Civil Service Commission Meeting.

And if someone cannot make it on July 21, by all means, we welcome their written comments. We don't want anyone's voices to not be heard on this. And we're going to – we felt like this is an important issue. We want to make sure we give it full attention. And that's why we're setting it for a special meeting on July 21. Right. The – go ahead. The online submission. Amy, maybe you can mention that. Yes. And so we do accept online submission. There are instructions on our website, on NOLA.gov, the civil service portion. And there's a form and instructions on submission there. Okay. All right. Okay. All right. Okay. Mr. Wisby, go ahead. If you'd introduce yourself for the record and tell us what your present position is. And welcome back. Thank you, Commissioner. And thank you, commissioners, for taking the time to hear this proposal today. My name is Jonathan Wisby. I am the chief innovation officer for the city. And what I bring to you today is really the cumulative effort of several months of work between the chief administrative office and its staff and the Louisiana legislative auditor. As everyone, I think, knows, the city is facing considerable financial difficulties this year. And what this really comes out of is a frustration that we've heard from both employees and supervisors on the existing performance evaluation process in an effort to try to align that more closely with some of the practices of the state civil service system. While also putting in place some structures to ensure that the merit pay that is awarded goes to those highest performers and is not sort of culturally accepted as a benefit as opposed to a performance metric to strain for. What this really encompasses are what I would boil down to four major changes. The first change is moving from a three rating option system, which currently exists, and allows you to rate employees as exceeds expectations, meets expectations, and does not meet expectations, to a five rating system standard that is adopted from the state civil service system reforms that were put in place in 2024 at the state. Those five being exceptional at the top, exceeds expectations. Second, satisfactory third, needs improvement fourth, and unsatisfactory fifth. And then the other change aligned with that would be authorizing merit pay for the exceptional rating rather than for the first two ratings. Those changes regarding merit pay would not go into effect until the 2027 observation year, which is paid out in approximately June 2028. The other couple of major changes that we would propose here is one, a reduction of evaluation categories. The feedback that we heard a lot was that the number of categories, I believe there were seven previously, and the definitions of those categories were very unclear, and what we're trying to do is streamline that a bit to make sure that it is more aligned with the actual expectations of employees. What that would include would be eliminating competencies, person role fit, overall placement, and clarifying that the supervision and guidance requirements category only apply to supervisors. And we think that that will make it a lot easier for us to focus on the remaining categories and will increase the importance of those. So before, performance goals was only one out of seven categories you could be rated on. Going forward, if you are not a supervisor, it will be one out of three categories, so that places a greater weight on the individual work the supervisor does to create that goal setting with the employee. Also remaining would be work tasks in behavior expectations, quality and completeness of work, and again, for supervisors, the supervision category. The last two changes that we're proposing are what I would consider sort of tweaks to existing rules. So there is an existing requirement in the rules right now that the city budget 2% of department budgets for merit pay. That, I believe, is a holdover from when merit pay was a 2% award, and so what we're recommending that language be changed to now would be a requirement to budget appropriately so that the city still has a requirement to budget and cannot say, hey, listen, we can't pay this, we didn't budget it, but that it isn't aligned with an old standard and allows the city the flexibility to align that with whatever the current standard and civil service rules are for merit pay. The final edit that's being suggested, I believe the commission a few years ago changed a rule that had been initially implemented which gave the administration and the CAO in particular the authorization to effectively, at their discretion, eliminate merit pay if there were difficult economic circumstances, and I think that was the result of the administration effectively using that discretion in years where we may not have had apparent significant economic headwinds. What we would like to do instead to ensure that there isn't discretion on the part of the administration but that merit pay is still tied to the fiscal health of the city is to provide that power to the commission and effectively say in any given year where the commission has approved furloughs for employees, that merit pay will not be paid out. And what that does is it prevents us from running into a situation like we faced this year where the city expended enough money in merit pay that it overcame the savings that it realizes from furloughs and effectively we're furloughing people in order to pay merit pay, which I think is not how the system was originally designed to work and I think the city would probably be better off if employees had been not furloughed but had not been paid merit pay. So I think what this is an attempt to do is to really connect those two concepts and protect the city fiscally while also ensuring that power is not abused by future administrations.

