicated that he will only be eligible for the posted minimum rate of pay for this position. The comparators, please don't interrupt me, the comparators that he submitted were all applied prior to that change in civil service policy in 2018. This green that he just spoke about indicated that she would not accept it at the minimum, therefore we were able to consider her extraordinary qualifications request. I have a question, may I ask? Sure. Go ahead. Does this something that happens at the time of application to a job or for promotion or transfer? Yes. At the time somebody applies, they indicate whether or not they're willing to accept the item at the minimum, I mean, accept the position at the minimum. When NOPD told him that they were not allowed to give it to him because he indicated that, he accepted the job and started anyway. So when somebody indicates yes or no to that question, it neither, it's not a disqualifying thing, it's a choice, they're just being asked, one second, it's okay, they're being asked just as a... Yes, are you willing to accept this position at the posted minimum rate of... Some people get hired by checking yes, some people get hired by checking no. And it says, it won't affect your eligibility for hire, but it does impact your eligibility to receive that pay premium. What's the purpose of... It's not in the public's interest to hire people above the minimum, they're saying they're willing to take it at the minimum. And the rule references whether or not there's an applicant pool willing to accept the position at the minimum. Okay, so the, and let me just finish asking Amy a question, because I want to understand why the question exists first. I think that's... Yeah, I get it. I just... So, all right, Amy, you were saying the question exists in applications so that in the interest of public fiduciary duty, we know the manner of applicant, what they are looking for, what they are willing to accept. I'm looking, I don't have the rule with me. The rule basically says that you award extraordinary, you have a rule around, oh, perfect, you award extraordinary... I can see that as well, where it says in the rule that you are barred from it, because I have an email recently from Tia Harrison that states that doesn't bar you from not getting extraordinary PET. Okay, it's... I can show you that. Well, it might be HR's intention, but they can't trump civil service rules. Okay. Subject to the revocation of the personal director, an appointing authority may pay an original, temporary, provisional, or regular employee at a rate of pay up to the midpoint subject to the following conditions and limitations.

That the duties and responsibilities of a position require the employment of a person with qualifications or credentials that differ significantly from those normally required for other positions in the same class, and that persons who possess such qualifications are not readily available in the labor market at the minimum entrance rate in the pay grade. So, if he's saying he's willing to take it at the minimum entrance rate in the pay grade, then the person who possesses those credentials, him, is available in the labor market at the minimum entrance rate of the pay grade. If there is not someone else in the labor market, plus that is a no-go... I mean, you can ask anybody in business, that's a negotiation. Are you willing? That's not a definitive statement. But it's not a negotiation, but we literally put on the application that it means you would be ineligible for that premium, and you checked that you understood that. That means there is not a negotiation. And Amy, do you tell appointing authorities who want to hire above the minimum if there are people on the eligible list who are willing to accept the minimum? Yes, that's one of the things that we look at as well. It wasn't relayed to me, and obviously NOPD didn't know it, because why would they tell me, during the interview and all after when they offered it, that they were going to go after what they didn't look at my application? Because they would have known then if that was a barring issue. We deal with a lot of issues here where appointing authorities are unaware of the rules. I get that, but it says if there's... I think I hear what you're saying, and I feel for you. If you were told something by your appointing authority, it's just that it sounds like they were wrong. Well, I mean, at the end of the day, there is nothing that... I'm not stopping here. You shouldn't. And I'm not. Okay. And I mean, I'm just trying to do... It should have been the morally correct thing to do was to fix it back then. Then I'm bringing it here, waiting all day to do it, because I understand the condition. But I didn't want to have to then take it to an actual court in it for something that... Well, let me clarify. This is quasi-judicial. I don't mean any disrespect, but I mean, it sounds like everybody's going to go with that, and that is not... Well, I want to give clarity. So we have to go by our rules, one, and you know that, and then number two, what does our policy... So I think where the challenge comes in is that when they amended the policy, and you determine, yes, you understood. Read the statement again. So the first question is, are you willing to accept this position at the posted minimum rate of pay, yes or no? I understand that if I select yes to the question above, that I will only be eligible for the posted minimum rate of pay for this position. Please check yes to show that you have read and understood this, and understand this statement. But if they're... Not to cut you off, but if that is the case, I get that, that would be a bonding contract. I read it. I understood, but it doesn't matter if the policy's changed or whatever, that's a valid contract in 2015 or present day, and all these people got it. But I don't think what you understood is that they said no, correct? No, they said yes. They were willing to... I can show you five different people that said yes. Either they said no, or it was prior... They applied prior to the policy. So it was a prior... It was still a... I mean... So if it predates that particular provision that says you're not... You are waiving that right, then they would be eligible, which is the difference. So I don't mean TIA, Harrison, Civil Service, that's... Yeah. I asked, does that bar the department? It doesn't say it bars the department from giving extraordinary pay. I asked, and this was 2026. And it's that the person can still get it. Amy, though, isn't that what it says on the initial checkbox? Whether that's fair or not, whatever, whether we like it or not, the department, it's not up to them ultimately. Right. It's the rule. Right. Sorry, Amy? It's the rule. It's the rule. I don't see that's relative to you. Yeah. Right. I'm saying, like, the department may, in good faith, have tried to steer this toward you. It's civil service laws, where in the law of civil service does it state that it bars you? Yeah. And that the duties and responsibilities of a person require the employment, of a position require the employment of a person with qualifications, credentials that differ significantly from those normally required for other positions in the same class, and the persons who possess such qualifications are not readily available in the labor market at the minimum entrance rate in the paper. One last thing, and I'll promise I'll let it rest, is this, so if you have a contract and an agreement, say me and you have one, we agree to the terms, right? Just like I agreed, I'm willing, but if you then counteract and you tell me here and you change the terms and then we make a new agreement, that changes the original contract. The fact that still back in July, after all of that happened, NOPD is still saying, here, we're going to do it. They don't get to do it without our approval. I'm just saying that there were parties to the agreement just like I was, and at the end of the day, it's... So I think that's a conversation with NOPD and the personnel director, but ultimately the keeper of the rules and the application, it lies with the personnel director and civil service, and at this time it hasn't met the burden of proof, or the rules, my understanding. I mean, at this point, I'm going to lean on just what the application, which you agreed to, is the standard that the commission is going to rule on.

