Finance Committee - 5/16/2018 Page 8
Mayor Donchess
Do you want to come on up Mr. Budreau?
Alderman Klee
My question is, is this just to aid in processing their current contract changes that have recently come down. Is
it just for temporary help? | was a little confused by the request so | apologize.
Larry Budreau, Human Resources Director
That’s fine, | am Larry Budreau the Human Resources Director. | have two, this is the Lawson Consulting first,
| believe.
Mayor Donchess
This is the $15,000.00.
Mr. Budreau
| never miss an opportunity especially for new Aldermen to reinforce that the city and the school district
combined have a very complicated payroll and benefits administration system; 17 union contracts, 3 non-
agreements, all sorts of different nuances. Lawson, the software that we use for the financials in the city and
for processing payroll and benefits administration needs to be constantly configured, reconfigured and
repaired. A couple of problems that we are suffering right now and have for years, is that there is a
phenomenon called comp time and it is that some hourly employees can choose not to be paid but store that
time and at a future time be able to take time and a half, an hour and half or every hour they worked overtime.
We should have a flawless record keeping system for that. We don’t. Many times they’ve tried to fix it and it
breaks. So this Lawson Consultant currently is helping us with that. So it is fixes, it is helping us to configure
for new things that come down the pike.
By way of contrast and another interesting thing that some of you don’t know because we haven't met, the
entire human resources and payroll department comprise 10 and a half people. Of that group | am the most
senior, I’ve been here less than 3 years. So we have an enormous learning curve and a broken system. In
Fiscal 2017, we spent $180,000.00 on similar consulting so we have made enormous strides. What we are
doing here is encumbering this so that we can continue on some of the projects we have and know that we
have money as issues or new challenges come up.
Alderman Klee
So if | may, so this is really kind of a one and done type of a fix or are we going to once a year need them to
come in and make these contracts or other things change? | worked in a payroll with the Department of
Veteran’s Affairs, so | understand all the different pay scales and all the different types of wage grade versus a
GF. | worked for the Federal Government so | can understand that and comp time is a nightmare yes.
Mr. Budreau
So the response is the latter, we will not necessarily, we are not going to spend all that money in one shot and
| can’t say for sure that we will spend it all in the upcoming year. But we certainly may, we have current
projects going on and with the Fiscal Year coming to a close, we want to make sure that we secure the
permission to acquire that consulting when we need it.
Alderman Klee
Sounds good to me, thank you.