So those are the content of the edits that Amy suggested we have introduced and what I would like to say is during that period until the special meeting, I do welcome all entities or individuals that have input to these edits to send those ideas of me and arrange meetings when available and I'll do my best to accommodate those so that we can get all that input and see if there are edits that we would suggest in advance of that meeting to reach a place where we can be all in agreement on the changes for it. So I appreciate the opportunity to present this and I look forward to that debate continuing over the next couple of weeks. Thank you, Ms. Wisby. Amy, you have anything to add? No. So we just have a couple of speaker cards. Amanda Follis representing AFSCME 2349. Good morning, Amanda. Good morning, commissioners. Good morning, Amy. So obviously as a representative of the city employees, we're always very concerned about any changes to merit pay. Depending on what these rules are based off what we just heard, the underlying issue is still not addressed. The underlying issue is and always has been there not being any clear rubrics in any department for employees to meet or strive towards for the betterment of city workings. Sounds like those still are not being proposed. What does sound like is being proposed is a reversion to something fairly similar to the previous system, which was, while we don't anticipate furloughs happening all the time, I hope, and we do hope to always have commissioners that will make the right decisions about whether to agree to furloughs proposed by the administration at appropriate times, that's not always a guarantee for long-standing employees of the city. Additionally, expanding it back to five categories, which is what it was when I started in 2012, once again still allows people to, without a clear rubric, without a requirement for clear rubrics, without any way to approve rubrics, without any way to share rubrics with clarity with employees, still allows people to pick favorites. And as it stands, these changes, in our opinion, as they stand, just don't address the underlying issue that may have led to too many merit pays this past year, or, as I hear from all the employees that were excluded, tons of favoritism. Nobody ever has to explain why somebody gets exceeds expectations or whatever the highest level is going to be now. Nobody ever has to explain it. They just sign the performance and say, yeah, you did great. Thank you, Amanda. Let me say to those points is that that's not something that the commission is tasked with, right? The department directors decide what the priorities of the departments are, set the work for the supervisors and the employees of those departments, and they need to tell us what success looks like in their actual departments. And so we rely on them to say, and work with their supervisors and their managers about what the work product is, what documentation of success looks like in their departments. Because we don't set the culture and the expectations in the individual departments. We provide a form for people to document that. Amy, are those aligned with the city goals and objectives? There's no requirement. Again, it has to come from the top. It has to be a culture that comes from the top within the individual departments. One of the areas on the form is it starts with the department's mission, vision, and objectives. That's the first area on the form. That's supposed to be so that the supervisors connect the mission of the department and the objectives of the department to what the individual goals are and how that person's individual goals contribute back to that overall mission of that department. Would that also be connected to the city's overall objectives statement, the initial statement? Yes. I guess my mind is, I'm thinking, and I was listening to the other comments, it seems like there's some sort of a disconnect. I'll just give you a really simple example. Everybody really should be evaluated on customer service. Everybody. Because you want good results in dealing with people of the public. That's what I mean when I say a really through line so everybody will be evaluated for something that the city is doing for us, the constituents. Historically, we have not received any information top down. I understand what Amy's saying with each department has different cultural needs and how they would meet those expectations or exceed those expectations. But could the commission mandate each department create a rubric of concrete objectives to meet those different criteria? I mean, each department would have their own, but could they mandate the creation of that rubric in each department so everybody knows to make it easier? Sounds like you have a suggestion for John for an edit to the book. We're not going to get into that today, but we'll get into that July 21, but any suggestions you have, Erin, talk to Jonathan. Because what we want to do is to, if there is issues that need to be discussed before July 21, I'm all in favor of you all doing that so that when you come on July 21, you say, we've gotten together. And it's no perfect system, but we've taken into account everyone's concerns, etc. And this is what we feel collectively is the best way to go. That's always the best way to approach things. So I invite that type of dialogue. Did you have anything else to say? You have a speaker card. And then Benjamin Quindy. Good morning, everyone. I just wanted to say that I look forward to being able to review those changes and prepare comments for the 21st. Given all the reasons that have been stated, we want time to be able to review those changes and suggest improvements. Thank you for that clarification. Thank you. Anyone else? Item number 4A under Recruitment and Selection Matters is the approval of examination announcements 11-5-34 to 11-5-61.