You're welcome to look at other avenues on how you want to address that, but as of this commission and this purpose, we're going to go by the rule of law, and at this point I'm asking the commission, do they have a motion? Or how they want to proceed with this? Yeah, I would move to deny the retroactive application of Civil Service Rule 4.2.7. Okay, so at this time we're going to deny to retro the application of 4.2.7, due to the nature of what I just shared. Do we have a second? I'll second, but I'll add this, I encourage you to see it through. If you feel confident in it, that's sometimes the way you've got to handle it. I get that, but what I have gone through over the last year working here, in all honesty, is... I understand more than you think. I get it, and you also understand that if you stir the pot, you're going to have some repercussions from it. Look, in that case that you're citing, the case you're citing, that guy, he saw it through and he won. And let me just reiterate again, I hear what you're saying, but I just want to make sure that you understand, if we don't uphold the application of the rule, it's not only you, it opens the floodgate for everybody else to come back and then re-oppose the rule. So I can't... I would like to... I mean, what I'm looking for, not to cut you off, in essence, is where there's the rules one through whatever. Somewhere on there, the rules, the laws, I mean, it states that. I'm looking for that, not something that is on an application, I mean, that is subjective. The department can make questions up. I mean, what makes me know that that application is... That's all I'm looking for. You show me a civil service law that is actually there. Because your employment was based on you completing that application. So even though we're at will, but you're in a classified, when you agreed on the application that you certify you have the skills, that you have the knowledge, also you also certify that you understood that this was the exchange for employment. So we do have to uphold the application. The application is important in employment. And so I think this is the application of the rules within the civil service rules. I do understand your challenge, and maybe that's further discussion. But I think for right now, for what's presented before us, commissioners, we have a motion on the floor to deny. And so we're going to, in a second, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Thank you. One last thing. Can I... I mean, where do I see that? You said the policy change in the people that I have right here were after that policy date. Where can I find that policy at? I mean, I would... If that is the boring thing that, I mean, that's making me lose this, because it is true, if all of these got it, unless there is a policy date after my most recent one right here, then I should get it too. All I'm asking for is to see it. Is that something you should email? Yeah, so I was able to locate an email from July 18th, 2018, when we added that second question to the... An actual, I mean, Dawson, where is the policy at? I mean, an email just between people, how is that a policy? Because that's why we started to collect that information. Okay. Mr. Roche, the commissioners rule. I know. I was just asking for that. I'm not going to... Our rules have dates they are amended attached in the rule book too. Yeah, but if the rule was not amended, just to be sure. Gotcha. All right. Item 13 is a request from former NORDC employee, Sonia Morris, for investigation concerning her classification, rate of compensation, eligibility for educational incentive pay, application of citywide pay adjustments, and possible entitlement to corrective retroactive compensation during her employment. I don't think Ms. Morris is still here. I guess we'll wait for the chairperson to come back. We don't have a quorum. And that last item, I'm going to defer that to the next meeting. So we just wait until she comes back and then we'll make a decision on that and we'll be done. No, I'm coming to you in a second. We just have one more. We just want you... We have one last item. It's the request from former NORDC employee for an investigation. Ms. Morris is not here. The reason it comes to you in the form of an investigation is because she's not a current employee. Our staff did do some preliminary looking into some of her concerns and at least one preliminarily we think may be a valid concern in terms of retroactive compensation. So staff's recommendation would be for the commission to grant the request for investigation. Okay. Based on your recommendation, commissioners, do we have a motion to grant? We do. So moved. So moved. Do I have a second? Second. Okay. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Okay. Thank you, commissioners. And like I said, item number 15, which is a report on disciplinary training for city leadership, I'm going to push that to the next meeting. So that's all the business that we have before you today. Commissioners, do we have a motion to adjourn? Moved. So moved. So happy. Thank you, everyone. This meeting is adjourned. Thank you, everyone. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.