Commissioners, you have copies of those announcements and we're still heavy just on sewage and water board, airport, things that are non-general fund funded at this time. Need a motion to approve? Move to approve. Second. I'm in favor as well, so it's approved. Thank you, commissioners. Item number 4B is a request from the Police Department to extend the eligible list for a police sergeant. Commissioners, as you recall from the past when we established eligible lists for public safety promotions, under our rules, I can extend the eligible list up to three years. Anything that's beyond three years, but up to five, can be extended by commission action. We did establish a sergeant's list in August of 2023 and it will hit three years on August 31st. There is still a valid existing list and we were unable to administer an exam this year because that was one of the items that was cut from our budget due to the fiscal constraints. We reached out to the police chief and she is in agreement. We'd like to request to extend the current list to March 31st, 2027 and we'll reassess also at that time to see what that looks like if we need to extend it further or if we've been budgeted for an exam, what that looks like. So we're requesting approval of the extension of the current police sergeant's promotional eligible list through March 31st, 2027. Do I have a motion? Move to approve. Second. All in favor as well so it's approved. Thank you commissioners. Item number 4C is a request from the fire department to extend the eligible list for fire captain. So same scenario. We created this eligible list in September 2023. It's set to expire September 30th of 2026. There is currently an active eligible list. We were unable to administer a new exam this year. So same thing we're requesting. The fire chief wanted to request the same thing extended through March 31st, 2027 and we'll make another assessment at that time. Move to approve. Second. I approve as well. Thank you commissioners. Item number 4D is a request from the fire department to extend the eligible list for fire district chief. And I understand that Commissioner Monteverdi is actually on this eligible list so he'll be recused from this as I'm on the list. We'll defer this item until a future meeting likely on our special meeting. But same thing we have some time it's not set to expire until September 30th so we anticipate being able to take care of that at a future meeting. I would think of the same thing. Let's put it on the agenda for July 21. Great. So there's really no delay because we don't have a regular meeting in August. Correct. Will do. Alright thank you. Thank you. Okay commissioners. Item number 5A is a report on the 2025 performance evaluations. And commissioners as you recall we do this report every year. We provide you with information in terms of a breakdown by departments, in terms of completion rate, in terms of the ratings for the different departments. Wanted to just call your attention really to the overall information. So based on the 2025 observation year and this also includes sewage and water board employees because they're under our umbrella. We had 71% of employees who were rated as exceeds expectations. 28% as meets expectations. And 1.5% as does not meet expectations. We can continue to see a very high completion rate in terms of the ratings being made. 97.82% completed. There are still issues here and there with departments and individuals not completing it in a timely manner. But much less than there have been in previous years. Just to show you like the trend. The first chart is completion rate from 2021 to 2025. And it's very obvious when the commission changed the rules to put merit pay back in because the completion rate went back up. But you'll see also sort of where it hits that same mark where exceeds expectations and meets expectations sort of crisscrossed in terms of the number of employees receiving those ratings at that time as well. So you have intended consequences and unintended consequences. And so I think this is part of why there are proposed changes to the merit pay rule and the evaluation rule to sort of reexamine whether or not the sort of how it shakes out now. How does this compare to the prior year? To the prior year, it's definitely up. I don't have the data points on this chart. But you'll see 2024 right here. It looks like it's up by about 10% in terms of the rating for exceeds expectations. And that was largely due actually from the fire department. The fire department had a pretty good shift last year. A lot more of their employees were rated as meets expectations than this year. And that was my question. You have those broken down by departments? Yes. Yes. That's in your report. You know, you have variance in terms of departments. You have departments. So like chief administrative office has 78% exceeds, but city council has 94. Finance department has 86, but fire has 66. The lease department had 94% of employees were rated as exceeds expectations. How come in some categories by some departments there's a greater than 100% completion rate? So that's due to people who did not weren't required to receive ratings. They still rated them in the system so they were included. We can't tease those individuals out of that data without going through one by one. So it's like if you were if you started after the beginning of the year or if you were an unclassified employee that is on leave from the classified service, they still do your rating in there. It just doesn't count as an official in that data. So in other words, they were catching all employees, but not all of them were due to be rated for one reason or another. Gotcha. Amy, I know this is going to be something discussed more fully at the July 21 special meeting, but just so it's clear, what role do we as commissioners have in you as civil service department director in regard to evaluating the evaluations that have been done? Gotcha.

So what we look at is the objective criteria, right? Were they done on time? Was a rating made? Were they submitted? That sort of thing. We do not police the content of, you know, we receive four or five thousand evaluations. We don't police that content. You know, the supervisor and then the second level supervisor both are required to sign off on that evaluation. And so they're supposed to ensure that the documentation to support that rating is required in that evaluation. So we can't micromanage, did you write seven sentences or attach three documents or, you know, that sort of thing. It's up to the departments to the supervisor and second level supervisor to police whether or not they're being completed in terms of the content. The only thing we do is make sure objectively that it's submitted timely and that there's goals and that sort of thing in the evaluation. I think it's important because sometimes it's misunderstood as to what the role of the commission is. And we have certain ability, certain jurisdiction, but in other matters we don't have jurisdiction over. And I think that that's going to be important when we get into the discussion on July 21. There's only certain things we can really take up. And I know as you always do a great job to guide us into those areas that we should be in and to make sure we don't stray into areas that we shouldn't be in. Right. Exactly. Exactly. So, you know, our role is to provide the tool and to do training on the tool. But in the end, it's up to the supervisors to execute on that tool. It's up to the department directors to say what the work product and the priorities of their department are and then have that translate down into the individual requirements for each of the employees. Just two questions. I'm just curious. Are these performance evaluations electronic? Yes. And my second question is does the city use like Press Ganey or what type of information is the city getting from the consumer who could somewhat validate these? So we use NeoGov for the evaluation. Sure. So we use NeoGov, a module of NeoGov, which is our human resources suite that we use in civil service. One of the great things about the system is it links to our learning management system. So our supervisors can tie in the evaluations to different trainings and require trainings to address deficiencies, those sorts of things. But it's an electronic system that we've used for a number of years now. We can run reports. The departmental HR officers can run reports in terms of the ratings. We can do batches of the evaluations, those sorts of things. I guess where I'm coming from with this is say like in the world of medicine, Press Ganey does a lot of what the consumer thinks about their health care. So if, I'm just saying, if there's a department and everybody got exceeds expectations, but the data comes back from what the consumer's thinking, it's like that's horrible services. Like there's a disconnect. Exactly. There's no correlation. Somebody spoke, I apologize, but someone spoke about everybody getting exceeds expectations and somewhat could be favoritism, what have you. That's kind of a way to really, really do a deep dive into why do we have all these exceeds expectations if the consumer doesn't think very much of it. Exactly. And one of the features of our system is it allows for journal entries where the supervisors are supposed to log behavioral incidents and that includes things like customer feedback, citizen complaints or citizen letters of thanks, those sorts of things. They can attach all that information. We encourage them to attach and document that and when you go to make the person's rating in the system, it actually pulls up all those journal entries in a column to the right and so you can see the sort of history of what you documented throughout the course of the observation year in terms of, okay, what kind of feedback did we get? Did we get complaints? Did we get praise? Did we get a mix? The problem is it's only as good as the data that the supervisors put in. So if they don't put anything in there, then there's nothing for them to rely on. Yeah, I get it. Thank you. Thank you. Do we know how many, like what's the maximum, is there a maximum number of people that a supervisor has to rate? Like is there a... No, there's no standard span of control. You have departments where someone may supervise one person and they may supervise 20 people in the system. It really just depends on the individual department and how their span of control is set up. So like, I don't know if it was a year or two ago, then CAO Montano came in, we had a big meeting, because that year there had been a massive case of supervisors that were not appropriately completing evaluations in time. Everybody remembers that, right? We talked about at that time that, and I can't remember if this went into the rules, but I remember we talked about it, that in the future, a supervisor, first, second, or higher up, that failed to complete their subordinates' ratings in time would then not be eligible themselves for merit pay. Does this commission or the department have any review over that when it happens? Because I hear from people that it happens. And my question is, are we relying on appointing authorities to handle that themselves and deal with it within the evaluation of that supervisor, or does the department or the commission, and if they don't, maybe we could look at a way to reconcile where that doesn't happen, if it's happening. So what we do is we send a spreadsheet to the departmental HR officers, and one of the columns on the spreadsheet says if this person is a supervisor, did they fulfill all of their supervisory requirements by the deadline? And they're supposed to tell us, yes, that person set all the goals and made the ratings for all their subordinates by the deadline, or no, they did not.

And if they put no, they did not, even if they receive and exceeds expectations in the system, we do not pay out merit for that individual. Now again, just like everything else in city government, we have some HR managers that do a beautiful job of that, and they give us the information, and it's correct. And we have other ones that put every single person in their department that was a supervisor, did everything in a timely manner, and I know when we go in the system and reject evaluations because they're late, that that's not correct. So we attempt to solicit that information from the department HR folks, and it's hit or miss in terms of correctness. For the moment, we're relying on taking them at their word, though? No, we also check up on it. Okay, and if you, just so I'm clear, if it turns out that there were discrepancies where a supervisor at one level or another did fail to do this, and thereby created a situation where the people beneath them didn't receive merit pay or an evaluation that they otherwise deserved, the staff will go back and make sure that that supervisor doesn't receive that? We see it in the system, yes. And what we do, we usually reach out to the department and say, was this the person responsible for that? And they'll tell us yes, and then we won't put them on the list. Anything else on that, that we can find out what the compliance is from the supervisor level to make sure that they're not disowned? Okay. Anything else in that item? Okay, that is the end of our agenda items. Before we end, I'd like to just take a couple minutes, and one of our commissioners will be finishing her term in a few weeks, Dr. Ruth Davis, and she has been an unbelievable commissioner. She has been exceptional in so many ways. I've had the pleasure, personally, of working with her and she's very conscientious. She's been extremely devoted to helping this city advance in so many different ways and our city really has benefited significantly by having Ruth on this particular commission. It's been, to see her work and to see her conscientiousness and the way she devotes her attention to the issues and the way she goes about doing her work, it's been a pleasure. And we've had some difficult issues to deal with with the commission, and our commission has been able to work together in a really, in my view, an excellent way and I give a lot of credit to that to Ruth because she has always added very valuable comments, valuable insights, and we're going to really truly miss her on this commission and whoever comes in to take her place has some, as they say, some big shoes to fill, but she is extremely well-liked and loved by everyone on this commission and I hope those of you who have worked with us for the last several years that she's been on this commission will join me in thanking her and congratulating her for her tremendous service to this commission. Thank you. Thank you. It's been my pleasure. Thank you. We have some flowers for you. Maybe we can get a picture. And with that, we will end our meeting but that's the best way to end this meeting and thank you so much, Ruth. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.